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Where have you gone, Russell T, Russell T?

One of the most shockingly bad television series in recent memory crawled to a bloody close on Friday night.

The end of Torchwood: Miracle Day was not quite as obscenely amusing as some had predicted, but its climax prompted laughter in this reviewer, not tears.

No dangling plot-lines were tied up, no extraneous characters rescued from irrelevancy. The program is over — and so too, probably, is the franchise — but not even the most generous critic could with a straight face say that it was concluded.

Snark? Oh yes. For snark and bullet points and a reviewer's exhausted post-mortem, visit, Where have you gone, Russell T, Russell T?

Vote for Geoffrey and Raven!

Nahanni National Park, Virginia Falls. Image from Wikipedia.

All right, silly as it sounds, I'm asking for your help. At least the help of all of you who (a) live in Canada and (b) have a Facebook account.

ETA: Actually, it seems all you need is a Facebook account, so all of you, please just in and send us on our way!

My sweetie has never been camping, and neither of us have ever been to the Far North (or white-water rafting, for that matter). With your help, we just might win a trip to the Nahanni National Park.

Click here to vote for my perfect 50-word wish, okay? Many thanks in advance.

Onwards.

(Almost) almost famous

( People are talkin' 'bout me! )

Sins of the Show-Runner?

A commentator at the Tor.com discussion of The Middle Men passed along a "strong rumour" that Torchwood: Miracle Day was originally meant to be a five-episode series, but was expanded to ten, "so that Starz could get subscribers for longer".

Like any rumour, I take this one with the proverbial kilo of salt, but it does offer a credible, if not fully explanatory, hypothesis for the remarkably slow and inept story-telling to which we have been subject lo! these past seven weeks.

Less subtle than an average episode of South Park, the seventh episode is the best outing of the series so far. Or perhaps I should say, the least bad.

Immortal Sins at least boasts some action, some humour, some sex and even some romance.

On the other hand, the sex and romance is at best only as good as the merely competent fan-fic it will no doubt inspire, the action was counter-balanced by long, gruesome minutes of torture that would delight Mel Gibson and — of course! — a secondary plot and characterization that make no sense and which are in any case mostly negated by episode's end.

For skin, spoilers, stereotypes, structural analysis (and, yes, snark) see Mel Gibson comes to Torchwood or, The Passion of the Jack. Probably not safe for work.

As you might know, I've been serially reviewing the latest Torchwood series, a work that (I presume) is as much the product of Russell T Davies' personal vision as is possible in an inherently collaborative medium.

So it is rather difficult to ignore the irony, that there is more credible social commentary, more humour and more excitement in Peter Watts' 300 page adaptation of a first-person-shooter video game, which (again, I presume) was written strictly for the money, than there has been in the first five hours of Davies' brain-child.

Watts' story, about a an accidental cybernetic soldier's brief campaign on a ruined island of Manhattan a scant 12 years in our future is also fairly rigorous science fiction, as one might expect from the "reformed marine biologist", but probably not from a novel about a super-soldier and his mysterious battle-armour.

If Crysis: Legion is not quite the follow-up to his 2006 hard-SF masterpiece, Blindsight one might have wished for, it's a better book than one has any reason to expect of a media tie-in.

Click here for "Strange bed-fellows". Some spoilers may occur.

Torchwood: Miracle Day — Escape to L.A. Introduction

The answer to the question, What happens in Escape to L.A.? is, "Not very much and what does happen is too stupid for words."

As there is no sense of reality in Torchwood: Miracle Day, so there is no sense of urgency. The only ticking clock is that of the viewer's rapidly-dwindling patience.

Once can only imagine that two years ago, the four hours to which we've been subjected so far would have been, to much better effect, condensed into the first 30 minutes or so of Russell T Davies flawed but taut, emotionally-moving and thoroughly gripping Children of Earth.

Do you really want to read more? Well, click away. As always, some spoilers behind the link; as sometimes, some foul langage as well. You've been warned.

Rendition: Delayed

Turns out I was anticipating the second episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day a little more than I thought I would.

I awoke to a dead computer on Saturday morning, with a full day already scheduled with Raven. I struggled with the recalcitrant beast's BIOS (the computer, people! The computer's BIOS!) until it was time to step out into the real world.

By the time we had returned from a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint and my very happy introduction to Malaysian cuisine (if you're looking for curry in Ottawa, the Nyonya Curry Chicken at Pedas in Chinatown is very good. But I digress), we were a little sunburnt and a little more worn out by a 10 kilometre stroll on a blistering day. (It's true: the lives Raven and I lead do not resemble a Torchwood storyline in the slightest.)

Nevertheless, I finally managed to finally get the machine to boot from a live Ubuntu CD and then, to diagnose and repair itself. But by then it was too late to watch anything. Quite a lot my surprise, I realized that, in my secret heart of hearts, I had been more frustrated by the delay in watching the second instalment of Torchwood: Miracle Day, than I had been anxiety-ridden by the prospect of getting professional help in repairing a dead computer.

Well, I've seen "Rendition" now, so that, among my life's stressors, is in the past. And so, after a decidedly mixed series opener, where are we at?

This reviewer, at least, is happier about the state of the Whoniverse this week than he was last week. For my full review, with fewer spoilers than usual, click here for Thugs On a Plane.

God said to Abraham kill me a son

Abe said man, you must be putting me on

God said no — Abe said what?

God said you can do what you want Abe, but,

Next time you see me coming you better run.

Abe said where'd you want this killing done?

God said out on highway 61

— Bob Dylan

It was probably the simply embarassing post-script to the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, that first really made me realize the often inverse relationship between hype and reality. (And of course, this year's utter travesty of an end to the sometimes brilliant Battlestar Galactica to remind me that getting my hopes up is always risky business.)

While most of North America's children and geeks are making hits out of Star Trek and even more (god help us) out of Transformers: Something-or-other, Great Britain's BBC has provided us with something a little different. A five-hour "special event", a mini-series broadcast (in the UK) on Monday through Friday of the week of the 6th called Torchwood: Children of Earth (it's airing this coming week starting tomorrow on BBC America, but I haven't been able to pin down when it will show up in Canada). For once, the work actually lived up to the hype.

Truth to tell, until now Torchwood has been more of a guilty pleasure for me than anything else. A Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood was, and was meant to be, a grittier, more "adult" version of the alien monster-battling children's show. The violence was more graphic, there was sex (male/female, female/female and male/male as well as "miscellaneous" — these people dealt with aliens, after all) along with near-nudity and swearing, including the F-word, at least during the first season.

By the end of the second season, four of the seven original members of the "team" had died violent deaths, leaving fans to wonder whether this year's edition would introduce new characters. As it turns out, long-time fans will have more grieving to do — but I'll say no more along those lines.

For more, along with some (though — I hope — not too many) spoilers, please click the cut below. Otherwise, book-mark and return once you've watched it — and ( then we can argue! )