Loved Children of Earth so much! Watched it on iPlayer with the boyfriend, and I’m so glad I didn’t use it for background noise while I was sewing, it was far too good for that. It went placed Doctor Who only wishes it could go; this is what Torchwood was meant to be about from the start! Although, I think Children of Earth has set it apart from Doctor Who now, it’s much more than just ‘the grown-up Doctor Who’.
Though it has to be said, while partially explained by Gwen at the beginning of episode 5, I still don’t really understand how that big of a shit storm could go down without the Doctor being involved. Particularly when it involves such great sacrifice – I love the fact that he wasn’t involved because we all know that it would have been a happy ending had the TARDIS showed up a Thames House, but regardless, this is a Universe where not only is the Doctor known, but known as someone who can save the Earth in dire need. We’ve seen the government turn to him before, so why no mention of him? Martha’s on honeymoon, so what? Think that would have stopped her making the phonecall when kids started to chant in unison?
That’s the only thing that bothered me anyway, but like I said, I’m glad the Doctor wasn’t involved because the reason Children of Earth was so good was because everything wasn’t OK, it wasn’t all hunky dory, there was no solution without sacrifice – even if it was thoroughly disturbing to watch. (The guy who played John Frobisher deserves some kind of award, seriously)
This kind of stuff can’t fail to get a reaction, but it seems as though the Torchwood fandom has exploded because of this. People were actually sending insults to one of the writers via Twitter (can read his blog post about it here) which is just unfair. I’d hate for this interactivity between creators and fans due to Twitter, blogs etc. to go sour because fans can’t hack what a creator does with their creations. People are upset that most of the cast has been killed off, and what with the news that Russell T Davies is heading Stateside, a fair few people are wondering if the intention was to leave Torchwood in a state in which it couldn’t come back. I don’t really know, I think it will come back because the ratings speak for themselves. How it’ll come back, I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t jump straight back into what Torchwood used to be, because it can’t really. We’ll see anyway. I hear John Barrowman is lined up for David Tennant’s last episode as the Doctor, so I hope some Jack-fixing goes on there and that’ll give way to a new Torchwood team.
