Captain Jack is back, and back with a bang! Torchwood: Children of Earth

Bit late, with this, but anyway.

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A couple of weeks ago, Torchwood returned and boy did it return with a bang! The programme has finally broken its way through biting tooth and nail to get on BBC One at prime time and low and behold it has finally done that. With everything at stake including the future of Torchwood, Russell T Davies (head writer) must have known that he had to produce something pretty special to get the show to continue on through it all like it battle tired, charismatic anti-hero Captain Jack Harkness and low and behold he has produced something that is even better than any fan’s expectations. This five part series I guarantee will be better than any film that comes out this summer with similar themes. Yes it really is that good! If we are all lucky, this will not be the last time we see Cap’n Jack and his plucky band of freedom fighters.

Day One

Day one truly was Captain Jack back with a bang as explosions flew left, right and centre. The first thing that Davies has done with expertise is cut down the fat of previous Torchwood seasons with characters Toshiko Sato and Dr Owen Harper feeling the chop at the end of season two. Davies has shown through Torchwood that he is never afraid to kill off characters however central they may seem and consequently this is to his credit. It leaves the viewer never knowing who is going to survive one scene to the next. Children of Earth sensibly revolves around Torchwood’s three most interesting characters: the enigmatic Jack, Gwen and Ianto. In Day One, earth’s children all stop at the same time only saying ‘we are coming’. Jack and the team try to work out what is going on with added complications with a bus load of kids in Scotland in the 60s and a mysterious 456 frequency that only the very select are aware of. As before with Torchwood, we learn a little more about the mysterious Captain: he has a daughter who has a son. The relationship between Jack and his daughter seems strained even more so as she realises that Jack only wants to be with his grandson to test him. Day One finishes with a stunning finale. Our anti-hero has been killed another two times (tot them up on the Jack death tally) where a bomb has been placed in his stomach. Only when he returns to the hub does the team discover the truth, let alone the fact that Gwen is pregnant. As the hero he is, Jack sacrifices himself literally pushing his loved one Ianto onto the elevating step. As Ianto leaves, the hub blows up, leaving Torchwood without a base and temporary without a leader. As viewers we assume Jack has survived: he is indestructible. Yet, Torchwood lost none of the excitement and tension. Furthermore, although it is assumed that Jack is still alive (as his trademark trench coat) what about Ianto and Gwen?

Day Two

In Day Two, the momentum does not slow down. With Gwen and Ianto now on the run from the government. The remains of Cap’n Jack are taken to a prison. As both Gwen and Ianto battle alone to discover where Jack is with help from Reese (Gwen’s husband) and Ianto’s sister, the viewer sees Jack begin to come back to life in a cringe worthy scene where Jack’s skin slowly grows back onto his skeleton. The torture is not over for Jack as he is locked inside a concrete crypt. Meanwhile, Lois Habiba decided to aid Gwen, telling her where Jack has been kept. Gwen and Reese create a battle plan to rescue Jack leading to gunfire. It seems there is no hope for Gwen and Reese till Ianto rescues Jack and makes an escape route for both Gwen and Reese. The final few scenes show the team back together as well as the promise that the aliens are coming tomorrow from the children with a suspicious character hugging a chamber for them to come.

Day Three

Day Three sees the team reassemble in an old Torchwood 1 facility. The team steal in order to survive. Whilst this occurs, Ianto presents Jack with a new trench coat. The episode ends with an unbelievable realisation that the 456 (the alien) needs the children for some reason. It would seem that they need them to live off. However, this is not the greatest revelation that leaves the viewer reeling. We discover that Cap’n Jack was the one that helped the aliens take the children in the first place in the 1960s.

Day Four

The day opens with Jack explaining himself how he was ordered to take orphaned children to the alien as it gave them the cure to a virus of some sort. However, this time, when the alien wants ten percent of all the children on earth, this time Jack has had enough and decides to strike war against the 456. Through the help of Lois Habiba, Jack and Ianto get in to see the alien. They threaten that they will bring a war onto the alien with all the people of earth against it. However, the war ends quickly with the alien attacking the building it was stored, killing all of the humans init including Jack and Ianto. As we all know, Jack comes back to life but Ianto does not have that pleasure. Yet again, Davies has shocked us all by killing a character that seemed to be so cemented into the Torchwood mythos that we did not think he could be at risk. Davies, like Josh Wheedon (creator of Buffy and Angel) has the ability to create characters that we care about and then rip them away from us by killing them.

Day Five

All hope seems to be lost. Jack is in jail and the government has decided to go with the alien’s demands. We also find out that the alien feeds off the children like a drug. Gwen is the last line of defence for Ianto’s sister’s children as she battles with all her life to save as many children as possible. Finally, Jack is released and has a plan that will save the children and earth if it works. However, he will have to risk it all to do so. The choice is simple: Jack looses everything that he has left or save the world?

Like in last year’s summer blockbuster ‘The Dark Knight’, Cap’n Jack seems to be destined to loose everything in order to make sure that the world survives. If ha hadn’t already, if this the first time you were introduced to the former time agent, surely after this phenomenal five part series you will now see Jack Harkness as one of the great heroes of the genre, rivalling Constantine and Angel for the classic brooding antihero