TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY – "The Middle Men"

Why does dimwit CIA analyst Esther Drummond use her real name while undercover? How does wanted fugitive Gwen Cooper manage to keep making trans-Atlantic flights without being caught? Why isn't Jack Harkness, the ostensible star of this show, getting more than about seven minutes of relevant screen time most weeks? Those are the burning questions in my mind after this week's episode, having replaced "who's behind Miracle Day?"

It's become very clear that Torchwood: Miracle Day has failed in its lofty ambitions, although I don't subscribe to a popular online theory that this miniseries has flopped because it doesn't feature aliens (so far). To me, Torchwood wasn't exclusively about aliens. The majority of pre-Children Of Earth episodes revolved around other forms of paranormal activity, so the world's population becoming immortal fits into that quite snugly. No, the problem is that this idea doesn't justify 10 hours of television, and the new American characters are both impossible to care about and, frankly, hog the limelight from the more interesting Gwen and Jack.

The latter has been treated especially poorly by almost every script, which is akin to writing six Doctor Who episodes and finding a way for The Doctor to only appear in a handful of scenes every week while his companions do all the work. This week, Jack's role was to stage a ridiculously fake kidnapping of a PhiCorp secretary, so he could use her as leverage with her boss Stuart Owens (Ernie Hudson), whom she's having an affair with. However, it turns out Owens is just as puzzled by Miracle Day as everyone else, and equally determined to explain it. His current theory being that PhiCorp is just one piece of the jigsaw, and the architects of The Miracle have spent years surreptitiously getting the planet to this point. Oh, and it may have something to do with "The Blessing", whatever that is.

Most of this week's story concerned the Overflow Camps in both San Pedro and Swansea. Gwen (Eve Myles) tried to get her "Category 1" father removed from the facility with the help of husband Rhys (Kai Owen), before he's sent to be burned alive; while Rex (Mekhi Phifer) tried to smuggle his video-taped evidence of the camp's ovens to the outside world, only to be captured by director Colin Maloney (Marc Vann), who wanted to ensure evidence of Vera Juarez's incineration didn't leak out.

There were a few scenes I enjoyed this week, like Esther's fight with Maloney and her subsequent breakdown over "killing" him with Rex. Alexa Havins' character may be a naïve moron, but I think she's a decent actress doing her best with iffy material. At least Esther's rite of passage is the kind of development you can see happening and enjoy, compared to boisterous Rex's slow realization that these Torchwood people aren't so bad after all.

It's just a pity so many scenes don't work or just feel  silly, both in how they're acted and constructed. For example: Maloney's twitchy accomplice whose guilt was written all over his face, or Gwen literally jumping back in horror at the message "Bring Us Jack" typed on her high-tech contact lenses by, we assume, the people behind Miracle Day. Or how about Rhys not even flinching when two armed guards were shooting at him as he drove a lorry through a security gate? A few cheesy or unconvincing moments I can handle in a show like this, but Miracle Day is riddled with them, and they seriously drag the show down. Miracle Day often comes across as amateur hour. How ironic that the UK-made show, often criticized by Americans for its cheap and cheesy feel, has compounded that problem now it's made with US co-operation.

Overall, "The Middle Men" did little to dissuade anyone that Torchwood: Miracle Day has been a big failure. It's making so many unnecessary mistakes that you can't quite believe it. Who writes six episodes of Torchwood and gives Jack Harkness the least active or interesting role in them? I'm sure some viewers appreciated having a break from the Oswald Danes storyline this week, and there were some nice ideas about state-sanctioned concentration camps floating around, but I can't see this miniseries turning around anytime soon. Still, now that PhiCorp don't appear to be our Big Bad, maybe a certain portion of fans will get their wish and "The Blessing" can be revealed as extra-terrestrial in nature. And we can also wonder what Owens' colleague in Shanghai saw that made him jump off a skyscraper. My guess: next week's script.

Asides

• Do all Americans pronounce "badminton" as "bad-minton"?


• Are you seriously suggesting a global network of concentration camps where governments were incinerating people, without anybody knowing, wouldn't cause huge outrage? The President of the USA didn't even apologize for what was going on? I mean, does anybody swallow that?

written by John Shiban / directed by Guy Ferland / 12 August 2011 / Starz

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TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY - "The Categories Of Life"

I wonder if this miniseries would have been better received if it wasn't connected to Torchwood, and was instead just a speculative SF special commissioned by Starz. You could easily replace Captain Jack (John Barrowman) and Gwen (Eve Myles) with equivalent American characters, as so little of Miracle Day relies on things that are unique to the Torchwood universe. Even Jack's signature immortality has been reversed as a result of the story's miracle itself, together with most of his personality when American writers are behind the script. I'm going to try and watch the remainder of this miniseries by divorcing myself from the expectations of the Torchwood brand, just to see if that helps...

"The Categories Of Life" was the usual tangle of good ideas spoiled by implausible execution and annoying contrivances. But the fact it took some significant steps forward with the story, while giving us a pretty dark "final solution" to the endemic of undying people, worked greatly in its favour. It even managed to turn sourpuss Vera Juarez (Arlene Tur) into a moderately less pointless character, before killing her off.

This week, despite being a wanted international fugitive, Gwen both risked and manage to travel back to Wales to help Rhys (Kai Owen) rescue her sick dad from one of the many PhiCorp sponsored "overflow camps" that have sprung up around the world. Governments are now passing a law that says life can be re-categorized into three separate groups—apparently symbolized by the red, white and blue of the US flag. There's Category 1, where you're "fatally" injured or sick and beyond help; Category 2, where you're hurt and would ordinarily die, but can continue living after treatment; and Category 3, where you're fine and dandy. Those in Category 1 are in the greatest danger, as Torchwood come to realize such patients are taken to secret campsite "modules" for processing—which it's revealed means being incinerated alive, in a chilling echo of Nazi concentration camp ovens.

I've actually wondered how Miracle Day would get around the problem that reducing a body to ash must bring certain death, so it seems "the miracle" does have its limits after all. Now the question is: if PhiCorp are burning the people who should actually be dead, aren't they just providing a cruel mass cremation service to the world? It's still hard to see what's in this for them. But incinerating the should-be-dead is apparently enough to justify the cost of setting up all these global camps, even if they're not doing a good job of caring for the people who end up inside them—as Vera discovered abandoned patients who aren't being fed, all sleeping in cramped conditions next to unwashed laundry. Oh, and a pen-pushing racist misogynist called Colin (Marc Vann).

The Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) story plodded on, but it's still difficult to comprehend why any of it matters. PR whizz Jilly (Lauren Ambrose) has helped organized a Miracle Rally for Oswald to give a key speech at, which requires he read a prepared PhiCorp speech that must include the word "revelation". But why's that? Is "revelation" a codeword for something to happen? Is it perhaps a sign to the people pulling Jilly's strings that Oswald's fully malleable? Jilly herself doesn't seem to know what's going on, as she was approached by a man who praised her and mentioned she's been "noticed"? I assume the people who've noticed her are Miracle Day's architects (the group symbolized by a rotating triangle logo), which suggest she's not working for them already? If so, is everything she's doing on behalf of PhiCorp is a separate issue to the white-triangle group? Oh, who knows, but we need some focus on this matter very soon.

I was intrigued by the possibility that Jack might talk Oswald into working for Torchwood, by giving him a different speech that would denounce PhiCorp as the people behind Miracle Day, in exchange for helping him die, but that didn't come to pass. That would have been a very unexpected twist, but it seems the writers would prefer to go down the Oswald-as-Messiah route... so he finally gave his approved speech about mankind's ascendancy to "angels", like a lapdog. Pullman's performance again oscillating from enjoyably creepy to outright laughable and weird. It often feels like he's not sure how to treat any of this material; with tongue-in-cheek humour or deadly serious? He's fallen somewhere in the middle.

Overall, "The Categories Of Life" wasn't a totally successful turnaround for Miracle Day, as there are still messy areas and ridiculous moments, but some things seem to be developing at last. It's just unforgivable that Captain Jack's almost surplus to requirement. While Rex (Mekhi Phifer), Esther (Alexa Havins), Gwen, and Vera went undercover in two overflow camps, poor Jack was stuck in Los Angeles and only given one notable scene with Oswald at the Miracle Rally stadium? That's an unforgivable, tragic waste of the show's lead character who, at least until Miracle Day, was the beating heart of Torchwood... now reduced to a bit-part player.

What did you make of episode 5? Was there some improvement, or are you on the brink of giving up? Maybe you stopped watching weeks ago?

written by Jane Espenson / directed by Guy Ferland / 5 August 2011 / Starz

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TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY – "Escape To L.A"

The best episode of Miracle Day so far, by some distance, thanks to overdue back-story to humanize Rex (Mekhi Phifer) and Esther (Alexa Havins), and tangible development about exactly who, or what, is behind the Miracle Day phenomenon itself. Buoyed by an entertaining moment of espionage for the Torchwood crew in the second half, "Escape To L.A" was breezy and decent fun, showing signs of improvement I hope will continue into the remainder of this miniseries.

Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) remains a real headache for the show, which is a shame because the core idea behind his arc has some merit. I just don't see why they decided to make him a paedophile (the least forgivable crime in human society), when having a serial-killer instead become an unexpected figurehead for tolerance in this New World Order would have worked equally well. Nevertheless, the idea to give Oswald a rival in Ellis Hartley Monroe (Mare Winningham), a mayor who's pushing a"Dead Is Dead" campaign that wants to brush the world's problem under the carpet by segregating the "dead" from the living was an intriguing development. It's just a shame the details don't feel very plausible, with Oswald victorious in this political war by giving a supposedly rousing speech to a makeshift hospital of sick people. (Incidentally, why would anyone ask a convicted paedophile to take care of a small abandoned baby girl?)

Team Torchwood are beginning to form a tetchy dynamic now, too. I was pleased to see Rex becoming less annoying, although his understandable frustration with the amateurism of Torchwood dragged his character back to being unlikable towards the end. This was also the hour where we learned something about the show's new characters: Rex is estranged from his vagrant father and trying to heal their relationship because he's starting to suspect he'll die when the "miracle" ends; and Esther has a sister called Sarah (Candace Brown) who's incapable of looking after her two kids, meaning Esther had to call social services to have them taken into protection. Both stories didn't take up much time and weren't hugely compelling—although Phifer gave a decent performance in the scene with his cantankerous dad and Esther felt more human. Considering the difficulties of fleshing out characters when there's an urgency to a story being told, I've seen it done a lot worse.

One thing that's becoming more of a noticeable issue is how extraneous and, frankly, boring Captain Jack (John Barrowman) has been on the show so far. Has removing his immortality neutered the dashing hero of the previous three series? It certainly seems that way. Here, Barrowman's given a few awkward speeches and a key role in an operation to steal information from PhiCorp's servers with Gwen (Eve Myles), but other than that he's almost surplus to requirement. Very little about Miracle Day is working because of what Captain Jack's bringing to the table, in terms of knowledge, expertise or attitude. It's perhaps one of the reasons Miracle Day hasn't gone down so well with fans. And why is the show still making cutesy references to the fact Jack's lived thousands of years? If you're new to the show (and this Starz miniseries was partly designed to introduce Torchwood to newcomers), it must feel very strange.

Overall, most of "Escape From L.A" worked well enough and it was a more capable hour than we've had so far. It's still not especially gripping, but at least we've been given big clues about what's going on: the unseen villains (their "organisation" symbolized by a rotating triangle) are referred to as "The Families" at one point, so are there three alien families behind this? They've also given Oswald Danes this platform intentionally, and must therefore have infiltrated PhiCorp to do that, so there's a feeling this episode has started to draw a few of the subplots together. We'll have to see if Miracle Day manages to resolve the story in a satisfying way, and I'm still not convinced it can, but I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Asides

• Love the scene with Monroe being crushed in a car compactor, ending up trapped alive inside a metal cube, with just her eye blinking. That's quite a horrific fate to be given, and a more imaginative twist on the common scene of someone immortal being buried alive in a coffin.
• Does anyone care about Gwen's family? I know Rhys (Kai Owen) has his fans, but every time Gwen has to dash off to call her husband while on a mission my attention wanders. And putting her sickly father in jeopardy doesn't feel like a good move, considering all that's happening in Wales. Are we going to see Gwen fly back to Wales for an episode of two to save him? If so, maybe this subplot only exists to stretch the miniseries out? I have a feeling Miracle Day doesn't need 10 hours, and we'll see more padding in the future, like episode 2's plane journey shenanigans.

written by Jim Gray & John Shiban / directed by Billy Gierhart / 29 July 2011 / Starz

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Comic-Con 2011 panels: DEXTER, FRINGE, SPARTACUS, TORCHWOOD, TRUE BLOOD & THE WALKING DEAD

San Diego Comic-Con is winding down for another year. I'm sure most of you have been watching and reading the coverage online in some capacity, but I thought I'd embed a few videos of various panels that are relevant to DMD's own coverage. Below are the panels for Dexter, Fringe, Spartacus, True Blood, Torchwood and The Walking Dead. Most were filmed using the "wobbly-cam" that's all the rage, so the quality's not great, but I commend Starz for ensuring their Spartacus panel was professionally recorded in its entirety. (You can click through the subsequent "parts" of each video via YouTube.)

A few more panels may be added soon, when they become available. But in the meantime: enjoy!

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TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY - "Dead Of Night"

From the overrated pen of Buffy's Jane Espenson, "Dead Of Night" was of mixed success and, owing to the fact this is a miniseries, I have less to say that's not just reiterating points from previous reviews. I still find Gwen (Eve Myles) so annoying she makes my teeth itch, because she's written as confident and sassy but it's all done so cartoonishly, and none of that attitude flows naturally from Myles. Rex (Mekhi Phifer) continues to be a belligerent dickhead, Esther's (Alexa Havins) written so thinly she elicits no reaction, and Captain Jack (John Barrowman) currently seems lost in the crush—and, frankly, more interested in shagging the local barman than saving the world. (Or if you're watching the BBC airing a week later, just flirting with a local barman?)

In some ways this episode is where the story truly started to take shape, but that shape doesn't feel like anything remarkable. The Torchwood team discovered a warehouse containing millions of painkillers stockpiled by a pharmaceutical company called PhiCorp, who assumedly knew about Miracle Day a year in advance and have planned to make a fortune by selling an immortal world their medicines. The CIA, personified by Rex's butterball boss Friedkin (Wayne Knight), are also in the pockets of whomever's pulling the strings. But right now the prime suspect must be red-lipped PR woman Jilly Kitzinger (awesome Lauren Ambrose), who invited Dr Vera Juarez (terrible Arlene Tur) to a PhiCorp presentation, while also managing to get child killer Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) on her client list, with plans to manage his sudden and wholly implausible celebrity status with the support of PhiCorp.

Along the way the video-camera contact lenses from an old Torchwood episode make an appearance, Espenson's script laboured the point that Americans and Brits use different words for things (although I must admit I never knew lemonade isn't fizzy in the States), a cult called the "Soulless" has started walking around town in frowning face-masks (um, it looks good for the trailers), Rex slept with Dr Vera (possibly because he needs someone to get a recurring blood stain out of his shirts), and there was Miracle Day's first gay sex scene—together with a gay joke playing on the double-meaning of the word "impaled". Fnar, fnar. And don't you dare criticize said joke or you'll be labelled homophobic, rather than having an evolved sense of humour.

In the episode's favour, at least it managed to get Oswald Danes into the same storyline as Torchwood's random investigations, and Oswald's speech to Jack about "painting" bruises on the 12-year-old girl he raped and killed was an effective piece of writing. We also now have a potential villain in PhiCorp, but if they're the definite culprits of Miracle Day I think they've been revealed too early in the show's run. Or are they just one part of a bigger plan, seeing as their painkillers are being given to the public without a lucrative prescription charge? Is it possible there's something in those drugs someone wants the entire human race to ingest en masse? And if so, is it encouraging that Torchwood's lifting a storyline from the first season of V's remake?

Overall, "Dead Of Night" didn't really work for me because the juiciness of the Miracle Day concept is beginning to wear off, and it feels like the explanation's edging into predictable "evil company" territory. But it's early days still, so I hope PhiCorp is just a dead-end, or will lead the investigation into a more imaginative realm. But really, given the size and scale of Miracle Day, the explanation's got to involve either aliens or futuristic technology. What else could it possibly be? I'll be mightily impressed if Russell T. Davies can avoid anything obvious for a cogent explanation, but given the show's abject failure to even make Oswald Danes' forgiveness and public worship feel plausible, I have serious doubts.

written by Jane Espenson / directed by Billy Gierhart / 22 July 2011 / Starz

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TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY – "Rendition"

Miracle Day's premiere divided fans, as most tried to reconcile its "Americanisation", but I was entertained throughout and didn't feel Torchwood was any less ridiculous than it's been on the BBC. How quickly forget that Cyberwoman fighting a pterodactyl, eh? I also think the previous miniseries, Children On Earth, is being remembered as a shining beacon of British sci-fi, when in reality it was just a proficient Quatermass knockoff blessed with an effective alien and Peter Capaldi scene-stealing. Miracle Day continues with "Rendition", written by Doris Egan, whose work on House means she's best placed to write an hour with an emphasis on medicine...

This episode was definitely a weaker hour compared to the premiere, but just about managed to pull through thanks to some spirited sequences and intriguing insights into the implications of a medical world without death. Dr Vera Juarez (Arlene Tur) came to realize that diseases that ordinarily feast on the body of the person they kill, before dying themselves, are now free to rampantly spread; and the system of how to treat patients has been reversed, with the seriously injured left to wait (as there's no chance of them dying), while people with minor injuries are given top priority.

These are just a few examples of the fascinating ideas floating around Miracle Day, often delivered in mere throwaway lines (like how the Hindu belief in reincarnation has been thrown into chaos). And then the whole situation worsened with scientific proof that people are still aging normally. So even if the world could somehow find a way to cope with this colossal population boom, everyone on the planet is doomed to become everlasting, shriveled cadavers. Living fossils, a living hell.

What was a little puzzling is how long this episode kept Jack (John Barrowman) and Gwen (Eve Myles) on the backburner, as they were flown back to the USA by CIA Agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer). For a big chunk of time, the show's three leads were all contained aboard a passenger jet, which meant supporting characters like Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins), Juarez and Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) had to pick up the slack. The results were mixed, although it was interesting to discover that Esther's boss Brian Friedkin (Wayne Knight) is perhaps involved in the mystery—as he ordered operative Lyn (Dollhouse's Dichmen Lachman) to poison Jack with arsenic after hearing he's mortal. Is Friedkin involved in whatever Miracle Day is? It would appear so. Was Jack targeted because of who he is (a time-traveller from the future capable of solving the crisis), or what he is (a mortal man whose biology may hold the key to reversing the problem facing everyone else)?

Pullman was great as Oswald Danes last week, but I wasn't too convinced by his heartfelt breakdown on live TV when asked to comment on his murder of a 12-year-old girl. It all felt phony to me, not helped by the wooden guest-star playing the TV host, and I'm not convinced Oswald's tearful apology was emotionally transcendent enough to trigger the beginnings of mass public forgiveness, as seems to be where we're headed. However, it was intriguing to see Oswald approached by a flame-haired PR lady called Jilly Kitzinger (Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose) with an offer to represent him, who then later appeared to Juarez with an offer to provide much-needed painkillers to the nation. Is Kitzinger simply a con artist with her fingers in a few pies, or does she have a plan that simply must involve both Oswald and Juarez?

Perhaps the best moments of this episode was seeing Gwen, Rex and the cabin crew try to save Jack's life after his poisoning, by making an antidote using chemicals that can be found on an airplane. This is where Egan's training on House came in handy, as it felt very plausible that you can counteract the effects of arsenic using de-greaser, fuel from a laptop battery, silver, etc. And I like how the roles have now reversed between Gwen and Jack, as he's now the person who can be put in mortal danger and needs her help. The show definitely works best whenever Jack and Gwen are bouncing off each other, as they know their characters inside-out and have a readymade chemistry (whereas everyone else is feeling their way still), although I do wish Eve Myles would calm down. I get that Gwen's a feisty and confident person who's very bossy, but Myles often tips over into petulant hysterics with her performance.

I'm also concerned about the character of Rex right now. He wasn't introduced as a particularly likeable person last week, and he actually became even worse in this episode—taking obvious delight in separating Gwen from her husband and child! It seems a very strange way to be writing that character, even if the intention was to absolve him by the episode's end after he helped Jack and Gwen escape after being warned by Esther that getting Torchwood onto US soil was all a setup. Hopefully now Rex will become more of a team-player than he's been so far, which will hopefully endear us more to Phifer's swaggering performance.

Overall, "Rendition" wasn't great and it marked a slip in quality from last week's rollercoaster opener, but it just about kept itself afloat thanks to a few dramatic sequences/visuals. The fact I'm genuinely interested to see how they're going to explain everything also works in its favour, but I remain unconvinced they can stretch this idea out for another eight weeks.

written by Doris Egan / directed by Billy Gierhart / 15 July 2011 / Starz

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TV Ratings: TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY (BBC1)

The UK premiere of Torchwood: Miracle Day lured 4.83m viewers to BBC1 at 9pm last night, down 1m on the premiere of Children Of Earth in 2009. Of course, Children was a world premiere of that particular miniseries, whereas Miracle has been controversially delayed in reaching the UK after Starz aired it in the US last Friday. So it's more than likely the 1m drop-off is partly because of torrent downloads this past week, and the fact this isn't being stripped across the whole week (so the need to watch episode 1 on the day of transmission, or risk falling behind, isn't so strong.)

Over in the US last Friday, Miracle Day's world premiere attracted 819,000 viewers for Starz at 10pm and 687,000 for the 11pm repeat, resulting in a total of 1.51 million viewers. This a fraction below the premiere of Camelot (1.57m), a show that Starz cancelled after one season—but not purely because of ratings and demographics, so this doesn't mean Miracle Day's doomed, too. Anything in the 1.5m range is a big hit for a premium cable channel like Starz.

Incidentally, Channel 4's The Killing was direct competition for Torchwood in the UK last night, and the crime drama remake dropped to 1.5m viewers—losing 670,000 viewers from its two-part premiere. Some of the loss may be attributed to people giving Torchwood preference, with 311k watching The Killing an hour later on Channel 4+1. So the loss of audience for the show probably isn't that bad, when you factor in the presence of a big Thursday night rival.

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Review: TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY – "The New World"

Russell T. Davies just about manages to transfer Torchwood to America without repeating the mistakes of the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie, although it's touch and go in places. Miracle Day is a ten-part reversal of Children Of Men's premise, where death itself becomes an impossibility and the world faces a four-month countdown to catastrophe as the population booms. It's the fourth series of the Who spin-off, but broadly accessible to newcomers by virtue of having so many American characters themselves unaware of Torchwood's existence and history. This premiere is largely successful at what it aims to achieve, blessed with a simple but stimulating idea to explore, although there occasions when British fans may be rolling their eyes at some cheesy/nonsensical moments (such as a brief phone conversation that somehow lasts a car journey from London to Cardiff), but in general "The New World" was effective and entertaining set-up.

In the months since the Children Of Earth miniseries concluded, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) has taken the baffling decision to live a reclusive lifestyle in a beachfront cottage with husband Rhys (Kai Owen) and their baby, but is inevitably pulled back into action to help investigate the so-called "Miracle Day". The phenomenon in question being the sudden, inexplicable inability of humans to die, demonstrated by the unsuccessful lethal injection of convicted paedophile Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman), and CIA Agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer) surviving being impaled by steel rods in a car accident. Curiously, at times this episode felt more like the story of inquisitive CIA Watch analyst Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins), given how Rex spends the majority of the episode in a hospital bed, dashing hero Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) doesn't appear until almost halfway through, and Gwen dances on the sidelines for awhile.

The concerns of most fans will be in seeing how well Davies has managed to transfer Torchwood's tone and personality to a (mostly) American context, and the answer is fairly well, but not comfortably. It's too early to tell if the show's risqué attitude has survived the Atlantic crossing, but this certainly wasn't an episode that sacrificed Torchwood's ideals and instead bombarded us with action set-pieces. In fact, beyond a climactic helicopter chase on a Welsh beach (involving a bazooka), the spectacle is restrained and the "Americanisation" only noticeable through the predominantly US casting and the quality of production standards—that even having a British director in Bharat Nalluri can't tune-out. And why should anyone want to? The show is slicker in some ways, but just as unintentionally amusing whenever it presents Gwen as a leather-clad bad-ass. In a strange way, the occasional clumsiness of "The new World" is a welcome reminder this is still the show we know and love (with caveats).

The new characters aren't very interesting just yet, and I'm particularly concerned about Mekhi Phifer, who spends most of this hour giving a performance similar to watching a young Danny Glover go through heroine withdrawal. Given the fact he's supposed to be the show's big new American lead, it's noticeable how poorly he's introduced and utilized, as Davies is clearly more comfortable writing for Jack and Gwen than any of his invented newcomers. The only unqualified success is Bill Pullman as creepy Oswald Danes; a character who's hypnotically repellent and gets the best dialogue to chew on. I'm already broadly aware of where his character's headed over the weeks, and I look forward to seeing how he develops from this intriguing introduction.

Perhaps the best aspect of "The New World" was simply having time to ruminate on the repercussions of a world without death. In one startling sequence, doctors gather around the body of a bombing victim who's now little more than a burned, mangled splat on a table—yet still alive to blink and groan at the living horror he's going through. Even when his head's severed from his body by snipping through what's left of his neck, the man's suffering persists. It was a horrific and unsettling moment, but simply the most visual example of the problems and abominations that will become commonplace. I'm sure Miracle Day will have great fun speculating about a world where there are suddenly billions of immortal people, many of whom will become trapped in a circumstance where they're begging for death to become an option again.

Overall, "The New World" worked because the high concept is so rich and fascinating, and it's good fun to see Cap'n Jack and Gwen back on our-screens after a few years away (even if the latter remains markedly irritating), but I'm not sure this idea will be able to sustain nine more hours. Children Of Earth didn't even justify five, and despite the fact Miracle Day's a global problem teeming with new characters, something tells me the mid-season episodes could be a problem to get through. The fact Russell T. Davies' plotting is by far his weakest skill, and so few of his episodes conclude plausibly, also has me concerned Miracle Day won't reward a ten-week commitment. However, on the strength of this opener, ignoring some of its sillier moments, I'm interested to see exactly where the story's headed.

written by Russell T. Davies / directed by Bharat Nalluri / 8 July 2011 / Starz

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TORCHWOOD: guns, lots of guns

Starz have released some promotional photos for Torchwood: Miracle Day. Can you spot the theme in the majority of them?

Two men, two guns

Man with a large gun

Injured man with a gun

Four people with guns

Man with a big gun

Woman with TWO guns

Is anyone else worried this Americanization (sorry, Americanisation) is going to leave a bad taste in the mouth?

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Trailer: 'Torchwood: Miracle Day' (Starz / BBC1)

Starz have released a full-length trailer for Torchwood: Miracle Day, their co-production with BBC Wales and BBC Worldwide. The ten-part series reunites John Barrowman, Eve Myles and Kai Owen from the original British show, joined by newcomers Mekhi Phifer (ER), Bill Pullman (Independence Day), Alexa Havins (All My Children) and Arlene Tur (Eat Pray Love.) Guest stars include Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), Wayne Knight (Seinfeld), C. Thomas Howell (ET), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters) and John De Lancie (Star Trek.)

What do you make of this trailer? Is certainly looks bigger and bolder than anything creator Russell T. Davies could have achieved on a BBC budget, but it also looks worryingly devoid of its unique personality. The last sci-fi drama that tackled a global high-concept event like this was FlashForward, and look how that turned out. Of course, Miracle Day has the benefit of beloved ready-made characters and a self-contained story to tell, so I'm hopeful this trailer's "wham-bang" aesthetic is just a concession to the American market.

Maybe the BBC will pull their finger out and release a more persuasive, intelligent trailer soon. Or is Torchwood: Miracle Day going to be nothing more than an Americanized 24-esque romp, with everyone under the misapprehension Eve Myles doesn't look ridiculous brandishing a bazooka?

Torchwood Miracle Day premieres 8 July on Starz. The BBC have not yet announced their schedule.

READ MORE - Trailer: 'Torchwood: Miracle Day' (Starz / BBC1)