Children of Earth is god-tier television, and if it doesn't win every award it's eligible for...
...I'm seriously gonna have to kill someone. That being said, that someone may end up being Russell T. Davies because I still feel like I was just kicked in the gut/generally nauseous and I finished watching nearly 6 fucking hours ago.
*sigh* I'm just gonna break this down day-by-day (well, what I can remember as being what day in my frazzled state; sorry if it's actually out of order a bit) so 1) it isn't just an incoherent jumble of cursing, and b) so I can manage to remember that there were in fact good parts in this damned thing...
Day One
--Okay, I get not bothering Martha on her honeymoon, but shouldn't Jack have the Doctor's phone number (well, Martha's old one) too in case of shit like this or like the last time with the Daleks? Y'know, just so he could maybe call and say, "Hey Doctor, the Earth's been moved halfway across the universe, could you maybe lend a hand? No, I don't mean the one in the jar..." or "Hey, so all the kids on the planet are speaking in unison and it's freaking us the fuck out. Any thoughts?"
--Oddly, I'm not surprised by the fact that Jack has a daughter, but the fact that's she's as old as she is throws me off. I know it shouldn't considering just how long he's been (and will be) running around, but for some reason I'd have expected her to be a little girl. Wonder how many other kids he's got out there?
-Wow, Nameless-Assassin-Lady (or NAL for short) is a bitch.
-Somehow I get the feeling that Jack is more upset that the cute ER doc is dead because he was cute.
--...Why, except for the blinking, do Gwen's baby and Jack's bomb look the same on the scan? Don't know what planet that scanner's from, but you'd think they'd differentiate between the two just a little more.
--Damn that kiss was hot.
--Nooo! Not the Hub! Not the pterodactyl! Not Janet! Not... well, actually I don't care so much about Jack's frozen brother 'cos he's the dick who killed Tosh & Owen, but we don't know who else they were keeping in the freezer, so, um, yeah.
Day Two
--No wonder NAL’s so bitchy, she’s absolutely horrible at her job. She’s supposed to kill three people, and understandably, one can’t die, but even the two who can manage to escape relatively unscathed and go on the run.
--Gwen & Rhys need to go do more Torchwood stuff together, they're too cute when they are not to.
--Well, Lois, I think somebody just passed their job interview…
--IANTO WITH A FORKLIFT! As I saw someone else here on lj say, Ianto Jones has out-badassed himself. Though, when the hell did he learn how to use one of those? Is he the Taskmaster of the Whoniverse or something? He’s a teaboy, a receptionist, a secret agent, a janitor, a personal shopper, general errand runner/personal assistant, etc. and now a construction worker too? He’s not only the Taskmaster, he’s Barbie.
--Unexpected Naked Jack! (And that’s pretty much all I need to say about that one.)
--Okay, so to sum up, NAL has not only failed to kill the 2 out of 3 people she could, but when she had the third… contained, he was broken out by a pregnant woman (who’s not taking the risks she normally would, and is therefore a nerfed version of herself), a guy who’s basically the manager (I think, not exactly sure what his job title is) of a U-Haul posing as an undertaker, and a [super-special-awesome] teaboy with a forklift, who as far as we know has no prior experience driving such a thing. Wow. That’s so sad that I can’t even make myself ridicule you for how bad you suck, NAL. I’m sorry?
--My affection for Gwen goes up and down, but after watching the Inside Look things BBC America’s airing after the episodes, I wholeheartedly adore Eve Myles.
Day Three
--I totally expected to see Bruce Wayne & Alfred when Ianto opened the door to the abandoned warehouse that is the new Batcave Hub.
--Gwen’s having an awful lot of fun breaking the law for a former policewoman.
-- Er, what in blue hell are the 456 doing when they keep squirting that green stuff onto the walls of their terrarium? Are they sick? Is it a nervous tic? Are they possessed by the devil? “Your mother’s in here with us, Frobisher.” “Prime Minister, we’re going to need an old priest and a young priest…”
--Why did they bother programming emoticons into the special contact lenses?
--Yeah, no, fake!mistress!Lois, Mrs. Spears doesn’t seem bitter at all…
--Jack, wtf are you doing handing kids over like that? I know it happened 40+ years before you met up again with the Doctor, but this is a total step backward from the point your personality was left at in “The Parting of the Ways.” I know you’re still all bitter then ‘cos he left you behind which is perfectly understandable, but I also know you didn’t forget what he taught you about the value of life and doing the right thing. He’d have at least looked for a way to cure the virus so that not even one child had to be sacrificed. You didn’t even try, and it didn’t sound to me like your co-workers had either. What the hell, man. You stood up to a legion of Daleks with just a pistol, where did your balls go? Did Rose not bring them back to life along with the rest of you?
Day Four
-- Which would’ve been more interesting when Alice was growing up, career day with her dad Jack at school, or take your daughter to work day?
--What is it with aliens in the Whoniverse and ten percent? The Master killed 10% of the entire human race, the 456 want 10% of all the kids…
--Wow United Kingdom, no offense, but your fictional self sure knows how to pick winners for PM.
--I <3 Lois. And I think she just earned herself a spot on TV Tropes’ Crowning Moment of Awesome page. Hell, she and Ianto with his forklift can start the Torchwood page of it (it doesn’t have its own yet… DW does though). Okay, just looked- while it doesn’t have its own page, both of those are listed for Torchwood under Other Shows in the live-action tv section.
--‘Cos Ianto will apparently need it as a memorial… fuck. Just, fuck. That wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to die! Not like that at least! WTF? That was too sudden, too quiet! He deserved to go out with a bang, not a whimper… *goes to cry in a corner for a while*
Day Five
--I think I agree with the rest of the interwebs when they say that they miss the Master as PM. Do you know what an absolute ass you have to be for people to pick the guy who literally killed a tenth of the world for shits and giggles then enslaved the rest over you? God damn it. Except for creating the whole Harold Saxon persona and hypnotizing people to get elected in the first place, at least he was honest about screwing us all over. And everyone’s right when they say the Master wouldn’t be taking this shit from the 456. We’re his minions, and he ain’t sharin’. (Of course, Harriet Jones pwns both of them. She’d have just blasted the shit out of those fuckers for even suggesting taking Earth’s children. Jones > Saxon > Green. GAH! Damn you again, RTD! Now I want to smack the Tenth Doctor upside the head for deposing her! Ten! Don’t you know how much I love him? Well, of course you do; you’re at my journal… Dammit! Yes, Harriet Jones, we knew who you were, and we miss the living hell out of you.) (Also, why does everyone awesome have the last name Jones? Harriet, Ianto, Martha & her family…)
--And another thing! Doctor! Where the hell are you?! I don’t know whether to go with Gwen’s theory that you turned away from Earth in shame, or that this was one of those fixed points in time and space that you couldn’t change, or that you were somewhere else doing some lonely-god-knows-what-thing of equal/greater importance, but this was certainly a time when Earth needed you and you weren’t around. FFFFFFFFFFFF-DAMN YOU FOR MAKING ME SO MAD AT MY DOCTOR, RTD! DAMN YOU! *sigh* I am now terrified of what kind of crap will be pulled during Ten’s last episodes… And where was Sarah Jane Smith during all this for that matter? Protecting kids is totally her thing!
--Jack! What. The. Bloody. Fucking. Hell?! I can’t fault you for having to make the choice to sacrifice one kid to save all the others, but how could you do that to your own daughter & grandson? (It’s cruel of me, and it’s not fair either, and I'm a horrible person for saying it, but there were still the other kids without families to miss them, just like when you gave up kids the first time in 1965.) How could you not even try to come up with another way of defeating the 456? You made such a point about what the Doctor taught you to them on Day Four, but again you don’t actually follow through! You didn’t have much time to work something else out, true, but you didn’t have that little either! Why didn’t you at least try? *turns away from the captain in shame*
--Bridget Spears should get to be on the CMoA page for her use of the super-contacts too. Although why that one woman thinks she’s going to get to keep her job when she’s on all the tapes too is beyond me.
--That’s it Jack? You’re just running away? You’re not even going to keep working for Torchwood and protecting the Earth as a way to make up for what you just did and what you’d done in the past? I- you’re not even worth the effort of slapping anymore. I’m disappointed in your lack of effort and I don’t know if you can make it up to me. I think Ianto would be ashamed that you gave up so easily.
Season 4?
--I know the mere existence of this was largely dependent on the ratings for CoE, and from what I’ve seen about those, it’s now just a matter of waiting for the BBC to give the thumbs up, but RTD has dug quite a hole for a fourth season to get out of. I mean, there’s no Hub, there’s no team… what’s even left to be called Torchwood? Or is he going to pull the mysteriously missing Torchwood 4 out of his ass in honor of it being season four?
--I literally feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut after finishing CoE to the point where the thought of watching old TW episodes feels depressing. Do I even want S4 now? Shit. To paraphrase the Monarch, I love RTD for bringing back Doctor Who and creating Torchwood, and this miniseries was excellently done (why can't we come up with stuff this good in the US?), but I want to kick his ass. I want to build a machine to kick his ass. I want to build an empire to house the machine to kick his ass.
--I sure hope David Tennant doesn’t have to sit right next to RTD during the Doctor Who events at SDCC, ‘cos I get the feeling that somebody’s gonna wanna throw something at ol’ Rusty. Think I’ll constantly be refreshing 4chan on Sunday to see if anything happens…
--Lois is definitely on the shortlist for new Torchwood people, but who else? I’d say NAL, but she might be a little too hardcore for it. Don’t think Rhys wants to do it, even though he’s proven that he can, but he might since Torchwood is apparently just Gwen now and he’d want to protect her. Mickey Smith has gone the way of Matt Parkman’s FBI agent-partner from S1 of Heroes and disappeared into the ether. In seasons past I know it’s been a crack!theory to have Andy join up, and I can never tell if that’s a good idea or not. Half the time he proves himself to be quite capable and just a bit awesome, but then he’ll turn around and prove himself to be a right idiot.