On Torchwood Miracle Day

After three episodes of this new style of Torchwood I'm now realising how slow this is going to be. I confess I am one of those viewers who loves contrast, variety, difference, novelty. That's probably why I liked Doctor Who in the first place.

And I remember how much I liked the first series of Torchwood more than that year's Doctor Who season. Episodes like Lost In Time, Small Worlds, Countrycide, Combat and Random Shoes couldn't have been more different from each other and each stands alone as an example of imaginative fantasy fiction writing that you can watch time and again. I've watched each at least three times, some more.

I can't see that happening with Miracle Day. Each episode is just an episode of a long soap opera, and when it gets to its end I'll say fair enough, that was fun, and I'll never watch it again. And will any one episode really stand out as the classic that you'd give a Hugo Award to? Will there be a Human Nature, a Fathers Day, an Empty Child, a Blink? I don't think so.

So, as a long, trundling, occasionally imaginative 10 hour ongoing drama, it's pretty good. But as someone who got fed up of The X Files when it stopped being stand alone stories and turned into a dull soap, I can tell it's going to lose me when I miss an episode and can't be bothered to catch up with it.

Here, a flashback to how stimulating Torchwood once was: