Riding to the rescue

The Best of The Best

Torchwood: Children of Earth This five-night miniseries follows as a strange event throughout the world brings society to the brink of destruction. It is a job for the Torchwood agency, Britain’s go-to force for dealing with the paranormal and extraterrestrial threats that arise.

In addition to being available on Sidereel, BBC America will be showing a marathon rebroadcast on Sunday, July 26th starting at 1 PM EST.

WARNING: After the jump, THERE BE SPOILERS.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of Dr. Who, which Torchwood is a spin-off from, but this miniseries really makes me consider giving the show another try. Russell T. Davies’ writing here was absolutely stunning, and it makes me wonder whether Dr. Who can match what he accomplished here.

In addition to the writing, the two performances that stole the show for me were Gwen (Eve Myles) and Frobisher (Peter Capaldi, who has been receiving effusive praise for his role in the new film In the Loop). In these two characters we were able to see the weight of this crisis in every word and action. Of course they represented two diametrically opposed sides in their reactions to the threat of the 4-5-6. Frobisher, a life-long bureaucrat, puts his head down and works hard trying to solve this, until he realizes that he is little more than a pawn. Gwen on the other hand looks to fight back against the 4-5-6 and the British government, even if she has to do it on her own, which in the end, she essentially does.

What I found interesting is that in the end both of these characters turn out to have chosen the wrong path, with some dire consequences (most notably for the Frobisher family). Victory requires true sacrifices to be made, and so the government looking only to protect their own children and Gwen looking to save every child she can find are both heading down the same path. This series explores the push and tug between the desire to care for the needs of the many and only having the ability to meet the needs of the few, and in doing so reveals how good people can be cornered into doing horrible deeds. Captain Jack comes to realize this, and is forced to sacrifice his own grandson in order to save millions of children throughout the world.

As much as we are to dislike Frobisher for most of the series, it is clear that it is his superiors, the elected officials, who are truly despicable. When Denise asks if society should really continue trying to treat all children as if they are equal and adds, “God knows we’ve tried and we’ve failed,” I cringed in front of my computer screen. These people thought that they were making the hard decisions, but it very quickly became clear that they were only concerned with self-preservation.

When all was said and done, the 4-5-6 were defeated and the Prime Minister was no longer in power, but it certainly didn’t feel like a victory—I don’t think it was supposed to.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Leisure, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.