Day 3113: TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN… CHILDREN… ICE CREAM… LOLLIPOPS… – DAY FIVE

Friday:


Crumbs! THAT was a bit of a DOWNER wasn’t it!

To avoid snuffles, I’ll just concentrate on the POSITIVE for a moment: stripping the drama across the week has returned Auntie Beeb ratings of around six MILLION viewers and actually picking up over the week – along with a high appreciation index too.

So, that’s the BBC’s top serious drama of the year so far and the leads were a gay couple and a pregnant woman. Welcome to Russell-world!

Plus… The War Games! Skip to the end, and Our Hero is stripped of his companions and goes into exile!

Sorry, I said I wasn’t doing that any more. Here’s Daddy’s final review; as always, spoiler-phobics (for Quatermass as well as Torchwood!) should wait ‘till AFTER they’ve seen the episode:

Did I mention Quatermass at all?

Our Hero uses what he’s learned about the aliens to drive them away by “stinging” them, but his grandchild dies. To really stretch the point, the series ends with Our Hero disappearing in a blaze of light.

The climax of Children of Earth isn’t quite as much of a downer as the atom-bomb-in-the-face ending of the Quatermass Conclusion, but it comes close. That’s fitting. There was no way that they could pull some happy everybody lives deus-ex-machina out of their bottoms without betraying the earlier episodes.

Now, that’s not to say that Torchwood hasn’t been know to do exactly that, so in many ways the triumph of Children of Earth is that it lived up to what Torchwood ought to have been from, er, Day One.

I’ve said before that recognising that actions have consequences has been the mark of the new series of “Doctor Who” under Russell Davies, and the marked lack of consequences has, time and again, been where Torchwood under Chris Chibnall fell short of the supposedly kiddie-oriented show.

Captain Jack does the one thing that the Prime Minister and the COBRA committee wouldn’t: he surrenders his own child.

This is blatantly contrasted with Mr Frobisher’s approach: he shoots his family and himself. Loyal Bridget Spears (a performance of quiet dignity from Susan Brown) insists to Lois that Frobisher was a good man. But he wasn’t. He doesn’t tell the truth to the media, he doesn’t try to save anybody else; he doesn’t even give his family a choice. His suicide, as is so often the case, is totally selfish.

What Jack does is still wrong, but he chooses the lesser of two evils, and he – unlike Prime Minister Brian Green – accepts that it was an evil, and that there is a price he has to pay.

(Incidentally, with Mr Green’s downfall, that’s the second time – after “Aliens of London” – that Russell has “killed” Tony Blair, and the second time he’s replaced him with a woman PM of dubious moral character.)

Equally, it feels right that the 456 are defeated by a radio frequency.

It’s the fate of all good Avengers villains to be defeated by their own weapons, and here it is the very Children of Earth that provide the “sting” for Captain Jack’s plan. It was perhaps a little convenient that the 456 provided the weapon by killing Clement. It’s churlish to demand even more development, but perhaps an explanation that his adult mind still being linked to them was an irritant, and that they squashed him like a bug – which is what appears to have happened – might have made it more clear that they didn’t even think that swatting him could have any comeback on them.

I’ve already suggested that Children of Earth deliberately begins with a “Day One” that overwrites the “Day One” of 2006. And if anything, the conclusion is even more of a rebuke to the earlier episode: a genuine “no, this is how you do it”. The motivation of the 456 is the same as the motivation of the gas-creature that arrives in “Day One”: to use humans as a drug. But Children of Earth shows that that isn’t something silly or titillating, it’s serious and horrible and grotesque.

And Torchwood even handles it better than Quatermass IV, where the aliens (perhaps) covet the young humans as “scent” or “savour”.

The 456’s response, on “Day Four” to Captain Jack was “but you’re letting children die every day; why would you mind this?” And that is exactly the sort of point that science fiction should be making.

“Day Five” challenges us to think about the consequences of the drugs trade, how it destroys the worlds of innocent, ordinary people just by the fact of it being done. Earth is some out-of-the-way backwater to the 456, the way that Columbia or Afghanistan were out of sight out of mind to us.

“Day Five” isn’t quite as strong as the two preceding episodes; taken as a whole, the outstanding moments of Children of Earth are clearly Frobisher’s twisty-turny negotiations with the 456 on “Day Three” and the abject moral failure at the COBRA committee on “Day Four”. “Day Five” slightly pushes itself too far by opening with Gwen’s version of Rose Tyler’s “this is how I died” speech from Bad Wolf Bay; this isn’t how the World ends; outside of a council estate in Wales, Civilisation doesn’t visibly totter, and that slightly makes Gwen look a little overwrought.

And, as Alex remarks, all that “he turns away in shame” is the most blatant “The Doctor is god” since, oooh, 1989.

Don’t get me wrong, the way that the civilians took on the soldiers to protect their children – and thank goodness PC Andy finally picked which side he was on! – was an outstanding moment of hope: that was the real face of humanity, willing to fight for what was right. But it was also a bit like the Auton Invasion of One Shopping Centre in “Rose”; it made the scale of events small instead of global.

And one really cheap shot – the digital duplication of the children at the army base collection point was a bit obvious.

Children of Earth has been Torchwood’s finest (five) hours. This is what it always could have been, and always should have been. It’s not a British X-Files, there’s none of that shilly-shallying about whether the aliens are real, and Captain Jack never denies that he wants to snog his Scully.

This is Quatermass V. There is no higher praise.


Next Time…?Is this the end of Torchwood? It’s certainly very much put together that way, and perhaps appropriately as Russell is marking the ending of his association with the parent series too. And yet, the bigwigs at the BBC wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t look at ratings success. Torchwood Children of Earth pulled in comparable ratings to hit weeknight series such as “Spooks” and “Hustle” and quite a bit better than the channel’s first attempt at “stripping” a series across a week “Criminal Justice”, and it did it in the traditional ratings Death Zone of July.

So, where would you go from here? The Hub’s destroyed, the team split up, Jack is gone… and yet, Agent Johnson and her team are left at the end in charge of a secret base with access, thanks to Jack, to the old Torchwood software. And super-temp Lois Habiba got to read all of those secret Government background files. And way, way back in “Everything Changes”, our Russell seeded another mystery that’s never been examined.

A new alien menace. Agent Johnston or Lois or both arrive on Gwen’s door and recruit her to find the lost institute. Series Four: “Torchwood IV”.

You know you want to.

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Day 3112: TORCHWOOD: CBBC – DAY FOUR

Thursday:

The War Games part four. At this point it doesn't seem as funny or as relevant to be playing "spot the plot coincidences" any more.

Instead, remember this:

There are some corners of this universe that have bred the most terrible things, things that stand against everything we believe in. They must be fought.

Not the 456. Although, we must fight them; obviously we must. But they're just a bunch of inhuman gangsters with a protection racket. No, I mean the quisling politicians who might accede to them.

How short is the step from league tables to gas chambers?

The centrepiece of "Day Four", arguably of the whole Children of Earth series, features the Prime Minister of Britain and the "COBRA" emergency committee discussing how they are going to surrender over three-hundred thousand children to suffer a horrible living death enslaved to the alien 456.

Just think what it says about the standing of our politicians that this is credible.

No one at that Cabinet table says the thing that ought to be said: this demand, this threat from these 456 is a declaration of war. So we give them a war. We tell the World about these abhorrent creatures and their ghastly demands. We execute their ambassador and we take the fight to them any way that we can, and if we can't and we die then we die fighting.

I know, I realise it's only a television drama, a bit of sci-fi fluff to most people, and I realise that it's set up to allow Lois to suddenly come into her own and make that speech as "a voter" an "everyman" and for Torchwood to put action to the words and be the ones to stand and fight and die.

But this is something true. This is how it happens that we can find our country at war with Iraq or colluding in torture, when decisions are taken like this by these… people… whose arrogant belief is that they know what is good for us.

Mr Yates (bless Nick Briggs but in this company he's really out of his acting league) even goes to suggest that, with overpopulation and immigration being hot-button topics, they can spin this as a good thing.

"Lord knows, 'spin' is all we've got."

That could be the epitaph of the New Labour project, assuming it's not just buried at a crossroads in an unmarked grave with a stake through its heart.

The Prime Minister, Mr Green (Nicholas Farrell), keeps up the pretence of pained, heroic self-sacrifice, bearing the burden even as it pains him to make the "tough decisions" to let someone else pay the price. I wonder who that reminds me of? Perhaps he's even pretending to himself, with his line of "no one in this room is a willing collaborator". Oh, yes you are Brian, yes you are.

It's Deborah Finlay, though, outstanding in the small and for obvious reasons repellent role as Denise, who perfectly captures the two-faced self-interest disguised as self-righteousness of those archest of New Labourites, the Harriets, the Margarets and the Hazels, the ones who can always justify the most odious of policies with a straight face, and yet still feel that they deserve to be treated that little bit better.

I'm sure it's a question that hasn't troubled the consciences of the Labour Party yet, but what do you do when there aren't enough asylum seekers to blame?

You pick the children from the bottom ten percent of the school's league tables, apparently. Yes, that's right, you stick it to the kids that you've already failed.

Even Mr Frobisher – and can someone just give Peter Capaldi the Bafta now, please? – even he has the good taste to look nauseated by what they've just agreed to.

And it's futile, too, when the British Government has no way on Earth of persuading to go along with this vile scheme the other one-hundred-and-ninety-one members of the United Nations, all of whom are already furious at us for covering up our earlier dealings with the 456.


Almost, that's all I want to say, it's too much to say more.

But I can't not mention how "Day Four" ends.

So, the COBRA scenes took up the middle third of the episode: before them was the expected revelations of what happened in 1965 – given what we'd already seen, no real surprises there, although the link between the 456 and a flu pandemic (prescient shades of Swine Flu, given how long ago this was filmed) was foreshadowing for the 456's weapons later – and after came Torchwood's counter-attack, and it's failure, and the price.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Jack, who can't die, understands the price of war less well than Ianto who can die. And does.

It was a good plan, and the execution is brilliantly choreographed, as Torchwood make the Government and the military dance to their tune. Agent Johnson and her people are supposed to be good at their jobs, but did they not start to think that something might be up when Ianto began to address them directly, knowing that they were tracing the call. Because I'm not a top military assassin but I guessed that Torchwood wanted Johnson to know where "Hub 2" was.

The flowing, sweeping almost languid shots had a sense of inevitability about them as they sept us to the climax.

The music too, descending choral voices in a minor key, was beautiful and tragic, and reminiscent of similar music in John Woo's Mission Impossible II, which also features a countdown to viral apocalypse.

It was a good plan. But the 456 are blackmailers, and they are careful and they are prepared. And, unlike the usual movie villain, the 456 didn't threaten and bluster. They just declared war and used their weapon. Death, just like that.

But the 456 fear us.

They won't tell us their real name, have refused to reveal where they are from, remain hidden in their poisonous mist and lie and dissemble to keep the people of Earth from knowing them. And they are right to fear us. Once revealed for what they are, a gang of cosmic paedophiles, human fury would be unbounded and retribution without limits.

They've seen "The War Games" too. They know, they know that we are the worst monsters of them all.

Next Time… Time's up. It's the End of the World. Day Five.

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Day 3111: TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION – DAY THREE

Wednesday:


In part THREE of the War Games, we learn more about the aliens behind the abductions when their impressive spokesbeing turns up and… gasp… has a sinister connection to a secret in Our Hero's past…

Meanwhile, we WOULD be watching TV's "The Wire", a story about phone-tapping, criminal conspiracies, corrupt politicians and favours for gangsters… but when Mr Roger Stavro Moredick's gang are hacking mobile phones and organising hush money with Mr Balloon providing the payoff for Soldier Coulson, "the Wire" seems somewhat REDUNDANT.

Beyond belief, above the police, out of control… who do they think they are, TORCHWOOD???

"Day Three" is halfway through this mini-series and appropriately it is exactly halfway through the episode that the "456's" ambassador beams down into his specially prepared tank.

By default this makes for a "game of two halves" episode, and the second half is much the more powerful. Before then we get a certain amount of setting up, as Torchwood pull themselves back together re-establishing their operations, drawing Lois further into their plans and rescuing Clem McDonald from police custody. It's like "Mission: Impossible" with a side order of "Hustle" and just a dash of "What Not to Wear".

In fairness, Mr Frobisher – and here it emerges that he is the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office – is also making preparations, and – to throw in a dollop of "Spooks" to the mix – we see his agents close in on Captain Jack's daughter by tracing the phone she's using and – more "Spooks – get some evil CCTV use to spot her. That's actually quite clever, because she borrows someone else's phone to make the call, knowing it will be traced, which is classic tradecraft, but they are smarter still which gets her caught.

Notice how Frobisher sends his hard-faced Agent Johnson to do his dirty work while later in the episode Jack goes in person when he seeks to make a contrasting implied threat to Frobisher's family. This contrast is developed further and Frobisher says it explicitly when in one of the episode's finest moments, he calls Jack's bluff: "You're a better man than I am."

It's a towering, yet impressively delicate performance by Peter Capaldi – a long, long way from his grotesque Malcolm Tucker of "The Thick of It"/"In the Loop" – as Frobisher is clearly doing things he knows to be terrible, and yet it's because he's caught by duty and fear and shame, rather than because he's a cackling villain. This complex web of motivations is the real difference between grown up drama and the stuff that Torchwood has been doing for the last two seasons.

In marked contrast, though, the character of Lois Habiba seems actively to be becoming less interesting as the series goes on. Lois here becomes literally Torchwood's eyes on "Floor 13" (honestly, do evil Government conspiracies™ do this sort of thing deliberately?). But I'm afraid she remains a very one-dimensional character, and they seem to be closing off opportunities for her to reveal some secret background to explain her unexpectedly useful behaviour on "Day Two". It's a great shame, after going to such trouble on "Day One" to flesh out Torchwood's central cast, to apparently be introducing a new cardboard cut-out for the team.

On the other hand, Gwen's ruthlessness in recruiting Lois adds a new dimension to former PC Cooper.

Eve Myles, it has to be said, suddenly seems to have come up to the mark in the acting stakes, with none of her usual unfortunate hooting or tweeness. Here she manages to convince us that this is a Gwen Cooper who has evolved, become a superhero in working hours while still staying true to the very human Gwen who married Rhys, who first joined Torchwood in "Everything Changes".

You can measure it by the two different mini-missions that Gwen performs in the first half of this episode. Her hardness in pressing Lois into service contrasts with the way she uses her (genuine) humanity to connect to PC Andy so that she can get Clem out of lockup and her (again unfeigned) concern is what persuades him to come with her.

Paul Copley as Clem, abduction survivor – we keep referring to him as "Egg's Dad" thanks to a memorable guest star turn in "This Life", but he was also remarkable in the Big Finish audio adventure "Spare Parts" – here does that difficult trick of being sympathetic and deeply creepy, with his twitches, talking to himself and above all smelling of everything. And there's the massively Russell Davies moment of him suddenly accusingly snapping out at Ianto calling him "the queer". It might be, perhaps, a self-rebuke for the "you're so gay" line given to Rose in "Aliens of London", similarly putting a shockingly un-PC line into a sympathetic character's mouth, because here he has Ianto angrily defend himself from the prejudice.

It also adds an edge of doubt when he turns his accusations on Jack at the end. Making it more powerful (even though it has to be said it's pretty obvious by now) when Jack admits that the accusation is true.

This, to return to the contrasts being drawn between Jack and Frobisher, is another difference: Frobisher's instinct is to cover up; Jack's is to confess.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first half hour is, perhaps necessarily after the level to which the tension was raised over the last two days, a pause to relax, gather strength and see Torchwood getting back on the front foot and doing what they do, doing it successfully.

And then, at the halfway point, all the children stop and point to the sky. The arrival is drawn out as long as possible, going twice around the world in news reports – hooray for Lachelle Carl again – and the pillar of fire descending in almost slow motion, rewinding all of that tension, until at last:

"We. Are. Here".

The 456 ambassador is impressively realised: horrifying and unsettling – sold brilliantly by (again) Capaldi's visceral reactions to it – capturing that essential Quatermass "unearthly" quality.

And never mind the Children of Earth, these are, once more, very much the Children of Quatermass: the thrashing, writhing, thing-living-in-tank alien coming directly from "Quatermass II"; while the alien ambassador, communicating from behind a glass window by means of a machine, is out of "The Ambassador's of Death", itself an offspring of "The Quatermass Experiment".

Concealed in its toxic mist, half-seen claw-like appendages flailing… hang on, you don't think it's a Macra, do you?

Its drawn out, I-don't-really-understand-English method of speaking served its alienness and drew up the tension as though it somehow freakishly learned to speak by watching the announcements of the voting results on reality TV shows. "I'm a 456 ambassador, get me out of here!"

Those huge pauses, loaded with Frank'n'furter antici… … … …pation, also allowed us to jump in with what we expected it to say. And I have to admit, I kept getting it wrong.

Mr Frobisher would make some dubious, slimy suggestion and I expected the 456 to go all Vorlon on us with an emphatic: "No!" And instead, it proved to be as dodgy as a duck house on expenses, each time going along with the designs of Perfidious Albion.

There's also the brilliant sucker-punch of first relaxing your expectations when the 456 agree to the request that they no longer use the children for communications, only for them to then demand children as a gift.

One tiny, tiny change I'd have made would have been in the demand for ten percent. I'd have delivered it slightly differently, for another sucker-punch, and also tied it to Captain Jack's confession that they gave the 456 twelve children in 1965.

Frobisher: "How many?"

456 voice: "Twelve… twelve… twelve… percent."

(Mind you, Harriet Jones might say that that's cheap, when the Sycorax demanded half the planet's population as slaves or a third would die.)

The second half of "Day Three" is a tour-de-force, gripping you with a fear of something genuinely uncanny, the uncertainty that comes from having no idea at all what the capabilities or limitations of the 456 actually are, and the certain knowledge that no one, not human, not alien, not Captain Jack himself, no one can be trusted.

This is Earth's First Contact. And it's going very badly wrong.

Next Time…The Truth is Out There… or, more specifically, the Truth is back in 1965. Time for Captain Jack to come clean. Day Four.

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Day 3110: TORCHWOOD: HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS – DAY TWO

Tuesday:


In Episode Two of "The War Games", the armed forces of British Governmentry try to SHOOT our hero before there's an ESCAPE in an ambulance and a RESCUE from a military prison. The alien villains behind it all haven't shown up yet, though.

On the other fluffy foot, I wonder what's happening in Torchwood?

"Day Two", by John Fay, was a terrific, fast-paced, action-packed roller-coaster ride with a particularly pounding, persistent musical beat that keeps driving the tension, all as a way of keeping any more of the plot from happening until Russell gets back to write "Day Three"…

Even more than "Day One", this felt like Torchwood, the Movie.

Blowing the Hub to bits – and was it wrong of me to be imagining the Grand Moff wandering around Upper Boat saying "I've got some plans for a bigger TARDIS set… this'll have to go!"? – destroying the Hub was a very "movie" thing to do. Think blowing up the Enterprise in at least two Star Trek movies. It ups the stakes, leaving our team without their safe place, in a way that a weekly serial, with the need to return to those standing sets for economic as well as continuity reason, cannot afford to.

The movie it most resembles, with its near-fetishising of guns and leather, laser-sights and night filming (yes, ironic after all that daylight in "Day One"), is, of course, "The Terminator", the classic chase movie. Or "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", particularly if you think of Jack putting himself back together like an exceptionally icky T1000.

And like a movie, it didn't quite have the "television-drama" complexity of "Day One"; with all of Russell's plots having neatly tied together at the end, there were fewer strands here to open back up.

To be fair, the chase-movie doesn't allow for many plot strands, the tension derives from there being so few options open to the protagonists, and you ramp it up further by not cutting away to other people.

So we were mainly reduced to Gwen's thread and Ianto's thread, with Lois Habiba's subplot folding into Gwen's story while Paul Copley, after a terrific performance in "Day One" as Tim/Clem, being woefully underused here, left to do nothing but wander around and do the "we are coming tomorrow" chant.

What we do have is more of the deliciously creepy Mr Dekker, almost literally salivating over the poison-gas chamber that he has prepared for the arrival of the "456's". He seems to be taking an unnatural delight in the discomfort of Mr Frobisher, and in dropping hints that he knows more about what is going on than is strictly-speaking – in light of assassination squads being sent out to dispose of people like Captain Jack who do know what's going on – good for him. He's like Torchwood's very own Cigarette Smoking Man, except instead of laid-back authority, he just oozes sleaze.

Meanwhile, Lois rather more than proved her worth. In fact, pulling a whole sheaf of deus-ex-machina out of her hat ass (this is Torchwood), she's been just a bit too efficient – it's her second day and she's organised a successful conspiracy against the Government. Let's just say that I hope she turns out to have something a bit more… substantial in her background, like maybe being a UNIT infiltrator, to justify this. I mean it's all very well being a concerned citizen, but have the Home Office never heard of staff screening?

And of course, Gwen takes one look and offers her a job with Torchwood… after that worked out so successfully with Dr Patenjali yesterday.

Having said that, the "family moment" between Gwen and Rhys, while fleeing for their lives atop a sack of potatoes, was rather charming, and Rhys's subsequent attempts to be gallant, usually in the face of all sense, were a lovely leavening of what could have been too, too grim an episode.

There was more nice family development for Mr Jones, too. Interesting to see them play with resentment about his father. Also, Alex points out the reversal of expectations as it's the "nice" sister who gets all resentful about Ianto dragging them into his mess, while it's the "bastard" brother-in-law who says "he's family, we have to help him".

Now, I don't want to pick holes but… Ianto proudly declares that with the right software you can track any car… and then drives off in his sister's auto. You know, the one that was parked outside the house that the Government agents were watching, and which they've almost certainly noticed has gone missing by now. So no chance of him being tracked then.

I'd have thought that an extra line of dialogue – "Tosh wrote the only known counter-programme" – could have cleared it all up, but Alex suggests instead that Ianto realises his danger and ditches his sister's car before hotwiring an identical model, on the grounds it's the last thing they'd expect… a theory apparently borne out by the car's number-plate allegedly changing from a "P"-reg to an "X"-reg somewhere between Wales and the quarry!

But there's a bigger, overall problem, which is one that Torchwood (the series) has had all along; it's just that when the Government is able to throw huge teams of black-ops agents at them it draws attention to it: if Torchwood is a Government organisation, if they are as well funded as Gwen's girlish enthusiasm over her pay cheques on "Day One" would indicate, then why don't they have their own teams of grunts? The tension would have been raised even further, the peril to Gwen and Ianto emphasised more, and the Government agents made to look less like the world's gayest ninjas (sorry, that's "Being Human" slipping through), if a bunch of Torchwood support staff had been quickly murdered in the opening minutes.

But really that comes back to what I said, when discussing "Day One", about Torchwood's main flaw: Torchwood ought to be the baddies. I suspect it stems from Russell falling in love with his creation; it's all too easy for a writer to do that. But the whole series would make a lot more sense if Captain Jack had taken over an abandoned Torchwood base and he was always on the lookout for the real Torchwood turning up to reclaim their own. Which, of course, it what we would then be seeing in "Children of Earth".

And speaking of the series set-up, the Hub being blown to bits does pose an interesting longer-term question, namely: what will they do for a base should there be a fourth series? It might be a bit boring for the Government to forgive and forget and rebuild the Hub for them… so, might they not instead go off in search of the mysteriously-disappeared Torchwood 4, last heard of in Russell's pilot: "Everything Changes" (though possibly alluded to in the Government primer on Torchwood read by Lois, which refers to properties bought by Queen Victoria personally)?

Finally, we can't go without mentioning the gratuitous nudity. Four years after his bare ass was cut from "Bad Wolf", John Barrowman finally gets his wish and gets naked on BBC1. His full-frontal, on security camera, is only slightly obscured by the discretely placed "X" of a serial number. When it comes to the end of the episode we the viewers get his excellent bottom and it's Torchwood who get an eyeful of his "Face of Boe". Charmingly, Gwen has a peek, then looks away then looks all shy, while Ianto has this big soppy-puppy that's-all-mine grin on his face.

Mind you, you have to wonder what happened to all the "bits" that Agent Johnson and her ninjas didn't find… and if there aren't a whole orgy of Jack Harknessess merrily coming back to life in the ruins of the hub.

Next Time…There's a fire in the sky. They're here! Day Three.

PS:

After "Torchwood" we ahem my Daddies watched Mr Charlie Brooker's new series "Telly Addicts". Made by Endemol, purveyors of fine television… and Big Bother… these are the people who make Mr Charlie's OTHER television programmes like Screenwipe, Newswipe and Wetwipe, er… More than anything this looked like the evil masters of Endemol had said to Mr Charlie: "Right, Brooker, you sold us your soul and we made your scathing review shows. Now it's payback time, and you are going to host a cheap-as-chips celebrity panel game show so that we can make our money back." And Mr Charlie had said "oww, oh bum. All right." And then gone and done his usual ranty-hilarious shtick anyway. Hooray!

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Day 3109: TORCHWOOD: WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST – DAY ONE

Monday:


Ooh, episode-a-day excitement from those nice Doctor Who people! Yes, our copy of "The War Games" has arrived!

Meanwhile, for those of you allowed to stay up after the watershed (shhh, don't tell Daddy!) there was also the surprisingly successful risqué fantasy-drama of… Krod Mandoon…

Oh, all right; Torchwood is back. And this time it's GOOD!

Once upon a time, Russell Davies, aka Russilon, founder of modern Time Lord society, wrote the pilot episode for Torchwood, "Everything Changes". The next episode is "Day One". Now, so long as you remember to stick with Rusty's "Day One" and not Chibbers'…

I mean this in the best possible way but this doesn't even look like Torchwood. For a start, most of it is in daylight, a simple switch reflected in the opening title card being stark white with "Torchwood" in black, contrasting with the series usual red on black. Likewise, there are none of those helicopter shots of Cardiff streets at night trying moodily to look like blood vessels; instead we get London streets from above but in the day. What it looks like, in fact, is a motion picture. (See again the opening credits where, like a lot of TV series that "go to movie", they've dropped the whole title sequence lark and roll the credits over the opening scenes.)

So, it's 1965 and a busload of children are dropped off somewhere in Wales-doubling-as-Scotland to be met by a very X-Files light in the sky. It seems that the British Government is doing a dodgy deal with aliens (again!) and, based on their general anxiety to cover it up that we see in the rest of the episode, probably double-crossing them. And it would seem that Captain Jack is involved in this dirty dealing – the order to kill him is part of the cover up, and it's because his name is in the "456" file, not because he's in Torchwood.

In fact, if there's a problem here, it's that Torchwood – the agents of the Crown with a mission to defend the Empire; not Captain Jack's little rogue band – ought to be the baddies. Peter Capaldi as sinister civil servant Mr Frobisher (nods to shape-shifting whifferdil companion of the sixth Doctor) deserves to be the new head of the organisation, with his connections to Thames House (where the "Spooks" of MI5 are based) and his briefings from UNIT and his men-in-black agents with their hard-faced-woman leader. He even gets to brief the (new) Prime Minister, so he's probably of Permanent Secretary rank – maybe not the actual Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, but possibly someone like the Head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, but with responsibility for extra-terrestrial affairs.

The Prime Minister, by the way, appears to be something of a moral coward, a Pontius Pilate, wanting to appear to keep his hands clean, but given that his predecessor, a Mr Harry Saxon you may remember, went on world-wide television and assassinated the (admittedly annoying) President of America, you can perhaps have a little sympathy for his desire to have nothing to do with this.

Frobisher (not the penguin) also gets a new secretary, Lois Habiba, who is screamingly going out of her way to look suspicious: loitering over the coffees, making good use of the user name and password that she should never have been given. She's almost certainly going to get that Torchwood job now that Dr Rupesh "he's a bit pretty" Patenjali has shown his true colours and of course been paid the wages of sin. The clever thing, of course, is that while you might guess that she's the goodie-looking-like-a-baddie and Rupesh is the baddie-looking-like-a-goodie – and by the time the "blank sheet" order went out, we probably did guess it was going to Rupesh, though the abruptness of the gunshot, when it came was still a made-you-jump shock – but what this distracts you from is thinking about Mr Frobisher's allegiances.

Capalidi does a marvellous banality of evil turn, because initially you are sympathetic to him: he's a family man and his children are as affected as everyone else's. He's concerned for them, thinks about cutting corners for them, to take them out of school, and he's clearly a decent guy. Apart from the being evil.

Family is a recurring Russell theme, of course. "Queer as Folk", "Mine all Mine", Rose Tyler, obviously – his route into humanising his characters is to develop their families and how those families interact. So here, he gives each of our Torchwood trio a family too. It's interesting to see how Jack and Ianto here reflect each other – they both stay away from their families, they both try to use money to buy some forgiveness for this, they both go to their families here for the implicit ulterior motive of finding a child to try and solve the mystery, rather than for the child's own sake.

The show, it should be said, still seems a little awkward about how to deal with Ianto and Jack's relationship, but it's not impossible that it's written that way, because Ianto and Jack are awkward about how to deal with their relationship.

Alex points out that, like family, pregnancy is another Russell trope, pointing out "The Grand", "Century Falls", Russell's Doctor Who New Adventure "Damaged Goods" and "Queer as Folk" again. We wonder, with the aliens affecting children, whether Gwen's newly-discovered pregnancy will play into this in some way. It's also deeply sinister, invasive almost, to be told in that way, through something so intimate as a stranger smelling you, smelling you. Although, of course, more crudely it is also a McGuffin to have Jack get scanned into revealing the implanted bomb so that Gwen and Ianto don't get turned to raspberry jam before Day Two!

We suspect that it was Ben Aaronovich who once speculated about whether the Doctor would be able to regenerate if you spread the bits out over a big enough field. Not really something you can actually do on a kid's tea-time show, so it's possible that Russell is taking the opportunity of the… well, I hesitate to say adult, though this version is much closer to grown up drama that Torchwood has yet been… taking the opportunity to test that theory to destruction. It's nice that Mr Frobisher's government team have taken the time to think about how to kill the unkillable man. It's not going to work, of course… Rose brought him back from death by Dalek, supposedly the deadliest force in the universe. So some high explosive is hardly going to do the trick is it?

Overall, this was brilliant, a taut and twisty thriller, that opens without wasting any time straight into the mystery of the frozen children as Gwen just sees them in passing, but then takes you off along multiple plots – the abortive recruitment of Dr Rupesh, whatever is going on with Lois in Mr Frobisher's office, Gwen's tracing of Tim/Clem and Jack and Ianto's family reunions – which all dovetail perfectly at the end, as it turns out they're all one plot after all.

The use of children is a large part of the success, in a very Doctor Who way, turning the everyday into something sinister and strange, and at the same time playing on the natural human urge to protect a child in danger. There's a lot of cleverness in the unravelling of the clues as well – for example, all the children in the world speaking in English, it's a wink to the Doctor Who convention that aliens always speak Englsih, and yet it's a great big guilty arrow pointing at us too. Similarly, when Rhys works out that the timing of the events is linked to British children being outside, that too is a clue, but it also cleverly provides us with another Doctor Who staple, the countdown, as we can now anticipate the next time the children will be taken.

I've already remarked upon the "X-Files" like opening, but you cannot help noticing that it goes deeper than that, when you have Government complicity in a conspiracy that involves aliens and the abduction of children. The only surprise is that abduction-survivor Clem McDonald, aka Timothy, doesn't communicate with the CIA through his fillings

Another possible theme that is developing, though, is Nigel Kneale's Quatermass IV, sometimes called "The Quatermass Conclusion". Doctor Who, over the years, has paid homage/shamelessly ripped off (according to taste) each of the first three 1950's Quatermas serials: "Ambassadors of Death" and "The Seeds of Doom" both owe a debt to different aspects of "The Quatermass Experiment"; "Spearhead from Space" has more than a little in common with "Quatermass II"; and most blatantly of all, "The Daemons" and "Quatermass and the Pit". But, perhaps because it was made by ITV, perhaps because it's just too distopic and misanthropic and just plain pessimistic, to date no Doctor Who team has approached the 1970s incarnation.

Quick summary: it's a near-future where society has broken down, and young people are either members of violent gangs or wandering "Planet People" hippies. The Planet People are "called" to gather at ancient stone circles, expecting to be taken to a new world, where instead they get blasted to dust by some vast and unknowable alien power.

Children of Earth clearly shares the "alien power" communicating through "young people", and – judging by the trailers – the blast of fire from above.

What it doesn't have, in spite of the un-romanticised view of youth as painted by the hilarious theft of the Mystery Machine, is the "kids today" sense of alienation between the generations that is as much a mark of Kneale's work as "family" or "pregnancy" is for Russell. Nor, apart from one boys "it was great" reaction, is there the idea that the young people believe the aliens to be benign and are very much mistaken. If anything, it is possible that Children of Earth will have exactly the opposite reveal at the conclusion.

We'll have to see how things develop from here… and that's not something you often hear me say about Torchwood.

If you missed it, iPlayer it tonight at 8pm and then watch part 2 at 9.

Next time…Was it me or was that cleverly constructed not to have Captain Jack appear… like they've really blown him to smithereens. The mystery turns into a chase as we move into "Day Two".

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Day 3094: But Who Will Speak(er) for the People?

Monday:


Today we are electing a new Mr Speaker of the House of Conmens, and the prospects for reform do not look good.

Apparently, the favourite with the bookies, appropriately enough, is former Grand National runner-up Mrs Bucket. With her track record of being non-partisan only SLIGHTLY marred by a brief FIFTY-YEAR stint as a Tribal High Priestess and one-time Acting Leader of Hard Labour, and her anti-establishment credentials, only MARGINALLY undermined by being stuffed so far up the establishment's fluffy bottom that she reached the post of Secretary of State for Foreign Caravanning, she would be a TOTAL DISASTER.

But that's just TYPICAL of the way this election has been run, with genuine PROGRESSIVES being squeezed out by Secret Stalin tactics (so reminiscent of old-style Mr Frown) on both sides.

The Conservatories clearly think that it is their TURN – seven of the candidates are Conservatories, whereas only two are from Hard Labour (plus one Liberal Democrat) – and you might think that this is FAIR, but remember Conservatories by their very nature tend to CONSERVE and that's the very LAST thing that Parliament needs.

Captain Clegg has called for Parliament to select a PEOPLE'S Speaker, someone who will enable Parliament to challenge the Government, hold the executive to account and restore some trust to our failing institutions.

But the fact that the list of choices includes five Knights of the Realm – yes, including our very own Mr Sir Alan – suggests that Parliament doesn't seem to have GOT the idea that the new Mr Speaker needs to be ICONOCLASTIC.

SEVERAL of the Conservatories are described as "traditionalists" (yes, read it and SHUDDER), in particular another popular choice: Ms Ann Widdyone, like Mrs Bucket, another former Government insider whose return to the backbenches was less a career choice and more to do with her toxic presence not being required by Mr Balloon under any circumstances. She would positively pickle the place in aspic. In fact, she'd glaze the chamber over and display it like one of those ghastly plates with KITTENS on! (And it can't be THAT much of a surprise that she's the candidate backed by that "friend" of democracy Mr Roger Stavro Moredick.)


Liberal Democrat Mr Sir Alan says many of the right things, but – and I'm very sorry to say it – he's a bit of a FRAGILE ANTELOPE when what we need is a RHINOCEROS.

Also sadly, Hard Labour Rasputin Mr Frankly Failed has, er, failed to get enough support to stand, largely on the grounds that his own side would rather poison him, shoot him and drop him in frozen river.

Which really only leaves Conservatory Mr John Sergeant Bilko, a man described as having moved from the far right to becoming a Blairimort-ite (so, how can you tell the difference?). This apparently has ALIENATED most of his colleagues who prefer the way that, under the leadership of Mr Balloon, they have moved from the far right to becoming Blairimorts-lite… hang on, what are they objecting to?

Anyway, there really is only one possible choice – throw them ALL out and pick ME instead.

And if Mrs Bucket gets it, I might just break with all convention and stand against the Speaker myself!


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Day 3090: Green Eyed Monster

Thursday:


I am sad to read today that super-humanly strong-stomached Auntie Jennie has finally, thanks to THIS posting, given up on her efforts to make the LABOUR CONSPIRACY website a bit LIBERAL.


I do not seem to have written very much in my Fluffy Diary about the sickly Green Party, mainly because, you know, why bother? If you are GENUINELY concerned about the environment then you will find the Liberal Democrats have policies that meet most of your needs; if you are more interested in SHOWING OFF your Holier-than-thou-ness then feel free to POSE.

But they ARE quite ANNOYING.

Their leader is Radio Caroline Lucas – and, as an MEP, Radio Caroline floats around outside the Three-Mile Limit broadcasting Hippy Tunes and merrily taking no responsibility. Particularly irritating is her REPETITIVE JINGLE: oh, those Westminster Parties are all the same.

Yes, I KNOW why she does it – she knows she's ONLY going to get PROTEST votes and so needs to paint herself as the "alternative" choice. But to suggest that the Liberal Democrats are the same as the Conservatories or Hard Labour is a BIG FAT FIB and she knows it.

In fact, with their AUTHORITARIAN desire to IMPOSE their policies regardless of what people actually want and their OPPOSITION to the European Union, Radio Caroline's party has FAR MORE in common with the Conservatories and Hard Labour than the Liberal Democrats have with ANY of them.

While WE recognise that everyone in Europe (and the World!) all need to work TOGETHER if we are to protect the planet, the Greens seem to think that the environment ends at the White Cliffs of Dover. And while Liberal Democrats believe that the benefits of FREE TRADE will help to lift people everywhere out of poverty and ENABLE them to make better environmental choices, the Greens want to put an end to all that, seemingly intent on taking us back to the kind of pre-industrial barter economy where the environment was protected from humans by such methods as FAMINE and PLAGUE.

(Which reminds me of their "HEALTH" policies – "no" to developing new drugs; "yes" to aromatherapy. Forgive me but "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!")


The article in question is a great big WHINGE about how dreadful it is that the Liberal Democrats didn't just lie down and act like a doorstep for the Greens. Never mind that we might think that their policies are not just wildly ILLIBERAL but also BAD for the environment, it seems that we should not point out that most people don't actually want to vote for them!

This, they claim, is "telling fibs"; in fact, writer Rupert the Bear-with-a-sore-head goes so far as to give us a funny name – he calls us "Fib Dems". I mean, what sort of a BABY would do a silly joke like THAT?!

[R: Millennium's excuse is that he is eight years old – what is Rupert's?]

The PROBLEM is that it's NOT the Liberal Democrats who are LYING.


Here is what Rupert the Bear-faced-liar CLAIMS that the Liberal Democrats said:

"It takes about 150,000 votes to elect an MEP in the East of England. The Greens only got 25,000 votes across the whole of the East at the last General election."

Here (from the leaflet that he links to) is what the Liberal Democrats ACTUALLY said:

"Just 2% of voters in this election will come from Norwich – but the Greens are weak in the East outside of Norwich. They have no chance of getting enough votes across the East to elect and MEP, and last time were 64 THOUSAND votes short. They only won 25,000 votes altogether across the East of England in 2005's general election."

Do you see that Rupert has DISTORTED what the Liberal Democrats said in order to SEXY-UP his complaint.

The Liberal Democrats presented the FACTS: the Greens FELL SHORT in the last Euro elections, outside of Norwich their support fades away, and in the last General Election it all but disappeared. Is any of that inaccurate? No. It is in any way misleading? NO!

But the "complaint" OMITS the fact that we referred to that last Euro result FIRST, makes it SEEM that we were basing our claim on ONLY the general election result, whereas the FULL quote shows that the general election result was only MORE EVIDENCE to show that the Green were generally weak.

Oh, and with the benefit of hindsight we SAID that they COULD NOT WIN and they DID NOT WIN. So it was true.

(To further inform and entertain: later, in the comments thread, our very own self-styled Tactical Nuclear Badword, the award-winning Mr Jumbo Graham, lays in to point out more direct LIES that the Greens are telling, somewhat undermining their "we lost because we don't tell lies" agenda.)


So, anyway, FLUFFY HUGS for Auntie Jenny; it was a BRAVER effort than the one that I made to make the idea of a co-operative progressive project work and I am SORRY that you feel it hasn't.

And as for the Greens… ooh, Green Grapes, how SOUR do THEY look, I wonder?


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