Well thank god it's finally over. Not that the show could go out without insulting its audience for one last hour. So, let's take a look at Torchwood's last gleaming.
- This is Torchwood's idea of a mystery: The world becomes immortal, Jack becomes mortal - all logic would suggest that Jack must somehow be the cause of this, and the entire audience therefore predicts this result. So, how do Davies and his writing staff attempt to misdirect us from this? They have Jack state over and over again that 'he's not responsible' for the miracle, and that there's 'nothing special about his blood'. He has no reason to believe this, an no one investigates it (as they should), the writers just hoped the audience would believe Jack (though they had no reason to), so that they could be surprised when it turns out that Jack was responsible, and that there was something special about his blood, after all. No one was surprised.
- Here was the villain's plan, as I understand it. Find a fissure in the earth because of nonsense. Even though they have no idea what the fissure in the earth is or how it works, they toss some of Jack's blood onto it, turning everyone immortal, which was part of their plan for world domination. Couple of things here: 1: If they didn't know what the Blessing was, how did they know how to manipulate it? 2: If they didn't know how either Jack's blood or the Blessing works, why on earth would they think that combining them would turn the whole world immortal? Were there trial runs? Could there have been? 3: Was this whole thing's premise a rip-off of 'The Doctor Dances', where the nanocurebots thought that creepy gas mask kid was default humanity, or the medical machine that decided the default state of earth was to be the Master? Wow, Russel Davies really loves going back to the well, doesn't he?
- Gwen Cooper - continuing to just be a horrible person who makes horrible speeches, opens the show talking about how she loves her dad, and that now she's going to murder him. Which wounds intense, and all, but her dad's already dead. He's essentially in a coma, aware only enough to suffer in agony. He's like the poster child for euthanasia - incineration would be a blessing.
- Gwen's dad has the preposterously Welsh name of Geriant Wynn Cooper. Swap that last name out with the creator of the show and you have Geriant Wynn Davies, star of vampire cop TV show 'Forever Knight'. Coincidence? It can't be!
- We're supposed to be creeped out because the villains have a plan B. Whatever it is, here's a better plan B: grab Jack, drain him of blood, turn the world immortal again, and this time kill him. Literally nothing happened on the show that would keep them from just doing the same thing a second time. What, the governments of the earth are now watching the Blessing? So what? These are powerful forces, and all they have to do is smuggle two jugs of blood down into a couple of holes.
- Those two neighbourhoods had the same life expectancy as the earth, and they'd been that way forever? How could you possibly know that? I'm guessing neither Buenos Aires nor Shanghai kept thorough demographic records for more than the past hundred years. Also, since you're just talking about small neighbourhoods, how can you even judge overall life expectancy - don't you need a much larger sample to check things like that - people move in and out of neighbourhoods quite regularly, don't they?
- Oswald Danes went out gloating about his intention to track down his victim in hell and rape/torture her for all eternity in hell. Gosh, he might have been the worst character in the history of television.
- Other than Rex, who'll now be around forever. Thanks for that, RTD.
- Remember when I said that this show's vision of the CIA seemed to be 24 written by/for retarded people? Yeah, this episode went above and beyond in its attempts to prove me right. Q knows full well there's a mole in his organisation, and he has for two full months. How does he respond to this? By not changing the way the place operates at all, allowing people free movement in and around the facility, and to carry personal cell phones into the office. Remember Furbies? Remember how the US government banned them in official locations because they were capable of recording sound? This is the CIA's intelligence hub working on the biggest danger the world has ever faced, and there's a mole in the office - that building should be locked down until they uncover the mole, instead Q loudly announces just what means they're going to be using to find the mole, so that everyone in the office (including the mole) will know exactly what's about to happen. Giving the villain plenty of time to set a bomb off in the hopes of covering her tracks.
- Hilariously, despite the fact that someone within the office is both a mole and a murderer who set off a bomb inside the CIA, the mole has avoided discovery for a week at the end of the episode. Oh, and the bomb? It went off while being inside her purse. God, everyone on this show was stupid beyond comprehension.
- Let's just pause for a second to realize that absolutely nothing of consequence happened between the end of episode 1 and the beginning of episode 9. Had this show been three episodes long, it wouldn't have felt like the slightest bit of plot was missing.
Next week: A list of every bit of the plot designed to waste the audience's time.
- This is Torchwood's idea of a mystery: The world becomes immortal, Jack becomes mortal - all logic would suggest that Jack must somehow be the cause of this, and the entire audience therefore predicts this result. So, how do Davies and his writing staff attempt to misdirect us from this? They have Jack state over and over again that 'he's not responsible' for the miracle, and that there's 'nothing special about his blood'. He has no reason to believe this, an no one investigates it (as they should), the writers just hoped the audience would believe Jack (though they had no reason to), so that they could be surprised when it turns out that Jack was responsible, and that there was something special about his blood, after all. No one was surprised.
- Here was the villain's plan, as I understand it. Find a fissure in the earth because of nonsense. Even though they have no idea what the fissure in the earth is or how it works, they toss some of Jack's blood onto it, turning everyone immortal, which was part of their plan for world domination. Couple of things here: 1: If they didn't know what the Blessing was, how did they know how to manipulate it? 2: If they didn't know how either Jack's blood or the Blessing works, why on earth would they think that combining them would turn the whole world immortal? Were there trial runs? Could there have been? 3: Was this whole thing's premise a rip-off of 'The Doctor Dances', where the nanocurebots thought that creepy gas mask kid was default humanity, or the medical machine that decided the default state of earth was to be the Master? Wow, Russel Davies really loves going back to the well, doesn't he?
- Gwen Cooper - continuing to just be a horrible person who makes horrible speeches, opens the show talking about how she loves her dad, and that now she's going to murder him. Which wounds intense, and all, but her dad's already dead. He's essentially in a coma, aware only enough to suffer in agony. He's like the poster child for euthanasia - incineration would be a blessing.
- Gwen's dad has the preposterously Welsh name of Geriant Wynn Cooper. Swap that last name out with the creator of the show and you have Geriant Wynn Davies, star of vampire cop TV show 'Forever Knight'. Coincidence? It can't be!
- We're supposed to be creeped out because the villains have a plan B. Whatever it is, here's a better plan B: grab Jack, drain him of blood, turn the world immortal again, and this time kill him. Literally nothing happened on the show that would keep them from just doing the same thing a second time. What, the governments of the earth are now watching the Blessing? So what? These are powerful forces, and all they have to do is smuggle two jugs of blood down into a couple of holes.
- Those two neighbourhoods had the same life expectancy as the earth, and they'd been that way forever? How could you possibly know that? I'm guessing neither Buenos Aires nor Shanghai kept thorough demographic records for more than the past hundred years. Also, since you're just talking about small neighbourhoods, how can you even judge overall life expectancy - don't you need a much larger sample to check things like that - people move in and out of neighbourhoods quite regularly, don't they?
- Oswald Danes went out gloating about his intention to track down his victim in hell and rape/torture her for all eternity in hell. Gosh, he might have been the worst character in the history of television.
- Other than Rex, who'll now be around forever. Thanks for that, RTD.
- Remember when I said that this show's vision of the CIA seemed to be 24 written by/for retarded people? Yeah, this episode went above and beyond in its attempts to prove me right. Q knows full well there's a mole in his organisation, and he has for two full months. How does he respond to this? By not changing the way the place operates at all, allowing people free movement in and around the facility, and to carry personal cell phones into the office. Remember Furbies? Remember how the US government banned them in official locations because they were capable of recording sound? This is the CIA's intelligence hub working on the biggest danger the world has ever faced, and there's a mole in the office - that building should be locked down until they uncover the mole, instead Q loudly announces just what means they're going to be using to find the mole, so that everyone in the office (including the mole) will know exactly what's about to happen. Giving the villain plenty of time to set a bomb off in the hopes of covering her tracks.
- Hilariously, despite the fact that someone within the office is both a mole and a murderer who set off a bomb inside the CIA, the mole has avoided discovery for a week at the end of the episode. Oh, and the bomb? It went off while being inside her purse. God, everyone on this show was stupid beyond comprehension.
- Let's just pause for a second to realize that absolutely nothing of consequence happened between the end of episode 1 and the beginning of episode 9. Had this show been three episodes long, it wouldn't have felt like the slightest bit of plot was missing.
Next week: A list of every bit of the plot designed to waste the audience's time.
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