!SPOILERS! - Torchwood: Children of Earth - !SPOILERS!

[Zarniwoop]

I will not be blanking out any text as it will all be spoilers  

Having talked about this with work colleagues I thought I would canvass general opinion, we seemed to fall into two camps at work those that loved it and those (me included) that were disappointed due to the plot holes.

Firstly, for me, the infamous 1965 incident was nowhere near enough grounds to warrant handing over a dozen kids to an Alien they had never met before almost certainly to their deaths....

The escape from the Army Base, Gwen & hubby at least had some semblance of a disguise to get in but Ianto just seemed to arrive in Bob the builders JCB and save the day? In fact I think the army sequences in this "series" were all poor:

 A lorry across the road is all you need to make them stop chasing you!!!!
 If you run fast enough at them you get past them on Riot Patrol !!!!!!

They made UNIT (The sort of Shadow Government task Force formed SPECIFICALLY for this kind of thing) look like an incompetent bunch of pen pushers.

Why add in yet another secret agency we have never seen before to kill off Torchwood, especially when UNIT almost certainly would already have had access to those files (as this is their remit after all) so aside from assassinating a major Task force (not subtle) there should have been no way to cover this up.

Apart from that most of the week seemed to be spent finding different ways in which to Kill Jack...

For me I could have kept my suspension of Disbelief and ignored some of the more minor gaffs if he had actually written a more plausible reason to hand over the initial children, but as that ripped a large hole in the plot for me I just noticed all the others more.

This would have worked as a 2-parter, maybe, as part of a larger series but not as a 5 episode "Epic" there was not enough depth.

That said, he did manage some small amount of brilliance, the characters were certainly better rounded in this than in the other series more in keeping with the Darker Theme Torchwood was always supposed to have. John Frobisher was a brilliant character and extremely well acted, I liked his role in this and how they portrayed his final act which was well done. Just a shame the situation they were all in was not as well developed.

I look forward to the next Torchwood where he may spend a bit more time on it, as I suspect he is maybe a little Dr Who Dmob happy

[Snakes in the Tiki Lounge]

Just a note, because most of the above is opinion, and as such subjectively valid, though I enjoyed it rather a lot more;

I'd not really call torchwood a major task-force, given that by the start of the series, it had been reduced to three people under a harbour in Wales.


Also, Unit have been a shower of useless in every appearence I've seen them in (Read - Since Dr Who returned). I'm willing to guess they didn't regularly cover themselves in glory in the Original Series, either, hence needing the Doctor.

[Zarniwoop]

The major Task force I was referring to was UNIT not Torchwood, because as I mentioned UNIT would have had to have known about the original incident as it would fall under their jurisdiction.

The other thing about UNIT was not that they were any good or not but that their Authority to act would supercede the ministers as that is their Remit to tackle Alien related incidents.

[EvilGinger]

Not seen it yet but suspect it being chopped down to five episodes, from whatever it was originally  dident help matters.  Being old enough to have seen all the Pertwee and Baker Episodes and having watched them all, I recall UNIT being well meaning too fond of using armed force and needing the Doctor to rescue it on most occasions. I believe that was one of the reasons the time lords chose earth as the place of his exile, UNIT was not up to the job and earth was going to experience a flurry of alien contact. Of course Torchwood did not exist in that time line as The Doctor had not upset Queen Victoria yet.


 Ginger