For a long time, I had been willing to give Torchwood: Miracle Day the benefit of the doubt. This was largely on the basis of Children of Earth’s incredible success, and the interesting concept at the heart of Miracle Day. But over the past three weeks, any remaining good will has gradually evaporated as it became clearer the story wasn’t going to go anywhere interesting. So the finale wasn’t much of disappointment, and in fact you might call it a fitting conclusion. But if, like me, you found yourself increasingly disillusioned with Miracle Day, then this finale was unlikely to change your mind.
The “Blessing” turns out to be something that’s existed as long as the planet has, and it’s apparently been controlling human life expectancy since the beginning, via one of those “morphic fields” we’ve heard so much vague chatter about. And here I was, thinking that changes in life expectancy were caused by resource availability and medical advances. Guess not. In any case, the Families figured out that dropping Jack’s blood into both ends of the Blessing at once would cause the morphic field to recalibrate so that all of humanity became immortal. It’s not clear how they figured this out. In fact, it’s actually implied that once they realized that they had Jack’s amazing blood and the amazing Blessing, they just sort of decided to combine the two on a whim and went ahead and did it (which contradicts everything we know about PhiCorp being prepared for the miracle). But anyhow, the Blessing used Jack’s blood as a template and remade the world in his image.
I mean, never mind that it’s been firmly established that there’s nothing special about Jack’s blood. Never mind that the immortality we’ve seen around the world isn’t even slightly like Jack’s. Never mind that changes in human life expectancy have nothing to do with the ability to survive mortal wounds. That’s our explanation, and so the way forward is clear: recalibrate the blessing again by pouring Jack’s mortal blood in from both sides. Again, never mind the fact that it still hasn’t been explained why the Blessing’s morphic field had the opposite effect on Jack, but there it is.
I have to say I did enjoy the twist involving Rex’s blood transfusion, replacing his own blood with Jack’s. I thought that was pretty clever, and it was a decent way to expand his character into some more interesting areas if the show goes forward for another season. Like I said above, the fact that Jack’s blood would make him immortal (in the “fixed point” sense, not in the “miracle” sense) doesn’t really add up with what we know. In fact, one would assume that the transfusion is something the families would already have tried, given the fact that they had plenty of the stuff just lying around. Also, I don’t really understand why it was such a shock at the end to see Rex come back to life; I’d assumed we were supposed to have understood already that he had gained Jack’s immortality once we saw him survive his encounter with the Blessing. But still, this development could make for a more interesting take on Rex as a character going forward, so I suppose I’m all right with it. It makes as much (or as little) sense as anything else involving the Miracle, the Blessing, and immortality.
As for the revelation that the Families are still operating, I find that a bit less exciting. This plot turned out to be largely a dud, so seeing it continued doesn’t excite me much. Granted, the fact that we know about the families from the get-go could make for a more focused story with a clearer antagonist, but then again, since their mission is to make the whole world immortal, their return would presumably just lead to more of the same. The fact that after ten episodes of unraveling this plot they call it just “a trial run” seems to suggest exactly this, and I have to wonder why they can’t simply get more immortal blood (from their own reserves, or directly from Jack or Rex) and start this plan over from the beginning. Nothing’s stopping them, really.
Watching Gwen work through the emotions of guaranteeing her father’s death was another of the more interesting parts of this episode, as was the continued exploration of Oswald’s complicated attitudes toward his own wrongdoings. But a lot of the other emotional and motivational arcs fell flat, with the family being little more than boring religious fanatics and the cynical Jilly having been drawn into their zealotry far too easily. As for the emotional impact of Esther’s death, I have to say it didn’t really hit me too hard because she had been pretty forgettable and useless as a character all along. Rather than seeing her funeral, it might have been more effective to show us some kind of memorial for everyone who had perished over the course of the miracle. And there were a lot of them.
In any case, now that I’ve seen all of Miracle Day, I have to wonder whether the brilliance of last season’s Children of Earth might have been just a fluke. Or maybe Torchwood is just always going to reinventing itself, and each new iteration is a completely different show that could be awful, brilliant, or mediocre. In that case, if they make new Torchwood then I’ll certainly be interested to watch it, but I’ll have to approach it as though it were an entirely new show, or at least with significantly lowered expectations.
Tom Dickinson
Tom Dickinson is (in no particular order) a writer, a vlogger, a podcaster, a proud Rhode Island native, and a knitter. By day, he works for the college that gave him his undergraduate education in English. By night, he spends his leisure time using that education toward purposes ...
Read more about Tom Dickinson ->
