Torchwood: Children of Earth

[ashwednesday]

AKA: When Torchwood Became Good Science Fiction


I was massively spoiled for Torchwood: Children of Earth, because updates on what had happened were plastered all over the internet. Especially Twitter. Seriously, people, DO NOT post spoilers on Twitter a few minutes after a show has aired! It's tacky. But I didn't really mind, since I'm not majorly invested in Torchwood; I've watched quite a bit of series 1 and 2, but not with any great dedication. To my mind, Torchwood was a reasonably entertaining, but fairly badly written and woodenly acted pop scifi show. With Children of Earth, Torchwood shifted gears and became something much more exciting, moving - and promising for the future of scifi on British television.

Mum, Dad and I watched the entire mini series in one go tonight. Five hours in a row, with only loo breaks! It was intense. The first episode had a feeling of regular Torchwood - slightly clunky dialogue, clumsy character referencing - but it was entertaining. By the end of the first episode, though, the creepy premise - of children just stopping and speaking en masse - had gripped me, and over the course of the next four episodes the pacing, plotting and articulation of key themes became progressively stronger.

I won't do an episode-by-episode review, but here are some thoughts on key character and plot elements.

Team Alien
The alien was very creepy (although the "vomiting" against the side of the glass box was a bit... lame). Shadowy thing that can materialise out of the sky, control the behaviour of the children of the world, and poison people on a whim? Yeah, creepy. Even if it did seem the government was capitulating before it really saw any evidence of what the aliens could do - one might have expected the poisoning episode to come earlier. Though that, of course, would not have provided Ianto with a poignant way to die. Anyway, ignore the plot holes there, the alien/s provided a good threat that was much creepier than laser beams or explosions.

Team Torchwood
Jack was much his usual self... Fewer opportunities to quip and be dashing, though. Ianto smiled a lot more than usual in the first eps, which was vaguely disconcerting. His relationship with Jack was very matter-of-fact, which was nice. His death was sad. Since I'm not a major Torchwood fan, however, it wasn't heartbreaking, and it really brought home the great odds. This mini-series was, in a lot of ways, about loss. But more on that later. Gwen was actually NOT annoying. In series 1 and 2 I found her irritating and a lot of the time self-righteous and annoyingly obsessed with Jack. In this series her relationship with Rhys seemed a lot more stable, she wasn't possessive of Jack, and she just got on with getting the job done. And she kicked ass awesomely! Though I will say making a videotape about the world ending when you're sitting with a bunch of scared kids is not very clever. Anyway. Rhys was his usual nice reliable brave self. Lois initially annoyed me - she seemed designed to be the stand-in for Martha - "look everyone, here's the cute black girl who can help out" - but her character became more fleshed out as the series progressed. I think her turning point for me was when she gave Gwen a whole bunch of info about intercepting the undertaker. Kudos, girly!

Team Government
The Prime Minister was a bit too hard edged and straight to the point. I think his character would have worked better if he'd used more spin and charm on his people. For instance, telling Frobisher that he was really going to have to give up his children, and also telling Frobisher he was disposable, seemed kind of stupid. It would have been more sensible to lie and charm, and that would also have made his character more compelling. Being a straight-up nasty guy is less interesting. Frobisher was a very interesting character, though. He was someone who had a very strong sense of duty, but was lacking in moral fibre. He was not made to lead, but to take orders, which is why his only act of disobedience was not of rebellion, but of despair. I knew he was asking Bridget for a gun as soon as he asked for item 31 or whatever it was called. The murder of his family and his suicide was a sign of how far down a dark road this miniseries had got. Ianto dying was one thing; it was tragedy in the typical pop scifi mould. Suicide behind a closed door was something grimly different.

Other characters
For me the death of Clem was more upsetting than the death of Ianto. He was such an innocent in a lot of ways, a man who had been a victim since he was a little boy, forever trapped in the nightmares of his past, and he died bleeding and screaming in pain. No poignant last speech like Ianto, just a cruel end to a sad life. That got to me quite a bit. Of course, that was preparation for the death of Steven. When a popular TV show is prepared to have a man execute his own grandchild to save the world, something very startling is happening on the air. Oh, science fiction sacrifices people all the time; but not usually children. There is a revulsion at the death of a child that makes child-murder one of modern western society's great taboos. And the hero did it.

Themes

One of the key themes of the series was "how big a sacrifice is too big? Where do you draw a line?" The Torchwood answer was that any was too many, and that, I think, was why Jack was so guilt-stricken and weary of earth at the end. Not just because he had caused the death of his grandson; but because, having repented of leading those children to the aliens in 1965, he had made the same choice again. In 1965, he had said that it was better for those few to die to protect the world; today he made the choice to let one die to protect the world. What is the line that separates evil from good? That is what Torchwood seemed to ask tonight. The thin line seemed to be that the death of Steven was at least a strike against the aliens, a cry of defiance, whilst handing over the children was merely a capitulation to evil, a giving in to the dark. But it was also apparent that for Jack, he no longer felt that he was definitely on the right side of that line. He caused the death of people he cared for, he said. Earth was a graveyard.

Loss was a major part of this season. There were the obvious deaths, of course, but there were also aspects like Alice, who could not have Jack in her life because he represented continuity in the face of remorseless change and decline. Jack's regenerations, it became forcefully clear in these episodes, are a burden. To be able to live forever is one thing; to have no possibility of death is quite another. There was grief in that, to be forever burying others, knowing that this is what you will be doing until the end of time. Always acting the mourner.

There was also some interesting political stuff about who is valuable, how we judge what people are worth and so on. The government coolly decided to get rid of the 10% of the population who would be least missed. We naturally recoil at that, but as the alien pointed out, children die every second. Around the world many children are sacrificed to all kinds of horrors - war, disease, poverty - and we turn our eyes from them. We are negligent of our own kind; that may be a less stirring storyline than the abduction of our children by aliens, but in many ways it is more terrible.

Why this series was important

Someone on my flist noted the other day something along the lines of: this is good TV now, not just good-for-Torchwood TV. I agree. Oh, there were faults, and many of them, but they are not really worth listing. This was prime time entertainment that demonstrated that science fiction can say important things, raise serious questions, and leave you feeling uncomfortable rather than satisfied. Those of us who are science fiction fans have known this for years, of course. Raised on a diet of 60s and 70s science fiction novels and short stories, I have always thought that the greatest science fiction makes us turn our gaze both inward and outward - out toward the stars, literal and figurative, and inward to ourselves and our society. Good science fiction, for me at least, doesn't just tell a rollicking story; it asks profound questions like "what makes a human? Why do we explore? What is our place in the universe? What is worth dying for?" Good science fiction can be uncomfortable to watch or to read; it can feel like burrs under the skin, because it catches at the vulnerable places in our hearts, making us aware of our own faults and hypocrises. It can also be exhilirating and inspiring, because it makes us think about what is great about humanity, about individuality, and what we can become, if only we keep thinking and asking questions that matter.

I am not saying that Children of Earth was a great piece of science fiction. I have read science fiction that was more profound and more moving. But a lot of what I have read is niche stuff; Torchwood was shown on a major tv station at primetime. This was not easy family entertainment. This was not a simple adventure where the day was saved. Great sacrifices were made, and at the end the cost was so high that it seemed nothing would ever be the same again. It was not satisfying television in the sense that it sated; instead the final episode left open many questions, and that, I think, is good. Neat conclusions in science fiction can feel pleasing, but something less tidy seems more true to the spirit of the genre, and this week the British public was given a fantastic glimpse of the possibilities of this genre. Since it seems to have been popular, with strong viewing figures each night, I hope that the BBC will see that you can do more with scifi programmes than have monsters-of-the-week and campy fun. Those things have their place, and old Torchwood was certainly entertaining; but I for one am glad that this week Torchwood seemed to graduate into something more.