Torchwood: Children of Earth

After a lengthy absence, the highly popular but critically maligned Torchwood returned with a stunning mini-series event that finally established it as a dramatic force to be reckoned with, something that can no longer be easily dismissed as a snickering schoolboy idea of “adult” Dr Who.  Spoiler filled discussion coming up after the break.

It’s somewhat ironic that Torchwood finally arrives as the sort of show you’d really miss at the exact moment when its continuation seems highly unlikely, not because it isn’t popular enough to continue but because Torchwood itself has more or less been destroyed.  The Cardiff headquarters of the team has been destroyed, and the only surviving members after Children of Earth are Eve Myles’s fetching Gwen Cooper and John Barrowman’s charming but now battered and broken Capt. Jack Harkness, neither of whom is in a position to defend the Earth against much of anything when we last see them.

Not since Buffy the Vampire Slayer split town at the end of her second season can I recall another series lead as shattered by what they have done as Capt. Jack Harkness, forced now to live with having put his own grandson Steven to a horrible and painful death in order to save the lives of millions of other children, losing not only his grandson but also his daughter in the process.  And whilst his daughter Alice remains alive, it’s quite clear that she may never be able to forgive her father for the damage he has wrought.

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Ultimately, the success of Torchwood: Children of Earth rests on the shoulders of John Barrowman.

In a character trajectory worthy of Shakespeare, Capt. Jack pays a tragic price for his own cavalier actions.  Chosen in 1965 to deliver twelve orphans to the disgusting and repellant 4-5-6 aliens, Jack is an ideal candidate for the job because, as another character puts it, the government knew that he wouldn’t care one way or the other.  For his capacity to stay emotionally and morally out of reach, Jack is the ideal man to do something so monstrous, if logically sensible.  Yet, when the 4-5-6 return demanding millions more children, Jack must pay the price for his earlier compliance, a price that involves sacrificing almost everyone who matters to him, from his lover, to his daughter to his grandson.

When Children of Earth begins, we see Jack blithely decline to get involved with the mystery of patients disappearing from an NHS hospital.  His reason?  Getting involved with NHS means dealing with too much red tape.  By the end, Jack learns this fundamental lack of seriousness, flying by the seat of his pants and expecting to win on bluster and good intentions is a formula for catastrophe.  It may work for Time Lords, but Jack Harkness comes to realize a bit too late that he isn’t a Time Lord.  By the time he comes to this realization, his boyfriend Ianto lies pointlessly dead at his feet, part of the collateral damage resulting from Jack’s arrogant and reckless assumption that the 4-5-6 could be defeated with little more than his wits.

It’s a pretty interesting treatment of a character who was introduced in Dr Who as a swaggering, devil-may-care type whose primary appeal to the audience was as a charming scoundrel.  Some people at the time complained that Capt. Jack became too dour and serious during Torchwood’s first season, and he was comparatively closer to his Dr Who level of charm in Series Two.  Doubtless some will be unhappy with the end result of Children of Earth and what it says about Jack’s character, but the more serious treatment here resonates with me far more.  I liked the charming scoundrel of Dr Who, but I’ll probably never forget the tragic hero of Torchwood.

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In a fine performance throughout Children of Earth, Lucy Cohu travels a heart-wrending arc as she tries to protect her son whilst reconciling her conflicting feelings for her father.  As most daughters would, she loves her father and recognizes his goodness but also knows instinctively that he is dangerous and somehow fundamentally…wrong.  I’ll touch upon that a little more in a moment, but kudos to Cohu for a touching performance.

One of the masterful things about the script is how it tightens the screws against its characters, sparing no one.  That’s why it is particularly heartbreaking to see Alice’s love for, and trust in, her father ultimately blow up in her face and lead directly to the death of Steven.  It is her own open-heartedness that starts the chain of events that leads to her son’s death.  If she hadn’t cared, if she’d stuck to her guns after chasing Jack off on Day One, if she hadn’t tried to find out if Jack was okay, the government never would have realized her significance, and if she hadn’t exposed herself, her son probably wouldn’t have died.  These are dreadful, dreadful things for someone to live with, and Cohu plays them masterfully.

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Trying to make the best of awful possibilities cuts right to the heart of what is so masterfully done in Torchwood: Children of Earth.  As terrifying as the 4-5-6 are, and as hideous are their plans to use the children as narcotics, the real resonance of the mini-series comes from the exploration of humanity’s capacity to tolerate evil and to make tiny evil choices even amidst larger crises.

Children of Earth asks the question: what would you do if faced with extinction?  How far can you go to avoid that and still maintain your humanity?  Where is the line that, once crossed, negates your worthiness of being saved at all?

These are all very difficult, complex questions, questions without easy answers, and whilst it is easy to hold the loathsome Prime Minister (deftly played by Brian Green) in contempt for his cowardice as he focuses on minimizing his own political damage, it is not so easy to dismiss the cold, awful logic of the scene where he, his underlings and other representatives of the Earth’s governments hash out the details of which children should be sacrificed.  Faced with such a no-win scenario, Children of Earth asks, what would you do, and how do you live with yourself afterward?  Not since Kenneth Branagh and his fellow Nazis hashed out the details of Jewish genocide in the riveting HBO drama Conspiracy has an act of evil been so chillingly portrayed on television.  Not bad for a Dr Who knockoff, really.

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Speaking of Dr Who, Torchwood: Children of Earth demonstrates nicely Russell T Davies’s ability to straddle the ground between the very tonally different worlds of Who and Torchwood.  It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time that the fundamental wrongness of Jack’s existence that I mentioned above has been touched upon.

In Who, the Doctor’s revulsion over Jack’s immortality is lightly touched upon as a somewhat ham-handed lesson in tolerance and then ultimately set aside.

Here, though, we see that Jack’s immortality is, indeed, something to pity and abhor, providing in a sense little more than the ability to alienate people and commit sins and transgressions that would seem impossible to live with over a longer length of time than ordinary humans could ever manage, all without the ultimate release (and relief, perhaps) of death.

***

I cannot say enough about the quality of the performances in Torchwood: Children of Earth.  There’s nary a false note from anyone, from the crude security guard who can’t control his libido when faced with Gwen Cooper down to the charming and good-humored performances by the young girls who played the doomed daughters of John Frobisher.

Special praise must go to Paul Copley for his touching performance as Clem.  He tapped into Clem’s childlike core beautifully, never seeming like the older man he is but always like an eleven year old boy who never got the chance to grow up properly.  It was impossible not to share his panic every time he senses the presence of the 4-5-6, and it’s a testament to his performance that I wanted to hug him almost as much as Gwen did.  Every time his face turned red, every time he squeezed out a few more tears, my heart seized up in empathy and sympathy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Peter Capaldi also turned in exceptional work as Frobisher, showing us a man who’s clearly in over his head and, whilst obviously intelligent, isn’t quite smart enough to fully appreciate the noose that is tightening around his neck, deceiving himself into thinking that there’s an upside to the amount of responsibility placed on his head by the craven and cowardly Prime Minister, unwilling or unable to immediately anticipate how terrible is the position he is in.

Frobisher’s role as a villainous force in the plot cannot be glossed over, but by the last time we see him, preparing to commit the unthinkable act of murdering his entire family and himself, it’s very hard not to empathize with his plight.  Few of us know for sure how we would respond when faced with such a deplorable situation, and Mr. Capaldi does an exemplary job of letting us see the journey.

Other people deserving of praise include Ian Gelder for his portrayal of the creepy Mr. Decker, a man who can hardly conceal his relishing of the 4-5-6 problem, sparing no opportunity to indulge in Schadenfreude, whether by tweaking Frobisher over the 1965 incident or by informing Jack of how, exactly, they will transmit the wave that will kill the 4-5-6.

Really, praise goes out to everyone involved, and if I fail to give adequate notice to everyone else, it’s only because I want to keep this review from getting too lengthy.  Kudos to everyone.

***

This is dark, grim, black stuff, exactly the sort of material that I’d begun to doubt Russell T Davies was capable of delivering any longer.  As a long-time fan of Dr Who, I was delirious with its return in 2005, yet the joy and, frankly, interest has been lessening each subsequent year, to the point where I greeted the news that he would be stepping down and handing the reigns over to Steven Moffat with excitement, not merely because I like his writing so much but also because I was eager for some fresh new blood in the creative process.

Yet with Children of Earth, I have to admit that one should never underestimate the creative powers of Russell T Davies.  I still think it’s a good thing for someone else to take the creative helm at this point, but I’m now very eager to see what RTD has up his sleeve next.

***

And so Torchwood ends, grimly yet gloriously, too.  Time heals all wounds, they say, and one can’t help but pray that this will be true some day for Capt. Jack Harkness, the immortal man fixed in time and space, with all that horrible baggage that comes with such a fate.