Overall Torchwood: Miracle Day Poll.

[Iroscato]

Overall, how would you rate the entire series, seeing as its now spluttering to to its conclusion?

[Themightytom]

I feel like the survey is calibrated a little too much to the negative here, you do know that number three should be neutral right? I would have voted it a decent show, but I didn't care for the caveat "That will be forgotten fairly quickly", likewise, I would call this a classic, but I wouldn't say it was just a "Few flaws short of perfection."

You also added a 0 out of five? Seriously Chimera, there's no real difference between the level of dislike suggested by 1 and 0, you might as well go work for Fox News so you don't run into anyone with a moderate opinion.

[2000AD]

2/5

For the simple reason that it didn't interest me enough to actually make me finish watching it, which is a first for a Torchwood series. It wasn't abyssmal, but no where near good.

[Crazedwraith]

2/5

For the simple reason that it didn't interest me enough to actually make me finish watching it, which is a first for a Torchwood series. It wasn't abyssmal, but no where near good.

This.

I forgot to watch one episode and even when i realised it. I felt no compulsion to look it up on the iplayer. I deliberately stopped watching at that point.

[Hillary]

Voted 3. Entertaining enough that I kept watching to the end (which we get on Thursday). An interesting concept, some good new characters (Max, Oswald, PR girl) and a nice shadowy conspiracy family as the bad guys.

However, Gwen is even worse than before and there are more plotline holes than in The End of Time (from DW). It won't exactly live on in the memory unless the finale (which I'm dreading) is bloody good.

[Bedlam]

I found the overall idea very interesting but I think the main problem was that it was to long. It should have been 5-6 episodes like children of earth, you get an episode to introduce the idea, an episode or two to see the effects, an episode or to to show how the world deals with it (catagory 1, overflow camps) and then a final episode to fix the whole thing. As it was it dragged on to long with nothing much happening and alot of the plots didn't go anywhere. The final plan of the families is to crash civilisation and then take over so why prepare and stockpile drugs for several years? Why suport Oswalds retoric? Why do anything but sit tight and wait for the end?

Actually how did the families know feeding the blessing Jacks blood would cause immortality anyway? It wasn't like they could try it over a small area or anything for all they knew it might just kill Jack or turn everyone into Jack.

[Eternal_Freedom]

3/5 - an interesting premise that wasn't handled too well I think. It dragged out waaay too long but it did have some bits in it that I wasn't expecting - the legal/medical reactions to the even itself.

One thing I would have preferred (and I find this endemic of TW and DW plotlines) is that they reveal the bad guy waay too late. Consequently, you get 90% build-up and 5% solution, with 5% happy-family crap as filler. Compare with old classic Who like Genesis of the Daleks, where we see the Baddie in episode 2 of 6.

Another thing I found particularly jarring was the "Two Months Later" start to episode 8 or 9. It felt like the writers realised "oh crap the set-up for the finale wouldn't work on such a short notice, quick, throw in a delay" kinda thing.

Also, I think Bill Pullman was kinda wasted on Oswald Danes. He played the part reasonably but it was never totally convincing to me. (Mainly because I was expecting some speech like "I will not go quietly into [the overns]!" after the Category 0 thing.

Again, Gwen really sucked. She seemed to cause a lot of the smaller problems along the way.

And lastly, the whole backstory with Jack and Angelo felt wasted. Sure it established where they got Jack's blood but it was dragged out. And I found the sex scenes very jarring. It as too in-your-face and stopped me from being interested in the story at all. It really was a "JACK'S GAY, DEAL WITH IT" kinda impression. Oh well.

[avatarxprime]

I finally got around to watching the end. That was a massive waste of time. Almost the entire thing ended up being filler considering the way they ended it. How about more into just what the heck was going on, instead they had the Families being the Big Bad, just so they can reuse them the next series. I get the need to maintain some amount of mystery as a result, but this is ridiculous, all we know is that they have "infinite resources" yet can't seem to use any alien tech to ensure their schemes go about as desired. Considering Jack's old lover got his hands on some nifty alien tech you'd think the Families could do so too, yet they seem bound by human tech.

[PREDATOR490]

0

Totally disgusting from start to finish with plotholes, bullshit pacing and forced filler crap to compensate for the most stupid story I have ever seen. I cannot tell you how extremely annoying that stupid cliffhanger 'What, what, WHAT' crap has become since they started it in Doctor Who.
Entire run made me bored simply because the writers are trying so goddamn hard to MAKE you feel uncomfortable by putting stuff that is meant to make you uneasy every episode.

[AndroAsc]

I would vote for -1 if there was a choice

No aliens (till the very end), no spaceships, fucking gay scenes. Somebody should kill the series.

[Big Orange]

An inevitable disappointment after the great Children of Earth, but I give it a 3; not brilliant, not awful, and if not for the mostly excellent cast ensemble I'd given Miracle Day a 2 score. It kept me watching for ten weeks, but I'm not compelled enough to purchase this on DVD (unlike Children of Earth) and in its inevitable next season in '12 it better get genuinely good (again). There’s an overwhelming consensus that Miracle Day was too strung out and padded. I didn't mind aliens not (directly, at least) involved and it was trying something different that had nothing to do with a Alien/Monster of the Week.

[Hillary]

I would vote for -1 if there was a choice

No aliens (till the very end)

Why does Scifi have to have aliens?

no spaceships

Why does Scifi have to have spaceships?

fucking gay scenes

Did the nasty gay men upset you? Seriously WTF?

[Hillary]

It won't exactly live on in the memory unless the finale (which I'm dreading) is bloody good.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Oh dear.

[Iroscato]

I would vote for -1 if there was a choice

No aliens (till the very end),

Imbecile.

no spaceships,

Imbecile!

fucking gay scenes.

BIGOTED IMBECILE!!!

Somebody should kill the series.

I'm afraid a TV show is not a living thing, it can't be killed by single person.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm afraid a TV show is not a living thing, it can't be killed by single person.

You can't kill a TV Show mister, it don't die like a man does.

On a serious note, it was allright.

[Adrian McNair]

I can sum up my opinion of Torchwood: Miracle Day in two words: potential squandered. I think the main problem stems from the length. The concept was certainly strong enough to fuel a twenty episode season but the writers just weren't skilled enough to sustain that for ten installments. So we got padding and general ineffectual aimlessness from the newly reconstituted Torchwood team. It did pick up towards the end but that was too little too late. The pacing was just too uneven.

Out of all of the characters (both familiar and introduced) I think that Oswald Danes and Jilly Kitzinger fared best. Bill Pullman in particular was effectively creepy and repugnant until the end (A stark contrast to his earlier roles). I'm mostly indifferent about the new team-members. Rex was far too much of an obnoxious prick to empathise with while Esther, while nice, was just there.

I'll give it two and a half out of five. It wasn't aggressively horrible but it certainly wasn't one of the better examples of TV sci-fi.

fucking gay scenes

Did the nasty gay men upset you? Seriously WTF?

Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly the first time I saw him trot out that steaming pile of homophobic bullshit in the main thread.

On a side note, is anyone getting really tired with the fucking gay overtones in Torchwood? I seriously do not want to see two guys fucking each other. What's wrong with British in general? It's seems like every damn TV show they produce have gay overtones. Are their entire damn population gay?

I'm surprised nobody called him out on it then. It really is baffling that in a series which features all manner of gore (as well as a pedophile becoming a celebrity, delivering nonsensical speeches that are inexplicably inspirational to people), it's consensual acts of intimacy between two people (and they were rather tame when you get down to it) that sets someone off. There are plenty of actual, legitimate flaws to complain about without being a prejudiced moron. I think that Andro's postings are a good example of just how petty and stupid homophobia is. Why can't some people just grow the fuck up?

[Themightytom]

I think I have drastically different impressions of the earlier series here. I found the first torchwood series to be chaotic poorly written more of the same Whoverse lite.

Children of men felt more epic, and more tightly written.

Miracle day was.. TOO Epic and tightly written, and I would rather it have been looser, so to speak. I mean they really hammered home the sexuality, everyone has been pointing out Jack's man on man action, but he was seriously draining the life out of the show with his obsession with Gwen too. Dial back, STARZ, we didn't come here for Smallville. I DO think there should have been aliens. Not because Scifi needs aliens. I was a fan of SeaQuest and that never had any...
...

Anyway. Torchwood is an organization founded to fight aliens, wasn't that stated time and again? So they're Uniquely Qualified To Get To The Bottom Of This(tm) except.... they never do... and even though they figured out what was going on faster than everyone else because of their experience with aliens... somehow we never really see any. That pesky Whoverse which can't let Earth have one measly Christmas to itself, wasn't paying attention when everyone was immortal?

Son of a bitch man, this was the perfect time for the Cybermen to recruit invincible cannon fodder, the vampires could have fed forever, the Sycorax could have played the best game of Lemmings ever...

Miracle day did a fantastic job of exploring ramifications. We were throoughly introduced to what if's in a realistic sense. We saw emergency rooms begin to overflow, we saw pharmaceutical companies making a killing, governments creating killcamps, pedophiles escaping capitol punishment, etc. If this were a doctor who episode, we'd have come in around episode ten we'd HEAR about the state the world was in, rather than watching it unfold, and it'd be over. In that sense, Miracle day was tightly written to explore what if's. it did not do such a great job exploring the "how come". Two thirds of the way through the series, the writers jacked up the tempo, used Jack's blood as a DEM, distracted us with star trek characters who died immediately, and then use Jack's blood as a Reset button.

Then they did it again, when we let our guard down to bring back Rex.

Then they did it a third time in the church, when we knew it would happen. it was a pat on the head.

[Revy]

I was a fan of SeaQuest and that never had any...
...

Yeah it did, didn't it?

[Themightytom]

I was a fan of SeaQuest and that never had any...
...

Yeah it did, didn't it?

Thank You Ted That Was The joke.

[Hillary]

On a side note, is anyone getting really tired with the fucking gay overtones in Torchwood? I seriously do not want to see two guys fucking each other. What's wrong with British in general? It's seems like every damn TV show they produce have gay overtones. Are their entire damn population gay?

I'm surprised nobody called him out on it then. It really is baffling that in a series which features all manner of gore (as well as a pedophile becoming a celebrity, delivering nonsensical speeches that are inexplicably inspirational to people), it's consensual acts of intimacy between two people (and they were rather tame when you get down to it) that sets someone off. There are plenty of actual, legitimate flaws to complain about without being a prejudiced moron. I think that Andro's postings are a good example of just how petty and stupid homophobia is. Why can't some people just grow the fuck up?

Amen to that. I remember someone whinging about one of the main characters being gay in the Doctor Who episode Midnight once. How dare they have gay characters on TV - it's not like you ever see any in real life.....oh wait.

By the way, Andro, we're all a bunch of woofters in the UK - I'd suggest you never visit, lest your brain explodes or something.

[Big Orange]

Moving on from the predictable dogpiling of AndroAsc...

It won't exactly live on in the memory unless the finale (which I'm dreading) is bloody good.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Oh dear.

Jack's blood was needed right from the start to switch the plot McGuffin back to normal, we haven't seen the last of Jilly Kitzinger, and I liked Bill Pullman's death, but the villains for the most part weren't very ept and genre savvy, Rex gaining some (or all) of Jack's powers seems too much, they needlessly killed off too many characters this time, and the ten episodes loaded down with plot padding had nearly smothered everything, And what was the Soulless about? I don't think Miracle Day was as genuinely terrible as Torchwood under Chibnal with sex gas, innocent bystanders losing their brains, bad CGI fairies, and sheep shagging cannibals, with an interesting premise and some good action thriller scenes. But it was ultimately competent mediocrity that was reflected in the lukewarm audience numbers.

Next year Captain Jack should concentrate on rebuilding the Torchwood Institute from the ground up, rather than being a couple of people on the run from the authorities and other antagonists? And maybe tie in more into the main setting of Doctor Who (like Captain Jack encountering Mark/W.Morgan Sheppard's character from the opening S6 episodes, for example). Anyway I liked the inclusion of 1990s sci-fi veterans such as Bill Pullman, John de Lancie, Nana Visitor, and Wayne Knight.

For S6 if they're doing ten episodes again, they should concentrate on having more self-contained episodes, with the main stroy arc being the final defeat of the Families as a major power (with their resources subverted by Jack into a second Torchwood Institute). And speaking of Jack, will he ever regain his lost memories, you know his lost memories he mentioned way back in "The Empty Child"-"The Doctor Dances"?