The waiting. That's been the hardest part for fans of the BBC series Torchwood, an adult-focused spinoff from the legendary Doctor Who. After a huge success with the five-part miniseries Children of Earth which was started exactly two years ago yesterday in the UK, nothing.
NOTHING.
And that just sucked. First losing Ianto Jones (and before him both Naoki Mori's Tosh Sato and Burn Gorman's Owen Harper) and then seemingly losing the show. BBC, having its own budget issues in this down economy, seemed to say it was hardpressed to find the funds to produce another season on its own, which just didn't make sense to me after CoE's ratings success on BBC One, and in Canada, Australia, the rest of Europe and here on BBC America.
(Of course, there are all kinds of reasons this is happening and they all have to do with the structure of the British Broadcasting Company and BBC Worldwide and how revenue is shared, and I still don't really understand it all.)
Their mandate now seems to be to find an international partner for big shows. And in Starz, they've found a hungry participant as well. Their Spartacus series put them on the pay cable drama map and although Camelot did not follow suit and in fact was canceled just this past week, they are hungry for big, bold series that will attract hoards of young men and the women who love them to the channel.
Enter Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). He's big and bold. He lives forever, he's traveled through time, he's had sex with all kinds of stuff in the tradition of one James Tiberius Kirk, that's big and bold for ya.
Like Kirk he's saved the world, more than once. You know, like heroes do. And, bonus, his interstellar horniness doesn't restrict itself to one sex, Harkness is a true pansexual. In fact, I think he would have sex with a very attractive pan.
So, with only Jack, Welsh goddess Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and hubby Rhys (the bear-y loveable Kai Owen) left of the ol' Torchwood crew, the hub in Cardiff having been destroyed, and lots of American money being spent, how do you come up with what is in essence a fourth series of Torchwood?
Well you bring in the heavyweights is what you do. You've got Russell T. Davies, the guy who brought back Doctor Who, created Queer as Folk for Channel 4 UK, showed us that Bob & Rose can fall in love (but it's a tricky business) and invented these people in the first place.
He calls brilliant friends like fan darling Jane Espenson (Buffy, BSG, Caprica, the recent Game of Thrones), Doris Egan (House, Numbers), John Shiban (Vampire Diaries, Breaking Bad), and John Fay who wrote Ianto's death scene in Children of Earth.
And they get it done. My somewhat spoilery review of the first hour of Torchwood: Miracle Day starts when you click over the jump.
The first person who speaks in the opening stanza of Miracle Day, titled The New World, is a local news reporter played by Ellen Fox, which just reminds you and me that Ellen isn't on TV as much as she should be and that we miss The Rotten Tomatoes Show on Current.
Well, at least SHE's working.
Standing outside a Kentucky penitentiary, she's reporting on the imminent execution of Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman, above, looking very flinty eyed and worn), a school teacher who was convicted on child sexual abuse charges, who said in his own defense that it was the little girl's fault for not running fast enough away from him. We're told this just so that we can be sure to hate the guy. I get it, he's evil incarnate.
On the way to his lethal injection, however, something happens, something we don't even see. But it happens sometime before that amber liquid hits his peripheral IV line. Danes shudders, goes through seizures, rips the arm off the chair he's tied into as witnesses watch. One witness in particular is very emotional and we presume she's the victim's mother.
Danes just isn't dying, though. And so the curtain between the witnesses and Danes are closed as he continues to experience the effects of the drugs.
Meanwhile, Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins above left, who is unfortunately for me is a dead ringer for a woman I just can't stand) is sitting at her station at the CIA where she works for agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer), who's on the phone. Stuff is happening, the word "Torchwood" appearing out of nowhere on computers in the heavily securitized CIA control center. Matheson's totally wrapped up in how he's gonna turn another agent's misfortune into a win for him when traffic screeches to a halt and metal fence posts crash through his windshield and into his chest.
You'd think that would be a fatal accident, huh? Not on Miracle Day. No one's dying and in fact no one has died since Danes didn't. No one is dying.
No. One. Is Dying.
Far from DC, Gwen Cooper, hubby Rhys Williams and baby Anwen (it's a Welsh name, click here for more) are basically in hiding in a two story home on the Welsh coast in the middle of nowhere, far away from anything that has to do with investigating aliens.
Gwen still has Torchwood nightmares, still tells Torchwood stories to Anwen during feedings to Rhys' displeasure and is always on guard with an arsenal of weaponry in the closet ready to be used in defense of her little girl. When an older couple comes to the door for directions they are met with coarse language and a slamming door.
Good thing, they aren't what they seem.
Rex starts to learn things about "the miracle" from hospital staff and Dr. Vera Juarez (Arlene Tur) in particular. He gets antsy to investigate, starts working with Esther to find out more about this Torchwood group that was involved with the 456 in that thing that happened in London a while back.
(I don't know how important an understanding of Children of Earth will be to new Torchwood viewers, but I still can't recommend the five-part miniseries enough, and it's available on Amazon for a good price if you're interested. Click the icon below to pick it up.)
Esther ends up in some CIA file room looking for any Torchwood evidence which has been stricken from the web by some insidious malware. As she stares into a file folder with a pic of Jack Harkness she looks up and sees the same silhouette imploring her to follow him. She runs, he follows her, they both find the dead security guard at the front desk and then a guy with a flack jacket and a lot of firepower chases them both out a window and into a public fountain before detonating a suicide vest that would kill him ... if not for the miracle.
Jack, because he's Jack, flirts with Esther a little and then retcons her. She wakes up in her own apartment with a big bruise on her side and no idea why.
But back at the CIA, there's more Torchwood talk and the retcon isn't foolproof so she and Rex are back at trying to find out what the hell is happening and why this Torchwood stuff has something to do with the miracle.
With the world abuzz with the news of everlasting life and Danes and the anti-death penalty contingent negotiating a release from prison (a plot point that frankly enfuriates me ... why would the state of Kentucky release a pedophile murderer when his sentence is death and death has not yet happened? The state seems to decide these events are permanent, immediately, and it rings false) things start to get pretty crazy, not to mention the fact that with nobody dying, even PC Andy (Tom Price, reprising his role as Gwen's former police partner and confidant) is figuring out that the miracle isn't really that at all.
Andy calls Gwen on her witness protection cellphone with a coded message that her dad's in the hospital in Cardiff after suffering a heart attack. They hesitantly head toward the city while Rex decides to leave his Washington DC hospital bed, grabbing pain killers off of trays and gobbling them while flashing his CIA ID, then gets on a plane for London.
So, you've got everyone on the move. Rex on the way to Heathrow, Jack not far behind at all (which is an understatement), Rhys, Gwen and baby on the way to Cardiff ...
... and I can't tell you any more. Anything I say past this is too much.
First things first ... there's a lot of guns and shooting, which is quite different from the first couple series of Torchwood. There's even a moment of rocket launcher v. helicopter, because that Starz money can buy a helicopter. Does it help, does it make for more excitement? Maybe, I dunno. I think Davies is smart enough and a good enough writer that he can create tension and thrills without big explosions. It's what I prefer personally. For some the firepower will be a plus.
The scope of this first episode, however, cannot be denied. It feels bigger with stuff happening across the US, in the UK, beyond. Director Bharat Nalluri (BBC's Outcasts currently airing on BBC America, Spooks/MI5, Hustle) gives this episode sweep and a hint of epicness that I think we'll see play out more as we get further into the series.
The returning cast performances are all spot on, you would never know that it's been a long while since they visited these characters. I particularly love Eve Myles as Gwen, my Action Gwen who didn't know how to shoot a pistol when she met Jack but handles the big artillery with the best of them now. Smart, ballsy, she takes no prisoners. She loves Rhys but you get the sense that even he can't stop her now that there's a threat and she has a little one that needs protection.
John Barrowman's Captain Jack might not be the Keith Richards-based invention of another Capt. Jack (played by Johnny Depp in those movies I haven't really seen more than parts of), but he does lead with charm, just like Sparrow and a whole host of other heroic figures in our popular culture. He's Johnny on the spot with a clever line and wink for just about anything attractive that comes his way, disarming and of course swashbuckling like all your better pirates of the ol' timey variety (as opposed to the one's in Somalia).
You might be surprised by Mekhi Phifer in this. I've never seen him play this kind of guy. He's a leader here and pulls it off quite effectively. He even seems taller than he has in other projects, like ER and Lie to Me. I have to admit that I'm iffy on the aforementioned traveling sequence with Rex grabbing pills from wherever and downing them, stumbling to a cab, getting a flight crew to let him board a plane with a huge hole in his chest that doesn't seem to be healing ... and then it get's even more ridiculous ... but he pulls it off even though the sequence doesn't match tone with the rest of the hour at all.
Alexa Havins, so far, is serviceable as his desk assistant Esther. Her performance peaks during her scenes with Barrowman, the other stuff is so much plot exposition, but someone has to do it.
The key to this series working is its bad guy. There's not a lot of Pullman's child rapist Danes in the pilot, but enough for you to know that when he does get screen time in the eps ahead it will be riveting. The look they've created for him here is very creepy, he spends a lot of time looking out of the corners of his eyes. We know he's capable of very bad things. I look forward to more.
Where you really see the money here (that Starz money, probably came from the Spartacus: Blood and Sand DVD proceeds) is in locations, cinematography and background performances. Compared to the first couple seasons, this Torchwood packs the screen with atmosphere, tension, foreboding.
And remember, we haven't even seen the REAL enemy in the piece yet. It's not Danes. He's a very bad guy but he's not causing the miracle, he's just a beneficiary.
I can't wait to see what's next. And I guess that means I liked it.
Torchwood: Miracle Day premieres Friday night at 10 eastern on Starz. Is your DVR set? You'd better get to that.
Watch a trailer for the series by clicking right here.
Thank you for this! I am really looking foward.
Posted by: Documentary Dude | July 12, 2011 at 09:52 AM