Torchwood Miracle Day: Episode 5

Well that wasn’t bad at all. It was nice to finally have an episode that wasn’t already explained in the previous week’s trailer.

This was good, clearly raising the bar from last week and working quite nicely to give the characters something else to do. I will say that my prediction of Gwen needing to have a personal connection to overflow camps paying off didn’t come true. Although it gives Eve Myles some emotions to work into the character, story-wise she doesn’t really do anything in Wales that she couldn’t have done in the overflow camp in America.

I got the impression that Wales only featured in this episode to keep the UK fans happy. I will say that it was refreshing to see her at the beginning of the episode arriving at Cardiff Airport, which makes more sense than episode 1, when Rex flew into Heathrow then drove all the way to Swansea; He knew Gwen and Reece were in Wales, but presumably touched down in London because the majority of the new American audience would be more familiar with the English capital over the Welsh. But now that Davies seems to be comfortable to make a good deal more sense with his storylines maybe we’ll see even more improvement next week.

But then again, as I said, there wasn’t actually a narrative reason for Wales to feature in this episode and the involvement of Gwen’s dad seemed to indicate that the writers didn’t really have anything to do with her, so they had to have her doing the same thing as everyone else, but in a different place.

But that’s just a little quibble. The positives of this episode make up for such aspects.

We get a lot more definition to Oswald Danes and a speech (and some actions leading up to it) that really hammers home how we’re supposed to feel about the character.

Plus we’re introduced to a character who I hope features in the episode next week for good comeuppance.

Still no real elaboration on the main villains, but the ending really starts to put some serious dark vibes on them.

So that’s about all; Five episodes left now people  - scary stuff!