Doctor Who - Revolution Of The Daleks

Clone and Dusted

Doctor Who
Revolution Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st January 2020 BBC 1

Oh well. I had ridiculously high hopes for this year’s pseudo-Christmas special of Doctor Who but Revolution Of The Daleks (which doesn’t actually have a proper revolution in it anyway, by the way) turned out to be a somewhat uninspired rendition of the show, it seemed to me. It wasn’t, by a long shot, what the people I live with thought of the episode... which was that it was the worst ever episode of Doctor Who. Hey, they’ve obviously forgotten the Colin Baker era and, you know, it’s certainly nowhere near the worst episode we’ve had in even the last two years of the show, even. But I think it’s time the people at the BBC started to realise that if you just throw a load of Daleks at an episode and hope they’ll stick, it just doesn’t cut it anymore. Maybe in the height of Dalekmania in the mid-1960s that might work but, ironically, the 60s stories would stand up with or without the Daleks in them, something which no longer seems to be the case.

I had high hopes for Jodie Whitaker when she started this show. She’s a brilliant actor and actually plays The Doctor really well. Alas, she’s just not getting the scripts to match her wonderful interpretation of the role and I really feel for her. Capaldi had the same problem in his first couple of seasons but I think they started writing more to his character’s strengths and he did some good stuff towards the end. I wish they’d think about writing up to Jodie’s version rather than treat her as a magic wand or accessory half the time, which is what it feels to me like they’re doing now.

Okay, so I thought the first ten minutes of the show, the set up, were actually very good. They didn’t feature The Doctor at all and instead looked to set up the story idea and then follow it up by showing how her companions had coped while she’s been in space jail. Bradley Walsh was brilliant as always, Tosin Cole seemed to be playing a more mature version of his original character and, frankly, Mandip Gill absolutely took her performance to a new level here and was, possibly, the best thing about the episode. And even the way it was presented was good for a while. There was an excellent moment somewhere during the first ten minutes where the entire screen was out of focus apart from a tiny flask taking up a very small portion of the bottom left of the shot. I thought it was a really brave moment and wrongly imagined I was in for a good ride.

Alas, this didn’t prove to be the case and the last good thing in the show, John Barrowman returning as Captain Jack Harkness to break The Doctor out of space jail, came way to early in the episode to have any real impact (although it was a nice scene taken out of context) and that kind of set the pace from thereon in, as the show just kept going downhill from there.

It was nice seeing Chris Noth back as the slimy, evil politician type from the spider story from last year but... yeah, well, I guess he’ll be back in a future episode, for sure. Mostly though it felt like the episode was needlessly padded and downright ham-fisted in some areas. For example, we already know that a Kaled grown from the tissue of the one from last year’s New Year’s Day special has taken over various high tech systems, acquired humans to build a clone army of Kaleds and then melted the humans down to use for food. We were then presented with a shot of them all in their little jars in a big warehouse so the full impact can be taken in. Why then, in the scene not ten minutes later, when Captain Jack and Yaz discover this fact, is the whole thing treated like another reveal with a big, pull back of the same Kaleds and a big musical flourish to hammer things home? Old information. We already knew that from a previous scene, thank you and, frankly, it didn’t seem all that worrying then. So, yeah, the whole thing just seemed like a big bag of air being puffed up while we watched it for what was, these days, quite a lengthy episode.

Also... it’s quite established in current continuity that the Daleks have invaded and conquered the Earth in recent history in the show. Indeed, I believe they were even sending humans to concentration camps at some point? Why then, does nobody, including the Prime Minister, recognise them or have even heard of a Dalek? I’m sorry, this just makes no sense now.

And even the good-bye scene, where the much loved Bradley Walsh and the ‘just getting to be an interesting character’ Tosin Cole leave the TARDIS for good didn’t actually trigger any emotion, I felt. And it really should have when we’ve come this far with the characters. So, yeah, sorry, I was just underwhelmed. And then to follow it up with the news, after the end credits, that some stand up comic I’d never even heard of until this moment would be joining the TARDIS crew this year seemed, well, pretty underwhelming to be honest.

So there you have it. Sorry to be so negative about Revolution Of The Daleks but... yeah... they can’t go on like this. I think this show needs a long rest now. Not a cancellation... just a rest and then to have someone comparable to Russel T. Davies to take it into a more dynamic direction. This just isn’t doing it for me at all. Jodie Whittaker is cool though so... yeah, the level of the show needs to rise to meet her, I think.

Doctor Who - Fugitive Of The Judoon

Jack And The Box

Doctor Who - Fugitive Of The Judoon
UK BBC1 Airdate: 27th January 2020

Warning: Big spoilers right from the outset. If you don’t want to know, don’t read. You were warned.

Okay... this is what Doctor Who is all about. Or at least, what Doctor Who has become for the last ten or so years... a devious puzzle with a side helping of nostalgia thrown in from a couple of angles. Finally I can report that another new episode of this year’s series seriously knocked it out the park.

For starters, Fugitive Of The Judoon actually had some decent writing from someone who seems to really understand how the chemistry between The Doctor and her new companions works. There is concern and strength in unification of the team at the heart of the latest iteration of the extended ‘TARDIS family’. Also, when the various companions got separated from The Doctor, she continued to pull the threads of her own part in the story without, actually, even knowing something had happened to them. The show didn’t stop to play up the emotions on the bits that didn’t matter... only on the sections that built the character of the team operating as a unit.

So we have the return of the Judoon, who have placed a deadly perimeter around Gloucester while they are looking for a dangerous fugitive... or at least have been hired to find said fugitive. From the start of the episode it’s pretty obvious that the person they’re looking for is going to be one of two people... and as it turns out it was both, technically (or three if you think about the consequences of what happens later in the episode). It’s obvious two of them are disguised as humans and it soon becomes clear that one of them, Ruth, played by Jo Martin, is even disguised from herself. At this point, my ears pricked up and I thought... ‘pocket watch containing a Timelord’s identity?’. Well, no, not a pocket watch this time but a ‘break glass’ sign in the lighthouse this character thought she had lived her early life in. So, basically, a safehouse.

Meanwhile, to set up the first of a couple of important plot points for the overall story arc of this series, we had the very welcome return of Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman (which meant he was on two channels simultaneously, also busy judging the ice show on the other side when this thing was broadcast). He’s here to give a warning to The Doctor... which he has to settle doing through The Doctor’s companions as he is ejected from the ship he used to scoop them all up in by anti-theft nanites... to ‘beware the lone Cyberman’ and don’t give it what it wants. Okay, so I’m sure that advice will certainly both come in handy and be totally ignored by the end of this series, for sure. But it was great seeing him back and I’m sure we’ll see him again at some point very soon.

Meanwhile The Doctor, not knowing that Ruth, who she left alone in the lighthouse, is about to unlock her Timelord cover personality and reveal the true her, starts digging up an important looking unmarked grave outside. Only to discover she’s digging up another version of her own TARDIS. Now this is more like it as it’s soon established that both The Doctor and Ruth are the same person... but neither of them can remember the other from their past although our current version of The Doctor takes the destruction of Gallifrey as proof, for some reason, of the fact that she is a future incarnation of Ruth. There’s also another person who is working for whoever hired the Judoon and she may well be The Doctor as well, for all I know (we’ll see how that plays out but she’s dead for now). So, yeah, lots happening with... possible heavy-ish repercussions for the future fabric of the show’s history... though not ‘so much’ I suspect.

So... big episode with some really nice moments. I knew Graham wasn’t dead when he seemed to disintegrate, especially since the writers went out of their way to show another ruthless disintegration soon after to show just how serious they were being here. Wasn’t expecting to see Captain Jack teleporting him away though. So that’s a good thing.

Also, I love how Ruth, in automatic mode, pulled the horn off the Judoon (who are basically vertically walking rhinoceros people in heavy police uniform) and it was explained that she had dishonoured the Judoon in question. This is great stuff and, I suspect, comes directly from ancient Japan when, in days of old, it was a huge disgrace and dishonour if a samurai’s top knot was cut off. Indeed,  I wonder how many Westerners, when they watch Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent movie Seven Samurai, realise the absolute gravitas and anticipation that is built up in the opening scene for Japanese audiences when Takashi Shimura’s character shaves off his own top knot in order to disguise himself as a priest? It was great to parody this ‘loss of honour’ here with the Judoon and it also gives them a little more substance than they had on their previous appearances throughout the show.

So, yeah, this one was a rollercoaster and with the lone Cyberman and the ‘other Doctor’ out there, this looks like the writers are finally ‘really going for it’ at this point. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they are anyway.

Where could all this lead? Well, there’s always a chance that the Master could be hiding within this other Doctor still, I guess... unless s/he was the one who hired the Judoon in the first place (or heck, maybe it was even Rassilon or Omega from old Timelord lore, who knows?). Or it could be that The Master and The Doctor have always been the same person and the Timelords have split them into different time strands over the years... and this is why The Master chose to destroy Gallifrey just recently. Or something else. Either way this is compelling puzzle setting here and, even if the solution to the puzzle turns out to be a little underwhelming (as it so often did in the Steven Moffat era), it doesn’t take away from the brilliant set up that we got this episode. And I still haven't forgotten that Matt Smith reference to having had his memory tampered with in a previous Cyberman story... could they be finally tugging on that old Moffat thread here? I doubt if next weeks episode will have much, if anything, to do with this weeks story line but I am looking forward to when the writers start yanking on these strings again. This could go either way but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it stays challenging to the viewer. With Fugitive Of The Judoon, my faith is somewhat, partially, restored... or at least distracted for the time being.

Torchwood 4.10 The Blood Line

Bloody Rubbish

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 10: The Blood Line

Airdate: 15th September 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Bloody spoilers.

To loyal readers of my weekly Series Four reviews who have suffered and despaired and shared in my disappointment at the current incarnation of what was once one of my favourite TV shows, I can say only this... I come to bury Torchwood, not to praise it.

I mean... wow! Any hopes that the last episode would go out with a bang while simultaneously tying up any dangly loose plot ends were slowly shot down as the episode wore on until we were left with a tagged on ending scene which managed to not only insult the viewers intelligence and then do it all over again... but also, it has to be said by the look on Gwen Coopers face in the last shot... seemed to have turned in Carry On Torchwood. Seriously, you just needed Kenneth Williams standing behind John Barrowman and Eva Miles in that last little bit and it would have been just too perfect!

So, to be fair, the episode did pick up the pace a little but everything was so overplayed that it was just unbelievably insulting... the writing was just plain weak. For example, there's a very important cargo on a truck full of soldiers and, just after one of our two lead characters in that section gets on the truck, the other one starts grasping at his injuries and lead character number two gets back off the truck to help him. Woah. Way to telegraph that the truck is just about to go up in an explosion people! I mean, seriously, find a not too discrete way to get the leads to safety and then blow something up. What rot!

And then you have Rex, who has been carrying Jack’s blood in his veins (bit of a give away really about what’s going to happen to him, is it not?) and when he and Jack spray their blood into the earth’s diameter-long vaginal canal that is The Blessing, you pretty much know (since Jack can’t die until the future events witnessed by The Doctor and Martha Jones in an episode of Doctor Who) it’s pretty obvious that they’ll both be returning from the dead soon. Which they do, although Rex then seems to collapse on the floor again in a desperate bid by the writers to attempt to engage the audience one last time.

Not content with not at least giving us the courtesy to assume we know a little about the obvious resurrection abilities of these two characters, the makers of Torchwood: Miracle Day then do a slow reveal in which I think they wanted the viewer to act surprised about when it came to Rex being in the shot. Seriously? And then they go and do it all over again by having Rex gunned down and pronounced dead (even though it’s quite clear that the terrible wounds he’s been carrying around with him all series have healed themselves) and then expect us to accept things as a good ending to have everyone reacting like someone’s just stuck a finger up their collective bottoms when Rex comes back to life again. Seriously Torchwood people? You are really that dumb about this stuff?

Things pretty much went, in this episode, as I expected them to go... as opposed to going as I’d hoped they’d go. In a review for Episode 4 of this series, for example, I said this...

“... does anyone else think Oswald Danes is going to be thoroughly despicable right up until the last five minutes of the final episode... when he suddenly realises what’s at stake and saves the day in some self-sacrificing way? Is that character’s set up really going to be that obvious?”

Well I’m afraid the answer to that one turned out to be yes... yes it is.

And just to completely, “play the game” they also added a scene which can be used to set up a sequel story arc. Seriously people! If, and I sincerely hope it will happen but really don’t think it will after this poor showing but... if... anyone ever decides to put some money up for a fifth series of Torchwood, they surely wouldn’t be so stupid as to write a storyline that’s in any way, shape or form connected with this storyline which, it has to be said, has seemed to have left a bitter taste in the mouths of the older fan base of the show. This is never going to happen people and we’ll never, I strongly suspect, ever hear from “The Families” again.

You know, I’ve been thinking about this dumbed down for the kiddies incarnation of Torchwood for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that Russel T. Davies really can’t be held too responsible for this mess. I bet there was a lot of pressure on him to do things a certain way on this and maybe that’s why he’s gone on record that he doesn’t think he’ll do anymore Torchwood after the first episode of this series aired. I bet, after seeing the finished result and seeing just how oafish it’s turned out... he may have found it quite a painful birthing for the fourth child of his Torchwood family. It must be hard to see the projects you are emotionally invested in turn out with less than stellar results. I hope he gets on to something really good again soon because, and I know some folks will disagree with me here, he can be a pretty talented writer and a great producer. So I hope he’s smart enough to just take this stuff in his stride.

And that’s about it. I won’t waste anymore column space on reviewing this terribly disappointing series of Torchwood. I do hope that somehow this lifeless corpse of a TV show will somehow snatch itself back from the jaws of death like one of it’s regular characters but I just can’t see that happening. However, give me a year or two and I will start revisiting and reviewing the first three series for my blog. Hopefully I’ll have something positive to say again about the exploits of Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and the rest of them.

Until then, though, I will use the tag line of another sci-fi genre show to sum up my feelings about the promising collaboration between the BBC, Starz Network and Russel T. Davies and say just this... Trust No One!

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4 Episode 2: Rendition

What Condition My Rendition Is In

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4 Episode 2: Rendition

Airdate: July 21st 2011. UK. BBC1

Now that’s what I’m talking about. This episode was much, much better and it was "all over" the spirit of Torchwood, even in the lengthy scenes away from the two surviving members Captain Jack and Gwen Cooper. The three new series regulars Rex, Esther and Doctor Juarez were all sensational and I expect we’re supposed to be thinking now that these three will be joining the Torchwood team for any future series', should they get made. However, I suspect at least one of these three characters will be killed off before the end of the series... after all, one of them is technically dead now already and given the mortality rate for regular characters in Torchwood, anything can happen.

I guess they’ll need to start making that point to the larger audience they are expecting sometime soon so I’m expecting at least one of these characters to drop out early in the game... but I sincerely hope not because all three of them are beginning to grow on me already.

Carrying on exactly where it left off last week, this episode sees Gwen torn from the side of her husband and child and flown with Jack to the US, prisoners of the CIA... however, there are conspiracies afoot in the CIA and the rot starts with Esther’s boss, played by the “Ahh, Ahh, Ahh!” guy from Jurassic Park (wow, how lazy at research am I? Ah, leave it. Everyone knows who I mean when I say “Ahh, Ahh, Ahh!” guy. He was even on the pinball machine). A faction of the CIA are already gunning for Torchwood and now it’s been properly clarified that, while the world has turned immortal, so Captain Jack has become mere mortal, which means we’re probably going to see a lot of “Jack in peril” type situations over the coming weeks (even though we know he can’t die because we’ve seen that happen already in an episode of Doctor Who, set in the far future of Jack’s timeline).

This weeks assassination attempt came in the form of a poisoning with a cure which was, to be fair, a little more protracted and milked than a similar scene in The Girl Who Was Death episode of the original series of The Prisoner, but perhaps not “quite” as much fun. However, this sequence where Gwen Cooper is strong-arming her captors as she orders them to strip the plane of ingredients for the antidote cocktail she is making on the instructions of Doctor Juarez is both comedy gold and Torchwood writing at its best. It also shows the ballsy character of Gwen again, played with absolute perfection as always by series regular Eve Myles. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if her performance in this show sees her heading back to the US sometime soon for some stateside roles. People are bound to sit up and take notice.

It was good to see the very bleak Torchwood humour was back with a vengeance, best seen after Rex snaps the neck of the CIA agent who tried to poison Jack. Since nobody can die in the world depicted in this story, said CIA lady stumbles after our escaping heroes but proves ineffective and, it has to be said, highly comical. The look that passes between Jack and Gwen is comment enough on this turn of events.

The pacing in this weeks show was fantastic as we are quickly made aware of unforseen developments to the trouble mankind is in because it can’t die out anymore. Never mind the population explosion, another worrying threat is that the antibiotics given to horrendously injured but undying people will just, over the course of time, allow various diseases to build up resistances to various medicines and disease will be rife within the human race. Since the prospect of intervention at a massive scale seems probable (divine or otherwise) then this could be a set up to turn the ability to die back to the "on" position and let humanity die of its own lack of resistance to numerous illnesses.

Of course this is all very bleak stuff and, so far, we’re being lead to believe that this is all a symptom of something to do with Jack’s ability to die and not heal himself... but here’s the thing. Jack would inadvertently heal himself every time he took any kind of side swipe or mortal wound... but the people of earth in this story really aren’t doing that. They’re all left in various states of dying or perpetual living death so there’s a good chance, I reckon, that they’re not exactly suffering from what ails Jack. So in this instance that might well be a red herring from the writers. It will be interesting to see if the end explanation for all this turned up, “our goes up to eleven” existence is written as being extra-terrestrial in origin or is a symptom of “man meddling in things he can’t understand." My best guess right now is that it’ll be a little of both.

As this episode ends our band of flung together “regulars” are on the run from the law (Rex and Esther having been set up by cloak and daggery faction of the CIA) and we have the introduction of a new character who is currently selling herself to her customers as a PR woman... those customers being Doctor Juarez and the executed-but-not-died-and-free-to-roam-legally killer pedophile, played marvellously against type by Hollywood actor Bill Pullman... who I’ve liked ever since seeing him as a young actor in Kasdan’s big screen adaptation of Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist. I think this PR woman is going to turn out to be a lot more than what it says on the tin so I wouldn’t be surprised if her role starts growing now in leaps and bounds from week to week.

All I can say at this point is what I know... and that is that if this episode is anything to go by (as opposed to last weeks misfire) then this is going to be one intense TV show. It’s left me wanting more of the same next week and that’s quite a turnaround because I’d all but lost interest in the show after the first episode. I hope it doesn’t all come down to who’s writing the show because, and I find this surprising for a serialised story that follows a single arc, their are a few different writers on different episodes... so I’m kinda hoping the quality doesn’t drop down again next week.

Keeping my fingers and toes crossed that this second episode is the start of something good.

Torchwood - Miracle Day 4.1

Passing the Torch

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4 Episode 1

Airdate: July 14th 2011. UK. BBC1

Hmm... since I’ve only been blogging a year and a half and have not had a chance to review the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood before in a public space, I think maybe I should give you a little history of my own experiences with the last three series’ of Torchwood before kicking off into a review of episode one of the fourth series.

When the first series came out 5 years ago, we were all excited about it over here in the UK because this was the first time that we’d had a spin-off show from a popular TV show, Doctor Who and the name Torchwood or The Torchwood Institute had started to get referred to a little bit in the good Doctor’s show to get us all primed and ferocious for the series premier... and all in all I have to say that I was very disappointed with the first series back then. Since then I’ve re-watched them all on DVD and am not quite so disappointed now with them, I think my expectations of what the series was going to be possibly got in the way of me being able to accept that series on it’s own terms a little bit... although I still say that the first year of Torchwood was hands down the worst series of the show we got (so far).

I think we were all expecting more Doctor Who references on the programme (after all, even the shows title is an anagram of Doctor Who) but apart from a few cynical references to The Doctor and an episode featuring a cyber-babe, we had to wait until the last minute of the last episode of the first series to hear the familiar sounds of the TARDIS... and that was all we got, the last episode dovetailing into a new Doctor Who adventure in the main series which guest starred Captain Jack (and an important three episodes they were, dealing with the return of The Doctor’s famous arch-nemesis The Master, this time around played by both Derek Jacobi and John Simm in two incarnations).

Aside from that though, I think that first season had some bad writing in it. It was trying to be adult without wanting to really ruffle anyones feathers was my opinion of it... and as such was a huge let-down. The pacing seemed a bit out and the dialogue just sounded too... well too English school-marmy for my taste. Everything was so prim and proper and you got the feeling half the time that the shows writers (and Russell T. Davis is an excellent writer and producer to have on anything, by the way) were just doing things to impress the audience which just weren’t that impressive.

However, good fortune inadvertently smiled on me because I persevered where, frankly, every other friend I had who was watching this show dropped out of it by the middle of that first series (and none of them have returned to watching it by the sound of it, which is a pity because Torchwood suddenly got to be compulsive viewing a short time after).

My secret weapon, at the time, was that I had a girlfriend who liked it and insisted on watching it (otherwise they would have lost me too). I groaned when I heard she wanted to watch the second series when it came on but dutifully sat with her to watch... and I’m really glad I did. Torchwood Series 2 was like a fresh breath of air to jaded British TV... it’s like the producers and writers really listened to viewers perceptions, analysed what was right and wrong about that first series, and managed to completely fix everything. The second series, right from the opening hook in the first five minutes where the crew chase down an escaped fish alien, was absolutely brilliant. The pacing was great, the dialogue was clever and extremely witty, it was a TV show that had got itself more than just a fresh lick of paint... this was suddenly a great show. Even if they did kill off the best two characters at the end of the series.

And then the BBC decided they didn't have enough money to carry on so the third series was a 5 part serial which aired in one week over consecutive nights... everybody was disappointed with this decision but it has to be said that the result of this, Torchwood: Children of Earth, was also quite brilliant and dramatic. And both critically and in the ratings was an absolute sensation.... so of course the plodding BBC let it wallow for more than a year without commissioning a new series, presumably because of budgetary restraints again?

Luckily (perhaps) a US cable chanel has jumped in to fund a fourth go at it and the right, honourable “Russ T” and his brilliant producer Julie Gardner have brought us a show which I’m still confused about in regard to it’s title. I believe that over here it’s called Torchwood: Miracle Day and in the US it’s called Torchwood: The New World. Ether way... we get to win on this side of the pond because I believe our episodes are 5 or 6 minutes longer over here. My guess is they’ve cut out a lot of the uniquely British bits in the US to make way for advertisements?

And I also have to say that, quite surprisingly, after my viewing of episode one of this 13 part serial (man, that’s one long story arc) then I’m almost, but not quite, as disappointed as I was with that first season... but this is, after all, only the first episode so I’m figuring (hoping) this is gonna get real good, real quick).

There’s two real problems I’ve got with it at the moment. One is... it looks and feels like any generic, US made TV series... it seems to have lost a lot of that edgy Britishness that it had and looks maybe a little too slick for something like Torchwood. That’s okay though... I’ll get used to that, I’m sure, as soon as it gets a bit more edgy (fingers crossed).

Because my other problem is that it really does feel very formulaic at the moment. It’s exactly what I was expecting it to be... and that’s really not a good thing. Even the action sequences were things we’d seen before... rockets entering a dwelling through one window and exiting via another window, helicopters flipping out of control and just flying over the heads of “our heroes” etc. We even had a major character skewered through the chest in exactly the same way as the husband and child got killed off at the start of Neil Marshall’s The Descent... we’ve seen it all before.

Same thing with the Ret-con and standard Torchwood procedures (and emergency drills)... I guess this is a big jumping on point for US audiences though, so it’s understandable for now.

But, there were also some nice sequences in it, like the man who is blown apart and later decapitated but who is still conscious and alive throughout this process (the show deals with a world unable to die). Also the fact that Captain Jack has suddenly become mortal since his run in with the Daleks at the end of Christopher Eccleston’s first season of Doctor Who. Interesting twist that. After all, we know the ultimate fate of Captain Jack Harkness and we’ve even seen his ultimate death in an episode of the companion show, hundreds of years in the future, so we know there’s no actual threat to Captain Jack in this series... although I do put it to you that he could wind up decapitated by the end of the show... that would tie in with things, wouldn’t it? Although I doubt if they’d want to do that to John Barrowman’s career in the two shows just yet.

The real problem with the events occurring on Miracle Day though, of course, is that if it really is related to what normally “afflicts” Captain Jack then they’re going to have to get into the whole Rose Tyler powered up by the heart of the TARDIS where she inadvertently gave Captain Jack his passport to immortality (I like to call it the Rose T-virus)... that could be an awkward one to dovetail into a “jumping on” series. We’ll have to see what happens on that.

So, yeah, some nice things about the show, certainly... like Captain Jack's use of the name of a former Torchwood team member Owen Harper as an alias or the little flourishing musical references by Murray Gold to the old main theme of the show whenever Captain Jack does something particularly Captain Jack-ish... although I was surprised to see they’d dumped the old “chase/action” theme in favour of something less striking... never mind.

Also, though, there’s been no real references or explanations as to Captan Jack’s sudden return to earth after the death of his lover and the guilt over deliberately and painfully sacrificing the life of his grandchild at the end of Torchwood: Children of Earth. But again, this is only the first episode and I’m sure they’ll get to it. I’m willing to forgive them a lot for a few more episodes due to the fact that Series 2 and 3 were so brilliant... I trust Russell T. Davies a lot so lets just be patient and see what he’s got for us this time.

The jury is out on Torchwood 4 for the time being.