This results in a handful of scenes that worked very well, particularly when the Prime Minister Green (Nicholas Farrell) and his cabinet convene to discuss ways to discretely handover a sizeable amount of children the country would least miss (i.e. the lower classes.) A fine pastiche of how self-serving civil servants have a failure to communicate and only really care about thinking up a solution that causes them the least personal torment, and something they can pass the buck on afterwards.
It's quickly decided that school league tables will decide which "rejects" will be taken out of classes, under the cover-story of receiving inoculations to stop their chanting, while actually being sacrificed to the aliens. It's an uncomfortable scene of pragmatic elitism, recorded by spy Lois (Cush Jumbo) and beamed directly to Hub2, where Torchwood are effectively amassing evidence to blackmail the PM into allowing Jack (John Barrowman) to confront the 456.
Jack himself is hoping to make amends for the time he arranged the abduction of Scottish orphans in 1965, particularly now rejected child Clement (Paul Copley) has recognized him as such, and his teammates are disappointed he was complicit in the government's deal (twelve children in exchange for an antivirus to beat a pandemic.) In one of the episode's best scenes, a cameraman is allowed inside the 456's gas-chamber and the fate of those original abductees is revealed, as we find one little boy hooked up the three-headed alien as some kind of "battery". It was a ghoulish moment that underlined the 456's monstrous nature, even if that shocking reveal was almost immediately smoothed over by the 456's insistence the children feel no pain.
Really, it's just a same Children Of Earth has struggled to give Torchwood themselves much to do since "Day Two", as the team are once again stuck inside a warehouse watching events unfold on a laptop -- little more than audience members themselves. Then, just when Johnson's (Liz May Brice) hit squad arrive to take them out, Gwen (Eve Myles) plays the blackmail card with the evidence they've gathered and forces the PM to let Jack and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) waltz into Thames House and up to Floor 13.
Only, far from having a masterplan up his sleeve, Jack just tells the 456 that they won't be handing over any kids this time. A noble statement, but one that results in the painful death of twitchy Clement (revealed to have been a "remnant" somehow linked to the aliens all this time -- huh?) and the ill-explained release of a poisonous gas that kills everyone in Thames House -- yes, including Ianto. The final scene found Gwen and a resurrected Jack in a gym full of covered dead bodies, grieving the untimely death of yet another teammate.
It all left me with the awkward feeling that, while it's a wry observation that Torchwood are dullards who triumph through a combination of experience and blind luck, Jack has suddenly become a naïve fool with more blood on his hands than a butcher. I don't agree with how the spineless government were choosing to handle things, but I can understand their quandary (forfeit millions, or allow the death of billions), whereas Jack just swaggered in full of breezy idealism and caused the death of innocent people, including his own boyfriend. I'm beginning to think the concrete cell from "Day Two" really is the best place for this reckless immortal dandy.
Overall, there were some nice themes and political interplay in "Day Three" from writer John Fay, but Children Of Earth has suffered from keeping Torchwood on the periphery of events, often letting them become mere onlookers. The real tension and drama has come from the government officials, so perhaps it was a storytelling mistake to ostracize Torchwood from the inner circle of where the real action has been. It was also frustrating to see Clement killed off unceremoniously, making me wonder what the ultimate point of his character was beyond window-dressing. Of course, I suspect the reason the 456 left him behind in '65 will form the basis of their downfall in "Day Five" tonight. Did Clem have some kind of ailment or deficiency it will be easy to replicate in the world's children, making them unpalatable to the aliens who wish to harvest them? Or will there be a War Of The Worlds-style Achilles Heel for the 456, to be discovered at the eleventh hour?
9 July 2009
BBC1, 9pm
written by: John Fay directed by: Euros Lyn starring: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Lucy Cohu (Alice Carter), Peter Capaldi (John Frobisher), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Liz May Brice (Johnson), Nick Briggs (Rick Yates), Susan Brown (Bridget Spears), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Paul Copley (Clement McDonald), Aimee Davies (Mica Davies), Nicholas Farrell (Brian Green), Gregory Ferguson (Young Clement McDonald), 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)
