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I’m currently watching Torchwood “Children of Earth” day four. It’s very interesting… but note that spoilers are contained within. So if you haven’t seen it yet, now would be a good time to stop reading ;)

The story so far: the 456 (or four-five-six, the aliens) have demanded 10% of the world’s children. It seems that they’re running some sort of protection racket: give us what we want, or we’ll wipe out your species. What I don’t quite understand is… if they want children so badly, why don’t they just wipe out the population and take them? If they do indeed have the power to wipe out everyone on the planet, why don’t they just do it?

I think they’re bluffing. But we’ll see!

One other thing about Torchwood I forgot to mention the other day which annoyed me. When Gwen was interviewing the doctor who wanted to join Torchwood, he said that one of the reasons he was interested was because of a woman who committed suicide. Apparently she was a devout Christian, and when she found out that aliens were real she couldn’t take it… “science had won”, she said. She realised that her place in the universe was, well, tiny. This annoyed me, because even if there were aliens, that would say nothing about the relationship between science and Christianity. It seemed bizarre – it was just perpetuating the myth that science and religion are in conflict. Lazy writing, in my opinion! Anyway, just a little rant.

I blame all this on Richard Dawkins and the so-called “new atheists”, they have a lot to answer for. Anyway, I’ll stop rambling on about Torchwood and science and stuff ;)

And you know what? I’m actually enjoying it this time! They seem to have finally got the right balance of tension, humour, characters and in general done what Doctor Who has been doing for years. There have been a few minor holes in the story, but generally I’ve been able to overlook them because I’m quite gripped by what’s happening!

It will be interesting to see where this story ends up. For about the first time ever, I’m actually looking forward to watching Torchwood!

The second series of Torchwood finished with a bang (literally) on Friday night. It was pretty standard Torchwood fair – i.e. nothing was explained particularly well – but they did at least do the exit of Tosh and Owen pretty well. I thought Naoko Mori’s performance was fantastic, and Burn Gorman did pretty well too.

It concludes what was, in my eyes, a much better series of Torchwood. I think they’d listened to the criticism from the past series, and tried to adjust the tone accordingly. Although there is still quite a way to go, I have enjoyed watching this series – which is more than I can say for series one, which I found quite a trial at times!

Like someone on the Behind the Sofa blog suggested, if they’d just cut down a bit on the number of episodes it could have been really good.

Anyway, Saturday night saw the return of Doctor Who – and it got off to a great start! I watched a repeat of the Christmas Special with Catherine Tate last Christmas, and I thought then that she would do a good job. If “Partners in Crime” is anything to go by, that’s definitely true! The scene between her and her grandpa was really quite touching, and she has a real chemistry with David Tennant.

And Rose has returned! That was a very mysterious five seconds at the end of the episode – I wonder where it will lead.

The story itself was a fairly typical “first episode of the new season” one, but it was a good laugh and I enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to the next twelve episodes – I’m sure it will be “fantastic”!

I actually thought the newest couple of Torchwood episodes (‘Something Borrowed’ and the one after) were pretty good. (Note: if you haven’t watched the next episode, this may contain spoilers…)

‘Something borrowed’ did have a few moments which made me think “Hmmmm”, but for the most part they kept it pretty interesting all the way through. This could be because I always find “shape-shifter” stories a little intense, possibly because I’m always reminded a little of “The Thing”.

The next episode (in which a bunch of crazy travelling show people who have somehow escaped from film) wasn’t quite as good — i.e., absolutely no explanation of what was happening was given at all — and the suspense wasn’t done quite as well as Something Borrowed, but in general I think they pulled it off.

All in all, I’m glad to see Torchwood return to the more entertaining style of the first part of the series, after the weak previous couple of episodes!

After a couple of weeks of pulling in pretty good, solid episodes (one of them being one of the best episodes I think Torchwood has done – ‘Reset’), they put out ‘Dead Man Walking’. I’m sorry, but — well, it was just poor! The episode just didn’t really make much sense, end-to-end. We also watched the follow-up episode on BBC3, and that’s not so brilliant either, but I’ll come to that in a minute.

‘Dead Man Walking’ was just full of things which I didn’t quite follow:

• Why was Jack so keen to revive Owen? Owen’s been nothing but a git all last season and most of this one. I just can’t see the motivation behind Jack risking life and limb to get the glove.
• Speaking of Jack getting the glove, what was up with that church? It was just kind of bizarre!
• What was going on with the glove anyway? – was it being controlled by ‘Death’ or something? Not exactly sure why it suddenly decided to try and attack people when they were going to inject Owen with something or other.
• Why, at the end of the episode, does Martha go back to her usual self — but Owen still remains undead? Owen remaining ‘undead’ is never really explained (more on that when I’m talking about the next episode).
• The worst thing about the episode, in my opinion, is the whole premise: ‘Death’ is an actual entity? WHAT?!!! I just won’t even bother going on about it – it’s ridiculous. (Oh, another random thing — why did death move so SLOOOOOWWWWWLLLYYY?)

The episode did have its moments, and it was quite tension-making at some points, but I spent more of the time thinking about what was stupid about the episode than actually enjoying it. In other words, it was like a Torchwood episode from last season. I was surprised that it was written by Matt Jones (‘The Impossible Planet’ / ‘The Satan Pit’ from the second season of Doctor Who). Although apparently it was quite heavily re-written (as were those episodes) so perhaps I’m doing Matt Jones a disservice.

I will talk about the next Torchwood episode now, but I just want to warn you that this may contain spoilers (if you haven’t already seen it).

It was a bit better than ‘Dead Man Walking’, but didn’t really hit the spot. There were still a few too many things — mainly about Owen — which still didn’t make sense: they draw attention to the fact that he doesn’t actually breathe, but then don’t answer the question: how the heck does he actually TALK then? I think I would have shied away from the whole ‘Owen being dead’ thing completely and just had his life come back after he ‘defeated Death’… it would have made more sense.

Still, the episode’s not all bad – Richard Briers is pretty good, and the episode does have quite a nice touch with Owen and the suicidal woman (if you haven’t watched it, that will sound strange…it’s not really). But it’s just overshadowed with me thinking “What??” every time they make reference to Owen being dead.

Aaaaanyway, I’d better stop ranting now!

I haven’t mentioned much about Torchwood recently – I just wanted to catch up on the past couple of episodes! I thought last week’s episode (“To the Last Man”) was really good. It was what Torchwood does best: looks at characters and how the rift actually affects people, rather than some gung-ho all-guns-blazing kind of thing.

This week’s episode “Meat” was pretty good as well, although wasn’t quite up to last week’s standard. About half-way through I felt like they were trying so hard to create drama, but I just couldn’t quite feel it! Nevertheless, I did quite enjoy it – I think I’m beginning to sympathise with the characters a bit more, which means I don’t worry about the plot holes so much. Although I’m still not sure about them all being randy 100% of the time – the show would be a lot better still without all the sexual tension! Relationships yes, sex no. Or at least, not the way they’ve been portraying it in Torchwood, no.

Ah well, let’s just hope that Torchwood keeps getting better and better, if current trends continue the rest of the series is set to be pretty good!

Ok, I admit it: I enjoyed this week’s episode of Torchwood. I think it was an interesting idea, and it certainly had more of the ‘human element’ than Torchwood of last year (namely, I actually empathised with some of the characters!).

There were a few problems with it:

• Although Torchwood is outside the government / police, why do they have the power to hold anybody just on a whim? All that had happened was somebody got stabbed. What if (for example) there had been an invisible alien who did the stabbing? Ok, seems a bit ridiculous, but it’s possible. Cap’n Jack just leapt in and put that device on the woman with no definite proof – in my opinion, that was an incredible foolish and rash decision. But hey, we’re not really used to seeing good decisions from this team, so let’s just leave it and move on!
• No explanation was given as to why the Weevil cowered in front of her. Although this may be part of a story arc (the whole ‘already here’ line suggests they may make a comeback this series).
• So these… um, whatever you call them… are supposed to be data gatherers. How did they find out about the ten nukes, if it was “highly, highly, highly top-secret classified information”? Some form of hacking, I guess, but it’s not really explained.
• Speaking of the ten nukes — storing ten nuclear warheads in a disused mine shaft? That sounds like it comes from “Dodgy Film and Television Cliches 101″. Oh, and I must have missed the part where the explained why these people were going to blow up the nukes, seemed a bit strange to me?!
• Finally — what the heck is going on with Ianto’s character?!!! He’s gone from being mysterious (first part of series one) to wuss (second half of series one) to comedian!!! It’s as if the Torchwood writers don’t really know what to do with his character… completely bizarre.

Anyway, despite all of the above, I did enjoy the episode… why? Because they’re not taking it as seriously anymore. It’s no longer “Torchwood… Bitch”, it’s more a case of “Torchwood… Yeah, it is a bit silly, isn’t it?” They’ve lightened up the tone, and it’s working. I don’t care about plotholes so much anymore.

I think that’s enough about Torchwood for the time being at least!

As some of you may know, I have a little bit of a history with Torchwood… suffice it to say, I thought the last series was a bit rubbish. If I was grading it as a school piece, I would probably put: “Could try harder” (Of course, that’s not really a grade, but still…) — it showed promise, but never realised its potential.

Yesterday’s episode, I think, showed a little more of that potential. The main thing that I had a problem with last year was the series took itself way too seriously. I can forgive a lot of things if it’s done slightly tongue-in-cheek, i.e. “we know there are plotholes and inconsistencies – but it’s just a bit of a laugh, isn’t it?” Torchwood last year was just depressing. Yesterday’s episode showed a good deal more of a sense of humour, and I actually felt like I cared about the characters (but just a bit).

OK, there were a few plotholes, and not everything made sense (it was a Chris Chibnall episode, after all). And yes, some of the dialogue was a little wooden and contrived (it was a Chris Chibnall episode, after all). And the whole gay theme just seems to me like they’re actually trying to be an ‘adult’ show by shoe-horning in a few ‘adult’ themes rather than because there’s a particular point to make there, or what have you (it was a Chris Chibn… actually, to be honest I can’t really blame that one on him).

But I could forgive all that because, for those 50 minutes, I did actually quite enjoy it. But ssssh — don’t tell anybody!