An Hour of Who a Day: 06/01/15

June 1: "The Categories of Life" (TW)

The last four episodes of Miracle Day have been about this Miracle and the conspiracy of people who brought it about, with Torchwood trying to uncover them and reverse it back, and while we've had updates of how the world is coping with these new rules, they frequently take a backseat to learning more about who's behind things. But now we've almost reached the halfway point for the series, and Miracle Day chooses to focus not on the conspiracy but on the human cost. This is a story about how we cope, and the answer that comes back isn't encouraging.

It's easy enough to watch Torchwood do its thing, but the advent of these "overflow camps" is independent of Torchwood and feels entirely like scared people doing the wrong thing. Sure, they attempt to tie Phicorp into them, but you're no wiser at the end of the episode than when we started -- even the plausible "they're using brain dead people to experiment on so that they can unleash new diseases that they can then sell medicine for" idea isn't true, and you start to wonder why Phicorp was brought up at all. Because this doesn't feel like an evil faceless corporation's act; no, this is just how people react.

The clever thing about "The Categories of Life" is how it turns the actions of the people calling themselves Torchwood back on themselves. Gwen's father has another heart attack because Gwen tries to get him out of bed and out of the overflow camp. Vera's work on how to treat patients in this new world has been subverted into deciding who has to be moved into the camps and how to classify people based on their current medical condition. Rex is responsible for Vera coming out west to help Torchwood, ultimately putting her in danger. We saw last time that actions have consequences, and that's brought home here.

The biggest "event" (for lack of a better term) in this episode is Vera's inspection of the San Pedro camp, which is being run by a racist, sexist paper pusher named Colin Maloney (no, it's not exactly a subtle character) who's been hiding all the problems with the camp (such as sticking people without insurance in buildings on filthy beds and leaving them unattended) and is in fact willing to commit murder (or the nearest equivalent post-Miracle) to avoid prosecution. It's a shocking moment, watching him shoot Vera, and it's even more shocking watching him place her in the mysterious modules that the Category 1 patients (aka the brain-dead and unresponsive) are being kept in, and turning on the incinerator. It's a dark secret -- the Category 1 patients are being burned alive -- and it's one that hits home, as Vera is trapped inside and Rex (who's also snuck into the camp to find out what's going on) can only watch and film her demise, presumably so that he can use it as evidence.

The "next time" trailer makes it clear that the situation at San Pedro isn't over by any means, but "The Categories of Life" doesn't exactly feel like the sort of episode we've expected from Miracle Day. It's a far more straightforward exploration of how low humanity can sink, but it's handled with reasonable care -- to the point where the scenes with Danes and Jack, which are more how the rest of the series has been, feel somewhat intrusive. I don't know that the show could sustain another episode like this one, but "The Categories of Life" is an episode definitely worth doing.