I watched the first episode of the new Torchwood series. For the tl;dr crowd and the folks who don’t want spoilers, it has promise but a real judgement must be held until a couple more episodes air.In this discussion, I will assume familiarity with the events of previous Torchwood episodes.
The episode starts with several people not dying. That’s right, the hook is that people didn’t die. One was a convict undergoing lethal injection, another was a victim of a fatal car crash. Given that this is the whole premise of the setup, it is good to get that out of the way immediately. Overlaid on the car crash is a discussion about a mysterious outfit called Torchwood. Thus, we have the bit that gets the new characters (CIA agents) mixed up with Torchwood.
The plot noodles around a bit with Gwen and Rhys eventually finding out about the miracle day (they have been living off the grid). We also have a female CIA agent (Esther) actually meet up with Jack, have a close call with a bomb, and be subjected to retcon. Classic initial contact with Torchwood. Then events she set in motion prior to meeting Jack re-reveal the Torchwood bit to her and she ends up convincing another agent (Rex), the car crash victim, that there is something to it. This leads to events unfolding to the conclusion of the episode where the Torchwood survivors are basically pressganged into service by the CIA.
The final reveal, subtly at first and then blatantly at the end, is that Jack was hurt. And he isn’t healing.
There’s a bit more, with mysterious assassination attempts against both Jack and Gwen, both of which are likely to be a large factor in the overall plot. There is also some gruesome scenes, possibly more gruesome than any in Children of Earth.
Overall, the episode is well done. There are a few minor things that are not quite right. The first is that leathal injections start with an anesthetic (at least as far as I’m aware) for reasons of being humane. It is not clear that this was done in the execution attempt at the start. This is, however, minor, and it makes for a dramatic scene. (It may turn out that the anesthetic simply failed in this case in which case it would not be a glitch.)
The other glitch is of the fridge logic type. When discussing the impact of nobody dying, the global death rate is mentioned as now being a direct addition to the global population. This is, of course, exactly correct if death simply stopped. However, they then go on to discuss the global birth rate and then add that to their implication list. This sounds right on the surface but it has absolutely nothing to do with the overall impact! Think about it – the net population growth worldwide is calculated as “total births – total deaths”. In this scenario, “total births” is not changing, only total deaths. It is unlikely that those who don’t die are going to contribute to a marked increase in birth rate before the impact of no deaths causes real trouble. Thus, the show cites a number of 300,000 or so global deaths. That means the net increase in population increase over the status quo is that 300,000 or so. It is not the 1.5 million or so inferred by adding the global birth rate to the number as that was already factored into the existing world order!
Of course, the precise mechanism for the end of death is not explained, though it is implied to be technological. How, precisely, it could work is a mystery, but given the history of the Doctor Who universe, it is not unprecedented. It is made clear that this is a truly bizarre effect by having a severed and burned head open its eyes and commentary that it is only humans that are affected (otherwise insects would have overrun the planet already – probably a mostly accurate comment). It is outright stated that it must have been directed by some external agency of the extra terrestrial variety.
All in all, it’s a solid start. It’s somewhat heavy on exposition but most of that is necessary to explain how all the characters end up where they are. There are references along the way to the 456 from Children of Earth and the survivors of that story are still dealing with the consequences. As long as the next episode picks up the pace of the story a little bit and lays off on the exposition (which should be basically done now), the next nine episodes will be a wild ride.
If it turns out as expected, I have to admit that the coherent miniseries idea works very well for Torchwood, much better than the monster of the week format, especially given the number of characters and organizations around on Earth that can handle garden variety normal weird occurrences (such as UNIT, Martha Jones, etc.). It makes sense that the Torchwood group would end up dealing with the much more unique events given their unique experience.