In what I think is my favorite scene from the episode, Jack’s madly driving a jeep down the beach at full speed while being pursued by a helicopter. Machine gun fire keeps spraying toward the jeep, but Jack outsteers the gunner. When Jack makes a sudden stop, Gwen stands up in the back of the jeep, holding a missile launcher.
Rex looks up from his seat and asks, “Who are you people?!”
Gwen replies with a single word, “Torchwood” and fires the missile.
It’s about 40 minutes into the episode, but that’s the moment that for me makes it official, this isn’t just some wannabe re-using the name, this is the real deal. The team is back and this is Torchwood.
This new episode came out in 2011, but I’ve been afraid to watch it. I hadn’t heard much bad, but I hadn’t heard much good either. There were tales that this Torchwood was going to be an Americanized version, and considering how well that worked for Doctor Who… Yeah, I just wasn’t overly excited about it.
But this evening I was making up a list of movies and TV shows for a friend who’s going to be housebound for a while and decided that the original Torchwood should be on that list. Not everything needs to come from Amazon though, so I decided to see if Netflix had it. None of the episodes I was looking for, but “Miracle Day” was listed, and it had Eve Myles. So on a whim, I decided to give it a chance.
I suspect this is going to be dark in much the same way as “Children of Earth”. All I know so far is that people have suddenly stopped dying and Jack has returned from his self-imposed exile to protect Gwen, Rhys, and their daughter Anwen.
The idea of “no more dying” has been covered before in Death Takes a Holiday and it’s remake Meet Joe Black. There’s a certain joy to the idea that you never again have to lose the people you love. But there was also a Twilight Zone episode, “One Night at Mercy” starring Jason Alexander as Death. That episode delves into the darker side of no more death – people living in pain because Death won’t claim them. This Torchwood episode touched on that sort of idea – no more dying means a population surge, and only four months until the world runs out of food.
It’s a dark place to go, but that’s what Torchwood has always done. I’m curious to see where the storyline goes.