Is That All There Is?
Torchwood Miracle Day: The Blood Line
Songwriter Jerry Leiber died a couple of weeks ago, and while I was watching this final episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day one of his finest lyrics repeatedly drifted through my mind: “Is that all there is? Is that all there is?”. Ten long weeks had gone by with aimless meandering, hopeless padding, abandoned subplots and the occasional glimmer of a half-decent story trying to emerge, only for it all to end with an exposition-heavy cop-out set in a couple of warehouses. Admittedly two warehouses set on opposite sides of the planet, but as they were virtually identical this rather undermined the epic feel for which the programme makers were striving.
It was almost as if the writers thought that having one villain in Shanghai and the other in Buenos Aires would somehow distract the viewer from the fact that they were actually watching a very long and tedious scene in which the baddie explained the whole plot. It’s possible that the mad or very drunk in the audience may have been taken in by this, but surely no-one could ignore the moment when both villains simultaneously emitted evil cackles. In that one moment, Torchwood: Miracle Day was suddenly Scooby Doo, and unfortunately Scooby Doo in the later years, with Rex running around doing a pretty good impression of Scrappy.
Still it was appropriate that the climax of the series involved two men repeatedly cutting themselves, as I’d started to self-harm after about twenty minutes. It was probably around the time that The Mother (Frances Fisher) had made it clear that she had no idea what The Blessing was that I started to fear the worst. Apparently they’d only found the giant arse crack once networked information had become sufficiently advanced to identify its existence (or something like that), but frankly if she’d said “We could only find it once Andrex had developed sufficiently large toilet rolls” it would have carried just as little dramatic weight. It wasn’t only The Mother who was in ignorance however, as at one point people were almost queuing up to say that they didn’t have the faintest idea what The Blessing could be. In fact, the only thing you can really say about The Bloody Blessing is that, thanks to a half-hearted bit of dialogue about the Racnoss and Silurians, it *might* not interfere with Doctor Who continuity. A revelation well worth waiting for I’m sure you agree.
The only vaguely interesting thing about The Blessing was its supposed capacity to “reflect your own self back at you” and in the last episode we’d heard tell of people killing themselves after the harrowing ordeal. You have to wonder what terrible crimes they’d committed as here we saw Jack and Oswald, child killers both, react to their experience with barely more emotion than if they’d just been on the London Eye for the first time. “Not so bad” said Jack with a cheesy smile as the dramatic credibility of the show did the impossible and sunk even lower. I found myself wondering more and more about the Families and their modus operandi over the decades. Who first had the idea to feed Jack’s blood to The Blessing? How much and how? Did they use a giant pipette or just throw bags into the crack? You find yourself musing on these details when events on screen – such as Jack and Rex almost making a sacrifice every few minutes but then being interrupted again – are less than gripping.
I feel desperately sorry for Jilly Kitzinger getting permanently involved with the Families. On the basis of this series, far from being an ultra-sophisticated gang of puppet masters they just act like a badly organised terrorist organisation with an endless supply of incompetent suicide bombers who always press the button when their main adversaries are out of range. The only decent agent they have is Charlotte and her success is mainly down to the fact that everyone around her is stupid. Either that or she has her own, personal morphic field which prevents her colleagues from noticing that a) she acts like a pantomime villain and b) she’s Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City Series Six. So it was baffling to see Jilly ending up with such a bunch of deadbeats. Didn’t she realise how stupid they were when she eventually transcribed her dictaphone recording of the final confrontation? Listening to that dialogue again must have been even worse than being nutted by Gwen.
Still I’d rather be attacked by Gwen than hear another one of her monologues. What was effective in Torchwood: Children of Earth became mawkish and tiresome this time around. As she droned on at the start of the episode, I was really hoping that there would be a brief cutaway to Jack and Oswald rolling their eyes at each other and yawning – a nice shared moment between child killers. In the end though Gwen had the heavy task of ending the influence of The Blessing and, in effect, killing everyone, which after the way she’s been acting throughout the series suited her right down to the ground. Her character has rarely been likeable, but throughout Miracle Day she’s been such a hooligan that she makes Rhys look like Benedict Cumberbatch. At one point, even Jack effectively had her deported rather than put up with her any longer, but in the end, after all the sound and fury, she and Jack are back together and ready to do it all again.
Once more, despite all the portentous build-up, and Jack’s flirtation with mortality throughout the series, the people you expected to survive had pulled through by the end of the episode and the dispensable Esther was predictably killed. Her imminent death could only have been more obvious if a cowled figure with a scythe had followed her around for the whole episode. Not that I’m complaining. When she died the general atmosphere of goodwill was so strong that my neighbours came round with a bottle of cava and they don’t even watch the programme.
Is that all there is? I’m afraid so. When early in this episode Rex said “I’ve seen some crazy shit with Torchwood but this is the limit” I felt a twinge of empathy toward him for the first time. This was a pretty woeful finale for a series that despite all of its faults had moments of energy, insanity and occasionally effective satire over the ten weeks. It’s maintained a perfectly respectable audience during its run here in the UK, so it would take a brave person to say that this is definitely the last we’ll see of the programme, but where could it possibly go next? The final moments revealed that the bungling Families had a “Plan B” which suggests another high-concept series featuring Torchwood battling the effects of both the evil scheme and Jilly Kitzinger’s associated PR campaign. I’ve no idea what the concept will be (all gold reserves suddenly turn to custard; all men called Brian die simultaneously; all Tripods fans finally get closure) but if the show returns I suspect I’ll be watching regardless. It’s too late to stop now. There’s no retcon available in real life.
