Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day Four

The government discusses the request from the 456 for 10% of the World’s children. They decide on a counter offer and offer 1 child for every million people, which would work out to 60 children from the UK alone. The 456 states that this is unacceptable and suddenly the children start chanting again. This time they are chanting numbers which turn out to be differenet in every country this time. However, it soon becomes apparent that the numbers represent 10% of that country’s child population.

The UK government setup a COBRA meeting and Lois manages to get into it along with Frobisher so that Torchwood can be in on the discussions. COBRA starts to try and determine that as they seem to have no choice but to comply how they would choose the 10%. Age? Alphabetically? Second born etc etc etc, until someone decides that the ones that should go should be the underachievers. The ones that don’t do well at school and so Frobisher is asked to come up with a plan to make it happen, but that they want to know what will happen to the children. The 456 invites the cameraman inside the chamber who dons a NBC suit and enters to film the creature. As the camerman gets closer instruments start to detect not two, but three heartbeats in the chamber. The third belongs to one of the children from 1965 who seems to not have aged but also seems to be integral to the 456 creature. It seems they need to children to keep them alive.

The members of Torchwood cannot believe what they are witnessing and start to put together a plan of action. As all the secret meetings have been recorded through the eyes of Lois, Rhys is sent of with a laptop and the damning recordings with instructions to release them to the World if the plan fails. Ianto and Jack head for Thames House to confront the 456 while Lois breaks the news to the Prime Minister that Torchwood have the recordings and so Jack should be allowed access. Gwen in the meantime is located after a call between her and Ianto is traced, but after seeing the recordings even Johnson doesn’t have the heart to attack Gwen and Clem who is still with Torchwood in Hub 2. However, he doesn’t last long as the 456 have sensed his presense and send signals to him the end in his death.

Back in the chamber with the 456 Jack and Ianto confront them and tell them that Earth will not sacrifice its children. The 456 start to repeat over and over that they complied before, referring the event in 1965. When Jack says that this is not negotiable, the 456 release a virus inside Thames House which automatically locks itself down sealing everyone inside. As scenes of panic ensue as people try to leave the building they start falling down dead. The last to go are Ianto and Jack. Ianto dies in Jack’s arms and then Jack dies as well. Again.

Later Gwen makes her way to Thames House and locates their bodies in a make shift morgue. Ianto looks decidedly grey and dead whereas, true to form Jack comes round and sits with Gwen next to Ianto’s body.

Again, day four was an outstanding piece of television which has helped turn this Torchwood series into one of the television events of 2009. There are surely going to be many awards on the horizon for this group of actors and more especially for Russel T. Davies and his writing team. I struggle to see how things could be more tense or dramatic. If the trailers are anything to go by then we are in for even more of the same for the fifth and final day. I can’t wait for Friday night.

Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day Three

Ok, so the team are back together although Jack doesn’t like the tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt he has been forced to wear. Ianto breaks into a huge building which turns out to have once been a holding station for Torchwood but was decommissioned in the 90’s. Essentially, this building which looks a bit like an aircraft hangar is now The Hub version 2. The team pool their resources but they don’t really have much between them. As an ex police officer and because they seem to be being treated as criminals at the moment, Gwen decides that the only way they can get back to being effective is to turn to crime. A few credit cards, a laptop and a porsche boxster later they are up and running again.

Meanwhile, the children have started chanting again but instead of the standard ‘we are coming’ message, it turns into ‘we are here’. This coincides with a column of fire over Thames House in London through which it seems an alien life form has been transported into a specially constructed holding cell complete with special atmosphere that the goverment has been secretly putting together ready for the arrival of an alien species called the 456. This is a reference to the radio frequency they have been using to communicate with Earth. They have been called this ever since their first visit in 1965.

The aliens initially demand to be allowed to talk to everyone on the planet, but Frobisher convinces them that the way things are communicated on Earth is through elected officials (although he isn’t one and has been forced into the position of point man by the Prime Minister). He also convinces the alien representative to help cover up their previous visit in 1965. Frobisher then sets up a committee of representatives from all parts of the globe to be in on the diplomatic negotiations with the aliens.

Lois, the new ‘woman on the inside’ for Torchwood is persuaded to wear a special pair of contact lenses which allows Gwen and Ianto who now also have Clement McDonald in tow (the little boy who ran away from the incident in 1965) to see everything that happens in the room where the negotiations take place. A tranlsation program on a computer can read lips and so they also get everything that is being said when Lois is looking at the speaker. She uses shorthand on a notepad to relate what the alien says in return. Everything seems to be going swimmingly until the alien asks for a gift. All they want is 10% of the World’s children.

At that moment Jack returns to the hub and Clement says that he was there in 1965 when the other children were told to ‘walk into the light’. Jack admits that he was there and that they had made a gift of ten children to the 456.

The tension is rising now in series 3 and as some answers are revealed more questions are being asked. For example, why on Earth would Jack have allowed twelve children to be given away to a bunch of aliens? Anyway, the quality and the storytelling has not diminished and I am really looking forward to tonight’s penultimate episode.

If you missed it, then you can watch Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day Three here

Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day Two

Following the explosion at the hub which has seemingly seen it completely destroyed, leaving a massive crater in the ground, Ianto and Gwen are being pursued by an unknown enemy force who are trying to kill them. Gwen heads home and gets Rhys out of bed in a bid to flee for their lives. They just manage to escape in their car after Gwen shoots out the tyres of pursuing Land Rovers. Gwen determines that their car is traceable and so persuades Rhys to abandon it. They steal away in a lorry packed with potatoes and head for London where Gwen thinks she will be able to find some answers.

Meanwhile Ianto is observing the goings on at the hole in the ground that used to be the hub from the rook of a nearby building. He sees what he suspects bits of Jack’s body taken away in a private ambulance and takes a note of the number plate. After getting hold of a laptop from his sister he traces the ambulance and turns up at the military base where Jack is proving to be not as dead as the numerous bits of him would have you believe. After witnessing his re-generation, Johnson, the woman in charge of the military operation that managed to get to Jack has him locked in a bunker into which she pours what looks like concrete, stating that she may not be able to kill him, but she can at least contain him.

Gwen and Rhys try to get in touch with Frobisher, their man in the government but their call is taken by Lois Habiba, the new girl. She has heard too many things pointing in the direction of the government not exactly doing the right thing and although she agrees to setup a meeting between Torchwood and Frobisher, she actually turns up herself to tell Torchwood what she has learned. This leads Gwen to attempt a rescue of Jack with Rhys in tow. Just as it looks like they are caught, Ianto comes to rescue with a huge forklift truck coming in through the wall and taking away the block of concrete which has become Jack’s new overcoat.

The team make good their escape and Ianto drops the concrete block off a cliff in a nearby quarry, which results in Jack being released from his concrete tomb.

This was an absolutely fantastic second episode following on from the good work done in episode one. It was nice to see Gwen in action and Ianto having much more to do than we have ever seen before. Russel T. Davies has surpassed himself, and I didn’t think that was possible. A few people didn’t watch this episode that tuned into the first for some reason but there were still 5.6 million of us watching Day Two which was by far the most viewed programme of the day.

Can’t wait for Day Three tonight.

Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day One

In Scotland in 1965 a group of children are taken out in to the middle of nowhere by bus. When the bus stops they all get off and a bright light suddenly appears over the road. All the children walk towards the light….. except one. He runs.

In present day Cardiff, the Torchwood team are presented with a new problem when children suddenly stop and begin chanting the words ‘we are coming’. It soon becomes clear that the same phenomenon is happening all over the World and that all the children stopped at exactly the same time and they are all chanting in English.

The UK government begins to get worried but a mid level minister who has the ear of the prime minister seems more worried than others. He is Torchwood’s ‘man in the government’ but is he working with them or against them? When Jack is captured and impregnated with a bomb, he unknowingly brings about the destruction of the Torchwood hub. Ianto and Gwen barely get away with their lives but even with his ability to regenerate and cheat death, could Jack have possibly survived an explosion so big which originated inside him?

Torchwood has been ‘promoted’ to newer and better slots on British television since it first aired. It started out in season one on BBC3 and was promoted to BBC2 for its second outing. However, John Barrowman seems to have mixed feelings about their latest promotion to prime time BBC1. He has been quoted as saying that it is almost as if they were being punished for their success, as at the same time as promoting the series to the best slot available on the network, the BBC cut the production from a full season of 13 episode to only 5.

That being said, the writers, producers and actors have done an incredible job of turning what could have been a bit of a limp third season into what looks set to be, if this first episode is anything to go by, one of the television events of 2009. With 5.9 million viewers watching this first episode, which is way more than the number who watched any of the previous episodes, the BBC may end up kicking themselves for having cut it short.