Torchwood: Miracle Day Review

Torchwood is a television programs which like its lead character has found ways to escape death/cancellation time and time again, effectively being killed off but always miraculously coming back to life. Miracle Day is a ten part mini-series that explores an event that instantaneously causes the entire human race to become immortal. What would the world become if people couldn't die, religion is rebuked, science becomes irrelevant, and the world plunges into chaos. In comes Torchwood Institute a highly secretive group who investigate the unusual, the unexplained, and the extraterrestrial. Torchwood is lead by Jack Harkness as the man who cant die, but on the day the world becomes immortal he becomes mortal.

Torchwood has always been a daring program that brings up interesting questions and sparks debate. If people can't die is there such thing as murder, how long would the earth be able to provide its resources to a population that is increasing in massive amounts by the second, or what is stopping people from upholding their moral standards if they cant be punished for their actions. Unfortunately questions is all Miracle Day really excels at, that and great performances, noteworthy among them John Barrowman who plays the until recently undying man with over 1000 years of regret and loss. Barrowman is his usual charming rouge self who will just as soon shoot you as bed you. Barrowman embodies a man who has lived and loved and is not better for it. There is an episode in the second half of the season that consists entirely of him being taken to his death all the while remembering a past love of his life, a man he meet on Ellis Island in 1892 its wonderfully portrayed love story, while once again bringing up questions this time of homosexuality and religion.

Bill Pullman who hasn't been seen much lately gives an often unsettling but always fascinating performance of a convicted pedophile rapist and murderer, Oswald Danes, who "miraculously" survives his execution the day people stop dying. His pleas of forgiveness win him attention which he quickly takes advantage of to turn the nation into his faithful devotees. His philosophizing makes him a beacon in the media and the unseen hands of those who orchestrated Miracle Day shape him to ease the public into some of the more extreme actions that take place in a world coping with no death.

My biggest problem with Miracle Day is that it takes to long for anything of note to happen, the story is always moving forward there isn't any filler episodes per se but every episode does feel artificially lengthened whether that's with clumsy expository dialogue or inappropriate comedy. Once the story reaches its climax its disappointing as well, the big reveal as to how the world stopped dying, who did it and why, its all underwhelming. Maybe I was just expecting too much but it felt flat. The investigation, the missions and the journey to the end are the best parts and yet its still oftentimes stretched too far.

Miracle Day brings up fascinating ideas but never capitalizes on them. The characters are compelling and are the most fun to watch when they're working as a team and pulling off some elaborate plan, you care about each of them equally and hope they survive this ordeal. All in all Miracle Day is a great piece of science fiction television it just stumbles in its way to the conclusion and then gives out when it comes time to put an end to the story. Thought-provoking, compelling characters, daring television, all the pieces are there its just doesn't come together as well as I had hoped.

(3 out of 5)