Children of Earth was just depressing! All that death was quite disturbing. Part of me wishes that this was not part of the Whoniverse.

Despite my views on this, I have the urge to watch it again.

If you think the amount of deaths in COE was depressing than you really should not watch Game of Thrones.

Or Pingu

Death in drama doesn't normally affect me but what I witnessed in CoE was horrible, for example Capaldi shooting his children & Jack sacrificing his grandson. Eastenders certainly lost to Children of Earth for "the most depressing programme of the week" back then.

Strange. I found all of those deaths more shocking than depressing, but I love drama that's shocking.

Shocking. Depressing. Engaging. It's just drama doing its job

Because it was nialistic tosh with the remaining members of team Torchwood grafted onto it. If it had been a standalone drama it still would have been nialistc tosh, but at least Jack's hero's journey wouldn't have been deconstructed and Ianto wouldn't have had a lobotomy so that Gwen could be the smart one of the bunch.

Exactly this. And the response to Ianto's death in particular was a clear indication that RTD and the writers of the series did a job well done.



I'm struggling to find clarity on some of what you're saying. Jack was never on a hero's journey - he's an anti-hero. As the face of the 'adult Doctor Who' it was a chance to explore a more real response to the threats that The Doctor usually faces. Jack was never afforded the chance to be a hero. I would say he was never an anti-hero more than he was here - in essence, Children of Earth was the series most true to his Torchwood persona.

And Gwen wasn't ever made to be the smart one of the bunch either. In fact she never actually got to confront the aliens herself, and she spent most of the series either hiding or on the run - from her fugitive escape to London, to her hideout in Cardiff. She was desperate, and resourceful, and dedicated to her job - but she was never put in a position to do anything particularly smart. In fact the only example of a smart idea explored in the series was the plan put together by the collective team on Day Four - a plan they all put together, and a plan that failed. It was that plan that cost Ianto his life...and it was a fitting price to pay for Torchwood's assumption that they were the authority figure on all things extra-terrestrial.

Children of Earth is my favourite of the Torchwood series/stories.

But, I do think it took Torchwood to a difficult place. After that story and what happened with Ianto, Jack and everything, it would have a taken a lot of work (or a huge reset button) to take Torchwood back to what it was in seasons 1 and 2. So from that perspective, I can see why some people don't like CoE and think that it ruined the show.

At the end of series 1 Jack, who has been promoted by default into a situation he's not suited (and to me seems to have all but given up) for runs away from Torchwood to get his answers from the Doctor. He doesn't get the one he's hoping for, there is no fix for his immortality. He could go anywhere, but he returns to Cardiff determined to do the Doctor proud.

In series 2 he steps up and actually tries to do his job and lead his team and make a difference. He is growing up.

CoE he is mostly innefectual. He sulks a lot. He gets blown to pieces literally and figuratively. Instead of taking back his mantel of authority when he gets a new coat (which IMO is where the story falls to pieces especially on the Torchwood front) he continues to let other people (including kid snorting alien druggies) call the shots instead of kicking ass and taking names. The best plan they could come up with was 'just say no to drugs' ? Really?

As for Ianto, who in previous series might have been as screwed up as the others with his cybergirlfriend in the basement but is otherwise an organizational genius, he lets the SUV get stolen, has to be shown by Gwen how to steal even though it's in his back story that he's been done for shop lifting, and goes to confront aliens, who are living in a toxic environment, without so much as a gas mask. He( and Jack) then SHOOT at the envirotank!

Yeah. I have thoughts about Children of Earth. It made me angry for a lot of reasons, but I was furious that Jack didn't get a way to be smart and resourceful and it cost him what little personal growth he had made in his goal to do the Doctor proud.
Last edited by maggie thecat : 12-02-2014 at 12:17

I think nihilistic is the best word to describe it, it wasn't so much dark as totally black and hopeless with death and destruction was everywhere. Some light in the darkness would have been good, but RTD must have wanted to destroy all he'd spent the last few years building up. God knows why. Then Miracle Day, which could have redeemed the effect somehow, made it even worse by being rubbish

I think the main problem is that Torchwood seems to have multiple personality disorder. The first two series are nothing like the third, and none of the first three are anything like the fourth. This means you have four series running under one name with only a few characters that are the same, with wildly different settings, tones and stories but that are meant to be one entity.I think the main problem is that series 1 while having goodish ratings was critically panned, and with good reason. Series 2 was a bit better but still erratic and not great. 3 was a huge departure and considered much better, but couldn't be done again in the same way as the audience wouldn't accept it. So they change again for series 4 and created something awful again, far worse than the first dreadful series.

Miracle day wasn't as bad as Cyberwoman was it? Only seen a few episodes, and they were so bad I couldn't watch the rest.

Considerably worse that Cyberwoman. I actually don't think Cyberwoman is all that bad - I mean, it's not good, but it didn't offend me with its quality. A lot of my problems with it are what came afterwards - they destroyed a lot of the credibility of the events in the episode by so swiftly pairing Jack and an until-now-heterosexual Ianto. It also clearly didn't have Who-production values, and I wish they hadn't tried to "sex-up" the Cybermwoman as there was a very decent, credible story underneath it all that tied in wonderfully with Army of Ghosts/Doomsday that would have sufficed to impress viewers.

I do miss the parallel canon of the two shows... it was great seeing them reference each other now and again. The Doctor might travel to a lot more alien worlds than he did in earlier series, but since the demise of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures the Whoniverse feels undeniably...smaller.

Probably cos it was americanised!

That would be Miracle Day, not Children of Earth.

Children Of Earth was great.

Miracle Day on the other hand, not so much.

Pretty much this. By no stretch of the imagination was series one and two good, and I say that as a fan. But it was entertaining. The cast was engaging and worked well with one another. And while many of the stories weren't executed to their full potential, they fired the imagination. Plus even on days when the team didn't exactly prevail, there was always something to undercut the bleakness and give hope that tomorrow would be a better day.

COE was billed as being big budget Torchwood. A rollercoaster adventure ride. If you were a fan of those first two series, the expectation was the quirky Cardiff based show about rift guardians who had a pet pteradon was that they'd get a story in the same vein. Something sci fi and quirky with a good mix of drama and optimism.

Yeah. COE didn't quite fit that bill. The Hub destroyed. The team made redundant at the time they should have been needed most. And Jack repeatedly kicked when he was already down to the point it was past cruel. As for the commentary on the ethics and motivations of the British government and the assumption that every other country would cede authority and go along ... that was a pretty cynical premise that strayed about as far as you can get from the Whoverse, and was a disappointment of a whole other magnitude.

I thought CoE was some of the most impressive, and brave, TV I'd seen from a sci-fi show in a very long time.

It wasn't until I read RTD's book that I realised how much he took his eye off the ball with Torchwood. He admits, with some angst, that he loves the cast but doesn't really know what to do with the show.

Which in turn, this week, reminded me of something I heard on one of the Classic Who DVD extras: most TV writers are great at set-up, and lousy at resolution.

I thought that was a very interesting insight, and underlines the need for a strong script editor.

And there in was the problem. RTD wrote a script for a bunch of characters and a show that he didn't know or understand even though he'd originated the premise. He tried to pull the show and relationships in a direction they had evolved away from, and for longtime viewers, it felt inorganic and artificial. Especially the Jack/Ianto relationship which went from being on solid ground, with Ianto secure in his bisexuality, to an angsty mess that might have worked during series one, but had to be fanwanked hard to make sense during series three.

RTD fanwanked himself.

His book has a lot of his lust for 'Midshipman Frame' amongst the email exchanges. It's even referenced in the leaving-do vid on YouTube that Tennant/Barrowman/Tate did.

And that's the character Jack gets off with. Alonso Frame.

So, for me, when I see Jack Harkness I see RTD's alter-ego. Remember that RTD says that he 'owned' Manchester's Canal Street for 10 years; the setting for Queer as Folk.

This isn't a homophobic post btw. I love Harkness and I wish Barrowman would reprise the role, but it does kinda blur the boundary.

Agree with the two posters above, loved Children of Earth (I want Ianto back though ) but really disliked Miracle Day as it felt like another show entirely.

Ew. That's just skeevy. Because that scene in 10's road trip did Jack's character no favours. (Or the Doctor's for that matter. There there, Jack, you just lost everything? Pish posh! Life goes on. (Well, unless you're me, then you're entitled to throw a monumental strop! Here's a nice chap. Go have sex with him. That will fix everything! )

Yuck.

Yes.

I don't believe for a minute the tabloid cry of 'gay agenda' for Dr Who, but RTD made the 10th Doctor a pimp for RTD's own fantasy.

It's not gay, or straight, it's just weird.

The way I saw it, it was less 'pimp' more 'background wingman'. It was just a way to include Jack in that final runaround without having to explicitly reference Children of Earth in Doctor Who, but allow Jack to move on a little bit from his losses having been given almost a green-light by The Doctor - the only other person who has paid the same sort of prices as Jack and knows what he's going through.

It was true to the character of Jack through and through though, even if Jack seems to be a bit of an RTD-in-fiction

I agree, but having read the book, I realised the actor cast in that role was far from coincidence.

Flip that around and any employer under UK law would be acting illegally.

At heart, it was RTD's air-kiss to Alonso, on screen, and in the book RTD is a bit snippy about the handsome boyfriend that Frame has in real life.

And I find that a bit icky.

Again, this is orientation-neutral. It just seems to be the most obvious point where a major TV show was hi-jacked by a personal longing.

Just to contradict myself, if it wasn't for The Writer's Tale we wouldn't know about it at all.