TORCHWOOD

I've never watched this show before, which is pretty odd when you consider that not only am I into all things fantasy and science fiction, but I know several of the people who write the Torchwood novelizations. But the prospect of a five day running mini-series -- Children of Earth -- finally tempted me. And to my own surprise, I was not in the least bit disappointed. There were a couple of lame jokes, and some -- er -- 'borrowing' from other films and shows. But overall the cast was good, the plot was strong and menacingly creepy, and there was even some unsubtle but rather timely social comment around the question of who's important to society and who is not, what used to be called Social Exclusion and was supposed to be reduced instead of getting worse.

Should Captain Jack re-appear on our screens, I'll definitely give him another look. But if I have one major gripe, it's that the good guys resorted in the end to defeating the villain by announcing something along the lines of "if we defribrillate the varg blaster and reverse the polarity of the neutron blerks, we can create a sonic resonance that will disrupt ..." etcetera and so forth. Um, yuh, why didn't I think of that? But if Torchwood does that regularly, then it's not the only show that's guilty. Doctor Who does it a lot, and so for that matter did TNG. Personally, my own heroes mostly beat the bad guys by punching them repeatedly or shooting them, preferably both. The simpler solutions are so much better ... and more fun.