May 30: "Dead of Night" (TW)

This episode isn't quite as good as the last two, as it's primarily an episode in a holding pattern.  The biggest advancement of the plot is that the drug company Phicorp (and note the similarity to real-world pharmaceutical company Pfizer) has been stockpiling pain medications for a long time: they knew the Miracle was coming and they were ready for it.  But we learn this in the first 15 minutes, and then the rest of the time is spent waiting, it seems.  It's a nice reveal, to be sure, with the gigantic warehouse filled with painkillers, but after that there's a sense of wheel-spinning.  Jack goes off to get drunk and laid, while Rex quits the team, gets laid himself, and then comes back.  I suppose if you're a fan of butts this is exciting stuff, and I suppose they had to show Jack's lifestyle, but in terms of the larger storyline it feels rather irrelevant.

Jilly Kitzinger and Dr. Vera Juarez. ("Dead of Night") ©BBC
Worldwide, Limited

I get that this episode is moving pieces into position for further down the line, as Vera realizes that pain medications are going to be the next big need, Oswald Danes starts his media ascendancy, Jack has a confrontation with Phicorp (via Danes), and Gwen steals some information (hopefully) on Phicorp.  But it's a rather joyless episode -- not that this storyline is particularly happy, but there've been flashes of cleverness.  Here, however, it's more an exercise in plot functions, and little here is particularly surprising or exciting.

I suspect I'm making things sound worse than they are.  It's not a bad episode by any means -- it remains entertaining throughout, and toward the end, as Gwen infiltrates Phicorp while Jack goes to find Danes, things start to pick up.  It's just not up to the high standards Miracle Day had set for itself, as it does start to sag in the middle.  But if a bit boring is the worst things get, they should be just fine.  Just so long as this isn't the start of a slow slide into mediocrity.

(Oh, and I keep meaning to mention it, but... with all the media coverage we've seen within this series so far, where's Trinity Wells, the newsreader who would always show up on Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures to let us know how the world felt about things?  It feels like a weird omission, given that they've gone to the trouble to get so many other recurring characters from previous series in this.)

May 29: "Rendition" (TW)

Torchwood continues strong with this second episode of Miracle Day.  "Rendition" (or "Renditions", if you're going by the iTunes intro) is primarily about two things: Jack and Gwen's flight across the Atlantic (Rhys gets left behind with Anwen), and Rex's CIA colleague Esther Drummond being pulled into this Torchwood conspiracy and set up as a patsy.  Sure, there are some other things going on involving the consequences of the Miracle (such as Vera working out that they were treating patients in the wrong order, now that no one can die), and we're introduced to the character of Jilly Kitzinger, a public relations representative who's so perky and calculatedly scatter-brained that it kind of rubs you the wrong way, but those often feel like background details while we focus on other things.

Jack is poisoned. ("Rendition") ©BBC Worldwide, Limited

One of those things is a conspiracy within the CIA against Rex and Esther, purely because of their investigation of Torchwood -- somebody out there really doesn't want people to learn about the connection between Torchwood and the Miracle.  Not that Torchwood understands it yet either.  But as Rex says, "I don't think you actually know anything. ... What you are is connected.  And someone has made a link between that old Institute of yours and the Miracle.  And now they want to kill you for it.  So we work out what the connection is, and then we start to solve it."  Jack has a theory, involving morphic fields²³³ being reversed (which is why he can be injured and not heal -- as Rhys puts it, "Everything mortal becomes immortal, so everything immortal becomes mortal"), but as of right now it's little more than a theory.  It's enough to worry the conspiracy, though (whose face is currently that of CIA agent Brian Friedkin, as played by Wayne Knight -- perhaps still best known as Newman from the sitcom Seinfeld), so they try to poison Jack, which leads to an exciting sequence on the airplane as they try to save the only mortal man left alive on the planet.  I like the way they're tearing up the plating on the plane to get what they need to save Jack, and how Gwen punches out the awful smug Lyn Peterfield with one right hook (sorry, Dichen Lachman was recently on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have some issues with her character (not her acting -- she was good) that I'm still working through).  It's a good sequence.

And this conspiracy definitely don't want Torchwood finding out what's going on, so not only do they try to kill Jack but they also start taking care of anyone working on the Torchwood case.  So not only is Rex set up, but Esther makes the mistake of telling Friedkin that she'd been working closely with Rex on the Torchwood case, which makes her a target as well.  That's also a tense scene, as she steals a fellow agent's badge to get out of the building before the conspiracy's men grab her -- but Esther is smart (for now), so she makes her way out of there unscathed.  It's a nice way of showing her thrown into this fugitive role that she was completely unprepared for but still able to think intelligently about her situation and thus get away.  (Sadly, this won't last.)

Those are the main parts of the episode, and they're easily entertaining enough to keep this story going.  As Gwen says at the end, "Welcome to Torchwood", and it's hard to think of a better introduction than what we've gotten these past two episodes.  Keep it up, guys.







²³³ Morphic resonance is a "theory" from Rupert Sheldrake that suggests that all members of a species are linked together and influenced by special morphic fields, which means that if someone does something somewhere then it's more likely that someone somewhere else will do/learn the same thing.  It's supposed to provide an explanation for how you can sense that someone is looking at you behind your back, among other things.  It's not accepted by the scientific community because it can't actually be tested experimentally and seems to be unfalsifiable.  About Time 5, while acknowledging that it's generally nonsense, advance it as a possibility for how evolution works in the Doctor Who universe, so they were probably pleased by this confirmation.

May 28: "The New World" (TW)

It's the thing I'm not really sure anyone expected.  Torchwood: Children of Earth ended pretty definitively; yes, they'd saved the planet and the children, but the cost to Torchwood had been dear and Captain Jack had in fact left the planet at the end.  A bleak ending, to be sure, but it was an ending.

But then an American premium cable network, Starz, decided to co-produce another series with the BBC (after a rumored deal with Fox (which had aired the Paul McGann movie in the US) fell through), and so Torchwood was back, now in a trans-Atlantic form but still helmed by Russell T Davies.  And, understandably but something of a first, new episodes premiered in the US a week before they aired in the UK.  (However, I'll be conforming to UK airdates where relevant, in keeping with earlier non-UK shows like K-9.)

This first episode is an impressive opening, to be sure.  Miracle Day is clearly intended to be a mini-series like Children of Earth was (albeit twice as long), and "The New World" does a good job of setting up the basic premise while keeping everything taut and involving.  It's a simple idea -- suddenly, no one in the world can die -- but it's explored with some thought.  The most obvious exploration is the character of CIA agent Rex Matheson, who is impaled through the chest but doesn't die.  "You should've died last night," Dr. Vera Juarez tells Rex, "but when this thing happened, the Miracle, it gave me time to fix you.  Without the Miracle, you'd be dead."  What's not clear, however, is whether Rex can actually heal, and what will happen when the Miracle ends.  "Do I die?" he asks Vera, but she doesn't have an answer.

We also see the aftermath of Children of Earth for Gwen and Rhys, as they're living in a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, continually worried that someone will find them and either take them away or kill them.  The scene where Gwen is talking to the two hikers with a gun held behind her back is evidence that Gwen is still dealing with extreme paranoia.  (Correctly, it turns out, if the knowing looks the two hikers give each other afterwards are as significant as they're made to appear.)  But Gwen and Rhys have a beautiful daughter, Anwen, and they need to make certain she'll be safe.

Rex, Jack, Rhys, and Gwen watch as a helicopter is about to
crash into them. ("The New World") ©BBC Worldwide, Limited

But as I said, it's the exploration of the idea of immortality that makes this interesting.  Not only do we have Rex, and the discussions between Gwen and PC Andy Davidson (Hooray!  Another returning cast member) pointing out that this miracle is targeted specifically at humans but that this will cause the world population to explode exponentially and all the problems with food and space that that entails, but we're also presented with the character of Oswald Danes, a convicted pedophile and murderer who was about to be executed by lethal injection when the Miracle happened.  They've gotten in Bill Pullman to play Danes -- no mean feat, given the star quality he brings -- and he chooses to play Danes as slimy and conniving; even when he's being executed he gives off an air of unlikability, and afterwards he's even more distasteful.  Then there are things like the man sent to kill Captain Jack, who is at the center of the explosion at the CIA Archives but is still alive, despite being horrifically burned -- and as we learn in a quite gruesome scene, even when his head is removed from his body he remains alive.

However, this is Torchwood, and so of course Torchwood is somehow at the heart of it all.  A message went out around the world that simply read TORCHWOOD at the exact same time the miracle happened -- it's not a coincidence, but it wasn't from Torchwood themselves, either.  It got Captain Jack's attention, though.  Someone clearly wants to tie the Miracle to Torchwood, but who and for what purpose remains a mystery.  Still, it intrigues Rex enough to go find the surviving members, so that he can extradite them to the United States in connection with the Miracle...

Gorgeously scripted and shot, with fine acting all around and a story that intrigues and doesn't let up, "The New World" is a stylish new beginning for Torchwood.  If they maintain this level of quality over the next nine episodes, Miracle Day will be an absolute winner.

May 27: "A Good Man Goes to War" Prequel / "A Good Man Goes to War"

The prequel is just a quick scene, showing Dorium selling security software to the Headless Monks and cautioning them against angering the Doctor for stealing his best friends' child, but it definitely puts you in the right frame of mind for the main event...

This is a bit of an odd episode to judge, as it's not really a story in its own right; rather, it's part of the overarching plot of series 6.  Except even then it's not quite; we get more information and resolution regarding Amy and Rory's baby Melody, but the big question lurking in the background -- that of the Doctor's death -- is only briefly alluded to.  We'll have to wait for that.

But what "A Good Man Goes to War" does is pull off its troop-gathering with considerable style.  We get some highly incongruous characters -- Rory dressed as a Roman centurion, presumably as a symbol ("the Doctor's idea", Rory tells River), an Earth reptile stopping Jack the Ripper in Victorian England, a Sontaran soldier acting as a nurse by way of atonement for his "clone group" -- all being brought together to fight a war against an enemy whose sole purpose is to stop the Doctor.²³¹  They're terrified of him, and they're preparing for an onslaught.  It's not dwelled upon -- there's the moment where the soldiers are quizzing each other regarding psychic paper, and there's a sign about the sonic screwdriver which reads "REMEMBER: 1. It's not sonic. 2. It's not a screwdriver" -- but it's definitely there.

Because we've had flirtations with the theme before, but this is the first time where they unequivocally state that the Doctor makes enemies and terrifies people, and not just the villains; here we see members of the Church of England, who were the Doctor's allies in "The Time of Angels" / "Flesh and Stone", now working against him out of fear.  Fear of what, we don't exactly know, but fear nonetheless.  Note how Colonel Manton has to reassure the troops that the Doctor "is not the devil.  He is not a god.  He is not a goblin, or a phantom or a trickster.  The Doctor is a living, breathing man", because that needed saying.  The Doctor is a dark legend, and these people are scared of him even as they try to stop him.

Strax, Rory, Lorna, Vastra, and Jenny prepare to fight on
behalf of the Doctor. ("A Good Man Goes to War") ©BBC

However, this is still the Doctor and we're still on his side, and the other side has done worse things to his friends, so it's not like there's a question as to who actually holds the higher moral ground.  And so what we get is a thrilling action sequence, as the Doctor reveals himself in the midst of all the soldiers and then gets them all to leave without killing anyone, all in his pursuit of Amy.  It's a good moment, even if it's later compromised by all the people killed when Madame Kovarian springs her trap.  Plus there's the stuff with Amy and Rory's baby, the suggestion that she's been experimented on (presumably while still in the womb) in order to create a Time Lord to use as a weapon.  "Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?" the Doctor wonders.  "Well, they've seen you," Vastra replies, leading to a slight crisis of conscience for the Doctor, it seems.  But it's still an interesting idea, and the cheat of the Ganger Melody is a good, albeit heartbreaking one.  Madame Kovarian has gotten away for another day.

It's a good, solid episode, with some cool ideas floating around, even if it's not exactly a complete story in its own right.  And it's a hell of a cliffhanger they send off this first half²³² of the season on, with finally the reveal of just who River Song is -- she's Melody Pond, all grown up.  Of course, we still don't know why she's in prison (although we can hazard a guess, based on the clues they've been dropping...), but that will come in time.  "A Good Man Goes to War" remains an entertaining, albeit somewhat transitional, episode.







²³¹ Apparently Ood Sigma was also going to make an appearance but it was cut for time -- but that's why Russell T Davies is credited as the creator of the Ood in the credits.  It seems they also offered a spot for Captain Jack, but he was busy filming Torchwood.
²³² That's something of a first, breaking up a series American-style into multiple runs -- as opposed to a small break over Christmas, which had happened before.  This was allegedly for storytelling reasons, but some have wondered if this was a knock-on effect of the 2008 financial crisis followed by Britain's adoption of austerity, requiring the BBC to have to spread the money out a bit to make it last.  Note how series 7 is also split into two halves but spread over two years, while series 8 (made after the UK eased back a bit on austerity policies, which contributed to some growth for the UK's economy) was back to one single run (albeit an episode shorter).

May 26: "The Almost People"

I don't think that Matthew Graham was actively aping Chris Chibnall when he wrote this story; it's more that they both have similar ideas and similar old Who stories in their DNA, particularly the work of Malcolm Hulke.  But it does mean that this episode, like the last, feels familiar -- and there are little in the way of surprise moments to really wow us.

The two Doctors. ("The Almost People") ©BBC

The best part of the episode is easily the presence of two Doctors, one the original and one a Ganger who nevertheless proves that the Gangers are just as much the people they're copies of as the originals, once they've stabilized.  The interaction of the Doctor with himself is handled well -- none of your Troughton/Pertwee bickering here -- and the small tell of the different shoes is used to great effect.  The first time around, when you see the Ganger Doctor isolated from the rest of the group because of his nature and then you see him lose control and rage -- rage! -- against Amy because of the fates of all the Gangers who were slaved to their hosts, being "decommissioned" and wondering "Why?", is powerful, and it's painful to watch Amy's prejudice against what she deems to be an inferior copy.  The second time around, after you learn that the Doctors changed places (probably while behind that communications console) and it's the original Doctor who feels the Gangers' pain, while the Ganger version remains calm and collected, this becomes much more intense.  It's one thing to see a cloned Doctor lose control; it's altogether more powerful when it's "our" Doctor, and the treatment he undergoes at the hands of the humans is more uncomfortable than it already was.  But that's the point; if even Amy can't actually tell the difference between the two, how can anyone judge the Gangers as being somehow less than people?

That's the core of the story, and they do a nice job of teasing it out without being overbearing about it, but sadly we have to go through a fairly generic story on the way there.  There are some nice moments along the way, such as the Ganger Cleaves pointing out that Jennifer was "a sweet kid.  Look at you now.  The stuff of nightmares," the fate of all the Gangers that didn't quite come out right, and the resolution of the story, where the Gangers essentially say, "Stuff this, what's the point?" and stop trying to kill the humans.

But everything else feels, if not exactly comfortable, at least fairly routine.  We've seen this sort of thing before, and "The Rebel Flesh" / "The Almost People" doesn't have much new or interesting to say.  As I said, there are flashes of greatness, and I like how the story ends with a commitment to change things, rather than for all the Gangers to die, but this frequently feels like a typical runaround.  Still, we're leaps and bounds ahead of "Fear Her", so that's something at least.

Oh, and there's the cliffhanger into the next story, with Amy revealed to be a more sophisticated Ganger who the Doctor destroys (which goes against the whole point of the story, but never mind), while the real Amy is about to give birth (hence the "pregnant"/"not pregnant" readings the Ganger Amy was giving off).  TO BE CONTINUED, the ending tells us, evoking the language of a show that's going to resolve things in a few months, rather than the following week.  But I suppose they were excited about their cliffhanger and wanted to show off.

May 25: "The Rebel Flesh"

Matthew Graham's second story for the show is a lot like Chris Chibnall's last one.  In that story, we got a conflict between humans and Earth reptiles in an isolated area, where both sides do good and bad things and neither comes out as morally superior; here we get a conflict between humans and the doppelgängers they've created in an isolated area, where both sides do good and bad things and neither comes out as morally superior.

The Gangers. ("The Rebel Flesh") ©BBC

Of course, while the basics are largely similar, the devil's in the details, and those details are different enough that this doesn't come out as a pure remake, even if there's frequently a sense of déjà vu.  We get quite a bit of backstory about the Gangers and how they've been created by people to be sort of remote controlled clones, mainly so that we understand what's going on.  But that's good; they've taken enough care with this that we can sort of see the original people's point, even if the episode is set up so that we're unlikely to agree with it.

But as I said, there is that lingering sense that we've already had this story before, so it's nice to see the changes.  The underlying setup is doubly bizarre (there's an island monastery that's mining for acid for some unexplained reason, and solar storms can cause earthquakes and things), but there are some lovely moments.  Rory's treatment of the Ganger Jennifer is really lovely, as he's willing to help her even though she (sort of) tried to kill him earlier, in a fit of anguished anger.  The interaction between the two Jimmys is handled well, as neither of them seem to be violent, and the cliffhanger is the logical conclusion to all the running around with doubles that we see here.

It's not great, but it's moderately entertaining so far.  The question that the next episode is going to have answer, however, is the fate of the Gangers.  If they can avoid killing them all, this might turn into a more interesting story than it initially appears to be.

May 24: "The Doctor's Wife"

In 1983, producer John Nathan-Turner was concerned that he had a fan leak somewhere in the Doctor Who production office, so he laid a deliberate trap: on the planning board in his office, in place of The Caves of Androzani, he wrote "The Doctor's Wife by Robert Holmes" as a fake title to see who would bite.  (I've never heard if anyone did.)  But since that title entered fanlore, it's probably been only a matter of time until a real story under that name would show up.  Fortunately, the story we got was so much better than anything we could have imagined with that title.

"The Doctor's Wife" is by Neil Gaiman, who rivals Douglas Adams for the title of "most famous author to write for Doctor Who" (the other primary contenders are Richard Curtis ("Vincent and the Doctor") and Frank Cottrell Boyce ("In the Forest of the Night")), and it's likely because he's so well-known and highly regarded that they've let him play with the mythology of the show so much.  You can tell that Gaiman has fond memories of the old show -- how else to explain the use of the Time Lord distress cube that we last saw way back in The War Games? -- and that he's drawing on that to write this story.  And so we get a strange entity that tricks Time Lords and feeds on TARDISes, only it's found out that there are no more TARDISes coming, so it's time to head into the real universe from the bubble universe it's inside.

But of course, if you're hiring Neil Gaiman to write an episode for your show, it's probably because you're looking for the qualities that Gaiman brings, that sense of magic mixed with the ordinary, of fantastic situations that characters nevertheless react rationally to, and "The Doctor's Wife" doesn't disappoint on that front.  And so we get the marvelously wonderful and audacious conceit of taking the "soul" of the TARDIS (for lack of a better word) and putting it inside a humanoid body (that of Suranne Jones, who was the Mona Lisa in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Mona Lisa's Revenge), which allows the Doctor to have a conversation with his TARDIS.  But it's not just that; Neil Gaiman takes 48 years of the show's history and turns it on its head:

IDRIS: Do you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?
DOCTOR: I chose you.  You were unlocked.
IDRIS: Of course I was.  I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away.  And you were the only one mad enough.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Doctor's Wife)

Idris and the Doctor in the junkyard TARDIS. ("The Doctor's
Wife") ©BBC

A simple, quick piece of dialogue, but it changes our whole understanding of things -- and the episode's filled with lovely little touches like that.  (There's the "Pull to Open" discussion²³⁰, but my favorite bit is how Idris/the TARDIS reminds the Doctor that the first thing he ever said to her was that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever known -- there's something oddly wonderful about imagining Hartnell saying that.)  This is a story that is absolutely in love with the show and the mythology that's been created, but it isn't so reverent that it causes everything to sink.  There's just the right balance to make this feel wonderful and special.

And while we could justly laud the other elements of this story (Amy and Rory's chase through the TARDIS corridors (ooh, TARDIS corridors!  It's been ages since we've seen any of those) is tense and scary, and the mind tricks House is playing on Amy are genuinely creepy; the way Idris thinks that Rory is the "pretty one" is wonderful; the appearance of the ninth/tenth Doctor's "coral" TARDIS console room is thrilling; the way the junkyard TARDIS is the result of a Blue Peter contest; "Fear me, I've killed all of them"; and so much more), ultimately this story is about the one thing always with the Doctor: his TARDIS, the closest thing to a wife we've ever seen him have.  "Look at you pair," Amy says at the end.  "It's always you and her, isn't it, long after the rest of us have gone.  A boy and his box, off to see the universe."  And it is.  And for one brief moment, the Doctor got to talk to his TARDIS and hear her reply.  It's mad, bold, magic, and beautiful, and more evidence that even after 48 years, the show still has the ability to surprise us, and to do so with both style and heart.  Little wonder it won the Hugo.








²³⁰ As many people pointed out after this episode was broadcast, the "Pull to Open" message refers to the door on the phone compartment, not the main door.  But that doesn't actually change Gaiman's point, which is that real police box doors did indeed open outward -- the TARDIS doors open inward because of space concerns in the '60s studio.  (Note, for comparison, that the doors of Tardis open outward in both Peter Cushing films, where floor space isn't an issue.)