Rate and Discuss 4.9: The Gathering

[Anthony Williams]

Well, this has aired in the USA. Some of you might've seen it already, some won't till Thursday.

This thread is likely to have spoilers for those who haven't seen it yet!

So, go ahead - rate and discuss the latest episode!

[Alex]

Another dull one with way too much filler, the whole episode was spent trying to protect Gwen's Dad (they failed in the end) or trying to work out where the blessing was going to take place, but the only things of interest happened in the last 8 minutes. Oswald's appearance seemed quite forced, and only Jilly Kitzinger's character interests me right now, I couldn't care less if everyone else was to die (though I'm guessing she'll be most likely to bite the big one, annoyingly).

Now everything needs to be explained and resolved in 53 minutes, and I can't imagine it will be done in a satisfactory and non-rushed way.

4/10.

[Dino]

*BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEP!!!
Come on! Come on! It's taken 9 episodes to get to this?
"Speed kills" as people said sarcastically...
There were one or two jokes in it. We had an entire episode two of Jack and Gwen on a plane and a microsecond of them getting from Cardiff to Shanghai?
Oh well, one more to go. I know, I know... it's Torchwood! What was I expecting.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Aaaaahhhhh just finish now please.

[Dirk Gently]

It's still hovering around 5/10 for me. But I still think this could be cut to about 6 episodes. An action packed last episode is not going to raise the score above 6/10 unless its stupendous.
To be perfectly honest this 10 episode season has been quite a let down for me & not a patch of CoE. We should have seen our 'heroes' finding the Blessing around episode 7 & then the remainder episodes fighting the Family/correcting everything.

Still, lets hope for an upswing in TW's fortunes next week.

[Nyder]

I think like a lot of people I'm just waiting for the last episode to see what gets resolved and who dies! I guess we all recognised RTD's voice as the Welsh announcer??

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

For most of that episode I was happily in 7/10 territory but towards the end it was knocked down to 6/10 for me by the magic carpet ride to Shanghai (would it have killed them to help that along with a caption to suggest some time had passed between scenes?) and then the reveal of "the blessing" (whatever it actually is) left me saying "Whaaaat?!" in true Ed Bradley style.

[The456]

This is bizarre now, what started off as quite an original concept has ended as rather confused and disjointed. I find it bizarre that Oswald Daynes turned up in South Wales delivering bread !! The purpose ?? To tell Gwen that he had a name ? Bizarre. Who was the young guy watching Gwen from across the road ?? No idea, bizarre. Two months later Jack is in Scotland BUT what happened to the alien plate under the floor from last week ??? Bizarre. Well it's going to have to be one helluva an episode next week.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

One thing I forgot to mention was that for the first time since much earlier in the series I actually found myself enjoying the scenes with Oswald Danes in (although this was probably because Jack, Gwen and Rhys were in the same scenes!). Inspite of my Martin Penny impersonation last night I am looking forward to seeing the final episode.

[Andrew Curnow]

I enjoyed this week's (only just watched it now over breakfast) and it does feel like it's going somewhere, but... It was a bit too 'clever deduction' for me, leaping from one thing to another to suddenly arrive at going to Shanghai. It would have been nice if we'd seen them piecing it together over the past few weeks, with it now all coming together. Also not sure how they were able to get at footage with Jilly's name on it, after she'd been "totally wiped off" the net - or did I miss something (was that actually her old laptop, was that the point?)?

There's still an awful lot to explain in only one more episode, I worry we're either going to have an action-packed episode with too little explanation - or alternatively, too much yakkity-yak explanation and too little action. I might be wrong, it might all end superbly, and I really hope it does.

[Jason Thompson]

I think I finally realised what's been bugging me about this whole series.

Interviewed about it just before it aired, RTD said he was interested in how 'mortality based' the world's economy is, and what would be the ramifications of immortality. This is hardly a new idea. Thirty years ago Sir Humphrey Appleby explained to PM Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister that it was essential, economically speaking, for smokers to continue to die at their current rate because they'd cost the country far more in health and social services costs if they lived a longer life. In the Mars Trilogy of books by Kim Stanley Robinson a way is found to prolong human life dramatically, and this leads to economic collapse and revolution on Earth and Mars. So there is mileage there.

The trouble is he has spent so much of the series dealing with the effects that now these later episodes where the characters go off in search of the cause seem like a totally different show, and for all the difference the economic collapse has made to the characters on screen it might as well not have happened.

Oh, and an unsatisfying 'two months later' resolution to what was actually a pretty good cliffhanger last week.