Miracle Day - are we facing another CoE slap in the face?

[blucougar]

Spoilers behind the cut

For anyone who has seen the "preview to episode 10" that is available when you purchase Torchwood: Miracle Day through a season pass, you'll know that John Barrowman says that there will be a death in the final episode and that we will be shocked.

Frankly, I don't care if they kill off Rex, Esther, Oswald... and I think I'll cope if they kill off Rhys. I know I'll be shocked if Jack is killed off, although it's been said that Jack will be in the anniversary series of Doctor Who, so it's hopeful that he will be returned to his immortal state, and continue on his happy way to becoming a giant head in a jar.

I live in hope, slim though it might be, that the shock death will be Gwen. I say that unapologetically. RTD and Julie Gardner insisted right from the beginning of Torchwood that no character (barring Jack) was safe, and that Torchwood operatives died young. They've killed off Tosh, Owen and Ianto. To leave Gwen untouched would be hypocritical at the very least.

I really do hope the character dies, because if that happens then we can be sure that if Torchwood is resurrected for a new season, then it will be a completely fresh show with a complete set of new characters.

Yes, I know I am a bitch, but I hate Gwen. I thought maybe she had taken a turn for the better at the start of this season, but sadly she just degenerated into her usual, sanctimonious and irritating self.

Unfortunately, I worry that RTD has another slap in the face of CoE proportions planned for those of us who have been brave enough to stick with the show.

There is one episode left. Jack was shot at the end of episode 8 and appears to be slowly bleeding to death. We have been promised a death that will shock us. All I can say is that if that death is Jack's, then Torchwood is officially dead in the water, and there will never be another series. I may never even watch another episode of Doctor Who, unless Moffatt is prepared to go against RTD and bring Jack back.

I am sorry, but Eve Myles cannot carry a show like Torchwood on her own. Without Captain Jack, there is no Torchwood. End of story.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

RTD and co have already ripped Jack to shreds so much, short of killing him off there's really nothing else they can do to him. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he was killed and I'm in two minds about how I'd feel. On the one hand, Jack's suffered so much it would put him out of his misery and he could go join Ianto in the afterlife. On the other, I want Jack to be around to appear on Doctor Who. Of course, in my head neither CoE nor Miracle Day exists in the same universe as Doctor Who, to me it's all AU and in the Doctor Who universe's version of Torchwood none of this happened, because if it had, the Doctor would have showed to fix it.

I can't help feeling that RTD would have killed Jack off long ago if he hadn't been immortal, so that Torchwood could be completely The Gwen Show, so Miracle Day may well have been created just in order for him to have an excuse to do just that. Make everyone else immortal, make Jack mortal, then kill him to fix the world. It's cynical of me, I know, but it wouldn't surprise me.

If Gwen dies, I will be very surprised. Sadly, I think it's highly unlikely (although I suspect a lot of people would be relieved, myself included). RTD practically worships Gwen, he thinks she's perfect, so I can't see him killing the wonderful character he created (shame sarcasm doesn't come across well in writing). I'd be surprised if Rhys bit the dust, because Gwen never loses anything important to her, but then I'm not convinced Rhys really means that much to her anyway...

Having said all this, I haven't watched Miracle Day at all, nor do I ever plan to. I suspect the reviews are more entertaining than the actual show and I don't have to waste 10 hours of my life to know what's happening. 5 minutes a week tells me all I need to know.

[theorclair]

Of course, in my head neither CoE nor Miracle Day exists in the same universe as Doctor Who, to me it's all AU and in the Doctor Who universe's version of Torchwood none of this happened, because if it had, the Doctor would have showed to fix it.

Me too. If I had to list twenty things that bothered me about CoE, the first five would all be variations on "Where's the Doctor and why hasn't Martha/Sarah Jane/The Brig/insert other person he's close to here called him yet?" Because the Doctor cares so much about Earth that he's repeatedly dropped everything to come save it.

[badly_knitted]

Exactly! It makes no logical sense, so they can't be in the same universe. Martha being on her honeymoon wouldn't have kept her from at least contacting the Doctor, and she would have have found a way to get in touch with Torchwood. Sarah Jane would have got Mr Smith and K-9 working on the problem...

Someone else said somewhere that global threats really don't work for Torchwood because of the Doctor and UNIT being the people who would automatically respond to anything on such a grand scale, and it's true. Torchwood worked while it was dealing with the flotsam and jetsam that fell through the Rift - they had a clear purpose, protecting the people of Cardiff and the surrounding areas from things and creatures that could harm them - but when you make the threat global and claim that only Torchwood can help and even they are incompetent, it all falls apart.

[theorclair]

I've been working on a fic for more than two years (writer's block some) where Martha explicitly states who knows how to reach the Doctor and that he'd come for anything serious. Watch "The Stolen Earth" again and you'll see how they should have reacted - they know this is way over their heads and ask for help.

People always seem to assume I hate CoE because I'm a butthurt shipper (I am a shipper, but not a butthurt one...) and somehow it never occurs to them I don't like it because it doesn't make sense in the Who universe.

[badly_knitted]

I think a lot of Who-Verse fans are in the same position. We have perfectly valid reasons for not liking CoE - not only doesn't it make sense within the Who-Verse, it doesn't make sense in any respect a lot of the time - but we just get accused of not liking it solely because they killed Ianto.

I'll admit I think killing Ianto was unnecessary to the plot (such as it was), but by the end of Day One I was pulling apart all the plot holes and rolling my eyes about how little sense it was making, and it just went downhill from there. There were a few brief moments when it seemed like Torchwood, but most of it was a nonsensical mess. There were so many things that bugged me, I couldn't suspend my disbelief for more that a few minutes at a time before the plot fell down another gaping hole.

[idamus]

Disaster it might have been, but I didn't want the Doctor to come to the rescue, I can see that in his own series, I liked how these ordinary people (and one immortal from the future) tried to make a difference, I also very, very rarely read fanfic where the Doctor fixes things, Torchwood is not Doctor Who

[badly_knitted]

No, Torchwood isn't Doctor Who, but it is supposed to exist in the same universe. By making the plot global, it begs the question of why no one even tried to contact the Doctor, who has shown up to rescue earth from far lesser threats. If the threat had been more localised, say only Britain in danger, then yes, the Doctor might have thought Torchwood could handle it and stayed away, but he doesn't have a high enough opinion of the apes who inhabit the planet to leave such a devastating threat to be dealt with by earth itself.

Then there's the fact that UNIT apparently made no attempt to tackle the threat. Isn't that what they exist to do? Protect earth from alien threats? Even if the Doctor didn't show up, UNIT should have been fighting back, but instead...

And I'm not saying that I myself wanted to see the Doctor come riding in to save the day, just that there's not even any real explanation of why he didn't or couldn't even though fans were bound to ask "Why?"

I've long thought that the whole idea would have worked better if the global threat had been season 2's Sleepers. They could have crippled earth's communications so an S.O.S. couldn't be sent to the Doctor and the destruction of the Hub would have actually made sense. Maybe something in Beth's body activated and blew the Hub sky high. Anything would have made more sense than planting a bomb in Jack and hoping he'd get back to his secret base before exploding.

I also would have enjoyed it more if the ordinary people and the immortal hadn't been made to look so downright incompetent most of the time. It beggars belief that Torchwood didn't have any backup Hub in case their base was compromised, no off-site stash of weapons and equipment for emergencies, no pre-established false identities they could use, etc. etc. It looked like amateur hour.

[theorclair]

Exactly. If they are in the same universe there's no logic to the story line. It wasn't a matter of wanting the Doctor to show up as much as there was no reason he couldn't.

And mind you, it's established in "Journey's End" that Tosh is a master at planning for unexpected things, which makes the whole plot from day one onward make no sense. If she prepared something for a Dalek invasion she'd surely have come up with something for explosives in the Hub.

[badly_knitted]

That's been my problem with CoE from the start - the moment you start thinking about the 'plot', the whole thing just collapses. It's like getting hold of a loose thread, pulling it and watching everything unravel.

The Hub would surely have had some sort of detector beyond the alien ultrasound scanner thing that would have registered the bomb in Jack! Tosh built enough safeguards and alarms into the Hub systems!

CoE was one of the reasons I chose not to watch MD - I'd been burnt once, I didn't wanto to watch something as dark, depressing, bleak, pointless and nonsensical again. From everything I've heard, it was a good decision on my part. I wasted 5 hours on CoE, I'm glad I haven't wasted twice that on something I can't even recognise as the Torchwood I used to enjoy so much.