World War Z (aka World War Zed)

Dead’s Zed, Baby

World War Z (aka World War Zed)
2013 USA/Malta
Directed by Marc Forster
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Dead looking spoilers
suddenly springing to unlife to bite you...

I really didn’t know much about World War Z going in.

In fact, the only four things which I did know were as follows...

1. Brad Pitt is in it. I don’t mind him as an actor but at least one of his decisions in the past, if what I read was reported accurately, caused some bad consequences for other people in the business and consequently, since I don’t know him... I am wary of him. That said, his performance in 12 Monkeys was astonishing and I enjoyed his comic book performance in Inglourious Basterds a heck of a lot too. However, he’s a major star (and producer of this film) and my feelings say that major stars change the tone of projects... and that’s not often a good thing.

2. There was a lot of fuss, really a lot of reported news in the film press, that this project has been going for a long time and that major changes and reshoots were made. This is usually a sign of a bad movie, or often a really good movie which doesn’t match studio expectations of it, which is deemed in need of fixing and that tampering, from what I see of it, is rarely for the better (the extended cut of the Universal remake of The Wolfman, for example, became a contradictory mess in its longer version, whereas the original studio cut is quite watchable - reviewed here).

3. I’ve not read the original novel this thing is based on but I’m told that there is no one central protagonist in the book and that everything is pieced together from different news reports on a global level. Now this could be perceived as a problem because Hollywood and its stars don’t react well to narratives which have no real main protagonists in them but, you can tell even from the trailer, that this movie did have a starring lead role for the picture... Brad Pitt. I wasn’t too worried about this (not as much as I might have been had I read the book, for sure) and I think sometimes in the film industry you have to streamline things down to a central narrative character arc in order to get the film to something watchable... so not too many worries there.

4. The trailer worked really well for me. We had gazillions of zombies eating everything in sight and people in peril. So, really, whatever cynicism I might have been harbouring for the final product on screen... it was going on hold. I like zombie movies. They’re strangely comforting (for the most part).

Now just a couple of days prior to this, I’d heard some criticisms of this film on twitter based on it being filled with action for the first two thirds of the movie and having a strangely subdued last third and, yeah, I can almost see how some people might have had a hard time with that except for one thing, and it’s this...

Although the movie does celebrate zombie action over anything else for the first couple of acts, the third act, while slower in pacing and less spectacular in setting (although no less spectacular in set design), is certainly no less an intense or a suspenseful sequence than what has gone before it. In fact, I’d argue that it’s a whole lot more breathtaking and interesting than the rest of the movie put together... even though by now you’ve completely figured out how the movie is going to finish (I’ll get to that later).

So what we have here is like a big computer game with the first couple of levels in action mode and the final level in stealth mode. Pitt is quite convincing in his role and although it’s not a character driven plot, the film does take time to invest you with a feeling of Pitt’s “family unit”, which is a dead giveaway to the emotional state you will get to at the end of the film and why you know Pitt’s “final solution” will work... it has to in order to pan out the family drama. This drama is badly handled right at the last couple of minutes, I feel, and is one of the worst things about the movie, imbibed with a certain saccharine sweet sentiment instead of going for the natural sugar which was all it needed at this point.

Nevertheless, despite critics redundant rumblings, World War Z is a pretty entertaining time at the movies. It’s basically the big budget end of Hollywood finally catching up to something the low budget end of US film-making has been doing well since the late 1960s and, in this, it does kind of come across as George R. Romero meets 28 Days Later but with a slicker, commercial feel and lots of money to do it in style. But so what? It’s fine by me... I get to see a big budget zombie movie which actually gets to play at local cinemas with enough showings for me to be able to catch it. That’s not a bad thing and, as I say, it was pretty entertaining.

The film enthusiastically goes from one impressive set piece to another and is basically split up into three acts:

1. Escape from the zombie epidemic that suddenly hits where you are living and destroys your entire city in the space of an hour...

2. Become a globe-hopping researcher to try to find the cause of the plague and find some way to stop it... with impressive stop overs in both Korea and Palestine.

3. Go to Cardiff in Wales and sneak around a zombie infested World Health Organisation building with all the atmosphere (and some of the cast) of a really good Season 2 or Season 3 Torchwood episode.

Job done. Great film.

I did find it to be a bit “art-imitates-reality” poignant when Pitt’s character discovers that by immediately lopping off the hand of a female colleague he can halt the infection before it starts, considering the tragic events that have recently plagued his own real life family, but this film is a really well oiled machine of what is known these days as “the summer blockbuster” and it didn’t fail to deliver the goods (as many of them, of course, do fail to do just that).

There were a couple of disappointing things about the movie, though.

I don’t understand the USA ratings system but certainly, over here in the UK, the movie has a 15 rating. That’s kinda crazy because this film is pretty bloodless and lacking the kind of goriness you would usually expect from a good zombie movie. It’s like the producers were playing it safe on every level and not wanting to annoy the censors too much. So anything which might have been better explained by seeing it demonstrated as on screen violence, like the aforementioned, quick fire hand amputation or the killing of an “up-close-and-personal” zombie threat is often just off the side or bottom of the screen where you can’t properly get a handle on it quickly enough. It’s not too detracting or damaging to the movie as a whole, although it obviously distracted me enough to notice it each time they did (or rather, didn’t) do it but I’m guessing this just means there’ll be a harder, longer  and more satisfying cut of the movie released on video at some point.

The other thing which bothered me was the obviousness of the final solution and it’s successful outcome. By the time of the third act, Brad Pitt (and the audience) will have more or less figured out what the “chink” in the zombies’ armour is. However, in the last part the film makers place the lead character in a position where he is surrounded by zombies and there is no way out... unless he tests out his theory on himself and goes with his final solution. Which is what he does and, since we’re already so invested in him getting back to his family, we know it’s going to work, no question. This kind of lets it down in some ways but it doesn’t make it any less watchable for it and it’s only the very end of the picture with the family reunion where it gets maybe just a little less palatable... on the whole.

But there it is. World War Z is a pretty entertaining movie and it certainly won’t let down people who are into these kinds of monster infected pleasures (myself included, of course). The performances are fine and, aside from that one mis-step with the predictability of the “cure”, the writing is pretty good too with some excellent and hard hitting dialogue in places, performed by a cast who are obviously enthusiastic about hitting the right kind of tone for the story. I can’t speak for anyone else who’s seen this movie, obviously, but from my end, that of the endless audience, it’s certainly a top notch summer pop corn movie and people should have a good time with this one. I certainly enjoyed it a heck of a lot more than the last film I saw by this director, Quantum Of Solace, which perhaps isn’t saying a lot, come to think of it. However, World War Z is something I am quite looking forward to introducing to mum and dad when it comes out on Blu Ray... and that’s not a bad thing. Go see it.

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 4.9 The Gathering

Gather Ye Torchwoods

While Ye May

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 9: The Gathering

Airdate: 8th September 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Spoilers galore.

Oh... really, Torchwood?

You’re just going to skip a couple of months out between the last episode and this one? Okay.

You know, if you’d have done that a lot earlier in the series I would have applauded you for moving the action on at your own pace so you can clearly focus on what you need to focus on. But doing this now is kinda irrelevant, don’t you think? All that’s happened here is you’ve shown how insignificant everything that went down before this little “jump” was in relation to the story. You’ve just confirmed how much needless padding it all was.

Not that we didn't all suspect that anyway but... well, it’s really not good to be doing stuff like this when you’ve only got one episode left to sort everything out... don’t you think?

As you can probably tell from the above, folks. I’m still less than happy with the current series of Torchwood. There seem to be amazing plotholes left in place by the "filler material" and, generally things just don't seem to tie together... or make sense as a whole.

Let’s have a look at this... so Gwen Cooper has been hiding from the British government, presumably since the events of Children Of Earth when the British government went on a bit of a kill frenzy and tried to wipe out Torchwood. Fair enough. And then she gets herself into some kind of skirmish overseas with the current storyline and the boss of the CIA has her extradited. Which means... she can just go on living in Britain again, no longer in hiding and with the government knowing all about her. What the f*** Torchwood? Is this totally insane or am I somehow missing something here. Shouldn't she be unjustly locked up in some dark cellar at the pleasure of Her Majesty? Did IQs suddenly drop as a result of the fact that nobody can die anymore.

So anyway, also two months later, the PR lady goes to the big “promotion” meeting aka to The Blessing which she was told about in the last episode. Wow, these families must be really tied up in paperwork if it takes two months for this to actually happen. Don’t envy them. And The Blessing seems to me to be a huge anticlimax, to be honest. A tunnel that passes through the earth from one side to another (lucky I’m not a geology expert or a basic scientist... then I’d really have a go... big forcefield I guess) and this big crack in the world seems to have Nietzschean properties... that is to say, when you gaze into it’s abyss you see your own monster gazing back at you and this will either cause you to have some kind of lethal breakdown (if I’m interpreting this right) or it will just be like giving yourself a big pat on the back. There’s confidence for you.

Jack’s back and nicely recovering from his gunshot wounds when he was quite literally at death's door... even though, you know, he can’t heal anymore. Yeah, it’s so credible that he can be running around, Torchwood-style, in this condition, is it not? And he has plenty of Retcon, that selective amnesia drug with him. That’s handy. Has he got a secret stash of this stuff then? Or are the ingredients so easy to find out of normal household kitchen cupboards that he can mix this stuff up whenever he needs it at a moment’s notice? Pass the ketchup, dear.

And then we have the return of Oswald Danes who seems to be, is my guess, purely along for the ride now to be a demonstration of the more lethal effects of The Blessing? Or maybe The Blessing is the thing which will push him into saving the day? Who knows? I’ve kinda given up on him to be honest. If that’s the only reason to have this character then it’s a bit weak... everybody in this series seems to have been “overplayed” as something more important than just ballast to the workings of a not so cleverly constructed plot... and it’s not really working to be honest. The wool is not-so-slowly slipping from my eyes.

And, as I seem to have been saying for a number of weeks now, after I finally gave up hope on this new pseudo-Torchwood we’ve been asked to accept... there’s really not much there. So once again, my conclusion on this week’s Torchwood has to be... move along folks. Nothing to see here!

Torchwood 4.8 End of the Road

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 8: End of the Road

Airdate: 1st September 2011. UK. BBC1

You know, in a lot of cases I really don’t mind when a movie or film has been padded. Lot’s of countries’ cinema have a very different style of playing out than what I term the standard “cause and effect” style of “narrative” movie making so predominant in both American and UK cinema. You know the kind of thing... from A to F but making sure points B, C, D and E are all contributing to the little rush hour journey towards that point F, just before the end credits. Whereas movies and TV shows made in, say, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Spain will quite happily deviate onto another tangent altogether if it’s going to give you an interesting ride, whether it’s contributing to the plot or not... it may even take you somewhere far away from your anticipated resolution point and leave you somewhere alien, with a passionate disregard for closure which viewers used to more story led art may find less substantial... a less sweet pill to swallow for the couple of hours they’ve invested.

So there, that’s one kind of padding I don’t mind... but that’s not what Torchwood is really doing at the moment, I think.

Then there’s the other kind of padding which I can also handle if it’s done with a certain enthusiasm... that of keeping a story going because you need a certain thing to be going on for a certain time. I can quite confidently say I don’t really mind that stuff because I love those old black and white movie serials from the 30s, 40s and 50s and, frankly, they’re full of padding. Certainly, most of the episodes in, say, a Republic serial could probably be dispensed with in all honesty... you could probably make do with playing just the first and last episode and probably get away with missing the other stuff out completely and still have it all making perfect sense is my guess. But these things were scheduled to run for 12 weeks of 10 - 20 minute episodes and so you had to find ways to pad the things out. So you’d have a fist fight where someone, or some thing, is either kidnapped or stolen by “the bad guys” and then you’d have a chase where the good guys would lose the bad guys. Then “the good guys” will track or trap the bad guys and another chase and possibly another fist fight before at least one of the good guys will be placed in mortal danger (and often killed until the opening footage of the next episode reveals stuff they didn’t have added to the footage from the week before) in a traditional “cliffhanger” ending so that people would come back and watch the next episode to see how the good guys got out of it.

And then, of course, the next episode would start the whole thing off again until the alloted running time was eventually finished and you actually get to a traditional resolution. And it’s this kind of chase/fight/conflict format which is what made serials like, for instance, King Of The Rocketmen or Undersea Kingdom or Daredevils Of The Red Circle so watchable... and darned hokey too!

Torchwood: Miracle Day seems to me to have a similar raison detre. They want the thing to succeed as a joint production and they’ve commissioned a ten part serial. Trouble is... I’m realising that most of the episodes in this series are really just padding. Last week’s “set up” of Captain Jack’s “across the gulf of time” lover, for example, was loosely and sloppily picked up on this week and, although we thought he’d have something major to do with things... you really didn’t need him there at all and you certainly didn’t need to take all that time setting up this completely disposable character out of the blue. It was a huge waste of the viewers’ time which, if you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been saying above, could be acceptable as padding if it was at least rocketing along at a cracking pace and keeping everything moving... or at least keeping things intriguing. In a Republic serial fist fight, everything in a room not nailed down or boarded shut would be thrown at all the participants.... test tubes would be smashed, chairs would get chucked through windows and hats would stay on heads for no longer than two seconds. It was nonsense but it was cracking fast paced stuff accompanied by a blaring symphonic score which threatened to do your eardrums in worse than one of the fellas on screen were getting punched out!

Thing is... Torchwood isn’t doing this right now. It’s padding things out and, unfortunately, most of the padding is, quite frankly, very dull. Now End Of The Road had some lively moments and some cast of interest to fans of the sci-fi genre but, all in all, these elements were just dull or implausible. Genre favourite Nana Visitor, for example, had nothing too much to say and was frankly wasted when the guy from Jurassic Park decided to kill himself and take out three expendable characters in the explosion. Fellow Star Trekker John De Lancie turned up as the head of the CIA but, frankly, was having so much fun with the role and was just so darned larger than life that his credibility as someone who could competently run such an organisation would frankly be brought into question by anyone still left watching this show is my guess.

Finally, we’re getting to the “alien tech” and the heart of the story... but there’s only two more episodes to go. I wish they hadn’t gone with the long serial format for this series because it seems to have really killed it. I think most of the content of most of the episodes could have easily been cut or squeezed into ten minute sections or easily dispensed with. This whole thing could have had a lot more impact as a shorter, four or five episode serial... and then they could have gone on to a second story straight after.

As it is, Torchwood has become, for the most part, dull and boring and lifeless. It did start to wake up a little this week, as I noted earlier, but it seems to me that this is all very much a case of too little too late for series four... which is a great shame for what was one of our two leading science fiction exports. Still, only two more episodes left to go and then I can stop writing these worrying autopsies.

Torchwood 4.7: Immortal Sins

Gwen Is Mightier

Than The Sword

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 7: Immortal Sins

Airdate: August 25th 2011. UK. BBC1

Well, this really is going to be short and... well, probably not sweet. There are really no spoilers... depending on your definition of spoiler.

Last night I saw what was probably the most boring and completely superfluous episode of Torchwood I've ever seen. I went to bed thinking about how I was going to get through writing this review but, this morning, on the bus on the way in to work, I thought of two positive things I could say about it. As the day goes on though, I have to say that one of those positives is turning into a... "Meh... that’s no big deal."

Last night's episode was essentially two double-handers intercut with each other from two different time zones... the present Torchwood time zone with Captain Jack and Gwen picking up from last week’s not so great cliffhanger and 1927 America, with Jack and his newfound Italian lover of that era. The 1927 plot just suddenly dropped in out of the blue to suddenly try to start explaining the final solution of Torchwood: Miracle Day is, frankly, bad storytelling. If you’re going to do this... rather than pad out a long boring episode with great chunks of mind numbing, slow paced (for an action show like Torchwood) nothingness that could have easily been made up on the spot without any serious links to a “real” end solution embedded properly into the story, then you really want to do it in gradual tiny doses... say 5 minutes an episode, so you get a sense of history of the problem slowly developing over the course of the story and not just something that’s been dropped in from the “answer book” right near the end. People can easily follow that kind of stuff if you do this and, in fact, it tends to bed in people's minds more deeply if you do it more subtly like that!

My one positive on this episode was the absolute gorgeous, almost sepia tinted cinematography on the 1927 scenes in the episode (which were beautifully contrasted with Jack’s blue shirt) coupled with great shot compositions. But these sequences were rather tedious to say the least.

On the other hand, Jack and Gwen driving to a showdown seemed quite punchy and more like the old Torchwood... until i realised that watching wet paint dry cross cut with those 1927 scenes would have seemed more punchy and like the old Torchwood in comparison. Anything would. So, although the modern sections seemed faster paced and more relevant, considering that everything which was set up in last week's cliff hanger was undone in the last minute or two of this episode... I have to say that the modern sequences were even more of a letdown and it felt like some serious padding exercises were being performed on the running time here. Everything in this episode could have been done in ten minutes and edited into another similarly padded episode... so this really was quite insulting, at least to this viewer.

I don’t know where this is going anymore and I really don’t care that much either. This was shabby story structuring clear and simple. That’s my opinion anyway and if you don’t like it then don’t bother reading my reviews. This has been the most disappointing series of Torchwood ever... and I really like Torchwood. Please bring back the proper Torchwood after this! This is kinda heartbreaking to watch.

Torchwood 4.6 - The Middle Men

Middle Of The Road

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 6: The Middle Men

Airdate: August 18th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Kinda spoilers I guess.

OK then. This is going to be another short one because I really don’t have much to say on this one.

Last nights episode of Torchwood was... not that hot. And when I say not that hot I mean, mostly pointless and some might say unwatchable. I am the last person I know (other than people on twitter) who is still watching this train wreck of a fourth series.

Last week we saw one of the regular characters being burnt alive for no real reason, it seems - hopefully they’ll have addressed that little loophole and it’s a clever and complicated ploy, leading into a brilliant explanation for that. This week’s episode felt more like an autopsy of overemotional characters merely reacting to those events and dealing with the aftermath in extended and mostly uninspiring scenes that might have been better handled in a five or ten minute sequence instead of the majority of an episode.

To borrow a conclusion from the awesome Hypnogoria in his review of last weeks episode (his website can be found here at http://hypnogoria.com), it really does now seem like the original Torchwood cast have become guest stars in their own show. The majority of the “action” in this weeks episode was based with Rex and Esther trying to come to terms with the events of last week... but it all just felt like “We’re going to get to the end of the show too quickly guys! Can you pad it out for a few episodes do you think?” And that’s exactly what most of this weeks Torchwood felt like... uninspired padding.

There were some nice little sequences with Captain Jack and then Gwen, especially involving those “special” contact lenses inherited from previous incarnations of the show. Ultimately, though, these special items have been subverted in the last few minutes of the show in the way that I’d thought they were going to be used in Series Three, Children Of Earth, when that season aired... so it all just seems like a logical, dramatic extension to me. And Gwen, while she’s been nicely handled so far in comparison to some of the characters in this incarnation of the show, did seem a little gung ho and “out of character” this week. Hurling a brick through a car window to break into it is one thing but... blowing up a government institution in such a way that, supposedly, kills loads of totally innocent people to make a point doesn’t really seem her style in my book.

Also, the one new feature of the current series which is actually kind of interesting, that new feature being Bill Pullman’s portrayal of Oswald Danes, is completely absent from this episode. It’s like they totally forgot about it because... well, presumably because they had too much “padding” to contend with this week?

Either way you look at it, this series of Torchwood has only had a couple of really cracking episodes which were a shadow of the former incarnations of the series and this weeks contribution was one of the dullest and unnecessary yet. It really hurts me to be this harsh about a show I’ve been watching for a while (which is made by so many hard working and creative people pouring their sweat and life’s blood into these episodes) as there are very few TV programmes that I actually do watch these days... but there’s no point in writing a review and not telling it like it is. Torchwood needs to get better very quickly... not because I think it has a chance of being picked up for a fifth series... but because I’d rather see it end on a magnificent high and not leave a bitter taste in the mouths of die hard fans of the show. Maybe I’m a fool but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed. Getting painful though.

Torchwood - Miracle Day 4.5 - The Categories of Life

Catastrophic Categories

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 5: The Categories of Life

Airdate: August 11th 2011. UK. BBC1

Spoiler Warning: Here be spoilers... duly warned.

Ok... so as I was watching this one, what was probably the dullest episode of Torchwood so far, somebody else in the room proclaimed... “They’ve really killed off Torchwood haven’t they.” He wasn’t talking about Torchwood, the once undercover agency of the Government set up by Queen Victoria after an encounter with The Doctor and Rose Tyler. He was talking about the programme itself, which is now not even a shadow of it’s former glory which it found in its second and third series. And though I wanted to defend the programme against this comment, I realised that I really couldn’t. He was right on the mark about this one. This isn’t Torchwood... it’s merely an ailing spin-off.

So far, in my humble opinion, we’ve only had two really cracking episodes. We’re at the halfway mark now of this serial and so that means that less than 50% of the episodes, in my book anyway, have been less than succesful. That these are not stand alone stories just rubs salt into the wounds because the problem with serials is that their structure ensures that they tend to get judged on the sum of their parts, rather than on those particular individual parts.

This week’s individual part was quite surprisingly dire and unrevealing when it played out. The camerawork was a little more dynamic than the previous episode... not exactly in the same style as earlier episodes but not as static as last week’s episode... the camerawork didn’t really save it, however. And bang goes my theory that different writers determine the success of an episode, as this writer had written a really fun episode earlier in the series and then... well this one dematerialises up it’s own allusions in a really uninteresting manner. I know I’m being harsh now, perhaps, but honestly people... we’re half way through the series now. Unless we have 5 really solid episodes in a row, things are going to be hard to turn around and certainly they won’t help attract back the audience that’s already jumped ship on the programme. This is why a series/serial needs to start off strong and ratchett up the tension... not dawdle about in its own ethos. I’m really beginning to see how that few great things about the show... Captain Jack’s larger than life personality, Gwen Cooper's hard-gal-with-a-heart Welshness and Bill Paxton’s show stopping performances as Oswald Danes... are unable to outweigh what this programme has slowly become.

Last weeks teaser had footage of Gwen Cooper apologising for the inadequacy of Torchwood against the horrible revelations they’d found and said revelations were promised. Although it had been done before in Torchwood, it still created a certain sense of promise or tension. However, not only was this episode not in any way revelatory... it didn’t even feature any of that footage of Gwen on the video. What’s up with that? Did it all get cut at the last minute... too late to change the previous teaser? Was it in the American version of the episode but not the English version? What’s going on?

The so called “revelation” of the health cmaps being Nazi-like ovens to burn the “returned but severely damaged” dead seems to make no apparent sense as to why the company in question would set about creating this situation in the first place (hopefully I’m just not realising the bigger picture yet) and instead seemed to be a dramatic device so we could watch one of the central characters burn to death. I was expecting one of the regular characters to die soon, in the traditional Torchwood manner, but not for that death to be so clumsily reached. It wasn't the fact that it was an unneccessary death that made it so rubbish... unneccessary deaths can be quite dramatic... but this whole plot device seemed to be there just to serve this scene and there were much better ways they could have dramatically pushed a point like this across than have a character just happen to get shot and stored in an oven until another character was in place to witness her being burnt alive. Not particularly smart and, in this particular case considering this kind of death-by-fire almost always gets under my skin, rendered surprisingly unshocking by the way it was shot. Can’t put my finger on what was wrong exactly but the timing or something of the build up and release just seemed wrong and a litle antiseptic. This is just no good.

So this episode has left me feeling like the next five episodes, which I will watch because I hate giving up on anything, will be something of a chore to witness. I can only hope that things step up a pace both in terms of action and in terms of general intelligence. I’ll keep writing these little reviews of them more as a diary for myself of what I thought of them at the time as opposed to the hope that anyone’s going to bother to read them. After all, with a series that’s become a dull echo of the greatness it once had... why would anyone want to read the autopsy after. But please, read some of my other reviews if you get a chance... they’re not all this negative and you may find something you like better.

All the best,

NUTS4R2

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4 Episode 4: Escape To LA

LA Quartet

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 4: Escape To LA

Airdate: August 4th 2011. UK. BBC1

Ok... this is probably going to be a short but not so sweet review of the latest Torchwood because, frankly, this is the worst episode we’ve had so far this season and I’m beginning to understand the problems with the new format I think.

First up, the cinematography in this episode seemed quite pedestrian compared to some of the more dynamic stuff we’ve had so far. Yes, I was complaining about the over-use of handheld, catch things “as they happen” style of camera work last week but this, more statically shot episode (apart from some nice camera work in one of the outside location sequences near the start) didn’t really match the visual style of the story telling (that I’ve been aware of) of previous episodes and so it just felt like it didn’t tie in as well.

The pacing of the episode was also slow and dull and, for the most part, didn’t keep me half as gripped as the tease of some of the dialogue toward the end of the show did either. And that was just due to the content of the dialogue in terms of the advancement of the story, as opposed to any real wit or sparkle or emotional pull from the dialogue itself. Thought the writing on this one was fairly poor.

Don’t get me wrong. There were some nice sequences here also and the occasional, enjoyable one-liner, but overall I just was so unenthused by this episode... unlike last weeks brilliant offering. Episode highlights from this one would have to be the opening location work in LA and the enemy infiltration and subsequent “showdown” with a gone-rogue-and-independent-at-the-drop-of-a-hat assassin. Standout of the episode was the wonderful Vera Miles as Gwen, all dolled up and looking like she stepped out of a Modesty Blaise comic-strip... in fact, I’ve just realised what a good Modesty Vera Miles would make... somebody needs to jump on that quick.

I’ve got problems with the storyline now. The villains are being kept deliberately sinister and this is normally kept up to maintain mystery if the audience already knows who the villains are from a previous adventure... but I don’t see how that can really be happening on this “reboot”. I’d seriously love it to be The Silence and tie in with the second half of the latest Doctor Who season... but I just don’t think something like that will happen in the shows inaugural US produced series. I’m guessing humans are being harvested and whatever they are being harvested for (meat for food or whatever), the consumers need their “stock” to be still alive. Maybe... maybe not. It’s a theory. Unfortunately I’m just not that worried about it at the moment.

Also, 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?

I think the problems of having a show like Torchwood which is... in this case, a single story ark, is that having a different writer and director plugging in to various episodes may be seen as fresh, and is indeed a regular practice on non-serialised stories, but it just leads to a lack of generally feeling like a whole show in the case of a serial format like Torchwood. It feels and looks fractured in style and this stylistically disjointed atmosphere is not necessarily the best breeding ground for this kind of story to gestate in and flourish from.

Next weeks episode looks like it’s going to be a lot darker and more intense but the whole Eva Myles, talking head into a camera to spell out how much trouble mankind is in and how nothing can be done to stop it is something which, while effective, has been done before... just in the last series of the show, in fact. So nothing new there.

Okay, so I’ve probably been a tad harsh on this one but only because I really care about this show and was hoping it might have the power to survive for a fifth series (although that seems to be looking increasingly unlikely from what I’m reading). I’m sure this was just one less than stellar episode in a more interesting “whole”... at least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself in a house where the other two regular viewers of this show are just about ready to give up on it. I’m going to hang on in there until the bitter end though... I kinda like Torchwood!

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4 Episode 3: Dead of Night

Love At First Night

Torchwood - Miracle Day Series 4

Episode 3: Dead of Night

Airdate: July 28th 2011. UK. BBC1

Okay, so here we are at week three of the new Torchwood reboot and it's just beginning to look like it's a proper piece of sci-fi storytelling again as opposed to a series of set-pieces cobbled together with some loose threads. Not to say that their aren’t some really obvious “event sequences” thrown in for good measure, but the tone of this one was pretty level and despite the obvious loose cannon of Rex (who I’m sure will be dead by the end of the series anyway, if the new Torchwood team are successful?), the team seem to be working together as a whole and even Rex returns to the fold once he is reminded of the gravity of the situation.

So what have we got here then? Well, for one thing we have the slow, cross-cut plot details emerging like a photographer might develop a photographic print... and that print, in this case, is of a story with a lot of texture and detail in its telling. The various points coming across are beginning to seem that they were written for a modern comic book rather than a movie... and by that I mean to praise Torchwood, not bury it. It’s long been my belief, based on the evidence of comic books in the last 25 years, that the comic book medium is the place, of all the “visual based” media, where a writer will get the opportunities to tell richer and more adult minded tales... and by that I don’t mean “adult” as in “porn” or “violence” (I personally find the “adult” euphemism to be a curious contradiction when used in regards to the actual childish sensibilities on display in a lot of gory/sexy movies) but “adult” in terms of tackling less juvenile issues with a healthy attitude and a structural template which will allow these issues to be explored and re-examined over an appropriate period of time.

This week's Torchwood certainly lived up to these lofty aims with some very densely textured details and questions being aired as the mystery girl who is the link between Oswald Danes freed child killer and good gal Doctor Juarez leads us into one section of the story which will, inevitably and ultimately, bring these pieces into a direct crash trajectory with Torchwood.

Now there is someone who is making money off the plight of “the human race that can’t die” and this, in turn, makes you wonder about the assumed “alien nature” of the new human condition, with Torchwood assuming an extra-terrestrial cause to the woes of mankind. But by the same token, it’s hard to imagine what, if anything, could have brought about this new condition other than alien intervention. Now, if I was an optimistic type and believed in artistic synchronicity between different aspects of an artistic property with no worries about the time factor, I would by now be thinking that the Owen character from the first two series of Torchwood was about to make a Lazarus-like appearance and be the obvious point of solution for the team... “oh, living-dead boy Owen has managed to resurrect himself from radiation meltdown after all... yay. Oops, he accidentally did the same for the rest of the planet in the process... oh well.” Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s that either so I’m pleased to say that three episodes in, I’m still in the dark. I don’t expect to stay that way for very long, but for now I’m happy.

This week’s set piece was the intercutting of two unnecessary sex scenes into the mix... not that I’m not a big fan of unnecessary sex scenes (who isn't), it’s just that these weren’t much fun, to be honest. That’s one of the few negatives on the show right now. Less sex and more nudity please!

The differences of English and American culture are dutifully pointed out by the new Esther character, who I’ve realised has been included just to point out these semi-amusing quirks of cultural divide and also to be the person the others can explain things to so the "whole" audience have no excuse not to know what's going on. Yep, Esther wins my “exposition gal of the month” award... or would if I had such a thing.

I’ve started to notice the camera work a little more now and they’ve gone for that thing they do a lot in Firefly and Battlestar Galactica with a constant, though mostly unobtrusive, hand held style which just follows the action and reacts to characters as they say or do something by honing in on them. Kind of like a cinematographic version of musical "Mickey Mousing" on a soundtrack... it will catch every slight action and nuance and that’s its job. Not very inspiring perhaps but mostly effective although, I have to say, I’m getting just a little bit fed up with it. Not very fair of me, I know, since its obviously a valuable item in the moving image toolbox. I’d rather see a little more smoothly paced and perfectly framed action I think, but confess I am kinda getting on a bit now.

So far, so good though and I am much more encouraged that this is going to be a good series on the whole... although the ratings seem to be going down accordingly and apparently there’s no guarantee (or even much likelihood if I’m reading the news stories correctly) that there will be a fifth series of the show. Which is unfortunate as I’m still waiting to see how Captain Jack ends up as a disembodied head in a jar for countless millennia! Maybe I’ll never know.

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.