Torchwood: Children of Earth - Day One

(Originally written 1/1/14, modified 9/2/14)

This episode is no less exciting now than the first time I saw it. It sets up the supporting characters nicely, blending them in with what appears to be random extras, so it’s only later that we find out their connection to events and to Torchwood. And if you know what happens already, there’s a nice (read: tragic) bit of foresight when Alice tells Jack she will never let him experiment on Steven.

Then there are some genuinely shocking moments, like when the kids start screaming, and the incredible impact of the last word of the episode: “We are coming... back.” It was enough already that they were repeating themselves, but unlike, say, a Steven Moffat cliffhanger, which would go no further than this – “Mummy?” “Hey, who turned out the lights?” “Donna Noble has left the Library...” – RTD adds one extra word which changes the meaning of the sentence completely.

And while we’re talking about the end of the episode, can I just mention how amazing Peter Capaldi was? He was already giving a wonderful performance as a quiet and reluctantly dutiful civil servant. But then he witnesses his kids speaking those words, and suddenly he’s screaming, pleading with them to stop. This pushed me over the edge and moved me to tears – and it’s only Day One! It gives me hope that perhaps he’ll be able to salvage the Moffat scripts he’ll be saddled with later this year. (BTW, I can’t help but wonder how Moffat would have handled a concept like this one. How much more emphasis would he have put on the innocence of the children? Steven might have even survived, due to being related to the immortal Jack or something.)

Despite this episode being wonderful, I do wonder what the others Defenders of the Earth were up to at the time. Jack mentions that UNIT were performing some tests, but apparently Torchwood can’t have a relationship with them without Martha being there? I also would have been interested to see what the SJA gang got up to – while they are all too old to be affected, perhaps Mr Chandra would have had to deal with some late-blooming high school kids.

Other things remain unexplained. The Torchwood van gets conveniently stolen (we never find out how), which means Ianto doesn’t need to explain to his sister why a company car for the civil service has the name of a secret organisation blazoned on it. And while Clem is brilliant, I don’t understand how, apparently through avoiding the 456, he gained a super sense of smell which is able to detect truth, enemies and pregnancy.

(Later he'll apparently detect Ianto's sexuality, which is problematic for me. Ianto tells Rhiannon in this episode that "it's not men, it's just him", suggesting the complicated nature of his sexuality. Two days later, Clem asks "Who's the queer?", and because his nose is magic, we have to accept its word. A friend of mine argued that maybe he can smell traces of partners on people's bodies, but if this were the case, he should have recognised the smell of Jack, who he only detects later as the Man who kidnapped him. But I'm getting ahead of myself...)

One thing which didn’t need explaining, for the first time, was the significance of Frobisher handing Bridget a blank page. I always guessed this was just code for “orders to kill”, but I’d clearly forgotten his conversation with the Prime Minister where he literally requests that Britain receive a “blank page”. It’s funny – Frobisher is approving assassination here, yet I’ve never thought of him as a killer (or Bridget, for that matter). RTD is so good at balancing shades of grey in this story, and I absolutely look forward to spending time with all these characters again (before crying over their deaths).