Torchwood: Children of Earth --- The Big Finish

The third series/season of Torchwood has ended, and so we have time to catch our breath and try to take in what happened.

For those still stunned by the loss of Ianto, I'd like to mention that the following characters were NOT killed off in the last episode: Gwen, Rhys, Gwen's unborn child, Jack's daughter, and that Lois chick that helped the team out.

In this last episode we learn why the 456 are so eager for Earth children: they connect themselves up to the children, and the children secrete something which acts on the 456 as a drug.

My first thought on learning that was this: why don't the 456 just synthesize the chemicals secreted by the children? But I suppose there might be some explanation. Perhaps the synthesized version is more dangerous to the 456--- more prone to cause overdose.

One of the themes of this series is sacrifice. Those evil government dudes are actually faced with an impossible choice: sacrifice a relatively small number of children, or face the death of the whole world. It's a horrible choice, but would anyone really condemn the whole human race--- including 90% of the children--- rather than let some children become slaves of a sort to aliens?

In the end, Captain Jack is able to save the day, and the 456 are banished without letting them take the children. But Jack has to make a more personal sacrifice to make this happen.

The episode concludes with some action 6 months after the primary events of the series. Gwen and Rhys come to a hillside to meet Jack who has been travelling through space. They come to say goodbye: Jack at this point has no intention of re-starting Torchwood.

So that's the end of Torchwood. It is possible to re-start the series, and if this weeklong Torchwood event was popular enough, it may happen. I hope they do revive Torchwood--- in spite of the unfortunate death of Ianto which was not necessary to the story and was something of a 'look at me' kind of event especially on top of the deaths at the end of the previous season.

If Torchwood is revived, I think the following must be done: new Torchwood team members must be recruited as they ought to have been after the deaths of Owen and Tosh. The next season ought to be a normal one--- no five-episode season, no team member deaths to draw attention to the season finale. I believe they really ought to try to give us two good seasons before they make with the tricksy stuff again. After all, without the first two seasons to let us get to know Owen, Tosh and Ianto, they would not have got millions of people to cry over their deaths.

TOMORROW: BBC America is premiering a new series, 'Being Human', about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, probably walking in to a bar. Or, more likely, they are trying to live as humans do, and coping with the nasty human prejudice against entities who want to drain them of blood or tear their throats out. It sounds a bit like the Southern Vampire series only set in the UK.

NEW DOCTOR WHO EPISODE: will be aired on BBC America this Sunday.

Torchwood DVDs and books
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They Killed Ianto--- the B-st-rds!!!

Yes, I said b-st-rds. And I didn't mean the nasty aliens in the Torchwood: Children of Earth
mini-series. Yes, they are vile. But the real enemy--- the real persons who killed our Ianto after having done the same to Owen and Tosh--- are the rotten swine who produce Torchwood.

I suppose I will still tune in for the fifth part of the Torchwood mini-series, if only to see if Rhys will be spared this season or whether they are saving up to kill him in the next. Then they'll be down to Captain Jack and Gwen, and since Captain Jack can't die, the question is, will they spare Gwen? They are running out of people to kill!

It reminds me a little of the frantic speculation before the release of the final Harry Potter book, over which characters would bite the dust. But author J. K. Rowling kept faith with her readers and spared Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny at least. Had the Torchwood production team been in charge, Ron and Hermione would have been dead for sure and Ginny's chances would have been slim at best.

But even if Harry Potter had ended in a bloodbath that killed everyone, at least it was the end. What is Torchwood going to do now? The original appeal of Torchwood was the team. It contrasted to Doctor Who which is mostly just the Doctor and one companion, sometimes two companions, and very rarely the Doctor alone. But now with Torchwood the team is gone, and we have Captain Jack as a Doctor substitute with Gwen as his loyal companion and Rhys, while he lasts, as the robot dog....

In my opinion, the poor judgment of the Torchwood producers in killing off Ianto, Owen and Tosh (over the course of about 5 episodes) has likely killed Torchwood altogether. And the same folks are involved in Doctor Who. Will they destroy the TARDIS next?

I suppose this is the price we pay when we become fans of a television series. Even the best of shows may have to write off our favorite characters from time to time, as actors move on or become unable to continue with the show for some reason. It makes me want to devote all my energy to my own writing where nobody gets killed off unless I personally want them dead.

Torchwood DVDs and novels at Amazon.com
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The Sci Fi Catholic says: Sign This Petition!

The Sci Fi Catholic urges folks to sign a petition at the ACLJ about the new 'healthcare' bill's abortion mandate.

I urge the same. When we have socialized medicine expensively forced on us, including abortion in the mix is sure to get the government to start promoting abortion, since that is cheaper to the healthcare system. Killing a baby in the womb means that seventy years later you don't have to buy the kid a hip replacement.
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'We are Coming!' and The Enclave

"We!"
"We are!"
"We are coming!"
If those words are familiar to you, you must be watching BBC America's 'Torchwood: Children of Earth" week. The 'Day One' episode was exciting, all the children of Earth were acting weird, someone's out to kill Captain Jack (good luck with that one), Gwen's pregnant again, this time with a non-alien baby, Ianto and Captain Jack kiss again, Captain Jack gets killed a few times again....

But, now it's time to talk about the blog tour. The book in question is 'The Enclave' by Karen Hancock. I must admit I didn't find it as exciting and compulsively readable as the last blog tour book--- or next month's blog tour book, which I read cover-to-cover the day it arrived. It was also less exciting than re-reading Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, less exciting (but more pleasant) than my most recent livestock escape, but more exciting than my current attempt to read 'En Ĉinio Batalana' by Hasegaŭa T., which is a World War 2 era story of a Japanese person, but in spite of the title is not about a Japanese soldier fighting in China but a Japanese communist lady (with a Chinese husband) who mainly seems to be fighting to find a better apartment.

One element of 'The Enclave' which made it a touch harder for me to get involved is that there are two stories, really--- one centered around Lacey McHenry, her work at the Kendall-Jakes Longevity Institute, the strange incidents she witnesses there and her possible romance with Cameron Reinhardt, and the other centered around 'New Eden'.

During the first half of the book, these two stories are wholly unconnected with one another, and in fact the reader might believe that the New Eden story is taking place in a future era when life on the surface of Earth isn't possible, and therefore all the people involved in the Lacey McHenry story are long dead.

It's only when you cross the line into the second half of the book that the two stories start to become interconnected.

The question is this: was this a wise writing choice? In one of the books I was reading as a distraction from 'The Enclave', there are multiple groups of characters--- Avtar the alien and his crew, David Goldfarb and similar characters in Great Britain, Sam Yeager, the man in charge of alien POWs in the USA, and so on. These characters interact rarely, if at all. Yet from the first at least we know they are all experiencing the same world events.

For me, the division of the first half of 'The Enclave' into two seemingly unrelated stories didn't work very well for me, unlike the similarly divided stories of 'Worldwar'. Perhaps because Turtledove is a more experienced writer, he was able to keep my full interest in all of the stories.

I felt that in the 'New Eden' sequences, there was something missing. Nothing in that storyline really caught my interest--- it didn't seem that real to me. Perhaps what was lacking was the details--- the little things, unimportant of themselves, that make a world as strange as 'New Eden' feel real.

As for the Lacey McHenry sections, well, that was a lot more realistic, but not particularly distinctive. The evil Institute with its Christian-hating characters is too similar to other evil Institutes with other sets of Christian-hating characters in other Christian fiction.

That being said, 'The Enclave' is an acceptably good read if not, for me, a compelling/addictive one.

Blog Tour Stuff
The Book: 'The Enclave' by Karen Hancock http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock's Web Site: http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm

Karen Hancock's New Wordpress Blog: http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

And The Usual Blog Tour Gang:
Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

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