An Hour of Who a Day: June 9: "The Blood Line" (TW)

June 9: "The Blood Line" (TW)

Hmm. Something of a damp squib, this one. "The Gathering" ended with a number of key questions unanswered, and "The Blood Line" generally refuses to answer any of them. What exactly is the Blessing? Dunno. How did the Families find it, or even know it existed? No clue (other than some waffling about average life expectancies in Shanghai). What is the Families' actual plan? Something about tearing down the old society and replacing it with their own, although the details are left vague. (And surely there are easier ways of destroying the world's economy -- but I guess they wanted the immortality as well.)

So we've got this deus ex machina running through the planet, without even a fig leaf of an explanation, and when Torchwood finally gets there it takes them forever to do anything about it. Instead we get all sorts of speeches from everybody which go on forever and don't actually tell us anything, and we even get the Families' representatives laughing at Jack's foolishness of thinking his mortal blood in Shanghai could fix things, which leads to even more speeches from Jack and Rex. And while, to be fair, the shooting of Esther is a shocking moment, Torchwood still takes forever to end the Miracle. Seriously, Gwen, just shoot Jack and be done with it.

Look, that's not to say that there aren't good moments in this. The standoff between the Families and Torchwood is still rather entertaining, despite its length, and the scenes inside the CIA are genuinely compelling. (And I'm still mad at Charlotte Wills' duplicitousness, but at least she gets a comeuppance of a sort at the end.) There are also some exciting action moments mixed with quiet, touching scenes (Andy Davison holding the hand of the unidentified Category 1 girl is really sweet) that add to the balance. It's just that this is the finale of the whole story -- they've been building to this for the previous nine weeks, and the final result isn't the impressive climax it should have been. Miracle Day needed this episode to deliver in a big way, and it just doesn't. It's an OK episode, but it falls short of the mark that it really needed to hit.

But that rather sums up Miracle Day as well. It's an interesting concept and a fantastic opener, but the goodwill that "The New World" engendered ends up being squandered as they spend too much time dealing with side issues instead of the main event. Ten episodes was simply too long, and while the slack was often picked up in somewhat interesting ways, it still was evidently slack. All that matched with a finale that fails to truly deliver means that Miracle Day isn't the strong installment of Torchwood that it initially seemed it would be.

Of course, part of the issue might be that "The Blood Line" ends with some unresolved issues. Yes, the Miracle was reversed, but the Families are still out there plotting (with Jilly Kitzinger working for them), while Rex apparently also has the same immortality that Jack has. ("You, World War II, what did you do to me?" Rex demands in the final line of the episode.) However, to date we haven't gotten another series of Torchwood -- apparently Starz was satisfied with ratings and amenable to doing more, but Russell T Davies' return to the UK put Torchwood's future on hold. It's therefore somewhat ironic how definitely Children of Earth ended, and yet we got another series, but Miracle Day's open-ended finale hasn't been followed up on. (Maybe Big Finish will explore it, now that they've announced they'll be doing Torchwood audios, with Davies' blessing.)

So that was Torchwood -- a show that started out very shakily but slowly got better and better, to the point where Children of Earth was must-see television, and while Miracle Day didn't quite reach those heights, they still did a decent job. Torchwood was frequently a difficult show to love, but in their efforts to make a more "adult" companion to Doctor Who they largely succeeded (once they recalibrated their ideas of "adult" to not simply be lots of sex and violence). I can see how it's not to everyone's tastes, but if you can get through that first series (so maybe just skip it altogether) then there's a fair amount to enjoy. Not bad for Doctor Who's first ongoing spinoff.

(Oh, and it should be noted that after "The Blood Line" I watched "Web of Lies", which was a 10-part "motion comic" with puzzles available online to accompany Miracle Day. The DVD presents it minus the puzzles, but unless you're a huge Eliza Dushku fan, don't bother -- it doesn't add anything to the Miracle Day storyline, and it's not interesting enough in its own right to warrant your attention.)