Torchwood: Children Of Earth: Day One
Last night 5.9 million viewers sat down to the first episode in the new Torchwood mini-series, Children of Earth. So far this is good news for Torchwood – the first episode of season one only had 2.5 million viewers and the first episode of season two pulled 4.2 million, both the highest rated episodes of their respective seasons. So clearly the Torchwood fan base is growing. Torchwood also spent most of the day as the third most highly trending topic on Twitter despite all the Michael Jackson handwringing.
In general I thought it moved a little too slowly around the middle of the episode but it ended strong and I appreciated the lack of Torchwood’s patented sexual content. I was also impressed with the character of Rupesh Patanjali, although disappointed in his departure I take heart that this leaves a spot open for Martha when she gets back from her honeymoon. Colonel Mace being relocated to Vancouver was cute, no mention of Sir Alistair unfortunately. I honestly never thought I’d hear Vancouver mentioned in Torchwood.
Regarding the pacing, I think as a fan of the franchise I probably found it a little slow because they needed to re-establish the characters and their relationships for new viewers and that resulted in several character scenes some of which work very well while others feel a little forced.
By and large I enjoyed the episode but it didn’t really have that Torchwood feel until the last 20 minutes or so but now that the housekeeping is out of the way I’m really looking forward to Day Two tonight.
