Just one more cup of tea, then I'll start

Sometimes it's just really hard to get going, so far I've made several cups of  tea, had a bath, watched the news, eaten two bowls of corn flakes and googled online eps of The Nanny.   In fairness I am recovering from the month of August during which both my wife and I hardly had a break from making home made noodles for local Muslims during Ramadan. It takes a lot  of time and energy to make 4 or 5 kilos overnight, leaving you knackered and craving your bed till at least noon or 2 in the afternoon. Multiply this 15 to 20 times over 30 days and you begin to realize just how drained the batteries are.

The last time I felt sufficiently moved to rise out of the noodle induced stupor, I wrote a scathing indictment of all that is wrong with Miracle Day, the latest and possibly worst, longest and most pointless Torchwood offering. Since then I've come close to commenting on Libyan affairs twice, reviewing Doctor Who, wondering aloud if Sci Fi as we knew it even 10 years ago has changed beyond all recognition.  I even had considered writing about the current series of The Great British Bake off.

But I never got any closer than several pots of tea, cleaning my desk twice, preparing several epic meals, going for walks and throwing dirty laundry into baskets. At one point I had even tidied the rubbish bins and reorganized the pantry.  So why the block I wondered, what was keeping me from writing again. Well I could discount the tired to some extent, as in fact I had at least since the last week of August, gone back to watching quality and sometimes less edifying telly. We had a Shameless marathon that took us from the first time Frank Gallagher graced our screens to the rise of the Maguires as the defenders of Chatsworth. Estate. As I said before, I even watched Miracle Day for a bit till it made me want to poke my eyes out of boredom and frustration. In between all of that, were great films on BBC and C4, Outnumbered came back and of course The Rob Brydon Show till just this week brought a gleam of hope to the usually dreary world of chat shows. And if that wasn't enough, we haven't missed a Doctor Who, Top Gear or the footie, such as it was.

"8-2 Brute?" Julius Caesar

I say such as it was, but Man U spanking Arsenal comprehensively 8-2 is the sort of  match you don't soon forget, regardless who you support. To quote a mate of mine ( Keith Telly Topping ok). He'd rather see Northern scum beat Southern scum if it comes down to choosing. but I still had to feel just a bit sorry for the Gunners. The worst result in 116 years, having the rot so plainly show, I suspect even Alex Ferguson thought that there had to be a point where honour was satisfied and the ref could have blown the whistle. I reckon somewhere 10 minutes after the restart would have been the point when the coup de grace would have been appreciated by the North London daycare side that Wenger fielded. Even now I'm looking forward to the England Wales qualifier later today, having missed the disgusting behaviour during the Bulgaria match. In case you're wondering  how I could have passed up such an interesting fixture? I could tell you it sounded boring and that I had better things to do, but the truth is I fell asleep on the setee and missed the entire day.

So I hear some of you wondering out loud how it is I wasn't able to rise even once since my Torchie review despite being thrown a bone when forced to watch 5 minutes of the latest candidate for worst UK game show ever ( Thanks again  Mr Topping) ... EPIC WIN. This exercise in annoying made Don't scare the hare, ....ermmm look less shit than it actually is. I watched a butcher identify meat with his feet. Seems all games and game shows at the BBC now need to rhyme. Surely this would of been just the thing that the doctor ordered to break the writing duck, but no, I wasn't moved, not even after seeing the host call on the pop up co-compare in a white suit make insipid jokes and be so embarrassing that small children would think they were at a particularly bad panto.

I can only assume that my biggest stumbling block was the fear that once started, I'd have to dive back in to another season of Srictly reviews and pretend to care what happens to talentless charvs and hapless chef wana be's who's big talent is stacking chips in the shape of a log cabin. Is that really all there is??? I sincerely hope not. While I can always turn to Dave, Yesterday  or even ( GASP) ITV 4 for old Sweeneys, I despair of the state of British telly when the best on offer is Top Gear, Doctor Who, Sherlock and a few decent crime dramas and maybe the occasional comedy. This Summer was supposed to be full of great filler  to while away the long hot  mystery months when there is no football. Instead we got a few half hearted efforts from BBC4 that placated the more intellectual among us, but below the medulla oblongatta, where Ideal, The IT crowd or Big Brother for Posh people ( Apprentice), live, there was a gaping hole of repeats and uninspired "hilarious" programmes from the same minds that gave us the truly awful Big Top.

I will freely admit to being addicted to the Libyan revolution and the news stations that one has to watch to be up to date with it. Big winner here is Al Jazeera English. A  brilliant station that has kept me abreast of important things like cricket, football and  English looters while also and importantly, providing me with obsessively detailed reports on battles, diplomatic moves and now the reconstruction of the new Libya. I'm sure the BBC has had much the same thing, but Al Jazeera was all too often too hard to turn off long enough to find out. Kudos to Sky News for having the first live pictures out of the newly liberated Tripoli and Martyr Square. It takes a special kind of crazy to get that kind of job done.

Sign the petition NOW if you haven't yet

Or it could have been the sudden appearance on Face Book of the petition to stop the powers that be from dumbing down BBC 4 in a move explained as an "economy" motivated policy. Why would anybody want to dumb down BBC4? Since when is it a criticism to say a programme or a station is TOO smart? What prize idiot at the BBC or the Government considered for even a second the possibility of  cutting funding to the flagship station in the BBC crown? As bread winner, BBC 4 does more work on a quarter of the budget that the brain dead BBC 3 gets. BBC4 provides 80 % of all English language programming to educational stations across the globe. Then even more translate the shows and spend even more at the BBC. And if that wasn't enough , these servants of Jeremy *unt want to stop broadcasting quality  foreign language material like The Killing, Wallander and Spirale. .

What ever happened to Leon Trotsky?

Is it any wonder I hadn't had the spirit, the energy or the desire to dive back in? A few extra quid in the account from writing would help, but this too will come one day, till then, one must endeavour to continue to endeavour. OK, this it it, I'll write those reviews right after I've read the news paper, had another cup of tea and fed the cat.

As per usual, this and all other entries written under the influence of the most excellent Beat Surrender, still channelling The Stranglers, The Pistols The Pogues and Ian Drury on BBC Radio Newcastle. Catch Nick Roberts online by clicking on BBC Radio Newcastle  Saturday listen again section, look for Beat Surrender.

R.I.P. Torchwood 2006-11 or Miracle Day mess

At long last, it has happened. Russell T. Davies has allowed his creation to be killed off by a combination of American money, being full of himself and the absolute crime of trying to sell tuna as filet mignon.

Back on 22 October 2006, a small band of odd warriors of all things not important enough for the Doctor to sort, broke on the scene and launched a love affair that lasted to about a week after "Children of the Earth", when certain obsessive fans girls wanted a mildly needy poof resurrected. By all accounts, that should have been the end, the final curtain  for a franchise that did what it said on the tin. Sci fi for adults on a personal scale where explosions were mental and devastating consequences were of the type you could feel all too easily. Individual relationships between characters and the rest of the world as well as with each other were compact and told a story in in the way old fashion Sci Fi used to. Torchwood treated us as adults with enough imagination and smarts to understand what was happening without having to include healthy doses of automatic weapons fire and macho posturing . It kept the connection with the Whoverse from whence it came and most importantly, it assumed a certain connection with the reality of the rest of the World and how government works in practise. In so doing, the stories, including Children of the Earth managed to be as disturbing and as riveting as they were.

Give me a room full of ministers condemning an entire subclass of people with the stroke of a pen over any helicopter spewing metal death at a harmless Welsh cottage on the orders of the CIA. The moment I knew American money was pouring in and the setting and cast were being sent across the pond, I had a terrible horrible feeling. From the first frame of  "Miracle Day", it became obvious that Torchwood had become utterly detached from any sense of reality such as was till then understood by RTD or the BBC. It failed on a number of levels which I shall now outline.

1- Miracle Day became an action shoot em up thriller with more bullets than story in a matter of minutes. It's combination of X files and 24 with a dash of right wing jingoism, was immediately evident to even the most untrained eye. There is an assumption of a level of power of the United States that never existed, not even in the most fevered imaginings of a Tea Party nutcase. The be all and end all attitude of America right or wrong that includes the resurrection of the Russians as adversaries, in current circumstances  speaks to writers who still haven't figured out that the US hasn't been a world power for at least 10 years now and more to point has it's begging bowl out hopping not to have ten shades of shit kicked out of it by the Chinese. That the story became that unhinged so quickly immediately put me off the rest of episode 1, a condition I never recovered from thereafter.

2- The writing was moved from Cardiff to an office in the USA ( I don't care what the official line is), and the clear lack of understanding of anything outside of the USA and the Cardiff team's lack of any comprehension of what Americans think or know or how they live, combined to make an already bad story into a shambolic script that would have sapped the spirit of even the best actor in the world. Which of course it did  with immediate and tragic effect to John Barrowman and Eve Myles. The American cast wasn't as affected as it was used to this level of shlock one must assume.

3- The abandoning of the connection with the Whoverse for the flimsy bizzaro notions that only seem to work in exploitation action horror genre shlock.  Forget that the so called drug would have to get past so many trials and filters to be used on a world scale and would thus be stopped in it's tracks, forget that it's too preposterous for words, How does this in any way fit into the continuum that is the world of Doctor Who from where it sprang or The Rift which fuels all the basic stories?


4- Perhaps most damning.... the loss of the need to tell the story ( however silly or strange) in a reasonable fashion or length of time. Miracle Day makes some filler episodes of Lost seem like action packed super vitamins of intellectual horse pills.

5- Lastly, the people in the US who watch ScyFy and other such stations have been watching Doctor Who and the real Torchwood, among other offerings, for years on telly and online. They are smarter, better educated and have a low tolerance for bullshit. To produce a puff piece aimed at what I can only assume is the lowest common denominator, insults the original viewers who expected better and misses the mark of what the adolescent  non geek American viewer is looking for. To be blunt, the average person who watches ScyFy would watch BBC 4 if they could. To dumb down Torchwood to such an extent puts RTD in the company of Guy Ritchie and his entirely awful Sherlock Holmes.

A few highlights or lowlights as you please, of strange logic in the story thus far. Captain Jack is affected by a clearly chemical created drug that causes him to become mortal while the rest of the World apparently becomes immortal. What horse shit! Whatever made him immortal was far more powerful than any drug Bayer could ever make. Another gem is the anti hero peado killer who didn't die. How in any world could he become some kind of religious leader?????? And why would churches empty after no one dies? Should be the exact opposite.

Miracle Day is about as much about the real Torchwood as a cheap knock off  a Dolce and Gabana hand bag could ever be taken for the real thing. It reminds me of the nasty plastic toys in the shops masquerading as  Star Wars Toys.... Galaxy Wars, which in no way resembled the original power sabres et all and broke the first time you played with them. Miracle day is what happens when a perfectly good UK programme crosses over and is "adapted" for American audiences. It's a dog's breakfast of gristle, fat and a few original features floating in a soup of  sparkle and flash that the original went miles out of it's way to avoid. Now if that was it, a bad adaptation that would be an improvement on what has happened here. A recent friend of mine on Facebook summed up Miracle Day in the following words.

Erik Engman You can probably watch episode 1 then all the "Previously on Torchwood"s then the last episode. 

It's all filler with a few minutes of content at the end. In fact according to Erik, episode 5 or 6 was written by the same criminal who wrote the killer cat episode of X-Files. Surely in all of the USA there had to be 12 writers better than this person??? But it would seem few people with a reputation wanted to touch this turkey. 

Are there any redeeming features to Miracle day? I'm told Eve Myles aka the delectable Gwen Cooper has some funny lines and looks pretty good on a motorbyke. Hardly a reason to watch an entire ep let alone anything after episode 2. As a plot device, the problem of that many undead people on earth using up the planet's resources had to come to the logical gruesome conclusion of concentration camps and ovens. that they waited till ep 5 , is testimony of how long they plan to stretch this simple 4 parter into an epic fit only for marketing shampoo and life insurance to bored people on cable. And on the ovens, let's talk for a minute. I'm not offended by them, not in  the least, but by what power have Congress or the White House to impose this on the World? Through  some sort of invisible long lost super power tool, by means of  a mega corp on the rerst of the World? Then ignoring the current geopolitics by making the Chinese the good guys but the EU evil, is so ludicrous as to stretch credulity past the point of suspension of disbelief. 

Another casualty of this debacle is the now seriously overexposed John Barrowman. His truly awful variety show Tonight's the Night, comes as a nail in the coffin of a once interesting actor who straddled bisexual, gay and straight sci fi. I now have to ask myself how much of early Barrowman brilliance is down to good writing and how much is him. I sincerely hope he bounces back from this, but If I'm honest, and when haven't I been brutally honest? This confluence of shite upon utter shite cannot be good for his career. 

The problem now is that even if from episode 6 through the end, it gets better, I am already beyond caring. And if I am beyond caring, how many people who are the alleged target audience, are also past giving a monkey's how it ends? The fact is that noise from the US backers indicates that there will not be a series 2 of Torchwood USA. Critical reaction and poor ratings are not making the kind of buzz the producers were expecting, and that spells doom for the new format. Will the great celestial Auntie in London green light the commission of more old style Torchwood now? I seriously doubt it. 


So here I sit angry and grieving the destruction of one of my favourite programmes by it's creator in the name of the all mighty American dollar and US ratings. There is no way back from this now. Torchwood as we knew it ended when the credits rolled on Children of Earth  and  were dead and buried the moment Gwen Cooper turned into Mr and Mrs Smith. What was left barely breathing was then pummelled to dust by the misguided and poor writing of people who seemed to think the CIA was more powerful than the British House of Commons and the Cabinet. And where the Doctor finds new and innovative ways to explain the TARDIS to new travelers, the concept of Torchwood was so poorly explained  in episode 5 that one wonders if they weren't maybe just a wee bit too embarrassed by Miracle Day to even go there. The scripts and acting are ham fisted and not much better than the stuff you see in bad  University short films. I almost wish  they hadn't bothered or that some evil troll at the BBC would have had it "put on hiatus" like they did to Doctor Who. Perhaps then I'd still have the memory of the wonderful programme I used to enjoy. 

I will always have my memories of Ianto, Owen , Toshiko and Gwen as well as the Bat cave under Cardiff. Torchwood then was like the unfashionable back end of the Whoverse where all manner of scum, scoundrels and hangers on would congregate around "The Rift". Captain Jack Harkness and his collection of off the radar police, would explore the grey area of intergalactic, timey whimey morality that is the seamy underbelly of the rosy universe The Doctor skims over most of the time. I miss the weird cursed gadget of the week or the well intentioned never clearly good or bad visitor who only reveals their intent when you least expect it and most of the time catches you off guard. The interpersonal relations of people who no loneger exist in the real world were equally interesting. They vaguely resembled the effect of spending too much time playing Halo or being permanently wired to your  work for so long you lost the ability to communicate with normal people. Living in the bubble of the lair reduced them to space travellers light years from the rest of space ship Wales, UK, Earth. And yet there was a logic to the whole thing, Torchwood London, The Doctor, 10 Downing, U.N..I..T. ( albeit evil), had a continuity that made it all feel familiar and worth investing time in.


This imposter on telly at the minute is not the Torchwood I know and clearly not what RTD at his most misguided probably wanted. Can I blame him for this? OH YES, but he's not alone in shouldering blame. Pity that regardless how it ends it's probably the end of what could have been a long run of realy fun Sci Fi. You know it puts me in the mind of when Blake's 7 got so seriously wrong. Seems history is doomed to repeat itself after all.  I've decided to take the advice of Erik, Come the last ep, I'll watch to see how it ends....maybe. Or perhaps I'll just ask somebody who watched. Frankly I'm not that bothered one way or the other. 

EDIT: Sept 10th, the finale has played inthe USA, I have in the end asked somebody who watched, how it ended. Seems I was right, episode 9 was sort of the end, then 10 was a steaming pile of filler that whimpered it's way to the credits in a haze of bullets and WTF illogic in no way connected to the Whoverse. I'm glad I passed on it  

Bring on Doctor Who PLEASE!!!!!