Torchwood: A Day in the Death
Somehow, while carefully not reading anything containing spoilers, I'd got the impression that this episode was going to be worse than last week's, so I was pleasantly surprised. That's not to say it was without flaws. I think a big plus was that all its does not make senseness was distilled into two specific areas - firstly, I do not think you understand dead bodies, nor have you thought zombieness through with sufficient care, secondly, a paranoid rich eccentric in need of 24 hour care would not have his house set up like this. The Torchwood team's treatment of Owen was stupid too but hey! they're Torchwood.
Good as Burn Gorman is, and this time he was not only the best thing about the episode but basically carried it, I'm beginning to feel a little "enough already" about this arc. This revealed the episode's pacing problems, B actually left the room halfway through the angst with instructions to fetch him if anything interesting started to happen. I'm also a little dubious about the decision to bring Martha Jones in apparently entirely in order to tell a story about Owen, rather than to tell a story about Martha. I can see that you don't want too much focus put on a guest character from another show, but presumably part of the point of the exercise was to bring Martha fans across to Torchwood and you don't want to leave them feeling she's been short-changed.
On the plus side, Gwen (for what little we saw of her) was great, revealing a new and more promising take on the character (in my opinion) as the 2iC she is supposed to be, especially given Jack's flaws as a leader. The framing rooftop narrative while, frankly, a hoary old cliche, was well done and Maggie came across as an interesting individual rather than the line-feed she could easily have been. In fact the guest cast, Christine Bottomley and Richard Briers, acted the socks off everyone else in the episode (bar Burn Gorman, of course).
Ultimately though this was a competent but slight episode lumbered with drawing a character arc out past its sell-by date. It was a vast improvement on last week and the show, particularly the team dynamics, continue to develop promisingly but, as parrot_knight has pointed out, inconsistently.
Good as Burn Gorman is, and this time he was not only the best thing about the episode but basically carried it, I'm beginning to feel a little "enough already" about this arc. This revealed the episode's pacing problems, B actually left the room halfway through the angst with instructions to fetch him if anything interesting started to happen. I'm also a little dubious about the decision to bring Martha Jones in apparently entirely in order to tell a story about Owen, rather than to tell a story about Martha. I can see that you don't want too much focus put on a guest character from another show, but presumably part of the point of the exercise was to bring Martha fans across to Torchwood and you don't want to leave them feeling she's been short-changed.
On the plus side, Gwen (for what little we saw of her) was great, revealing a new and more promising take on the character (in my opinion) as the 2iC she is supposed to be, especially given Jack's flaws as a leader. The framing rooftop narrative while, frankly, a hoary old cliche, was well done and Maggie came across as an interesting individual rather than the line-feed she could easily have been. In fact the guest cast, Christine Bottomley and Richard Briers, acted the socks off everyone else in the episode (bar Burn Gorman, of course).
Ultimately though this was a competent but slight episode lumbered with drawing a character arc out past its sell-by date. It was a vast improvement on last week and the show, particularly the team dynamics, continue to develop promisingly but, as parrot_knight has pointed out, inconsistently.