TV is the New Reading

‘Torchwood’ is about

to get very, very good

I promised a few months ago that I’d get back to the British sci-fi show “Torchwood” when it picked up a little. And from what I understand, it’s about to.

I notice that BBC America recently aired one of the least commendable episodes from the first season, an installment titled “Random Shoes.” The main problem with it is that the narrator is a ghost. All of the sci-fi stuff leading up to his being a ghost is hidden and, when it’s revealed, it’s boring.

So it was a good episode to skip, along with the episode they aired a few weeks ago called “Countrycide,” which basically argues that rural people are creepy and weird.

But for the most part, the later episodes in the season such as “They Keep Killing Suzie” and “Greeks Bearing Gifts” (which is a wonderful installment if you don’t mind your television steaming up a little) and “Out of Time” and “Combat” all lead up to a two-part season finale that’s just some of the most emotionally satisfying storytelling on television.

In “Capt. Jack Harkness,” Gwen Cooper, the hero of the piece, is thrown back in time to the blitz. There’s no good reason given for this beyond the rift in spacetime that runs through the show’s setting of Cardiff, which would be analogous to an American show being set in Fargo – large enough to bother about but small enough so that most people are only vaguely aware of it.

With Gwen trapped in the past, the team debates how best to get her back. Some team members want to open the rift wide open, risking a lot of lives and damage. Others want to investigate whether it’s possible to bring her back some other way.

In the process, they discover this impossibly quaint elderly gentleman who seems to be living both in 1940 and, quite changelessly, in the present.

Since time travel is a theme of the show, it’s not too surprising that Gwen and this gentleman, named Bilis Manger, are not the only characters who find themselves in both timelines. But in “End of Days” – the second half of the two-parter – when Bilis realizes that he can use the team’s meddling to further his own plans, the show takes a sharp right turn.

Despite the racy and gender-bending qualities that set “Torchwood” apart from most sci-fi drama – not least of which the libidinous and omnisexual team leader Jack Harkness – the show is well worth watching. And BBC America’s back-to-back programming structure allows viewers to pick up a lot of episodes in a short period of time.

But if you caught one of the bad ones early on and have been giving it a miss, you might want to take another peek.

It’s about to get very, very good.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

Back Back to Shows Back to Main Page Next