The Trouble With Torchwood

As a kid, I loved Doctor Who. Loved it. Watched every episode (except that last one of State of Decay because all those vampires scared the crap out of me and I was about 5 at the time).

But for some reason I couldn’t get into the new take on the show, because Christopher Eccleston hamming it up just seemed wrong after watching him in stuff like Cracker and Shallow Grave.

As a result I never really watched spin-off Torchwood either – but as I’ve been slowly watching the new Who over the past year, I figured I could do worse than give the five-night miniseries Children of Earth a go.

(Some spoilers follow)

And I was pretty impressed to start with. Sure, it suffers in comparison to a lot of US TV thanks to a low budget, but it was pretty solid, creepy stuff and it retained its Britishness very well.

If Torchwood was a US show, everyone would be gorgeous, thin and ripped, all bulging muscles and toned leg. But its not. Instead we get people who look more, well, real – with double chins and beer bellies. Even Captain Jack’s looking a little portly and plasticky these days. It’s kind of charming and makes me think of home and also makes me a little bit glad I’m not still there.

Anyway, it was pretty good. You get the mystery set up with the children all stopping and speaking in unison, you get a governmental conspiracy, and you get a nice intro to the characters. It’s kind of like the X-Files in Wales.

By the third night, though, the problems were beginning to show.

Firstly, we were being told information twice. We’d find something out in scenes with the governmental characters, and then find it out again when the Torchwood team found it out. That’s not exciting, that’s repetitive.

Secondly, the team were pretty much reactionary for most of the first three nights. Things were happening to them rather than them being proactive and instigating things. That at least changed a little in the fourth night.

Thirdly, we spend a lot of time with the survivor of the 456′s original contact who spends a lot of time looking nervously over his shoulder and telling us things that, once again, we either already know or are about to be told again.

Conventional storytelling would suggest that he should have some information that can help the 456 be defeated, but he knows nothing that Jack doesn’t know – instead here he’s merely used to externalize Jack’s guilt at handing over the first batch of children back in 1965. Once Jack’s confessed to his guilt, he’s killed off as Jack now needs something else to feel guilty about – like being responsible for Ianto’s death.

Then there’s the biggest problem for me – the alien 456. From the moment the children start talking, everyone is running around terrified of the aliens, building them a special environment to live in, giving children to them…

…but we never find out exactly why they’re so terrifying. Sure, they can make children stop and talk. It’s a little creepy at first but after a while it’d just become annoying, and then, finally, I can only imagine that it’d be a bit of a relief.

“The 456 have put little Johnny and Lisa on pause again – time for a cup of tea!”

Other than that, and the fact that they’re obviously a bit disgusting physically, there’s no overt reason why they’re a threat, so you’re left wondering why everyone has themselves in such a tizz – after all, the first episode goes to great length to establish that most of the world has now had alien contact.

Admittedly, the threat becomes a little clearer in the fourth episode when the 456 release a virus in the Ministry of Defense building killing everyone in there but it still feels a little…pedestrian.

They’re basically not that threatening.

And that deflates the whole thing for me.

Not that it’s all bad – like I said, the opening night has a nice sense of menace, and there’s a good Jack regeneration of sequence (although it unfortunately takes him out of play for most of an hour) – and it’s refreshing to see Jack and Ianto’s relationship relatively underplayed – for most of the time anyway.

I did say most of the time.

In fact there is one quite nice element to their relationship – Ianto’s realization that he’s just going to be a blip in Jack’s abnormally long life, and that, eventually, Jack will move on and forget him.

So…its pretty much the show I thought it was. Okay, but not great.

And ‘Torchwood’ is an anagram of ‘Doctor Who’ you know.