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Wow. I never watched Torchwood because I never watched Dr. Who. I know lots of other geeks love it but it all seemed silly and camp and besides...there's so much backstory there that it would take years to catch up to speed.
But I decided to break down and watch Children of Earth because I read that I didn't have to know anything at all about Dr. Who or Torchwood. And wow, was that good. One of my favorite things in television is when a show gets taken into deep, dark, miserably awful new territory and I could actually see Torchwood marching down that path over these five eps - even though I've never seen it before.
Spoiler: My one caveat for what was an otherwise excellent miniseries in every respect is that the solution (gobbledygook we just made up, have never mentioned before, requires fake sci fi technology, and only became apparent after nonsensical leaps of logic) represented the worst of science fiction. It's my understanding that Dr. Who famously had issues with everything being resolved by literally waving a magic wand...well, no difference here. Nevertheless, it's ok, because the miniseries was never about aliens and defeating them and whatnot. If it was, the solution would turn out to be those alien hitchhikers which release endorphins from the beginning of the first ep like I thought when the 456 said they used kids as drugs. That would have been neat and tidy and boring. Instead, it was about what people are willing to do, and what is wrong or right, when there is no way out. And it was excruciating and awesome.
I understand that Torchwood is not universally loved, and that the miniseries is considered a step above the series. I think I'll check it out anyways.
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