The Doctor on “Torchwood: Miracle Day”
I’m gonna throw down a gauntlet: I’ve never liked “Torchwood”. To me, it has all of Russell T. Davies’ worst aspects as a writer combined with completely unlikeable characters (even Jack is made into a douche). Even worse, all of the stories are depressing as hell and have no bright spot to anchor them (even “Children of Earth”, which is arguably the best the show has to offer). “Torchwood” does nothing but revel in the most negative aspects of human nature, in the hopes of being “sexy” and “edgy” to the kids, but it just ends up being a mire to slog through.
“Miracle Day” ups the ante in awfulness by not only wasting the goodwill built up by “Children of Earth”‘s success, but making the whole proceeding boring AND stupid on top of things. It also wastes one of the greatest casts ever assembled for a sci-fi mini-series (Nana Vistor AND John De Lancie??), and continues RTD’s trend of shoe-horning in his trite political allegories. “This is like the Holocaust! Get it??”
A lot of people were puzzled when “Let’s Kill Hitler” aired, wondering why Amy and Rory didn’t mention about the Miracle to The Doctor when he returned, or why he didn’t stop by to doing anything about it while it was going on. Personally, I found it hilarious. I feel a lot of Steven Moffat’s run as head writer has been trying to smooth over the sillier aspects of RTD’s run, and he did this by not even referencing “Miracle Day” even though “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood” are supposed to be set in the same universe. I can almost imagine Moffat calling up Davies and going “No no Russ that’s okay we’ll be fine without ‘Miracle Day’. We got all this nonsense involving The Doctor’s death and The Silence, you go ahead (snrk).”
Now of course, this is just my opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments section…but a giant stone vagina? REALLY? Dammit Russell…
Not sure that I agree with your comments on Children of Earth. I thought that one was pretty good, in fact I watched it twice! As for Miracle Day, I found it entertaining, but dreadfully inconsistent. I think the reason there was no reference to the miracle in Let’s Kill Hitler was because Torchwood was probably supposed to be broadcast after, but this got screwed when the decision was made to split the series in half. Great cartoon, by the way.