Torchwood: Children of Earth (with spoilers)

[dragonyphoenix]

Been reading a bunch of commentary so I thought I'd put in my two cents.  First off, I watched the whole series in one fell swoop exactly one week after I had my cat put to sleep.  What can I say?  Needed the distraction and a friend, with impecable timing, lent it to me that day.

 

First, let me say what I loved.  We have Mr. Frobisher totally devoted to his job and then the Prime Minister telling him things like, "You are expendable."  This so resonates with my experiences working for big business.  Loyalty just isn't reciprocated.  The company wants to own you in words, thoughts, and deeds but doesn't give anything more than a salary in return and that only as long as you are valuable to them.  That's why I love Frobisher's journey, especially when the PM tells him to give his daughters to the aliens.  It just really resonated as true for me. 

Which brings me to the PM.  Same actor who played the king's man in <U>To Play the King</U> which is the second in <U>The House of Cards</U> series about Francis Urquhart.  Note: I highly recommend that series, BBC from the 1990's.  Back to my point: The House of Cards series is all about what evil bastards politicians in general,and Francis Urquhart specifically, are.  Torchwood and Dr. Who <B>try</B> to show evil politicians but they just don't pull it off.  For all that the PM in Torchwood 3 does terrible things, he just doesn't come close to Urquhart.  None of the Torchwood / Dr. Who politicians do.

Another thing I liked was the whole using the kids as drugs bit.  Damn but that's disturbing.  I thought it was an unusual idea and terribly creepy.

However, I really didn't get how they killed the aliens.  Just because that human man, the one who'd had contact with them as a boy, could be killed with a sound signal, how is modulating that signal and sending it back to the aliens supposed to kill them?  That was such a hack fix to the "how do we get rid of them?" question. 

Other thing I didn't believe was, after the aliens were killed, the military didn't grab up the kids (in the chase scene with Gwen) to take to the base.  They couldn't have been given orders to stop collecting the kids that quickly and yet they just stood there while Gwen smiled at the little girl.  Aw, you're safe now.  How was she supposed to know that?

And another thing.  So, they need 10% of the kids but they know some parents will keep kids at home.  Instead of being ready to go to the lowest 12 - 15% of the schools, they hunt down the kids, house by house?  Talk about incredibly inefficient just when you need to be completely efficient if your gonna save the earth.  I so don't buy that.


ta ta for now