I know this series has received a lot of criticism due to the Americanisation, and poor climax, however, I personally don't think its completely without credit and think it raises some important philosophical debates like do we have the right to decide who lives and who dies etc.

I was talking to a mate about it the other day and we agreed it would have worked better as a 5 or 6 part series rather than a 10- if you got rid of the American agents and Bill Pullman, and actually gave the series a proper alien villain.

Just wondering what your thoughts on this are?

the basic premise was intriguing but poorly executed. It just didn't feel like torchwood. the americanisation screwed up the whole tone of it and instead it felt like some new souless american actiony show with jack and gwen just in it as guest's . Also I think, as you have said it should have been five part's because there seemed to be whole episodes that were just filler. Seemed like it might have been okay during ep 1 but after that it just dragged, only keeping you watching to see on the last ep what had caused miracle day and what the resolution would be, which was then so boring I don't even remember what it was now

It was twice as long as it should have been, with an incredible amount of padding.
It would have been so much better done in five hours over five consecutive nights as Children of Earth was, rather than dragged out over ten interminable weeks!
That's nearly three months FFS!

Many say that Miracle Day was overly long and drawn out, and they're right. What it was trying to do was replicate the success of Children of Earth, but no US Broadcaster would have been interested in a series lasting just five episodes. Nor were we ever going to be lucky enough again to get 'event TV' where they air one episode a night for a single week, akin to Children of Earth - not that such a stunt would have probably worked twice. It was stuck in the form of a ten part, weekly series and yet still the execs seemed determined to try and copy Children of Earth with a moral dilemma serial sci-fi. It backfired big time.

The US filming added absolutely nothing... the series aired in 2011, the same as Doctor Who: Series 6 which featured episodes filmed in Utah. While I feel both shows could have done more with their location filming, Miracle Day was an abysmally poor effort and could have just as easily have worked having been set in the UK. All it did was undermine the Welsh and English setting.

The concept behind the series was an interesting one, but not one explored particularly well. It completely rewrote the logic behind Jack's immortality to fit its own developments, and the characters weren't captivating enough to warrant proper moral debate. I remember in Children of Earth: Day Four there was a scene in the Cabinet Room with a whole bunch of politicians trying to decide which 10% of children would be given up to the aliens. It was a difficult, tense but clever piece of television - a bunch of characters we'd never seen before, and didn't even know all the names of... but it was gripping! It lasted a good ten minutes and really made the viewer think. Miracle Day didn't ever have such coherency or intelligence... any time it had the chance to explore strong moral themes it cut them short to deviate off on a sub-plot... towards the end of the series we had a whole episode set in the 40's at which point it was clear the idea (and the series) was running out of steam.

I really struggle to find much good to say about Miracle Day. It was slow, it was dull, and the Americanism's crept in far too much... the violence, the gore, the sex. Not only had Torchwood wisely distanced itself from these 'adult' notions as it had gone on over the years, Torchwood itself was a show that always enjoyed spoofing the identikit US shows of the genre - the type that had exotic cars and sweeping shots of Los Angeles... that's why it had a Land Rover and sweeping shots of Cardiff all the time! But now the show is in LA, and it's become the thing it was deriding. There were a few impressive action sequences in the episodes, and a few of the American actors did a decent job with limited material but otherwise it was a ten-part bore-fest which completely took a u-turn on the maturity and innovation that Torchwood had taken on board.

I have said this in the past. The general story is interesting it was the execution that let it down. It could easily have been shown over 5/6 nights (episodes 2-4 being 1 episode). If they had kept it in the UK they could have easily rebuilt the Torchwood hub with new members to replace Tosh, Owen and Ianto. Series 5 could have returned to the Series 1-2 format but with better stories.

It was a good idea and while the americanisation wasn't great it wasn't irredeemable. And some of the performances were excellent. But it really got let down by poor pacing and editing - plot beats that belonged at the end of episodes came at the start. The guy from ghost busters was wasted for no good reason. It really feels like a good editing team could cut and rearrange things to make an excellent 6 part series.

That's nearly 3 months of watching drivel I'll never get back. If it wasn't supposed to be Torchwood I wouldn't have lasted beyond the first episode.

I remember watching the first episode and thinking how dreary and dull it was... I mean they had a chase sequence down a beach involving a helicopter and a jeep - that shouldn't have been anything other than thrilling or exciting.

I stuck with it though and thought it would get better...it was just settling in and trying not to rush the story. By the end of the tenth week, I still concur that the first episode was probably the best of the bunch. Utterly disappointing. Never has a show turned its quality on its head so quickly.

I, personally, didn't find Miracle Day all that bad. It wasn't as good as CoE, but then I also found that an aberration from Torchwood's general output prior to that. Series 1 was mostly awful and series 2, whilst better, wasn't really must-see TV, in my eyes.

So whilst MD was flawed, I still felt it was at least on par with most of Torchwood's other output. What also might have helped is that I didn't watch it as it aired, but instead recorded the whole run and then watched it condensed. I'd read all the "its awful" and the "Americans have ruined out show," stuff prior to watching, so I also went in expecting it to be dreadful. So the low expectations might have helped me appreciate it more.

I do agree that it probably would have worked better as a five-part story, as it would have cut off much of the fat. What they should have done is written two five-part stories. That way the US network would have got their ten-part show, but we'd have got two leaner stories with less-to-no filler. The two stories could even have been linked by using the same villain. MD ended suggesting they had "other plans," so that could have just been story two, instead of a planned series 5.


Funnily enough, that is exactly how I would have been with Torchwood series 1 if it wasn't connected to Doctor Who. Ok, perhaps I would have given it until episode 2, but I wouldn't have lasted beyond that. It never earned my viewership on its own merits until CoE.

And after all that, the pay-off was a giant red crack. Worse, it kinda looked like an actual giant red crack.

And the american character getting Jack's powers via the magic of a blood-transfusion in a shed.

The whole 'red crack' story also contradicts (or needs explaining in context of) the Racnoss origin story...of how they became the centre of the Earth.

I really hated Rex getting Jack's powers. It undermined Jack's character, doesn't really fit in with how Rose gave Jack his immortality in Doctor Who and frankly I hated that Rex guy. Blood replenishes itself, so I'm going to just tell myself that it was a one-off event and that the character is now mortal once again. I don't want to see him cropping up again, personally.

That reminds me...the two American additions I did like were the two that were killed off, frustratingly. You had Vera's disturbing death in the middle of the series (that made me feel sick!) and then Esther's death in the finale too.

It was watchable, but I don't think it was up to much. It was a bit at odds with itself, at times wanting to be harrowing and massively unpleasant for dramatic effect, but then throwing too much comedy and light relief about the place. The characters on the whole were a pretty weak bunch. I just couldn't stand Rex, but admit he was dealt some dreary lines. Lauren Ambrose was pretty good, but she was self contained and removed from the rest of them which was probably the novelty. Do like Gwen and she probably had the best scenes of the series, but I think you do find, even though it's only a tv show and a genre tv show at that, yourself thinking, 'who the **** is she?' when she gives out about things. Despite some CBBC target practice with some branded earmuffs, she hasn't really done much in the way of formal training or testing to warrant her being a self proclaimed expert or hardarse. I found her quite annoying at times in Miracle Day, she did have a lot to deal with, but she she was very, 'Don't worry, I'm Welsh and I'm on top of it'. She usually was.

For me it so needed some kind of monster

I do agree there the idea behind Miracle Day was a sound one and realised some interesting ideas which should were addressed throughout the Series. The idea of how the world would cope if no-one dies, and how we would cope with that as a race, yep, can give credit for that....but that's about it.

Sadly the length of the show just kills the story completely. Ten Hours of airtime is hard to fill, even the Soaps struggle to do that with endless episodes where not much happens so how they thought they could make a Ten Episode story an hour long work and get away with it beats me. You look at The War Games and how they struggled with that story over ten weeks and that was 25 minutes an episode!

Plus the American Setting does it no favours either. It could and should have remained in Wales and stuck to it's roots. Plus it could have been just five episodes like the COE.

Jack was horribly underused in some episodes as well which is not the way to treat a leading character.

All in all just a complete mess of which if Torchwood ever comes back, I don't want to see the likes of again!