Torchwood Miracle Day: Episode 3

Ok…It was ok…

It’s only the third episode but I’m already starting to imagine this series on a graph that starts off at ‘meh’, goes up to ‘ok’ then stays there on a great, long and most importantly dull line.

This episode seems desperate for something to do, which isn’t surprising, given that there’re seven episodes still to come after this and we’ve now met all the new characters and been informed about all the stakes.

I don’t expect to see much progression until at least episode five, which means the “that’ll do” mentality that seems to have been present in the writing room for this episode is going to repeated next week.

This presents us with the problem that Russell T Davies seemed to have with series two of Doctor Who. Namely he seemed to run out of ideas. The result was an immensely lacking series, which had a total of 3 good episodes.

Is this going to be repeated here? Are the bits of quality we’ve seen so far, going to be the only lights in a pit of bad writing, poor excuses and jokes that stopped being funny ages ago?

There are also bits of this episode that are really annoying. For example, there’s a bit where Esther translates what Gwen’s saying in English to American English, but she translates it for Gwen. The words “I think you mean” are even used at one point. I don’t know who taught this lady her manners, but if you already understand that when a person says ‘cashpoint’ they mean what you’d refer to as ‘ an ATM’ you don’t need to point that out to them. She just comes across as really condescending. I know the whole exchange was probably for the benefit of the American side of the audience who (thanks to the relatively small size of the UK television industry) don’t get exposed to as much of the British dialect of English as we do the American, but the tone of the conversation paints the American terminology as superior. I don’t know whether this was an accident, or a deliberate attempt to make the American viewers more comfortable with the series, but it irked me either way.

We learn who the main villain is in this episode though! Yay! Accept not. Basically it’s a pharmaceutical company called Phicor. And in a disturbingly familiar way, you already know that because it was in the trailer last week.

We essentially watch this episode for the pure unadulterated filler, which includes Jack and Rex separately going AWOL, and both getting respectively laid, the introduction of a cult and the emergence of the paedophile Oswald Danes as the poser boy for Phicor.

Other than that, not much to say, it’s ok, but the bar really isn’t being raised.