I find it hard to believe that a technology which allows them to take over the minds of every child on earth and to release a deadly gas within minutes of their being given an ultimatum doesn’t have the the knowledge/ability to do what I asked.
They didn’t want to just come and steal kids, they wanted to negotiate a deal. They needed to revisit every few decades and grab some more, so they couldn’t just snatch them.
No, I think they DID just want to come and steal kids. They set up a pretense of diplomatic negotiations, set up their stall, and then basically pulled a gun on their hosts. I don’t remember them offering anything in return, like they did in 1965.
It wasn’t a deal, it was a mugging.
1965 could have been a mugging, too. We don’t get many details about that. They could have been threatening to release that flu virus, in addition to providing the vaccine or antidote.
Well I have sat back and waited, los of positive reviews, so i thought I’d better keep quiet.
…but…
I thought it was rubbish, on so many levels, seriously unlikely plotlines, too many differant arcs, subplots running into the sand, in fact some of those subplots pretty much took over the show.
It took far far far too long to actually make the main plotline known, you had some idea something was ‘not nice’ but to be honest, ‘not nice’ and true horror are very differant things.
Result is that the various subplots moved up into undue prominence, the whole thing wandered around aimlessly for the first two and a half episides.
Some will say this was to build up tension, gradual creeping up, but actually it was irritating, boring and frustrating.
To my mind this was a very poor execution indeed, and I’m afraid that some of the mild flaws in the latest Dr Who series were given a huge outing, in th eliteral sense in one case.
It isn’t ever popular to go against the crowd, but here I am and I say the show was rubbish, I will not go along with the flow, I will be objective and critical.
Unbelievable, overdrawn, mixed up priorities and excrutiatingly stretched out critical moments where I wanted to say ‘Oh bloody well get on with it and fucking explode’
Well that’s all well and good, but objectively you are wrong and must now be shunned. 
Sorry to zombify this thread, but as I just watched it I had the exact same thought with the very same instrument. I was so furious watching that scene I thought pick up thet phone and beat him to death.
Great series. I found most of Torchwood in the past to be meh to bad, but watched anyway but this seres is what the show should have been.
Indeed they were, and had selected Africa as the target IIRC. Jack learned this while in the Land Rover.
I wish they hadn’t done the cliched “Poochie” ending.
I love how we finally got to see the dark side of Jack having to carry some questionable moral judgements through eternity, instead of just swaggering and mugging through the conflicts.
On the subject of flus, I wonder if the mention of the 1918 outbreak was to suggest the 456 had a hand in that as well.
Frobisher killing the PM would have changed nothing. He’d have been arrested and his kids taken away anyway. And there’s no guarantee that Harriet Jones would have stopped the tribute-it’s quite possibly there would have been some kind of coup from the “better a wound now than death later” crowd. If I KNEW, knew that the aliens were never gonna come back, I’d have given them the kids. There’s no way to assume that we can fight them off and win. It was really an unwinnable choice if not for Jack.
The first point bothers me more than the second. It really pissed me off that the gov’t went ahead and built the cage to the 456’s specs without asking what it was for, or building in any sort of mechanism that would give them some leverage over the 456 that came to “negotiate.”
Overall, I liked it, but there were a ton of plot holes. Like Jack declaring war on the 456, and then being caught off guard when the 456 started killing people. What the fuck was he expecting?
Or the government being so worried about people finding out what happened in '65 that they destroyed the Torchwood hub and all the technology that would’ve given them a leg up in dealing with the 456. It was 44 years ago! Most of the people who made the decision to turn over the 12 kids are probably dead. Certainly they’re not the ones in power anymore. Why is the current government so worried about maintaining the image of people who were in power 44 years ago?
ETA: I hope in those six months we skipped between Jack killing his grandson and the last scene, that Jack committed suicide at least once a day. I understand that killing his grandson was the best, the only choice he had, but he needs to do penance for it IMO. Since he can’t kill himself permanently, he should spend at least a few months just blowing his brains out over and over.
Finally saw the whole 5 part series. Brilliant! To me, this is what Sci-Fi is supposed to be (sorry if anyone hates that term). Actually thought provoking, societal commentary. While I have enjoyed the previous seasons of Torchwood, this one definitely took the cake.
While I know I’ll get jumped on by a bunch of right-wingers or anti-anti-vaccination crusaders here on the dope, but I have to say it anyways…
I don’t think that this series could have been produced by a major American broadcast network - and especially not a public funded one. Forced vaccinations - a front for an evil plot… and run by the government! With our government-friendly corporate controlled media in the US, it would never get into the production phase in the first place. Go BBC.
I just watched it across the last few nights myself, akrako1. If Torchwood had been that good before then I might have kept watching it. That was the best television I’ve seen this year.
And you really think that the networks won’t produce a show where the government is evil? Seriously? That’s the default state for government in the mass media. If a government agent shows up on television or in the movies then nine times out of ten they’re up to something shadowy and evil. It’s usually more of a mustache twirling, melodramatic type of evil than deciding to sacrifice “excess population” but positive portrayals are the rare exception.
it’s not as much that “governments are evil”, but that the US seems to be moving more towards mandatory vaccinations, with a complicit media seemingly conditioning the public by fermenting panic and hysteria over the flu (and that’s really a whole different discussion, and one I don’t want to start here, certainly not in this thread). Let’s just say “some feel”, and not worry if you agree with them. Well, some people opposed to the US government vaccination schedule are starting to worry more and more that the government will come in, and (forcibly) vaccinate their children while in school. With the current hysteria about epi- and pandemics, it’s not that crazy a scenario. A lot of these folks have religious objections to vaccinations. What would happen on the day of vaccination for the school, if a kid called home and the parent came to remove the child from line, before they were vaccinated? Would they be restrained by school/city/fed/health security? These are the kinds of questions/hypotheses that I felt were hit upon, even just tangentially, during the Torchwood, and some of why I consider it some evocative Sci-fi.
Forgetting the question of “forced vaccinations”, I thought the government meeting where they were discussing how they could deliver enough “units” was reminiscent of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi leadership discussed what to do with European Jews. And to be honest, I can’t see the government as evil in this. As far as they could tell, their backs were against the wall. They were stupid in trying to eliminate the Torchwood team instead of asking for their assistance. And how was the government planning to explain the disappearance of all of those children to the public?
Jack is forever. The only thing repeated suicides will give him are brief moments of unconscious before he reanimates. He will spend billions and billions of years reliving that moment. He will never escape Hell. How a 4th series is going to work after this? Is Jack really just going to come back or will Gwen rebuild Torchwood while Rhys stays home with the kid? Even those recording never become public the world won’t resemble ours.
Was anyone else annoyed at how they glossed over how the other countries handled the tribute? Did nobody say “We’re not handing over a single one of our kids until every British child is sacrificed”?
This is pretty funny sarcasm akrako - US media has lies about “unsafe vaccines” broadcast all the time. It’s a growth industry… and makes tons of money for people immoral enough not to care about children’s health.
What about Captain John Hart picking up the pieces? James Marsters did a fantastic baddie-to-hero transition as Spike on Buffy; it would seem only natural to let him do it again.
If I recall They said they would claim the vaccinations were the alien’s idea and they had double crossed the government hence the need for a civil servant to sacrifice their own children to make it look as if the government, too was a victim of the treachery of the Aliens.