Torchwood COE: Day One

For months now, I’ve been hearing the hype about Torchwood Children of Earth. ‘Torchwood: Children of the Earth’: in a word? Awesome’, ‘Nothing seen from two seasons of Torchwood comes close,’ ‘As good as “Torchwood” has been, it’s never been this good.’

I gotta wonder, can the series actually live up to the hype? After watching Day One, I’m not so sure it can.

I wish I hadn’t gone into this with such high expectations – not that the show wasn’t entertaining or exciting, but there were moments where, frankly, I was bored, or worse annoyed.

Before I dissect this puppy, let me say that Torchwood always puts on a good performance. The characters are wonderful, the actors are perfect in their roles and the production values can’t be beat. Even more than ever, this looks like a feature film with those sweeping crane shots of Cardiff and the sheer magnitude of the events. Given all of that, anything negative I say from here on in is probably being picky, but I think Torchwood can take it. (SPOILERS FOR DAY ONE FROM HERE ON IN)

WE ARE. . .

Fabulous. Creepy. Intriguing and beautifully shot. It’s 1965. There’s a school bus traveling down a lonely, foggy road at night. It stops in the middle of nowhere and the kids get out. This can’t be good. Slowly the children walk off screen toward a mysterious glow, all except for one but don’t worry, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again and soon.

Jump to the present and something’s not quite right. Children everywhere have frozen in their tracks and it’s Village of the Damned all over again. But then we jump to the hospital scene and that sense of classic movie making falls away into a near slapstick routine with Ianto and Jack conning their way in to see a patient who has a “hitchhiker” in his body.

This entire scene is too cavalier. Particularly when the doctor, Rupesh, sees what they’re doing. Then there was all that “couples” banter. Look, I’m a great lover of Ianto / Jack, but this stuff between them was painful to watch. This is Torchwood not EastEnders, but you wouldn’t know it if you came in on the scene with Ianto and his sister or even the one between Jack and his daughter (in-law?). This is the first time we’ve seen these people, right? And yet their introductions were so matter of fact, I felt like I was supposed to know these people. I know it’s a five hour mini-series, but do we really need so many new characters introduced right up front, because by my count we now have about eight new people with significant roles to play in the first hour.

WE ARE. . . COMING

Meanwhile, back at the plot, the children have stopped again and this time they have a message, “we are coming. . . back.” (okay, so they don’t actually say back until the very end of the hour, but we still know that the opening scene and the current predicament are related. . . right?)

Now, civil servant John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi – who is perfect in his role) is in a panic as he tries to erase all previous references to the “456,” which includes erasing Jack Harkness and Torchwood. Ah, but a lowly temp, Lois Habiba, has her boss’ classified documents password so it’s easy for the audience to find out exactly what these government people are up to!

Meanwhile, Gwen has found an anomaly in the whole zombie children effect. One grown man also stopped to chant. He, of course, is the one child who escaped at the start of the show and now he has the ability to smell trouble – no really – and he can smell the fact that Gwen is pregnant which is creepy on a whole different level.

WE ARE COMING. . . BACK

This is one of those plot points that bothers me. Timothy, aka Clement McDonald lives in a mental institution and his care is presumably paid for by the government. And yet, the same government who has been so careful to keep the details of the 456 off the record, have no idea who he is or where he is until Gwen does a computer search on the name?

Then Jack, who is knee deep in the zombie children investigation, decides to take a side trip to the hospital to see a body that Rupesh claims is related to a series of missing corpses. Turns out it’s a trap! Jack is shot by the doc, the doc is shot by Helen Cutter (come on, the similarities. . . ) and then everyone leaves the room so when Jack wakes up he can go back to Torchwood like nothing ever happened. (Can you say contrived?)

Back at the hub, Gwen is performing an ultrasound on herself and sure enough, she’s with child – which, given the nature of this episode should fill her with dread, not joy. Lucky for her, Jack puts his hand over hers and the scan is smart enough to reveal that he too is carrying – a bomb – in his chest.

Gwen runs for the sake of the baby. Ianto gets gob smacked with the kiss of all kisses and the hub goes boom. Nice effect and nice cliffhanger cause, come on, even though we know Jack is immortal, he can’t possibly recover from being torn limb from limb! Right?

Guess we’ll find out on Day Two of Torchwood Children of Earth which airs tomorrow night at 9:00 on BBC America.

Photos: BBC America