OK, I’ve finally gotten around to netflix-ing the series “Torchwood.” I’m almost through the first season (or “series.”) My general opinion is that, much like “Nu Who” it is a generally intriguing, engaging show that occasionally gets sloppy & contrived. But I’m liking it for the most part, and do like that it has a darker, grittier tone than “Doctor Who.”
One running theme that I think is very bold is the fact that there is no afterlife. In the very first scene of ep.1, we get a slain character who is momentarily ressurected stating that there is “nothing. It’s just black.” As in, once you’re dead - there’s no heaven, hell, or afterlife of any kind. When your body dies, it’s simply a machine that gets deactivated. That, I thought, was a much more daring statement than all the constant randy bisexual hanky-panky. No American TV show that I can recall seeing ever dealt with the subject of life-after-death without solidly stating that there is an afterlife.
But that’s when the sloppy comes in. Ep. 1, we are told that there’s no afterlife. Then in ep. 7, deceased “Torchwood” member Suzie gets resurrected and at first seems to confirm the previous “resurrectee’s” experience - she died, and BLINK. Nothing, just blackness, until Gwen switched her back on. Then all of a sudden, she’s talking about “something being out there in the dark.” Huh? If there’s no afterlife, then what’s she talking about? Where was she? By the end of the episode, I had begun to surmise that the blackness she described was really Hell (given what’s revealed about her so far, she seems like a despicable person.)
And the very next episode then deals with a “Torchwood” groupie who is already dead at the start of the ep. His “ghost” follows Gwen around and narrates the story. At the end of the ep., everybody gets to see his spirit just as a bright light shines in the sky and he ascends into it. In one big happy Spielberg-style ending, the kids’ ghost tells the viewing audience to go out and appreciate their lives as we see the Earth, indicating that there is a Heaven, or some kind of happy afterlife as well as the 'black nothing with something out there" that Suzie talked about it.
And the very next ep. after that, we get a bunch of trio of folks who have flew through the Cardiff rift in 1953, and wound up in the 21st century. One of them cannot adapt to life in “the future”, and attempts suicide. Captain Jack, trying to talk him out of it, tells him (paraphrasing) “You won’t be reunited with your loved ones. I’ve been dead - once you die, it’s just black. There’s nothing after that.” So now we’re back to “nothing happens after death”? Agh! Make up your minds writers! Is there, or isn’t there an afterlife?
So, I am down to the end of the first season (two episodes to go.) And am wondering - do we get a definitive answer that resolves these very conflicting statements?
And as a small aside, what happened to the Pteradactyl? Did Janto’s cyber-g.f. kill it? I thought it survived that fight, but it appeared since then.