Miracle Day V

[swordznsorcery]

I seem to spend part of every Thursday mumbling about how awesome Bill Pullman is, so I apologise in advance for repeating myself. He is, though. He was more awesomer than ever tonight, too.

Everything stepped up a gear tonight. For the first time I didn't feel that it was maybe going a little slow. Having the story take place in several locations at once might have helped there. I'm not sure how Gwen is able to move around so freely back in Wales, since surely she should be as much on the run there as she is in the States, but I'll ignore that because we got more PC Andy. Or Sgt Andy technically, but I can't get used to calling him that. The stuff in Wales was really good, anyway. Loved Gwen's mother setting up a tactical map, and Rhys trying to be all Torchwood with his truck. The business with Gwen's father has been heavily predictable since the beginning - the poor man has always had "I am here solely for the Gwen Angst" tattooed on his forehead. Still, it's working out well, so I don't mind. Odd having her and Jack so far apart, though.

The stuff in America really shifted up a gear tonight, meanwhile. Everybody dashing off undercover looked like a disaster waiting to happen, but I didn't expect it to be quite that much of a disaster. I wonder if we've seen the last of Doctor Juarez. Shame if so, as I liked her. Still, this is the third season in a row where Torchwood has killed off an interesting medical character, so more fool me for getting complacent enough to become fond of her! Not that she is dead, as such. Living ash? I'm not sure I want to think about that one too much.

The best part of the episode, though, came once again from Jack's interaction with Oswald Danes. Jack thinks that he understands Danes, because they've both killed; but Jack is imagining Danes through his own moral compass. He thinks that Danes must be feeling the same guilt that he himself feels. Jack's been anything but an angel many times in his long life - most particularly before he met the Doctor - so he knows a few things about being very much other than good. He doesn't know what it means to be a man like Oswald Danes, though. I'm not altogether sure that Danes himself knows that, and I certainly don't. It's great fun finding out, mind. I like Danes' interplay with Jilly Kitzinger, too. She needs him but she hates him, and that's giving a nicely sparky edge to their scenes. It makes for some good comedy at times as well. There's a sitcom in there somewhere, you know: Oswald & Jilly, the story of a messianic paedophile and his PR officer. Well, maybe.

So yeah. We're at the halfway point now, and I still like how things are going. The answers that we got tonight were all good ones, and although I have no idea where we're going from here, or what is going on (which I find I don't mind in the slightest), I'm very much enjoying the ride. A few little niggles, perhaps. Transposing the images of Danes psyching up his new followers at a rally, with the fires at the concentration outflow camps, was a long, long way from subtle. Did that matter, though? I'm not sure. The hammer blow approach fitted with the mood of the episode, certainly, and with the build up to the cliffhanger. It just felt a little too obvious in its drawing of parallels. Still, that's probably a gripe at the director rather than at the story itself. My only real criticism in that vein is that Jack perhaps shouldn't be quite so fumbly right now. Misreading Danes is one thing - I wouldn't expect anybody to be able to understand how a man like that works. He seems to be picking his way very uncertainly in the rest of the story though, and that doesn't feel quite like Jack. He's always been Mr Confident - and he's several thousand years old by now. Okay, so at least two of those thousands of years come from being buried underneath Cardiff by his nut of a brother, which probably doesn't count much towards valuable life experience; but he's been everywhere, and he's done everything. Stop feeling your way in the dark, Jack. Where's the guy who stands beside the Doctor, and looks almost his equal? Shaken by the deaths of the rest of his team, possibly, but I still feel he should be a little more sure of himself.

And not wearing nearly so much make-up.

Anyway.


Doctor Juarez. I've completely neglected her before now, in a general rush of Jack enthusiasm, and not really knowing anybody else's names. Given that we've quite possibly seen the last of her, though - and also given that she could very well be living fertiliser right now - she probably deserves a mention. And a picture.


PC Sgt Andy, and the rest of Team: Wales.


Oswald & Jilly. Expect it on NBC in the Fall.


Obligatory Jack.