"Day Five" split its characters up after the Thames House gas attack, with Jack (John Barrowman) and Lois (Cush Jumbo) jailed in London, while Gwen (Eve Myles) and Rhys (Kai Owen) return to Cardiff to help the late Ianto's family protect their neighourhood's children from the government – who have sent the military to frogmarch riffraff kids out of school and hand them over to the alien 456. To maintain plausibility when 10% of the world's children are abducted, the Prime Minister (Nicholas Farrell) orders Frobisher (Peter Capaldi) to turn his own daughters over to the authorities, as a way to help convince the public that the kids are being taken for mandatory injections to prevent their chanting and to placate any concerns.This leads to the first of a few bleak moments, with Frobisher instead deciding to shoot his wife and kids dead in their bedroom, before committing suicide himself, in a scene hauntingly directed by Euros Lyn – intercut to Frobisher's aide Bridget Spears (Susan Brown) telling Lois how virtuous her boss is despite recent events. It goes without saying that Capaldi is magnificent here; the true star of this five-part series, running rings around all the other actors.
It was also a nice touch to add a further level of monstrousness to the 456 themselves, as they admit to Colonel Oduya (Charles Abomeli) they don't even need the children to sustain their lives – no, they're just intergalactic junkies who get high on the biological chemistry of human adolescent. This mass abduction is the equivalent of a crack-head trying to get a fix, and there's something extremely odious about stoner aliens, isn't there? I guess it's not coincidence the 456 resemble an articulated marijuana plant, either.
Again, it's frustrating that the story doesn't revolve around Torchwood that much, with Gwen stuck corralling children at a council estate while debating whether or not to have an abortion, as Jack sits in his jail cell looking morose about indirectly killing Ianto. Once Frobisher tops himself, the episode threatens to lose all tangible focus. Thankfully, Russell T. Davies' script starts to pull events together, with Jack released and soon hatching a plan to destroy the 456 by creating a "constructive wave" with the help of Mr. Dekker (Ian Gelder) and Johnson (Liz May Brice) – effectively this will turn the children into a deafening sound fed back to the extra-terrestrial addicts. Unfortunately, for his plan to work, Jack knows he must sacrifice one child to transmit the signal, and the only youngster available to him is his own grandson Steven (Bear McCausland)...
Overall, "Day Five" managed to craft enough good moments to compensate for the usual difficulty in believing in the situation being presented. The government's plan felt particularly harebrained, as the way the military went about collecting the children was in no way as efficient and surreptitious as it was intended to be, and it was impossible to see how the government could ever hope to get away with it. The demise of the 456 was also riddled with nitpicks once you reflect on the entire five-part storyline: why didn't they offer humanity a cure for, say, cancer if they were happy to provide us with antivirus in '65? Why did they reject Clem as a child? Why did Clem develop a psychic sense of smell? Why did a mere twelve children sustain them for 44 years, but suddenly they require millions? This must mean there are likewise millions of aliens who wanted a drug fix, so won't they be back for revenge now?
Children Of Earth ended about as effectively as most Torchwood and Doctor Who episodes tend to (with creaking clichés), but it felt mildly anticlimactic because we've patiently waited five days for a big finale that instead felt qite rushed and small-scale. Still, "Day Five" contained enough effective moments to gloss over it problems, primarily in seeing Jack save the day with an act of familial sacrifice his daughter Alice (Lucy Cohu) will probably never forgive him for. The coda to Children Of Earth jumped forward in time six months to find a heavily-pregnant Gwen saying farewell to Jack as he teleports off-world, after he admits he's running away from his problems. Jack's realized he's just a milder form of monster himself, really.
I guess this could mean the end of Torchwood, but something tells me the BBC will commission more after this special's stellar performance in the ratings (averaging just shy of 6 million every weeknight), so it won't be long before Cap'n Jack comes back reinvigorated and keen to revive and re-staff a new Torchwood Hub.What did you think? Was this an effective ending? Did Children Of Earth live up to your expectations? Or did it actually just stretch a decent two-part story to breaking point? Should the Torchwood characters have been more involved and written as more competent people? Did the ending satisfy and leave you desperate for more? Or was it all just another largely predictable mix of enjoyable, ridiculous, mostly dumb sci-fi?
10 July 2009
BBC1, 9pm
written by: Russell T. Davies directed by: Euros Lyn starring: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Lucy Cohu (Alice Carter), Peter Capaldi (John Frobisher), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Liz May Brice (Johnson), Nick Briggs (Rick Yates), Susan Brown (Bridget Spears), Aimee Davies (Mica Davies), Nicholas Farrell (Brian Green), Deborah Finlay (Denise Riley), Ian Gelder (Mr. Dekker), Julia Joyce (Holly Frobisher), Cush Jumbo (Lois Habiba), Rhodri Lewis (Johnny Davies), Ben Lloyd-Holmes (The Operative), Rik Makarem (Dr. Rupesh Patanjali), Hilary MacLean (Anna Frobisher), Bear McCausland (Steven Carter), Colin McFarlane (General Pierce), Sophie Miller (Vanessa), Luke Perry (David Davies), Simon Poland (456 Voice), Rhiannon (Katy Wix) & Madeline Rakic-Platt (Lilly Frobisher)
