Five Drinks Into British Television: Torchwood Series Three Review

Tom's Take:


So Torchwood Series Three is actually a mini series, which focuses on Earth dealing with a large scale Alien Encounter. I actually watched it a couple of weeks ago, so I'm actually kind of foggy on all the details of the series, but I'll just bring up a couple of key points.

The whole scene where the government discusses WHO to give to the aliens is brilliant. On the one hand the argument made for giving away the poor children is absolutely terrible, and it is obvious that the writers are completely opposed to this way of thinking, and the audience is supposed to be disgusted as well, but what I found interesting was that there really wasn't a counter argument presented. The argument is horrible, but it isn't really wrong, and the government officials have the responsibility of facing such horrible choices.

I wasn't a big fan of the aliens wanting the children as a type of drug. It felt like they were trying to villainize the aliens, when that really wasn't necessary. The aliens wanted to abduct the children, you didn't need to make them drug addicts as well.

All of the Children being controlled was really creepy, and well done.

Ianto died. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about his death, as a part of me feels like the only reason he was killed was to set up a personal price for the team and Jack Harkness in particular. I also thought there was a lot more story to be told for Ianto. Still, I can't deny it was effective.

Gwen being pregnant added a whole layer to this series and how she looked at the situation and the people around her. I didn't really like the last episode starting with her documentary clip, but I did like the way her character was forced to confront what she saw around her.

John Frobisher's whole plot and character arc was probably the best part of this series. His character was maddening at times, but ultimately I felt for him. Then he shot his wife and kids, and I was left both heartbroken and horrified. Well done.

So I'll finish this short review up by a quick discussion of what Captain Jack went through in this series. First off we learned that he had a daughter and a grandson, and that they were estranged. I was surprised by this reveal, but I think it holds up well. We still have so much we don't know about Captain Jack, and the fact that he had a hidden family wasn't really out of character. This series also put Jack through as much pain as possible to imagine. His body was destroyed, and he had to go through the process of regenerating in what looked like an excruciating process. He lost his lover, and you could see as soon as Ianto died that Jack had given up his fight. But he kept going despite himself, and he was forced to sacrifice his grandson in the process. So we end the series with Jack leaving Earth, completely broken...

Until Series Four then!