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My biggest problem with Miracle Day was the fact that by giving Jack the ability to die, they gave themselves a chance to explore some things with his character that they hadn't touched on before. After hundreds of years of not being able to die, he suddenly can. That is going to effect him mentally but they never explore it. They very quickly touch on it and then just gloss over it. It was just this gigantic, obvious missed opportunity.
The only Torchwood episode I've seen is the one with the Cyberwoman. Divorced of all context, it was at least moderately amusing in its badness.
Try some more episodes. Watching Ianto try and cover for his Cyberwoman girlfriend isn't the best episode you can watch from the show.
Two (belated) things:
1. How is the "Alien Fight Club" ep not in the worst five? Because it was written by Noel Clarke, I think of it as, "Oh, Mickey, This Ain't Fine."
2. How the hell is "Children Of Earth" at the top? Chris, I know this is most likely a list of your personal preferences . . . but I can't recall any story where I kinda wanted to die afterward. Maybe I made the mistake of shotgunning all five episodes at once at a Doctor Who club meet-up, but it was bleak as all hell, and I'm surprised I didn't throw myself into oncoming traffic.
Wow. I don't know what to say. I found Miracle Day absolutely gripping. But then, I guess I'm a sucker for stories about "small band of heroes against The Great Conspiracy".
------RM
Easy Fix: The events of Miracle Day (the entire season) never happened because of the events in the season finale of Doctor Who (time being screwed up royally and being repaired).
In fact, if I were in charge, not only would the events in Doctor Who undo Miracle Day, but they would have reset the timeline for Torchwood, so that the group now consists of Jack, Ianto, Gwen (minus husband and baby, both of whom never existed now), Owen, Martha Jones and Mickey Smith (still married), Madame Vastra and Jenny, and K9, who was gifted to Martha and Mickey after Sarah Jane's demise. The events of Children of the Earth will have happened, but it will have unfolded a different way.
I'd also have Ace drop by for a three-episode story arc to explain what happened to her (She's been palling around Time & Space with Kamelion (rebuilt) as a Time Agent. Her contact on Earth has long been the exiled and semi-retired Sabalom Glitz. She hasn't seen The Doctor since she was a young woman, and she's kinda pissed at him.)
Oh, and if I could get Brian Blessed and Nicola Bryant to show up, I'd want to have Captain Jack meet up with King Yrcanos and Peri on some adventure. That would be fun.
Yrcanos: WHAT IS THIS?Jack: I'm Captain Jack Harkness, of Torchwood.Yrcanos: YOU'RE A FOP!Jack: It's been a long time since someone used that word to describe me...Yrcanos: AND THEY WERE RIGHT!Peri: You'll have to forgive my husband. He's excitable. Yrcanos: AND DRUNK!Jack: My kinda guy.Yrcanos: FOP!!!
Thank you! I am an author, so I appreciate the vote of confidence.
I'd love to write a season of Torchwood. I think I could deliver something a great deal better than Miracle Day, and probably even better than the bulk of Season One.
My first novel plays with timelines, too. I think I could salvage Torchwood and make it fun again.
I was hoping to see two of the show's less standard episodes on here: the previously mentioned Out of Time and Adrift. Both are interesting in that it isn't the team fighting some monster of the week but simply dealing with people affected by some of the less pleasant consequences of the space/time rift.
Adrift is particularly interesting in how it takes some of the show's character traits and plays with them in interesting ways. We see Gwen's compassion, her strongest characteristic, and her attempt to help people make things worse while Jack's secretiveness and apparent callousness are in this case justified. Plus that ending, with a character insanely screaming his mind out, is really haunting.
I should also note that the one thing about Fragments that bothered me is that Owen and Tosh's flashbacks and the pasts they display don't really seem to correspond well with the people they are throughout most of the show. Owen is a devoted and grieving fiancee in the flashback and goes on to somehow become a horny, shallow jerk? And other than her technical skills (and a tiny unexplained flash of her mother in an episode), we see nothing in Tosh's personality that meshes with this idea of her being a criminal and a traitor, even once forced by circumstances to be so. I really wish they had set up these backstories better over the course of the show and done more with them.
While Random Shoes was indeed one of the best episodes of season one, it also highlighted the problem I had with season one. So here's this Torchwood Fanboy, eagerly following the team around, learning everything he can about them and basically being a train spotters. . . . whom we've never seen before.
Why not have this guy hanging around for the previous 9 episodes, not even as a huge speaking part or anything, but just someone lurking the background. Reinforce his fanboy-ness so when you kill him in episode 10, he hasn't come out of left field.
Also, I'm shocked to see Countrycide as the number 2 best episode ever. That thing was a huge piece of shit - not only the worst Torchwood episode, it was the worst episode ever connected to Doctor Who ever, beating out The Web Planet, Time and The Rani, The Twin Dilemma and The Gunfighters. It's the worst thing the BBC has ever done in the show's 50 year history, hands down.
Never saw the end of Miracle Day... We had to pirate it as we didn't get Starz channel, and hubby never put on that last episode.... I'll imagine the end: Gwen's Dad and her both get burned to death, Jack and Owen take the baby and raise it on another planet, and Big Pharma takes over the Earth... for now!
See? Writing for Hollywood can be FUN!
Maybe because I didn't actually sit down and watch the episodes in detail, but what I did see, I enjoyed Miracle Day. (I have not seen any of the other seasons, though)
It always bothered me that the best episode, Sleeper, set up an ongoing Alien Invasion that was NEVER mentioned again. Did they just stop that between episodes?
I got to say, I'm sick of everyone picking on Miracle Day!. Was it the best ever? Hell no. But the worst ever, bulls##t. I like that they added new characters. Oswald Danes was awesome. Who would have thought Bill Pullman could play such a creepy, evil character who would ultimately be useful. Esther filled the spot Tosh left behind and ultimately met the same fate. I loved the continued growth of Rhys and Sgt. Andy. These two never got enough play for me. Jilly Kitzinger was a wonderful character that you just wanted to punch (thank you Gwen) and the Blue-eyed Man was charming, mysterious and creepy all at the same time.What I am about to say will probably get me stoned, but I get sick of Gwen. She can get very bitchy (and I mean in the worst way), does not always appreciate Rhys like she should and always demands too much attention from Jack. By not featuring her in every scene, this mini-series used her the best. She got to be spunky and feisty ("I'm Welch" before punching CIA agent Lyn on the plane), without getting to be as annoying and self-centered as she often got in the series (both seasons).Besides, while not as twisted or scary as going after our children (I acknowledge that Children of Earth was awesome) it provided an interesting look at how society would unravel if given some form of immortalty. And yes there is at least one episode that can stand on its own. "The Categories of Life" was fantastic. When you realize (spoiler alert) that the modules are ovens, Oh My God, the chill that runs down your spine.Trust me, I understand that Miracle Day was not without flaws (Spoiler Alert) Rex coming back from the dead at the end left a bad taste in my mounth. Like I just knew they are just setting themselves up so they can do more. All in all, it was pretty good and interesting and you people need to back off.
"You people need to back off"? Really? We're all friends here.
People (like me) don't like Miracle Day because we know what Torchwood is capable of. Not everything has to be Children of Earth, but there are some fundamental things that have to be done with any televised drama. Miracle Day goes beyond failure for me, because I feel that much of what didn't work was due to lazy writing and production. It's one thing to try something bold and fail. It's another to have lots of bold ideas and have them collapse under shallow, boring writing that looks like nobody except the actors really gave a shit about the final product.
A good show should:
1) Have logical, satisfying character arcs. Oswald Danes is an interesting concept and Bill Pullman did an amazing job with what he was given, but what was the point? I kept waiting for the reason that such a provocative character was introduced. Why was he thrust into the center of the action? Why was Jack so interested in him when he had much more important things to do? The goal for a character like this is to show something compelling. What does his character reveal about himself or the audience? I found lots of shock value tempered by good acting, but I didn't find any substance. I applaud going edgy and trying to do something different, but you have to have a plan and you have to cash the check you're writing. Otherwise it's "Ooo. Isn't it so *shocking*". No, not really. It's lazy, substituting gratuitous sensationalism for actual characterization. The final test is: do you *care* about Oswald Danes. If his character was handled successfully, you should, no matter how evil he is. The answer is: not really, no. Horrible and hatable at the beginning, and only tolerable at the end because he's the plot device the story needs to conclude. The only thing you can really say about him is that he eventually realizes he's a monster. But that's it? He didn't know that before? I don't get the sense that he's haunted by his actions, remorseful, unrepentantly evil, or even opportunistic-turned-disillusioned. He just coasts from one plot point to another and conveniently pays his dues in time for the credits. Why was I forced to spend so much time with this character for so little payoff?
Jilly is potentially interesting, but she's wasted. I can't believe that all you have to do to be employed by the Big Bads is to be a middling PR person. By this logic, the evil global conspiracy should be run by Hollywood agents. She makes a decent remora, but we don't even get a complete story for her.
Rex and Esther never won me over. Rex was gruff and often sympathetic, but also equally annoying. He functions more as a plot device and generic hero than anything else. If I try to define who he is, I don't have a lot of there there, especially if I take out external things like his injury or Dr. Juarez. What's left? Not much. Esther is an interesting choice in that she's flawed but her heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, she's also kind of boring and her personal angle felt detached from the rest of the story. Compare Esther with Lois Habiba, the personal assistant swept into Torchwood's wake in Children of Earth. Lois is far more interesting and competent. I feel like she's Torchwood where Esther is still auditioning for the junior leagues.
Both of them never felt like they really fit and were more along for the ride than anything. I find it interesting that I felt like Dr. Juarez felt more like a real person and bona fide Torchwood member than either Rex or Esther.
I even disagree with you about Gwen. One moment she's Ninja Rambo, single-handedly leading the resistance and blowing stuff up on her motorcycle. She is determined to rescue her dad at all costs until they take him back and she completely gives up. First she's so focused on her father that nothing else matters, then she decides they're all dead anyway once the Miracle's up. What changed her mind? Writer fiat? Time to wrap up the plot? Like a lot about Miracle Day, I get the feeling they really didn't think things through and filled up time by having people do things that were ultimately pointless. It also dragged on, and on, and on. There were many times I just wanted to tell Miracle Day: we *get* it already. Move on. This brings me to:
2) Have reasonable pacing and show elements of the story that need to be told. Great ideas, like the cult, went nowhere. Entirely too long was devoted to things that were abandoned or things that had no payoff. Did we really need to spend so much time in the camps? How many times do we need to be told they're, like, bad and stuff. There was also very little showing of what life was like under the Miracle. Would life go on like normal? Would you go to your everyday job?
Torchwood's strength is as a team, and too much time was spent with everyone going their separate ways and doing their own things. Jack often felt on the periphery, even though this is his story more than anyone else's. The story and the team seem to lurch from one event to the next, without a plan, without a clue, letting events drag them along. As a team, they kind of suck.
3) Have some subtlety. The idea of dealing with ever-growing numbers of living dead is fascinating. Going immediately to camps and ovens is amazingly shallow. It also seemed quite similar to Children of Earth's rounding up of children, except now with old and sick people. Hey, coming for your family worked before!
Children of Earth was powerful because while you knew it was deplorable and awful, the main face of the bad guys -- John Frobisher -- was not pure evil or amoral. He was around a lot less than Oswald Danes and was far more fully rounded. He had motivations that made sense, even if you deplored him for it. You could also sympathize with him in a way that was impossible for Danes.
Miracle Day replaced this with all-too-obvious Nazi allusions and generic villains. The only one who even seemed human was the camp guard, who got caught up in the events around him. Nobody else rebelled, protested, complained? You'd think after the governments rounded up children that people would be keeping a closer eye on things, but no. Miracle Day's world is shockingly normal. The bad guys needed a focus and a sympathetic character so that when they explain their vision for the world, it's not immediately eclipsed by camps and ovens.
The bad pacing, the inconsistencies, and the introduction of elements that go nowhere smack of lazy writing, or writing to fill up a specific number of episodes without actually thinking through what needs to be shown and told. It's also extremely heavy handed -- beating "this is bad" into the viewers over and over, when simply showing the consequences is much more effective. The reveal of the alien in Children of Earth said far more in a few seconds than entire episodes of Miracle Day.
4) Play fair with your viewers. When Gwen's lenses were hacked, that was awesome. The threat and the dread was palpable. Then it was all "Just kidding!" Why all the cloak and dagger and betrayal when simply *asking* Jack to come and explaining why would have been easier, shorter, and more effective? It was a massive cheat, and the kind I always associate with contempt for viewers. Which reminds me of the ending.
The final reveal and resolution was simply awful. I can't for the life of me understand why nobody stopped the proceedings when it was revealed that the Miracle is a giant Earth vagina that responds to Jack's blood. Nothing is explained. It all just happens, then is magically undone. We're told over and over how amazing and wonderful and all that, but it's all tell instead of show, one of the most basic writing blunders. The big reveal is gobbledegook that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Trek-style technobabble, except more stream of consciousness and stupid. And it looks terrible. This is sci-fi cheez-whiz at its cheesiest. All the mystery, intrigue, and buildup led to *this*?
When something like Miracle Day or Phantom Menace produces a vocal backlash, it's usually because it's not a complete and total crapfest but because there are elements that show what it *could have been*, and how far it fell from what everyone loves about the franchise. I hope that you consider while there are things to like about Miracle Day, there are a *lot* of flaws that could have been easily fixed, and *should* have been before even handing out scripts. Recognizing and critiquing what went wrong is important because it shines a light on what is good, what isn't, and what we'd like to see fixed next time round.
I tried watching Torchwood when it aired, and after the utter MESS that was Cyberwoman I just gave up. As if the plot wasn't Z Grade enough, the cast iron bosom and Cyberman standard issue high heels just did me in. I could not take the series seriously at all after that.
Though I heard plenty of good stuff about Season 2, especially Zombie Owen's character arc and the time travel episode written by the Being Human showrunners. Someday I'll give it another shot.
What was the episode that dealt with the possibility of a massive alien invasion, only to drop the entire thread the next time out (checks) "Sleeper"? That was Torchwood 101 - neat premise, failed by horrible execution and followup. The episode ends with Jack saying that they're going to deal with the threat... which they then ignore for the remainder of the series.
It must be really, really hard to make television this stupid on a regular basis.
I won't say that I hate her. But I've never been quite on board with the series' portrayal of her as "sexually desirable", when every time I look at her, I'm drawn to the enormous gap between the actress' front teeth.
------RM
Nope. But I blame inconsistent writing (exactly the reason why I hate Captain Janeway). Eva Myles was terrific in the Dickens Doctor Who episode and when the show had an idea where her character arc was meant to go, she did good.
It's definitely the writing for me. One of my big issues with Torchwood and Doctor Who is that they seem to have a hard time writing actual characters who happen to be women. Gwen's a good example of that :/
It was really difficult for me to accept the premise of Torchwood from the get-go. Doctor Who's season two finale showed them as an organized, militaristic agency that I could buy being entrusted to handle interstellar threats. After their destruction, rather than trying to rebuild from what was left of the outfit, the world is stuck with... the Cardiff branch? They're a tiny operation of about five people who don't seem to work well together. The one thing I could say is that at least each person seemed to have his/her specialty that made sense, but when one of them ends up dead, rather than replacing her with someone who has knowledge in a similar field, the commander chooses... a beat cop? And his reasoning for choosing her was pretty specious at best. (Also, who's going to handle the stuff Suzie used to handle?)
Here's the thing, I enjoyed the hell out of Children of Earth, but I'm unsure if it's because it was actually good or because it was such an improvement over the rest of the series. It's obviously not without its flaws, but its 24-meets-X-Files tone worked for me. (It's what the show should have been right out of the gate.)
It was definitely because it was actually good!.The "Children Of Earth" arc(for me personally) easily rivals the "Enemy From Space" movie & "Quatermass And The Pit"TV serial written by the great Nigel Kneale.What a blast!.
"Man, those Torchwood producers are absolute sadists." Truer words were never spoken. Bastards.
And yeah, Miracle Day sucked donkey balls. It started strong, but the majority of it was a mess. We need to establish that Jack had a past relationship with a minor character, so let's devote an entire episode to them making a gay porno together! (And I'm not homophobic- it would be equally gratuitous if they showed him banging a woman.) Hey, let's throw in some blatantly obvious Holocaust imagery! Ugh.
I agree with most of this list (especially the inclusion of Countrycide), but I didn't think Miracle Day was all *that* bad. Sure, it was different from the usual Torchwood fare, and some episodes were weaker than others, but they left single-episode plotlines behind when they started Children of Earth.
Honestly, at this point, I'd love to see a return to form, with weekly storylines. I don't mind Rex and Esther that much, so they can come too.
I really wanted to like Miracle Day. It kicked off in this really intense and realistic way (The revision of triage under these new circumstance), but my issue was not just with the mess of not interesting characters, the ignorance of the nature of Jack's powers, or even the fact that it was too damn long. Its the fact that after the first episode it completely ignores the rules it created.
People can't be killed, even if they are exploded and their brain case is visible and empty. But all of a sudden they can be knocked unconscious, be paralysed (It goes back and forth on this), and incinerated to death. And in a period of months the word decides to immediately start burning people IN AFRICA? Not to mention the fact that the birth rate is so much higher than the death rate that any diffeence would take decades to be noticable (not 4 months to a global meltdown as the show implies).
Drives me nuts when a show can't decide if its 'fantasy sci-fi' or 'gritty and real'.
Here's the biggest problem with Torchwood: the writers don't understand what type of show they're good at. It's at it's best as a tragedy.
Now before everyone jumps at me saying "Jack's supposed to be light and funny", hear me out. There certainly can be a lot of comedy in the show, and Constant emo-Jack is a drag. But at the end of the day, Torchwood as an organization is woefully outmatched by the threats they face. Look at season one: 1/2 of the weekly threats are directly their fault and there is just one or two episodes in which they truly accomplish stopping anything (at least before it wreaks havoc). Fragments, which is also one of my favorite episodes, shows the team coming together not as a heroic joining of minds, but as each of them seeing Torchwood as a means of coping with their losses &trying to stop others from suffering the same.
Torchwood, as a show and org., is fundamentally damage control. They're not The Doctor, they don't always have a gadget or technobabble to save the day. Instead, they can only hope to minimize ese aliens' impact. Then the writers come in seeing them as the MIB and we get things like Miracle Day (them already forgetting how Ianto's death shows the flaws of rushing in half-cocked). Until RTD gets this, the show will still be schizophrenic.
The worst thing about Miracle Day was Rex. Hated him and the way his head would constantly bob up and down up and down up and fucking down all the goddamn time.
One other positive thing about Torchwood: at least it didn't completely kill of Martha Jones' character by marrying her off to the only other black character on the show for no apparent reason other than that.
leave Miracle day alone dammit
i barely watched BBCs TW
you should do one about the scifi channels version , u know the one with AMANADA TAPPING and that fish/spitter asshole .
Miracle Day was a joke.
It played out like Davies' shitty Left Behind fanfic. Except then it dropped all of the Revelation stuff part way through and forgot that entirely.
The whole thing was needlessly brutal in an attempt to make you care about what's going on, but in the end I was just turned off. The business was the ovens was particularily mishandled and telegraphed all to hell. And led to the death of one of the series only remotely likable new characters.
And in the end, we're left with one of Davies' traditional non-endings. "Uhh, I dunno, something about a hole? That's magic? And blood goes in it? Then like... everything's fine, EXCEPT IT'S NOT! Aha, me Davies! Me am writer extraordinaire!"
That was the advantage of Doctor Who's basic structure: Davies had to wrap episodes up because the Doctor would hop back into the Tardis. He'd still try and stretch things out, but they'd be contained.
With Torchwood, he got to try more serial storylines. He... wasn't very good at it.
Agreed that Miracle Day ended up as a disappointment. However, Danes and that handler of his were both solid characters, and John De Lancie's brief role was pretty awesome.
The whole "Rex is immortal now too" thing though felt WAY too contrived for my tastes.
The only thing I really disagree with on the list is that the entirety of Miracle Day didn't suck. The idea was great. The early episodes were promising. But as it developed, the writing was horrid and obvious, the plot was inconsistent and incoherent, the characters pointless, and the pacing just awful. Way, *way* too long for such an anemic story. I understand that it's difficult to find merit in the early episodes, but I would love to see a do-over after the second or third, because I think there was something good in there that just went horribly wrong.
Spoilers, I guess, though it's a good thing if you haven't watched it:
I do have to say that the climax (heh) of Miracle Day involving Jack ejecting his bodily fluids into the Earth's vajayjay was something so amazingly WTF and so-bad-it's-past-good-and-back-to-bad-again that I haven't laughed harder in years. I never expected to be watching FFF on my TV.
As I recall, I liked about the first half of miracle day, felt it had promise. then most of the second half just kind of petered off and then the ending just kinda pissed me off.
My biggest problem with torchwood in general is that in a lot of the episodes you could replace "aliens did it" with "it was magic" and not only would it still make sense but would usually make more sense. I still like it but more often than not I feel like it was closer to watching an episode of "friday the 13th the series" (remember that?) than "doctor who".
nice picks glad i am not the only one who thought miracle day was a big train wreck and the characters including jack deserve much better .
what makes a flashback a Lost-influenced flashback?
As apposed to, you know, flashbacks that have been a part of tv and movies for at least 50 years.
Man, it's hard to overstate just what a let down Miracle Day was for me after Children of Earth. I was thinking about defending it a bit here because there were some good aspects of it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The plot was a total mess, the new characters weren't nearly as interesting or likable as previous cast members (and man, did I ever want Esther to get kicked out of the group for being stupid). And on top of it all it was pretty boring. Just a total train wreck all around. I still hold out hope that Torchwood will come back and recover to its better days, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.
I only read this to ensure that 1-5 worst were all Miracle Day episodes. Every scene that didn't include Bill Pullman's amazing performance, stunk like cyberpoo. Zero Effect 2 please.
No love for "Out of Time"? That's my favorite episode, not counting Children of Earth.
I thought the show tried too hard (like me on a date)And came off stupid and creepy (like me on a date)
i was the same when they say " this is mature", was everytime i watched torchwood it was either some one banging some one else, some person back stabing some one else or ripping off jack. I saw a show that tried to be mature by doing everything doctor who couldn't do
Children of Earth is increasingly and obviously a complete and total fluke. Torchwood just isn't that good; even the other shows on the "good" half have a ton of issues with pacing and just overall mediocre plotlines.
When the BBC Kids' Doctor Who spinoff regularly and consistently kicks your shows' ass in quality, it's time to admit the failure of this particular experiment.
If I remember correctly, Davies had a lot of people around him curbing his usual writing excesses for Children of Earth. They weren't around for Miracle Day. Something to think about.
Considering what holy hell the show was going through (Budget cuts,13 episode season cut to 5,whether the show would even have another season,etc...),Davies forced creativity-and the final result-is anything but a fluke.
All Torchwood proved is that without Moffat and crew he is a hack. Torchwood as a whole was terrible.
Moffat wasn't a large part of the original crew for the new Doctor Who series. He was a damn good writer for the show, but he was not someone who was majorly involved outside of the episodes he wrote. The only contribution I can remember from him is how he insisted that Jenny survive in "The Doctor's Daughter".
Davis can be a very good director... And he can also be an awful director when he goes too far into character dynamics that he forgets the central plot, or when he goes so bombastic that he forgets subtlety. He's very uneven, which is one of the reasons that I preferred Moffat's direction (At least in Series 5. Series 6 had a whole host of problems related to that stupid central plot).
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