Doctor Who: 'The Stolen Earth' & 'Journey's End' (S4E12 & 13)

And so it ends (for this year at least). I've got to say that this has been the best of the four NuHu series so far, and by quite a margin. That's not to say that the previous three series weren't good, but is to say that this series was great throughout, with only a few dips towards 'alrightness' along the way.

If you haven't seen these episodes yet, don't read on, I'm sure to spoil something for you.

This two-parter followed the pattern laid down by previous Doctor Who two-parters in that it tried to achieve far too much in the first part. Too many characters converging and too many things going on. You put Donna and Martha together in one episode and we care. You put Donna and Rose together in one episode and we care. You put Donna and Martha and Jack and Rose and Sarah-Jane and the Doctor together and try to fit a plot into 45 minutes and we're struggling. By necessity the Torchwood team, Sarah-Jane's son and Mickey and Jackie got sidelined and we didn't have the time to actually care about any of them, which is a shame.

Also, the production team seems to think it is necessary to put the entire world in jeopardy at the end of every Doctor Who series. I'm not sure it really is. You can still pack a two parter with action and an emotional punch even if the entire world has not been ripped out of time and space.
But still. The Daleks are back. Yay! Davros is back. Double Yay! All the recent companions that we know and love are back. Yay! And then the best cliffhanger of any NuHu yet. What will happen next?

But still, I do agree with SFX (.co.uk) who said it was like an extended movie trailer - lots of snippets of what should be a much longer story. But the first half was clearly just there to be a set up for the second...

... and that was just fab. Davros showing the Doctor how he used his companions was a touch of genius, the Daleks talking in German was brilliant and the DoctorDonna was great. Everything that could have been wrong about Catherine Tate being cast as a companion thrown into one scene and somehow tranformed into pure class. 10 out of 10, Russell T.

Then thrown in a few silly bits and a pretty ropey plot whereby Donna has to have her memory wiped and is therefore written out - we knew it had to happen, but I'm sure there could have been a better way. With the prophesy of "One of them will die", I don't know why they couldn't just follow through on that. They killed off Kylie last Christmas, why not kill Donna off properly? In no real way did one of them die. It was a trick.

And of course the Rose storyline is now resolved and ended and she'll not be back again. I liked what they did there with the other Doctor, but it also felt like a little bit of a cheat. But I'm nit picking here at what was a fab ending to a great series. Well done the BBC.

So here's a quick summary of the whole series:

1. Partners in crime: Silly but entertaining. 7/10
2. Fires of Pompeii: Who as Who should be. 8/10
3. Planet of the Ood: A bit weak, but passes the time. 6/10
4. The Sontaran strategy: Entertaining. 7/10
   
5. The poison sky: Fun with dull bits. 7/10
6. The Doctor's daughter: Too simple a plot. 6/10
7. The unicorn and the wasp: Silly but entertaining. 7/10 (initially 5/10 but it grew on me)
   
8. Silence in the library: Brilliant and creepy. 9/10
   
9. Forest of the dead: Continuing brilliance and creepiness. 9/10
10. Midnight: Simple story, well told, some great moments. 8/10
    
11. Turn left: Genius. 10/10
12. The stolen earth: Too much happening, but a great roller coaster ride. 8/10
13. Journey's end: Emotion, heartbreak and some punch-the-air moments. 9/10

Wow, so an episode average of 7.7/10! That's pretty good. By my own scoring rules I should go and buy the DVDs, except that I wouldn't have time to watch them these days... Oh well.

So now its ages and ages until the next Doctor Who (OK, there's a Christmas special, but then ages before the next series). But at least they are making a new series of Torchwood after the summer, so that will hopefully hit our screens early in 2009. And for those of you who don't know, it will be a five-parter, continuous story, showing Monday to Friday one week. And will feature Noel Clarke as Mickey as the new boy on the Torchwood team.

Torchwood: S2E10 - S2E13

Oooh, a lack of blogging of late means that I have four episodes of Torchwood to review in one go... here goes. Probably spoilers in here, so tread carefully.

Episode 10: From out of the rain

Hmmm. A genuinely creepy episode. Or rather, the characters and concepts were really creepy, but the actual plot was a bit dull. I wish the character of 'Pearl' had been fleshed out a bit more, what actually did she do at the circus? What exactly was her affinity with water? And Jack was in there somewhere, but we never really found out why. Argh, so many questions, so few answers. A strange mix of interesting and disappointing.

Episode 11: Adrift

It seems that Ruth Jones is in every BBC Wales/BBC Three production at the moment. She's in Gavin & Stacey, was in Little Britain, Nighty Night, Saxondale and now here she is in Torchwood. Playing a character she isn't yet old enough to play (actually, I just checked, she's 42, so I guess she is actually old enough to play the parent of a 17 year old boy, must be me getting old...). She did a good job too.

Quite a moving episode, lots of what passes for emotion in sci-fi and a bit of a moral grey area dilemma, which is always good. Jean Luc Picard would probably have violated the prime directive here too. Everything was good up to the point when we saw part of Jonah's 20 hours a day torment, which was when it went silly. Nevermind, good effort.

Episode 12: Fragments

Four explosions (how did Capt John know that they'd split up and Gwen wouldn't be there?) result in four members of the team having life-flashing-before-their-eyes moments. Except only those bits of their life when they joined Torchwood. So finally we get the story of how Jack joined Torchwood. Good. And I suppose learning how the others joined was vaguely interesting too. But the Ianto story was just silly and is rewriting history, because he didn't have an interesting character in Series 1, so how come he had an interesting character before Series 1?

Episode 13: Exit wounds

And so it ends. In most end of season sci-fi episodes you need explosions, plot twists, the return of characters from earlier in the series and the unexpected writing out of a recurring character. Usually the entire world is in danger, or possibly just Cardiff if your budget doesn't stretch to the world. So nothing greatly unexpected here. I've been waiting for them to finally kill off Owen since he became undead about 5 episodes ago, so they finally did it. Good. It would have just got too annoying if they hadn't.

And now the yo-yo character of Captain John. He's good, he's bad, he kills Jack, he loves Jack, oh I don't care anymore. Please don't bring him back for Series 3, if there is a Series 3.

Now let me get this straight, Jack was buried about 6 or 10 feet down in the soil for 2000 years. During that time presumably he died quite a lot of times. But how come he couldn't manage to dig himself up even just an inch each time? Surely in 2000 years he'd have managed to get out? Didn't quite ring true... for a given sci-fi value of true, that is.

And finally the bad guy. 'Gray' is such a bad name for a character. How did they come up with that one? And I just didn't buy it. Sorry, but the explosions and mayhem were good, Gwen being a hero was good, the deaths of major characters were good, the Toshiko from beyond the grave bit was good, but the basic underlying plot was pretty rubbish. I suppose on balance that comes out as better than average, but it still disappointed.

Doctor Who next though...

Torchwood: S2E8 'A day in the death' & S2E9 'Something borrowed'

I watched both the BBC2 and BBC3 episodes, back to back, on Wednesday. So here are my thoughts on both. There's probably spoilers in here, so go carefully.

Episode 8: A day in the death

Life is worth living, even if you're dead. That seemed to be the message of this episode. I'm not sure how long they can sustain this Owen is dead plot. If he doesn't regenerate, can't eat and can't have sex, I'm not sure he'll stay a useful character for very long. But this episode was quite good. I enjoyed it at the time, although now I'm finding it hard to remember what actually happened. It was more character centred than plot centred, but was entertaining enough.

Episode 9: Something Borrowed

I liked this one too. This was one of those 'only in Torchwood' episodes. Humour, emotion, action and Nerys Hughes as a battle axe mother in law and as a violent shape-shifting alien...

The amnesia drug is too handy a plot device though.

Torchwood: S2E7 'Dead man walking'

Given the title of the episode and the content of this trailer, its kind of clear what is going to happen in this episode, but if you haven't seen it and you don't want to know, do not read below the video clip as there will be spoilers...

OK. So Owen died last week. But when has death ever stopped a character returning in sci-fi? They bring Owen back, but he's not alive as such (cue jokes about lack of bodily functions and the normal things that happen to a body after death) and something is taking over his body.

Anyone else reminded of the two parter ('The Impossible Planet' and 'The Satan Pit') from series two of the new Doctor Who? Must be just me then.

And so, when 'Death' is revealed we get into very dodgy CGI territory. And what happened when it all went black? Owen went to 100% 'something else', the black CGI came out of him, everything went black and then it seems we're missing at least one scene. How is Owen still standing? If he was 100% something else and it came out of him, surely that means he's now 0% anything, and certainly wouldn't be expected to be up and walking about. Why does Jack appear to wake up in the car at the hospital? How did they get there? Either this is bad plotting or really bad editing. What happened?

And the final battle between Owen and 'Death' was just mince, wasn't it?

And going by the preview, Owen is still neither alive nor dead next week. Do I care?

Killing off main characters is often good for a series. Instantly bringing them back undoes all the good. Unless of course, they're going to do the double whammy and kill off someone else, and then not bring them back. We'll see.

But I think this is the low point of this series so far. Next.

---

Oh, but who was the tarot girl? Do we get a story involving her in the future? I'm a little bit intrigued there.

Torchwood: S2E6 'Reset'

Martha Jones guest stars, Jim Robinson from Neighbours guest stars, lots of people die and something sinister is going on in the Cardiff area.

Beware, there will be spoilers below.

First things first, its nice to see Martha in Torchwood, but her realtionship with Jack with the Doctor not there was odd. I think they managed to convey that someting was missing between the two of them, and there was a slight awkwardness. Or that could have been a slightly clumsy script?

Given that Gwen, Ianto, Tosh and Owen still have very little clue as to who Jack is, where he's from and what he's done in his own personal past (even though much of that was in the future), I'm surprised that there wasn't more effort on the part of the Torchwood team to find out about Jack through Martha. Maybe that'll come in weeks to come. The moment of bonding between Gwen and Martha was good.

Nice to see the culmination of the Tosh and Owen thing that has been building for a few weeks, even though it ends in tragedy. But of course, we now see that they were setting that up.

So the plot? Well it was OK. Nothing remarkable, not terrible, not great. But, of course, it was just the backdrop for the two events that they wanted to write in this week. Enter Dr Jones, exit Dr Harper.

Clearly Russell T. and the production team have been watching some of the big action/sci-fi shows like 24, Lost and Heroes. They've learned that you can kill off major characters and keep going. indeed, that killing off major characters can sometimes enhance a show. Perhaps that's why the show has been made to feel much more of an 'ensemble' piece over the past 5 episodes.

In fact, for most of the episode I was expecting it was going to be Martha who was going to die. Not on the basis of what was happening in the episode, but on the basis of the press coverage of Martha's appearance in Torchwood. She's been everywhere recently mentioning that she's in Torchwood for a bit but that her involvement with Doctor Who isn't over yet, etc. For some reason it reminded me very much of when Alex Fearns character 'Trevor' was written out of Eastenders. For a week or two beforehand he was making TV and magazine appearances and somehowm managed to mention in every one of them that his contract extended for several months more, and then they killed him off suddenly when no-one was expecting it. I thought they were going to do that with Martha. And it was only when Owen saved Martha that I realised that wasn't going to happen and that Owen was the one who was going to die. Somehow a death was inevitable.

And where now? Well, I've recorded episode 7 from BBC3 last night, so may watch it tonight. But does this mean that Martha will be standing in for Owen for a few episodes, or does she just do her guest appearance and leave? Will Torchwood continue as a four-piece or will they have to recruit someone new? That could be interesting... We'll just have to watch and see.

Torchwood: S2E4 'Meat' & S2E5 'Adam'

I've been away for a while, so this is me playing catch up...

Episode 4: Meat

Nice idea for the story. I liked that. Um, but how does the creature actually grow? What does it eat in order to gain weight? Just a little problem for the plot there. But it was reasonably entertaining, even if it did feel like it was about 20 minutes longer than it needed to be.

Episode 5: Adam

Also a nice idea, which started off well but unraveled a bit towards the end. The problem is, however, if Adam changed their (long term) memories, how could taking a 2 day amnesia pill restore things to the way they were before?

So two episodes with interesting ideas, but both would have benefited from a bit more thinking the problem through before finalising the plot.

And Martha Jones is in it next week (unless you've already watched it on BBC3, which I haven't)

Torchwood: S2E3: To the last man

Delayed review of last week's Torchwood episode...

I think this was one of those episodes which shows just what Torchwood is supposed to be. Creepy stuff going on in Cardiff, a bit of sci-fi technobabble, a reasonably believable and touching human element and, predictably, more gay snogging. Lets take this character by character:

Gwen seems to have (hopefully temporarily) reverted to her 'What's happening Jack?' not very confident and a bit freaked out by weird stuff persona. Here role here was simply to look worried and get scared.

Toshiko, like all characters in this series, seems to swing both ways. The only love interest she had last series was a female alien, but this time around she has fallen for a frozen bloke she only sees once a year. Somehow that was quite believable.

Ianto snogged Jack. Sorry, but I just don't buy that. Obviously, in watching sci-fi, you have to suspend disbelief to a certain extent, but while I can accept the space-time rift in Cardiff allowing folk to walk between 1918 and 2008, I'm not sure I believe that Ianto swings both ways.

And the others were just there to make up the numbers this week.

All in all it was quite good, but with disappointing elements. And Tomorrow's episode throws Gwen & Rhys into the melting pot. Could be fun... I'll let you know what I think.

Torchwood: S2E2: Sleeper

Thankfully this episode was a lot more subtle than the last with no excessive bisexual snogging and no pointless macho fighting.

Actually, I liked this one a lot. Very human for the most part, but when the aliens acted upon their allegedly well thought-out plan of attack, I didn't quite see why two of these well informed aliens would simply become suicide bombers for no particular purpose. In both instances, surely they could have planted their bombs and then moved out of the way before the things exploded?

And we're still trying to give Ianto a character, I see. Good.

---

Oh, and I also watched the 7pm repeat of the first episode. In order to turn the '15 cert' 9pm version into a 'PG' 7pm show, all they did was slightly clean up some of the violence and remove a few lines of dialogue (including the 'murder rehab' line which was the only dialogue that bothered me in the original anyway), but all the snogging and innuendo was still intact. I guess kids these days are used to it...

There's only a few scenes of violence in episode 2 that they'll need to clean up. The violence will still happen, but some of it will simply happen offscreen on the 7pm version.

Torchwood: S2E1: Kiss, kiss, bang, bang

And so Torchwood returns with a bang. Two bangs and two kisses if the title is to be believed. Actually many more of both once you watch the episode...

But was it any good? Well, for the most part I enjoyed it. But once again it did contain (as Marcus put it last time around) "All that I dislike about Russell T writ large."

So, in the 21st century, it appears that all the cool people are sexually ambiguous and are quite prepared to swing either way when flirted with. Even Ianto. Sex and money are the only two reasons for doing anything. And life is cheap. I really disliked the throwaway comment about murder rehab - that tarnished the character of Captain Jack more than almost anything else, in my opinion.

So what's new? Well, it still looks like Angel - even more so now that it has James Masters in it as another 'Captain' - but with a BBC budget, so the car chase scenes looked really cheaply done. The script was written so that all the characters were reintroduced - several times, just in case you missed the first character summary. And everything was bold and in-yer-face. There was no room for subtlety here. But Ianto has a character now and Gwen has stepped out of her 'what's happening Jack?' insecure persona and into a much more confident and, hopefully, interesting character. Actually, the only thing that didn't ring true about Gwen was that she was still with Rhys. The others were much the same as before.

(At one point, when my wife asked something, I referred to Owen as 'the ugly one' as I have always thought he was particularly unattractive and am always surprised when he is given stories where he picks up women with ease. To my surprise, my wife said he was 'normal looking' and actually ranked him as better looking than 'cheekbones' Masters - who I know has a rather large female fanbase. Oh well, it just goes to demonstrate my opinion that men and women have very different ideas of what is attractive to the other sex.)

And so we come to Captain John. Not the most inspired character name they could have chosen, and when he appeared it seemed to me that the Adam Ant style white stripe across his nose was missing.

So he has a history with Captain Jack. They kiss, they fight, its all very macho. Clearly they have a lust/hate relationship and Jack doesn't trust him at all. And yet he does trust him and allows the team to walk straight into a trap because of this. But although he's clearly in some future episodes, I assume at least we've got all the Jack/John snogging over and done with.

Torchwood is back. Hopefully we'll get a wee bit more subtlety in future episodes and characters that aren't just caricatures. But I am interested to see what happens next and what happens when Martha turns up, so I'll be watching.

I'm also intrigued as to how they're going to make that episode child friendly enough for the 7pm showing for younger Doctor Who fans. I'd have thought they'd have to chop a full 10 minutes out of that one...

Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords

Season 1 of 'NuHu' (as true 'Whovians' seem to be calling it these days) ended with a climactic battle and a regeneration. Season 2 ended with a climactic battle and the writing out of the companion. And now season 3 comes to an end.

Climactic battle? Averted.
Writing out of companion? Could be.
Regeneration? No. Whew.

But the classic sci-fi homages still came on thick and fast: Last week we noted that we had an indestructible captain & a cloudbase (Captain Scarlet) and spherical flying robot things (Terrahawks, the torture droid in Star Wars or possibly 'Colin' from Mostly Harmless), this week we got loads of them: Flash Gordon (Ming's ring), Return of the Jedi (Vader's pyre), Lord of the Rings ("my preciousss") and Superman the Movie (earth spinning backwards). Probably others I missed too.

However, this was not a great episode. Exciting things happened in parts, but quite dull things happened in other bits. I know they felt they had to have a totally impossible situation for the Doctor to overcome, but I wasn't convinced by the way it was resolved.

And Captain Jack was just there to be shot at. He wasn't actually required for the story in any way. Nice twist with him at the end though.

But the writers forgot something. When we first met this regenerated Doctor in 'The Christmas Invasion', we found out what kind of person he was. He was a 'no second chances' kind of person. He gave the Sycorax leader one chance to live, but when the Sycorax tried to fight a second time he (the Doctor) let him fall to his death with no regrets.

Two series on and he seems to have changed. Here he's prepared to give the Master as many chances as he wants, it seems.

So the best season of 'NuHu' so far comes to a close with a slight disappointment. The finale was interesting without being gripping, not as emotional as it was trying to be and a bit slap-dash in the way it tied up all the characters' storylines.

But, I'm looking forward to Torchwood in October, the Christmas special (featuring Kylie - yay!) and the next series in 2008. Even if the new companion is to be Donna as played by Catherine Tate (hmmmm?).

Torchwood: Series 1

So series 1 of Torchwood is over. Started off good, got better, got worse, was OK for a while then got quite good towards the end. You can read all my episode reviews here:

1. Everything changes: 7/10 (perhaps more)
   
2. Day one: 7/10
   
3. Ghost machine: 9/10 (series high point)
   
4. Cyberwoman: 8/10
5. Small worlds: 6/10
6. Countrycide: 4/10 (series low point)
7. Greeks bearing gifts: 6/10
8. They keep killing Susie: 6/10
9. Random shoes: 7/10
10. Out of time: 5/10
11. Combat: 7/10
    
12. Captain Jack Harkness: 7/10 (perhaps more)
    
13. End of days: 7/10

So on average, the series scores 6.6/10 (perhaps slightly more), which by my personal ratings scale means that the whole thing is probably worth a second viewing, but not worth buying on DVD.

Oddly enough, the DVD releases are arranged in such a way that you can buy two out of the three DVDs and miss most of the dull episodes. DVD set 1 (out now) has the first 5 episodes (average rating 7.4/10 = possibly worth buying), DVD set 2 has the next 4 (not even worth a second viewing) and DVD set 3 has the final 4 episodes (worth a second viewing). I'll probably not buy any of these though, I rarely find time to watch things multiple times these days.

But it has kept me reasonably entertained over the past 11 weeks (Episodes 1 & 2 were shown on the same night, as were Episodes 12 & 13) and I'll certainly be tuning in again in October. But now I can get back to watching crappy US sci-fi for a while until Doctor Who starts in the Spring...

Torchwood: Episode 13 - 'End of Days'

Nice doggy. Sit!

Have we not seen the end of the world like this before?

It's the usual sci-fi take on the devil / Abaddon / etc. - the old bible stories got it all wrong, he's not some supernatural being, he's just a big, bad, powerful, very old alien who's been imprisoned somewhere and then gets let out. (Hang on, did we not just have this kind of story in Doctor Who, not just in the recent Christmas episode, but also in 'The Satan Pit' back in the Spring?)

Oh, and while we're at it, lets use some more biblical imagery and have the lead bloke die heroically (defeating the devil, no less), then be resurrected three days later, to be found first by a mourning woman, then to reveal himself to his followers, including the one who betrayed him - who he forgives.

A bit predicatable really, but reasonably entertaining. The Abaddon FX were a bit ropey but you kind of expect that on a BBC budget. And we still have lots of questions about Captain Jack... perhaps some of them will be answered in the new series of Doctor Who, perhaps we'll have to wait for Torchwood season two (which has been given the go ahead - it is the most popular programme on BBC3 after all and has the highest ever viewing figures for any non-sport programme on a digital channel).

So all in all I'd still rate it 7/10.

Torchwood: Episode 12 - 'Captain Jack Harkness'

The time rift opens up and Jack and Toshiko find themselves in 1941. They meet the real Captain Jack Harkness and it turns out that Jack isn't really called Jack after all...

I quite liked this one and will happily watch it a second time when the series is repeated in the future. We find out more about Jack, whilst still having lots of questions about him.

The time travelling is handled nicely, and fairly subtly (I was reminded of the novel 'Time and Again' rather than other, more flashy, time travel stories), and the period setting is good. The caretaker was suitably creepy and the interplay between Ianto (who verged towards being 3D) and Owen was good. Gwen, however, returned to her quivering-lip, 'what's happening Jack?' persona.

Nicely engaging story and more complete than I was expecting given that it was presented as being the first half of a two-part season finale. 7/10.

Torchwood: Episode 11 - 'Combat'

Good looking bloke isn't he?

This was a quite interesting episode, better than most so far. For the first half of the episode I really didn't know what was going on and although I did figure it out (the episode title should have been a big clue, had I taken note of it) before the events unfolded on the screen, it was still good to watch.

Good character development for Owen, Gwen and Rhys, although Ianto is still totally 2D. 7/10 (sorry Dave).

Teaser for next week's episode is intriguing too.

Torchwood: Episode 10 - 'Out of Time'

A plane takes off in 1953. Due to some poorly explained phenomenon it lands, half an hour later, in 2006. Lots of things in 2006 are different to how things were in 1953. Other things are different too. And other things. One of the three time travellers can't cope. One is indifferent and just wants to fly or have sex, but preferably fly. The third takes a couple of days but gets used to 2006 quite well. Um. That's about it.

Not really much plot here. No twists of significance (Owen falling in love doesn't count) and not much character development, although I fully expect Rhys to chuck Gwen before the next three episodes are out.

Could have been a lot more interesting. Only 5/10 (sorry Dave, I've started so I'll finish...).

Torchwood: Episode 9 - 'Random Shoes'

Another odd one this, but I quite liked it. Clearly the writer has read Douglas Adams's 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency', but as every SF fan should have read that, this is OK.

Once again this episode focuses for the most part on one of the main characters, in this instance Gwen, although the story is told from the point of view of a deceased geek.

The plot slowly unfolded, revealing exactly what did happen in the run up to the death of the narrator. It was never truly gripping, but interesting enough to hold my attention.

My only real gripe about it is a personal one. In the story, Gwen goes to a talk at Aberystwyth University, where I was a member of staff for 4 years. Except that she doesn't - clearly the budget wasn't big enough to allow for the three hour drive from Cardiff to Aber, so the talk takes place in a big museum type place which I have certainly never seen in Aber. But apart from that, it was all fine.

7/10 - I might well watch this one again on a rerun someday.

Torchwood: Episode 8 - 'They keep killing Suzie'

A bit of an odd one this. The plot kept twisting and twisting so that it ended up in a completely different place from where you would have expected. This is a good thing. But it wasn't hugely gripping at any point.

Possible spoilers below...

This episode was really trying to add some continuity to the series, continuing the story of Susie which was started in the first episode. Therefore it seemed quite odd that there was little continuity, with regard to Toshiko's arc or the Owen/Gwen affair, from last week's episode. Also, it was never explained why Jack couldn't use the gauntlet, but Gwen could.

But having said that, it was interesting and kept my attention for the duration. 6/10.

Torchwood: Episode 7 - 'Greeks bearing gifts'

I've always had a soft spot for Daniela Denby-Ashe (pictured), so an episode of Torchwood featuring her as a sexy lesbian alien should be something I'd like, right?

Well, it was quite good. Better than last week, but not as good as the first few.

This week the story was seen, almost exclusively, from Toshiko's point of view. In other words, this week we are 'fleshing out' her character. Until the end of the episode, all the other regulars stay very much on the sidelines as Toshiko gains the ability to hear people's thoughts and finds out what they think about her.

Once again, Torchwood tried too hard to prove itself as an 'adult' show - the lesbian kissing was fairly irrelevant to the plot and there was quite a lot of unnecessary 'adult' content as we listened to the thoughts of everyone who walked near to Toshiko.

But, leaving that aside, it was a fairly typical mid-season sci-fi episode plot, which could have been modified slightly to fit into almost any sci-fi show. Certainly it felt like an episode of Stargate SG1 (albeit one with added lesbian snogs). However, it was a fairly self-consistent plot, contained a good bit of character development (except Ianto, who is back to being two-dimensional) and did keep you wondering how things were going to end up. So while I won't be watching that episode again on a rerun, it was reasonably entertaining on first viewing.

6/10

Torchwood: Episode 6 - 'Countrycide'

Oh dear. Torchwood has gone all X-files on us. I suppose the run of quality just couldn't last. Hey ho.

It wasn't a bad episode. I just felt I'd seen it somewhere before, set in America, with Mulder & Scully. I actually can't remember a specific X-files episode that this was like, but it wouldn't have felt out of place in that series.

To begin with the location, the creepiness, the unknown terror, etc. was all quite well done. The relationships between characters were developed. It was a good start. But...

Why was it that the 'unseen aliens' moved extremely rapidly and precisely early in the episode, but merely moved at the same speed as normal people when we could actually see them, later in the episode?

Why 'once every ten years'? This was never given any reasonable explanation.

And the 'Captain Jack saves the day' scene was just silly and (even in the context of a sci-fi show) unbelievable. I'd expect that sort of rescue in a Stallone or Arnie film, but not here. It felt as if the writers had written the plot into a corner they couldn't get out of and had to resort to cliche to get out.

So all in all: good start, interesting character development, poor plot resolution, too many unexplained gaps: 5/10

---

Actually, the more I reflect on it, the more problems I have with that episode.

Spoilers below! Don't read on if you haven't seen the episode...

Given what we know about the 'unseen aliens' by the end of the episode, the first couple of bodies that were discovered were totally out of character. The first body was stripped of skin and internal organs, but still had meat on it. The second body was partially disected, but looked much as if it had been eaten where it lay. But later on we discover that the people are being butchered for meat and stored in a fridge. Thus the first couple of bodies don't fit at all with what the 'baddies' were actually doing.

The episode started off quite well, but really went downhill. I might have to revise my score to only 4/10!

Torchwood: Episode 5 - 'Small worlds'

Hmmm. The fairy episode. Or perhaps I should say 'faerie'?

In this episode we get a bit of back story about Captain Jack, but it provided more questions than answers. He clearly hadn't aged between 1909 and 'the war' (presumably WWII). And we know (from Doctor Who) that he was a kind of rogue time-agent during the war. But we need to know more!

Anyway, the plot was reasonably interesting although, having established early on that the faeries could control 'the elements' (i.e. earth, air, fire & water) and the first death was due to suffocation (control of air) and the second due to drowning (control of water), I was a bit disappointed that the death at the barbecue scene didn't involve control of fire in any way.

But there was a nice amount of moodiness here and they used the classic 'creepy kid' (and 'creepy kid' background music) to good effect. Its certainly handy (from a budget point of view) when your paranormal baddies are mostly invisible.

At the start of the episode I thought we were in 'X-Files' territory, but I'm not sure the X-files could have pulled this plot off.

So anyway, it was an interesting story with some nice moments, but possibly not as good as the previous two episodes - but then they were excellent.

I'd give it 6/10 - good, but not worth watching again.

And one thing struck me from the trailer for next week's episode. I'm getting a little fed up with Gwen asking Jack for explanations of every unusual occurrence. Its getting a bit like the stereotypical 'wots goin' on?' in Eastenders.