Torchwood: Children Of Earth: Day Four
This is the best Science Fiction I’ve seen on television in awhile. Not to disparage other programs but I mean true Science Fiction where the imagination opens the door to difficult yet fascinating questions and explores possible answers. Gene Roddenberry would be proud. So would Ray Bradbury. On Day Four this miniseries entered that caliber of writing. I predict Hugo and Saturn award nominations at the very least.
Day Four is also the first time Torchwood cracked the 6 million mark for viewers, specifically 6.2 million.
This really is the rebirth (or second coming if you prefer) of Torchwood. They gave up on using sex to sell their product and instead focused on the stories. Little Torchwood is growing up…and being rewarded for their maturity.
Talent has never been Torchwood’s problem – they regularly kick Doctor Who in the teeth at the BAFTA awards but this hasn’t translated into ratings as Torchwood tends to only garner about half the audience size of Doctor Who (on a good day!) but I think this could be the point at which that tide begins to turn.
They’ve truly created something special here. An event as I said before. If I was asked to say what the 5 most important events this year so far were I would probably say (in no particular order):
Obama Inauguration
Star Trek
Torchwood
Iran Election
US Troop Draw-Down in Iraq
If it were a top 10 I’d probably include Honduras, celebrity passings, Swine Flu, North Korea, and the recession (again, in no particular order) so don’t freak out if something important to you didn’t make the top 5. But I digress.
This is the first time that Torchwood has grown its audience over a season and it’s well deserved.
Of course it’s probably worth noting that Children of Earth are the first Torchwood episodes Russell T. Davies has written since the first episode.
So you’ve probably noticed I’m talking about everything but Ianto. The mind races trying to find ways to bring him back. Maybe the virus only simulated death. Maybe Jack can fix his vortex manipulator and travel through time to save him. Maybe there’s another life knife or risen mitten. At this point only Day Five will give us any firmer indication but I think we all need to admit that Ianto’s chances are not good.
Until tomorrow.
