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!

Torchwood Miracle Day: Episode 4

At last, some progression! We know some stuff now.

There were some things about this episode that I really liked. For example, showing the two ends of the extreme, by having Oswald Danes, juxtaposed with a fundamentalist, distinctly religious looking woman, who is leading the ‘dead is dead’ campaign.

This was a nice change to the habits that T Davies generally exhibits when writing a series. The best of these is that neither of the parties concerned in the fight could be construed as right. This is evident earlier series’ of Torchwood and especially in series 1 to 4 of the revived Doctor Who, where we typically have one character who’s dogmatically correct, while the bad guys are always wrong.

This episode works by having the story of Oswald Danes largely separate from the Torchwood mission. 

On that point, the Phicorp assault is quite good and done in a relatively realistic way. Although there’s no secret as to which film they lifted the security settings, for Phicorp’s server room, from.

The personal dilemma of Esther is alright, but felt a bit frustrating and I wondered if she was heading towards the Amy Pond level of annoyingness, based on her seeming inability to listen to anything that Rex tells her to do.

The bad guy for this episode is also a bit of a stumbling block. He seems a bit wooden; I wondered for a while whether he was supposed to be parody of Haratio Caine from CSI: Miami.

One thing I did like about it was the way that when he started monologing, the first thing that happened was that Gwen started taking the piss out of him.

We also find out that the Miracle is something to do with Jack giving the as yet unknown villains something in the past. Was this done, during that period when he worked as basic Torchwood muscle? I mean, during this time, he sold 12 kids to an alien race, because Torchwood told him to.

Is this the building of a Torchwood theme, of the darker parts of Jack’s past coming back to hurt the whole world. It could be a Torchwood version of the old actions have consequences concept.

The personal interest in the overflow camps for Gwen, didn’t really seem necessary, but it looks like it’s gonna be important next week.

On that point next week marks halfway point in this series, so hopefully, we’ll see some 24-style mixing up of the story.

Until then, this episode is more than watchable, a really nice improvement on last week.

New Doctor Who Trailer thoughts.

So there’s been a new Doctor Who trailer out for a while now and I’ve been having some extreme geek outs about it.

It opens with some loud music, some running and Hitler. The last one of those is a big risk, as the only line of dialogue he seems to have is “thank you, I think you just saved my life.”

Of all the historical figures to pick as a possible sympathetic guest character, Adolf Hitler is probably securely in the NO category. But who knows, maybe they’ll manage to pull it off.

At about 27 seconds in, we see River wearing an eye patch, like the one that evil lady wore. Does this mean that River and evil lady are the same person? I personally don’t think so, it’s far more likely that the eye patch could just be a symbol of authority on whatever planet the little baby River was taken to. It could alternatively mean that River’s built up some sort of maternal relationship with one-eyed lady (but as there’s another character at about 34 seconds in who wears the same eye-patch as well it’s more than likely some sort of symbol.  

29 second – both the Silence and the Weeping Angels are back  - not necessary a good move, as they’re both better as minimal villains  - and I’m getting kind of worried that the Angels might become the new Daleks; reappearing whenever they need a ‘scary’ episode, up until they lose all of what made them threatening.  

We get couple seconds of monster doing monster stuff (growling, teleporting, breaking shit etc…)

At 36 seconds, we get Rory punching who assume is Hitler, which is almost worthy of Quintin Tarantino and at 37 seconds we get Amy with some swords.

Oh and something’s happening to time  - but then again that happens every series.

The trailer ends with some assurance that the impossible astronaut threat is going to be resolved, before the already approved 7^th series.

I’m reasonably excited about this…not as eager as I was to see the return of Doctor Who after the fifth series, but still… 

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.

Torchwood Miracle Day: Episode 2

Well that wasn’t bad at all. A good continuation of the story, with good levels of tension and action…

This episode opens with Gwen and Jack being arrested and put on a plane as rendition procedure. There’s a nice bit where Reece (Gwen’s husband) points out that, while Torchwood has been taking on aliens, America’s been getting away with things like this all the time. It’s a bold move for Davies to write lines like that, especially as the show’s now being produced by an American studio.

Those who like running and shooting won’t like this episode, as much of it takes place on a plane, which would ordinarily be dull, but Davies manages to maintain tension, by giving a 24-esque omnipotence to the audience (we know what’s about to be done to Jack and the tension rises from not knowing how/whether it’s going to be resolved).

There’s an evil lady on the plane, who is a bit too evil; I could buy that she could be bought off, but her sociopathic tendencies seem to rise purely out of the plot requiring it. It’s explained by her being a “crazy bitch” but her motivations are pretty weird.

At the same time as all the plane stuff, the supporting character Esther (played by Alexa Havins) is going through some bad stuff that comes straight out of a CIA movie, with the classic element of “the Company” turning on its own, to protect itself or someone who knows something incriminating about it.

The paedophile (played by Bill Pullman) is coming into his own and seems to be developing well. 

Another thing that’s good to see about him is that Pullman doesn’t seem to be slurring his words as much as he was in the last episode. I get that he was doing it to sound creepy and seedy but it actually made him quite difficult to understand.

He’s also the vessel through which we’re introduced to what appears to be the villain for the series, which appears to be a drug company.

It might a bit early to do this, but I actually have to commend Davies for the themes of this series; as far as we know it’s presently not some alien race forcing humankind to the edges of it’s morality, but a drugs company that already has pretty iffy morality and seems to have come across as way to deliberately go to the darkest parts of it.

I’d say that this episode makes up for the lacking parts of the previous episode. The acting’s good, the story’s solid and the story elements now set up seem to be taking off.

Thoroughly recommended.

Torchwood Miracle Day Episode 1 Review

So it’s the highly anticipated return of Torchwood  - the adult equivalent of Doctor Who, fresh with a shiny new look and some new characters and…still Russell T Davies  - well, two out of three ain’t bad I suppose.

Lets get to it, the overall feeling I have for the opening episode of Torchwood Miracle Day is that of ‘Meh.’  It’s not bad, but not exactly ‘The Eleventh Hour”.

And that’s a problem that I have with this series in general; I’m always going to be comparing it to Doctor Who, which is now in the hand of a writer who is far superior to Davies. While Steven Moffat is capable of raising the bar and seemingly managing his writing team better (so as to produce episodes of better quality), Russell T Davies tends to start well and peter out as a series goes on (often ending on an extremely weak note) while apparently letting anyone write a script for him. Seriously, there are scripts from series two of Doctor Who that should have never made it off the paper they were printed on  - no never been printed in the first place  - never been accessed on someone’s computer via the file marked “I don’t believe someone’s paying me for this”.

But anyway, looking at this episode, while trying to avoid a comparison to its family friendly cousin, brings about some good points. It’s predecessor “Torchwood: Children of The Earth” ended on a distinctly melancholy tone, with the last two survivors of Torchwood Gwen and Jack, suitably miserable, to the extent that Jack left the planet. To his credit, Davies has managed to preserve this tone, within these two characters, with both seemingly begrudgingly taking interest in the main part of the story. Barrowman plays Jack Harkness in a far less camp way and Eve Myles (while preserving the most of character of Gwen) gives off the impression that she’s developed into a far more tentative person. At one point, she turns down the opportunity to investigate the whole everyone’s not dying thing, because her husband tells her not to.

Oh yeah, the main part of the story is about how everyone on the planet can’t die. But you already knew that because that’s exactly what all the trailers said. This episode brings a bit of disappointment to the table in that it only really sets up one interesting question (besides the whole everyone not dying thing) and spends most of it’s runtime re-treading the events of the last series (no doubt for the benefit of the new American audience, the majority of which is not likely to have seen the other series’ of Torchwood). This starts off quite good, with Davies seemingly writing for both British and American audiences; while using the new characters as a way of quickly filling in the new audience on the facts of the show, he winks at the old audience, by making said characters react in a way that suggests that they have no idea just what kind of legends they’re talking about.

This is one of the main strengths of the Davies’ writing, but to be honest, it wears off pretty quickly and it gets a bit frustrating watching the new female character go through the same steps as Gwen went through in her first episode.

There’s also paedophile who’s somehow linked to the whole thing but…I honestly found it difficult to care about his character. Maybe things will be different in next week’s episode..

So there we have it a resounding ‘Meh’ for episode 1 of Torchwood: Miracle Day.

Drive Angry Review

This film is Awesome….do I even need to say more?...ok then I will.

To give a brief summary this movie is about a Milton (Nicholas Cage) escaping from hell to save his baby granddaughter, while being pursued by the Devil’s accountant.

The thing that really makes this film work is the sheer silliness of the whole thing. Right from the ‘badass’ music that plays every time Milton does something awesome, to the fact that he needs to save his granddaughter within two days but seemingly won’t travel to her by any other means than a muscle car.

And that’s another thing; I might just be talking for the male population here, but the matte black 69’ Charger that Milton and his waitress sidekick rock around in for most of the film is awesome. A beautiful car with an awesome noise (always important) and a classic look that just says ‘I contain a vengeance driven escaped soul from hell and a really hot waitress’…well maybe not all that, but it says ‘badass’ at the very least. And the chevelle that they use after that is even better and it’s red and it has a stripe that makes it go faster. In case you haven’t noticed, this film did kinda tap into the juvenile I-like-the-explosions part of my mind, but since I spend most of my time hating the kinds of films that try to do that, I count the fact that it did as a big win.

The next big win in this film is Nicholas Cage. He swaps out his normal mantle of horrendously overacting in favour of making more of an emotionless, almost sadistic character out of Milton. I watched this film, just after watching a Steven Seagal film and the similarities in character lead me to believe that Milton’s personality is a very direct parody of Seagal and other B-movie action heroes like him. This is no more evident than in a sex scene between Milton and a waitress, in which he effectively keeps all his clothes on (including a pair of sunglasses) and neutrally sits under the waitress, with no indication of any kind of pleasure being taken in the act.

Clearly Cage’s equal is William Fichtner as “the Accountant” a character poised between comedy and deadly dangerousness. What struck me most about this demon (which is never stated but presumed by the fact that he works for Satan) is how reasonable he is. Yeah he’s still pretty murderous and nasty, but he lives up to the name ‘Accountant’ simply because he’s only ever motivated by what’s best for his books. As far as personality goes, he oscillates between being the boss who tells you just how much choice you have in matters and an excitable onlooker.

It’s also the Accountant who steals the show in terms of quotes, I don’t want to give too many away, but his first introduction of himself is pretty good

Accountant: “I’m the Accountant.”

Fat guy: “Is the that supposed to mean something to me?”

Accountant: “it will if I add you to the books.”

I know it doesn’t look like much when I write it, but trust me when paired with Fichtner’s style and tone, it come across as more of a lecture to a child than anything else.

And that leads to the next pretty good thing about this film. There are Devil worshippers in this film and it’s made clear that all agents of hell, including Satan find said worshippers really annoying and the fact that these worshippers attempt to lecture both Milton and the Accountant (at different points of the film) about Hell, keeping in mind that these are two people who come from Hell, they’re painted not as the sinister villains (as is the convention), but more as morons and posers.

Amber Heard is pretty awesome as Piper; Milton’s waitress sidekick, whom he selected based on the fact that she drove a 69’ Charger.

Not really much more to say; the cars a good, the characters are good, the soundtrack is awesome!

The only negative criticism I could give it is that, despite parodying the classic mad max action hero thing, it’s still very much aimed at the male audience. I know some girls who’d probably like it, but the majority of women will probably get tired of the explosions and not understand the science behind a stripe on a car making it go faster.