While obviously not wanting to pester the audience with anymore
fillers, Jack’s mortal danger of last week if pretty quickly written off;
himself and Esther having managed to get back to the United Kingdom and fashion
themselves in a place that looks rather like the temporary lodgings for the
Being Human gang at the end of series two of that particular show. No time is
waited for the audience to discover that Esther is keeping a tonne of Jack’s
blood in a fridge, despite that fact, as I have mentioned time and time again –
and Jack himself even stated in an earlier episode – that the blood is nothing
different to anyone else’s; Jack is a fixed point, simply making him
never-dying, NOT immortal, yet somehow the blood, maybe in the presence of
alien tech in Torchwood or simply the progression of a constant life seems to
have been given some immortal properties.
Or maybe we’re looking at this in the wrong way: Jack’s blood,
just like himself, is never-dying. The human race, in the shadow of the
Blessing have taken on an immortal life, similar to Jack’s never-dying one, but
they still suffer, like Jack, they still age, like Jack (although Jack does it
with more finesse), although they don’t heal as quickly as Jack did as a
never-dying man, so it all goes into question – the blood could simply contain
a portion of the fixed point Jack belongs too, and Blessed – shall I say – over
the entire human race, which has become the subject of the slightly
disappointing Miracle Day tale. Heck, maybe the finale will properly explain
the properties of Jack’s blood in reflection to the human race’s connection to
the Blessing and the consequences forth with.
Now back to the episode and despite Gwen and Rhys suddenly taking
up the drug trade, with Mary hiding Geraint in the basement, the Torchwood team
are soon reunited, along with the unexpected and unwanted Oswald Danes, who’s
story seemed to have petered to a non-existent patter when he bailed on Jilly
last episode. With the government being complete arseholes (it needed to be
said, and is true anyway) and forcing ‘Category Ones’ (with no reference to
Category Zero, which could have been a good story) out of their residences and
straight to the furnace, you have to feel deep sorrow for the Coopers, and
slight confusion to the thermal imaging app for the police inspector’s iPhone –
is that technology even possible in a simple application? – which leads to a
teary scene that splits the Cooper family forever. Indeed as a side note to
this is it stated, though not reasoned, that Gwen kept the surname Cooper as
opposed to Williams, something that has confused me – and I know that she has
every right to keep her surname – since her and Rhys’ marriage back in the good
second series.
In the midst of all this, Rhys becomes the brains with a globe beach
ball; the Team having located one point in Shanghai to access the illusive Blessing
thanks to Oswald’s help when he stole Jilly Kitzinger’s laptop, only to have
her entire existence erased when she joined the Family – something slightly
unexplained I thought but still, anything to see more of Lauren Ambrose – which
included an appearance from Frances Fisher and the chance to observe yet
another Who-ish crack, indeed I wasn’t entirely too sure what it was upon
viewing so had to wiki it to find out precisely what the Blessing-crack thing
was: ‘…a massive crack or fissure running through the center of the planet Earth, one
that pulls the surrounding debris into itself.’ Basically the fail-safe answer,
with very little thought towards Geography and that fact that, not only is that
impossible, it’s highly improbable, even for Torchwood standards – then again,
not for Russell.
Also, maybe ‘finally’, to mention as this review peters from a blow-by-blow analysis
to a blurt-out of general thoughts: Rex managed to wean his way back into the
CIA; the place he so loves so much and right under the nose of undisclosed
Family member and CIA perpetrator Charlotte Willis, who’s only goal is to stop
the Blessing from being stopped and to give dark looks and suspicious talks
behind Rex’s back, which has to be a job rather well done in my opinion. And
finally Jack’s blood, which as mentioned, is linked to the Blessing in some way
or another and when Jack and the Team arrived Shanghai, a droplet of blood conveniently
made a bid for freedom, practically magnetically drawn to the Blessing –
something that’s rather questionable in my opinion, but that’s just me.
- Jack = 9/10 – An average episode for the soon-to-be-never-dying-again man, although he did have some funny, almost typical-Barrowman moments.
- Gwen = 10/10 – Got to give her a ten once more just for Eve’s emotional performances; Gwen still having to keep managing a job and her personal life but with a much higher risk than ever before.
- Rex = 8/10 – Started to feel a bit iffy with Rex once more, maybe it’s the writing of him suddenly becoming more like the Rex of earlier episodes, or the fact that he wasn’t in the episode as much as some of the others, I cannot tell.
- Esther = 10/10 – How can you NOT like little Esther? All I’m saying…
- Oswald = 9/10 – Despite his dark and hideous past, he did have quite a few funny scenes; a reference to the brilliance of Bill Pullman whom even now I can’t quite believe is in Torchwood of all shows!
- Jilly = 9/10 – I love Jilly, but unsure of where or what her story is going and becoming and with one episode left, is there any point? So many filler episodes and not one proper explanation or development to the series or any characters, well FEW developments anyway…
Episodic Rating: 8 out of 10 – Although better than last week, ‘The Gathering’ ultimately
seemed to prove to be yet another filler episode. My opinion towards it thusly
becomes rather biased and leaning nicely towards severe disappointment, the
same reflecting for the series as a whole. With the finale on Thursday one can
only hope they pick up a thrilling story, but from what I have read in
spoiler-full texts, this might prove to be a vain hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment