Torchwood: Children of Earth

Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:14 pm

BBC America Website wrote:

In one epic story told over five nights, Torchwood: Children of Earth, re-joins Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) who are still coming to terms with the death of two of their closest friends.

Despite their pain, they still have a job to do. This time they are faced with their fiercest threat to date - one that that puts the future of Torchwood and the entire human race spiralling into danger. They battle against the odds but do they stand a chance of saving mankind?

The BBC's Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, despite the not-all-that-greatness of the first two seasons, just aired it's fantastic third season on the five days from the fifth to the ninth of July. The third season marks the switch between two very important things for the series:
1) Torchwood Moves to BBC1 from BBC3,
2) A change in the formatting of the show.

Torchwood's switch to BBC1 allows the series a greater audience(although it will continue to be a late-night series). Here in the States, however, that change will not be noticed, but BBCAmerica(also known as the British TLC/Food Network, or more endearingly, the Ramsay Channel) has decided to emulate the BBC3 to BBC1 switch by broadcasting Torchwood in HD, where Children of Earth will air on the five days starting from the 20th of July.

On this latest season of Torchwood, Euros Lyn and Russel T. Davies (the director of Torchwood and the lead writer notorious for some of the less well-written episodes of the recent Doctor Who revival, respectively) decided to experiment with the formatting of the series. Previously, Torchwood was mostly made up of 13 standalone episodes. The formatting in Children of Earth makes a leap from the old series, into a 5 episode mini-series*, with each episode interconnected.

Russel T. Davies seems to have gained tremendous amounts of writing ability since we last saw him in the Doctor Who specials, Planet of the Dead, The Next Doctor, and the end of series 4. You won't be seeing the over the top semi-sexual scenes. Ianto won't be busy riding Jack in the hub, as usual. In fact, you won't really be seeing much of the hub, and although Children of Earth sounds like the title of some terrible Captain Planet spinoff, the mini-series is a definite must see for any Brit-Sci-Fi viewer.

Children of Earth starts out as per usual, humor, light heartedness, etc. Then ten minutes pass and it's started to get frightening. All the children of Earth** stop moving. Then their mouths start moving, trying to make words. "WE," they chant. After a while they get a grasp of the word 'are,' and then, of course, 'coming'. They keep repeating it, and eventually stop, and suddenly start doing exactly what the were about to do before they stopped moving. It's important to note that every child in the world does this in English. This isn't due to laziness, as you will find out. Spoilers below.

Here's a few spoilers, for those of you who either don't plan on watching it, have already seen it, or just want spoilers.
-Remember that time Jack said he went through pregnancy? You get to meet his daughter. And his grandson.
-Jack get's stuck in concrete.
-Jack sent off a small group of kids (including one kid who is now an old man who is connected to the 456 and used as a speaker just like all the other children) to the aliens, known as the 456, in 1965.
-The aforementioned old man is killed by the 456, who use the children's voices on a certain frequency to kill him.
-Children have a certain enzyme in them that is used as a drug by the 456
-Jack gets a bomb implanted in him and blows up in the hub
-Gwen is pregnant throughout the series
-The 456 want 10% of the children of earth so they can have some drugs
-to save that 10% of children, and to kill the 456, Jack uses his grandson in order to get all the children to use the frequency that killed the old man. This causes the 456 to explode, and Jacks grandson to die. Jacks daughter watches as her son dies, and now hates Jack.
-Ianto is killed by the 456
-Gwen offers a temp at the civil service a job after the temp spies on and records some meetings between the 456 and the British government using the spy-contact lenses
-Jack gets his wrist-teleporter thingy fixed, and leaves Earth, not wanting to return.

When you watch previous seasons of Torchwood, you notice that everyone seems to know about Torchwood. They're supposed to be a secret organization, but everybody and their grandmother*** knows of them. This comes back to haunt them, as they can now be seen as a threat, and are pitched against the government as well as aliens. The miniseries is actually full of realistic (for a sci-fi series based in the Doctor Who universe, anyway)political intrigue, realistic emotion, and surprises you won't see coming. That goes for every episode.

*Only 5 episodes were actually televised, but the series was preceded by four radio plays, one airing in 2008, the next three aired in consecutive days starting July 1st.

**One old man also does the same.

***Dead serious here, sadly. Some episode d in series two, I think.

Spec Ops Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 575

I liked torchwood, i hope i can eventually buy the DVD's and watch all the seasons