Rate and Discuss 4.2: Rendition

[Anthony Williams]

Well, the second episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day broadcast a few days back here in the USA. And I'm late with the thread, that no-one here will comment on here until the UK broadcast anyway

But, that's not the point... please rate and discuss the second episode, Rendition!

[Jeff]

Another good episode, but one thing sort of grates with me and that is that.... It seems to me that they are going to have Oswald Danes get mass sympathy.. as in from a majority of people or at least a lot more than is realistic. Just because he claims to be 'sorry'. Even if he really was people might be glad he apologized to the family but there wouldn't be a mass call for forgiveness. The whole "Miracle Day" no one dying plot honestly seems more plausible to me. Just a minor quibble though.

[SiHart]

That was fine. Nice build up of the conspiracy and more set up than last week's smash-crash-bang stuff.

Vera continues to my favourite of the new characters, She's really likeable and warm. Very well played.

Kudos too to Bill Pullman who's amazingly good and sinister.

[Rob McCow]

I don't know if Russell T Davies has written the whole of this new series of Torchwood. But his style runs right through it like maggots through a corpse. And heaven knows I've missed it!

His story-writing is either incredibly brave or incredibly desperate. In tonight's episode there was a severed arm twitching on a table, totally alive and feeling away from whoever's body it was cut from. And that was one of the least remarkable things on display.

The whole business with Captain Jack being poisoned could have been awful. The fact that Rex happened to have a hotline to an army of doctors should have come across as a bare-faced coincidence, but I thought it was a really exciting idea. Of course all of the smartest medical practitioners in the world are in one room, they're dealing with the most bizarre event in history! It's a typical Russell T Davies scene. The logic behind it might be flawed and exactly the sort of thing they tell amateur writers to never ever do, but the genius of Russell is to keep the drama so bold and entertaining that these qualms seem like complaining about technical flaws in the canvas of a great painting. Or, more appropriately, complaining that the spaceships in Star Wars shouldn't make any noise as they go by.

From the writing point of view, what's been most impressive is the extrapolation of the basic idea. With ten episodes to play with, every nuance of undying life can be explored. Tonight we had the threat of germs becoming resistant to antibiotics at a vastly increased rate and, more viscerally, a woman with a broken neck looking back Exorcist-style as Gwen, Jack, Rex and Esther escaped in a blue Mini. Seriously! This would happen in no other TV show!

Actually, I'm wrong with that last paragraph. The best thing about Miracle Day has been Bill Pullman as Oswald Danes. The concept of a child-abuser starting to attract sympathy after surviving his death sentence is a massively emotive moral minefield to explore. The story hasn't really commented on Oswald yet. There's no over-riding view that we're being lead to take of the character, except to feel extremely creeped-out. Yet as the mysterious lady in red said, his performance on the chatshow was astonishing. Is it possible to forgive, or even to feel sympathy for a character like Oswald Danes? I'm sure the series is going to throw even more disturbing questions at us as things progress.

One other thing I love about this series is the casting. It's like all the best B and C list movie actors that I remember from other cult roles have been corralled into one show. I'm sure Russell must know about Lone Starr, Dennis Nedry plus coming soon Winston Zeddemore and Q. Supporting characters who weren't given much to do, but managed to steal the show in whatever they were in. It's a cult movie and TV smorgasbord!

The pace of this episode was a fair bit slower than last week, but that was fine. There's a lot of characters running about and there's all the introduction and setting up that needs doing.

It would be a shame if Russell only did Torchwood for the next few years, even though I'm thoroughly enjoying it. He suggested in his 60 Second interview for Metro that he'd prefer to write some domestic dramas. It's been a long, long time since he started on the Doctor Who road. There must be a wealth of kitchen-sink drama ideas lurking away in his gloriously mis-wired brain!

[Si Hunt]

Great post Steve!

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

Absolutely! Particularly good points about the Jack being ill/Doctors in a room business - that sequence (for me anyway) was the highlight of a slightly ploddy episode, but it didn't feel contrived. By which I mean, I wasn't thinking "oh lots of doctors in a room - that'll be handy if somebody gets ill", because it seemed to come naturally out of that thread of the story. So if it is a writer's contrivance, the skill is in us not realising the fact!

As mentioned elsewhere I think, I still feel like it's a programme into which the two remaining members of Torchwood occasionally pop up, rather than being 'led' by Torchwood - hopefully that will change (next week's trailer suggests it will).

BTW, it looks like last week's massive trailer was just several "Next Time" trailers stuck together wasn't it!!

[Si Hunt]

I enjoyed the episode, but it was noticably less action packed and shorter on special effects than the opening. A different matter was the plot which, it has to be said, didn't actually advance very much. A whole episode spent getting to America on a plane.

The best bit was getting to know the characters; unfortunately they don't completely pass the "name" test so far. The big black bloke was Rex wasn't he? I don't know the name of the woman who escaped in the car park. The Pedo was Oswald. He continues to be an interesting character, though oddly his storylines don't really seem to be linking up with any of the others yet. I adored the performance given by the bright red haired woman; marvellous. Best of all this episode was Neighbours' Dichin Lockman, who gave a sinister, cat-like performance. The image of her, head twisted round, stalking backwards towards them, was eerie. I found it really frightening. It didn't make sense that she didn't appear to be in pain, but somehow her calmless made the image all the more unsettling.

The premise continues to be extrapolated. This weeks best idea was the revelation (not quite given the emphasis it should have been) that people are continuing to age. The vision of a world full of crumbling, decaying but still twitching 300 year old people is spooky and quite breathtaking.

Worst bit of the episode was Jack's rescue on the plane. Reminscent of the Unicorn and the Wasp "antidote", and "New Earth"'s ridiculous "all the vaccines in the world mixed together will cure every disease" it shows an utter contempt for the audience and a stunning lack of understanding of how chemicals work. The logic that you could scrape various substances of the floor, the walls and off everyday items, bung them together (IN A COFFEE FLASK!) and somehow cure arsenic poisoning beggars belief. Surely chemicals need the right temperature, pressure and quantities to react together, never mind that the plane happened to have exactly the right ones. Woop, we need silver, drop in a silver necklace like we're mixing up a magic potion! Ridiculous! And even if it all worked, wouldn't he have got blood poisoning? Some of the bits came from the greasy pipe of a plane engine! Argh!

Si.

[SiHart]

Best of all this episode was Neighbours' Dichin Lockman, who gave a sinister, cat-like performance.

Really? I thought she was just as terrible as she was in Neighbours.

[Larry]

I
Worst bit of the episode was Jack's rescue on the plane. Reminscent of the Unicorn and the Wasp "antidote", and "New Earth"'s ridiculous "all the vaccines in the world mixed together will cure every disease" it shows an utter contempt for the audience and a stunning lack of understanding of how chemicals work. The logic that you could scrape various substances of the floor, the walls and off everyday items, bung them together (IN A COFFEE FLASK!) and somehow cure arsenic poisoning beggars belief. Surely chemicals need the right temperature, pressure and quantities to react together, never mind that the plane happened to have exactly the right ones. Woop, we need silver, drop in a silver necklace like we're mixing up a magic potion! Ridiculous! And even if it all worked, wouldn't he have got blood poisoning? Some of the bits came from the greasy pipe of a plane engine! Argh!

Si.

what makes it even more ridiculous is some of the stuff that was being mixed together would probably still kill you if you drunk it but after 5 years of writing for Doctor Who, I guess this is the kind of nonsense you get from RTD from time to time. My only reall gripe with this episode is how the blond girl (like Si, cant remember her name) could simply just walk out of one of the most secure buildings in the world when the CIA, want to get rid of her.

But these are just minor complaints and I'm thoroughly enjoying it yet again for me it's Eve Miles, who steals the show loved it when she tells the CIA, girl "Im Welsh" before she punches her lights out.

[Alex]

I adored the performance given by the bright red haired woman; marvellous.

She's Lauren Ambrose, who played Claire Fisher in Six Feet Under, and I've been a longterm fan of hers - and I agree, she was great in this, playing a role very different from that in SFU. I thought the introduction of Wayne Knight was also a great move, no one plays the creepy slimey boss figure quite like him.

I enjoyed the episode as a whole even though not that much happened, Jack almost dying seemed like padding, but it was a well orchestrated scene however ridiculous it was and it's always nice to see Gwen in kick-ass mode. I'm also enjoying the way they're playing around with Bill Pullman's character and how people react to such a person, and feel that Rex definitely became a more interesting character this week. Generic blonde is still a bit dull, but hey, I guess there's still time to flesh her out.

I hope next week ups it's game a little though, and we start to have hints of exactly what is going on...

[Dino]

Voted 7. Wasn't as bad as I've seen other people describe it (on other forums) but it did feel a step down from last week. The set up is still being set up it seems.
See how it goes.

[Jason Thompson]

I thought it was quite good. The curing Jack bit was absurd, yes. It's another case of getting a little bit of science right and then making it ridiculous. Yes, to cure arsenic poisoning you'd want to chelate it so it didn't affect your tissues any more, and the basic chemistry was correct. However, bunging all that stuff in there does not give you pure product, so they'd most likely have killed him anyway.

As for the progression, uit's moving on nicely I think. Last episode was the basic premise and the immediately obvious ramifications (no-one dies = population explosion). This week was the less obvious ramifications (the need to change the way hospital triage is done, aging without dying, and the breeding of bacteria in the now not-dying sick).

The only thing is, thanks to that one scene at the end of Last of the Time Lords, when they mentioned aging without dying I had visions of the whole human race turning into Faces of Boe....

[Rob McCow]

I had visions of the whole human race turning into Faces of Boe....

Awesome!

'Speak to the face! Speak to the face!' times seventy billion.

[Nyder]

Apart from it getting a bit "Death Becomes Her" at the end with Broken Neck CIA Lady, another good romp of an episode! I liked Gwen's disappointment with the getaway car being a Mini not an SUV. Jack seems a bit subdued at the moment, but I guess the prospect of mortality can to that to a chap. Sounds like he's going to get his joie de vivre back in a bar next week though

[Anthony Williams]

Franky, I really enjoyed this one. Certainly, it was a little slower than what we're used to with Torchwood (or even modern Who), but the slower pace was very much welcome, in my eyes.

I really love what they're doing with the concept. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't stop and think about the wider consequences of "the miracle" when presented in fiction. If this concept were done in Who, it'd last two episodes at the most, and wouldn't explore the details like a potentially exploding population, or the problems of the world running out of drugs.

There's some nice characterisation. I like exploring Rex, Esther and Dr Juarez, and Jilly Kitzenger is just wonderful (and VERY attractive. There goes my thing for redheads again!).

Of course, Oswald Danes continues to be explored wonderfully in this episode. I was so doubtful when it was announced that they would be casting someone as a paedophile, but they're doing it well. Obviously, he's a cold and calculating villain, manipulating people for his own ends. Again, I can't wait to see where they're going to take his character. Surely he'll get his comeuppance in the end, though!

I'm honestly more excited about what they're doing with this series of Torchwood than I have about Series 6 of Who so far.

Certainly, the episode did have its shortcomings. While the science behind the chemical combinations to cure Jack's arsenic poisoning may have been sound, the way it was executed was silly. But I think that this was the one downside of an otherwise excellent episode.

This episode: 8/10