Review - Torchwood: Children of Earth
Aug. 1st, 2009 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akaihyoFinally managed to watch all of this in a marathon sitting last Sunday when BBC American showed it all in one block. The review contains spoilers and so . Torchwood: Children of Earth is what we get rather than a proper 3rd season of Torchwood. It is a Torchwood mini-series or maxi-story depending on how you want to look at it comprising five episodes, each episode being a day in the sequence of events. Children of Earth is a very emotionally intense series with lots of up and downs (mostly downs).
It involved the return of a group of aliens to Earth called the 456 after the frequency band they used to communicate. The 456 announce there arrival through the children of Earth, freezing them and speaking through them ("we are coming"), how they do this is never really explained. It emerges that the 456 had visited the UK in 1965 and the government had traded twelve children to the 456 for the anti-virus to a dangerous mutation of the flu. The current PM orders all knowledge of this earlier contact "suppressed", which means killing everyone involved in the exchange including, as it turns out, Captain Jack. Jack is blown up, along with Torchwood, but Gwen and Ianto escape (after dodging fire from the worst sniper even seen).
At this point, the story splits into the story of the government(s) dealing with the 'ambassador' of the 456 and the Torchwood members trying to regroup and find out what is going on. These two threads tie back together, in a rather tangled mess, at the end. The 456 want children, 10% of the children of Earth in fact. And the governments just decide to give in . . . There is no indication that make any serious efforts to try and figure out what the 456 are, if there is a way to defend against them or anything. Remember this is the same Earth from Dr. Who, with UNIT and a history of alien invasions. They just fold. And the indication is that all of the other countries of Earth do too, they are all going to just hand over 10% of their children with less than 24 hours to organize it. Ianto is killed is a stupid and pointless attack on the 456 ambassador (with pistols! Pistols!) that gets Ianto and a ton of extras killed. Then the gathering of the children begins with no word of what is actually going on getting out even though it involves 10% of the children of the world, hundreds of million of people, and the cover story they use in the UK (we have no idea how it is being sold in the other nations) is an obvious tissue of lies.
A bizarre and senseless Deus Ex Machina, costing the live of Jack's grandson (whom he makes to effort to comfort or rescue), saves the children of Earth. Cause, you know, we have to have a price paid.
So many missed opportunities. It is a very fast moving and emotionally intense ride but it simeply falls apart when you start to look at it. Very sad, especially as it may be the last Torchwood ever.
It involved the return of a group of aliens to Earth called the 456 after the frequency band they used to communicate. The 456 announce there arrival through the children of Earth, freezing them and speaking through them ("we are coming"), how they do this is never really explained. It emerges that the 456 had visited the UK in 1965 and the government had traded twelve children to the 456 for the anti-virus to a dangerous mutation of the flu. The current PM orders all knowledge of this earlier contact "suppressed", which means killing everyone involved in the exchange including, as it turns out, Captain Jack. Jack is blown up, along with Torchwood, but Gwen and Ianto escape (after dodging fire from the worst sniper even seen).
At this point, the story splits into the story of the government(s) dealing with the 'ambassador' of the 456 and the Torchwood members trying to regroup and find out what is going on. These two threads tie back together, in a rather tangled mess, at the end. The 456 want children, 10% of the children of Earth in fact. And the governments just decide to give in . . . There is no indication that make any serious efforts to try and figure out what the 456 are, if there is a way to defend against them or anything. Remember this is the same Earth from Dr. Who, with UNIT and a history of alien invasions. They just fold. And the indication is that all of the other countries of Earth do too, they are all going to just hand over 10% of their children with less than 24 hours to organize it. Ianto is killed is a stupid and pointless attack on the 456 ambassador (with pistols! Pistols!) that gets Ianto and a ton of extras killed. Then the gathering of the children begins with no word of what is actually going on getting out even though it involves 10% of the children of the world, hundreds of million of people, and the cover story they use in the UK (we have no idea how it is being sold in the other nations) is an obvious tissue of lies.
A bizarre and senseless Deus Ex Machina, costing the live of Jack's grandson (whom he makes to effort to comfort or rescue), saves the children of Earth. Cause, you know, we have to have a price paid.
So many missed opportunities. It is a very fast moving and emotionally intense ride but it simeply falls apart when you start to look at it. Very sad, especially as it may be the last Torchwood ever.