Is it absolutely riddled with plot contrivances? Yeah 💀

I'm gonna be real though, when is Doctor Who stuff not? (real answer is probably sometimes) But even all-timer stories have a few.

But even with that, the world building is fantastic and the political commentary is on point and scarily relevant recently... People REALLY underestimate how fricken strong the premise of this season is!

The characters are still fantastic is well. There's tons of drama, some melodramatic but also a lot that have real character stuff behind it. Gwen being traumatized by being in Torchwood was a cool way to open the season and Jack's immortality being inverted is really novel and a fantastic hook for the season. (It probably should have played on it a bit more tbf) Rex and Angelo are also really fun.

The blessing is also fantastic to me. I can see how some people might be a bit underwhelmed by the visual of it but I actually really liked how it looked. The fact that Jack doesn't know what it is and that we as the audience never found out either is something not a lot of writers would be willing to do and I respect the restraint. It keeps you thinking about what it could have been even after you finish the season and I really like that.

It's probably not even the worst season of Torchwood too. Season 1 and this are probably tied. (For the record I love both)

The only bad thing to me is that it ends on a cliffhanger, even then it's only two scenes, it's not hard to just retcon then out in your head. And the way Gwen puts Rex whatever happens to Rex can work somewhat as a good ending. "Why didn't the blessing reach out and done one last favour and save Ester?" And then the exact next thing we see is that Rex is immortal, meaning that the Blessing actually DID do a favour, just for Rex. It's not like you NEED a follow up when it's framed so definitely. It's satisfying enough for me.

Overall I loved this season! Maybe Children of Earth served as a better ending for the show but I really don't mind having a little more after that!

I just finished Torchwood, and this is my first watch. I always heard in this subreddit that children of earth was THE best season of Torchwood. While I do agree that children of earth was incredible, I would say I enjoy Miracle Day just as much if not more. Maybe it’s because I’m American and don’t have a problem with the Americanization of Miracle day, but I LOVED it. I wish they’d make a season 5 with the Torchwood team and Rex, and pick up where they left off with the 3 families and Rex’s immortality.

Hi there. Casual 2024 Torchwood viewer here. I watched it as a little kid after loving Doctor Who and obviously didn't really enjoy it since it's a much more mature storyline, but recently I've rewatched it as age 20 and absolutely loved it.

Despite that, I never really got to season 4 of Torchwood because I heard it strays from the original story too far and I never wanted my memory of Torchwood to become "ruined". I have always accepted that the story ended after Children Of Earth and assumed Jack would continue Torchwood on his own and Gwen would quit and start a family with Rhys after the deaths of the Torchwood team. I also am assuming there will never be a season 5. I dunno, I am curious about Miracle Day but I also feel like I wouldn't like any other type of Torchwood either than the iconic team from the first two seasons. It's like I'm holding myself back. Just curious to see if anyone else hasn't watched season 4, and for those who have, did it feel too different?

I know miracle day is a bit of a mixed bag but I seriously can't believe they never decided to follow up on rex afterwards! I know he's briefly mentioned in "army of one" and "exodus code" but it's literally just a name drop, does anyone know of any post miracle rex content?

Ok this started as a comment on a thread, but when I saw the dissertation I'd accidentally written, I decided that it should probably be its own post. Also worth noting that I'm commenting on the direction of the series as whole, how it handled its themes and content and what I felt it was trying to do but fell short, not any specific changes to plot points (except to advocate for the complete removal of most of them) or characters. I'm curious about other people's take on this so please do comment below, and I'll try to respond.

So, to me, the biggest issue with Miracle Day is that the underlying plot was just too complicated. The whole Three Families Conspiracy, the Blessing, Jacks backstory with Angelo, Government infiltration etc... all of it devolved into a convoluted mess with no real satisfying pay-off. In my opinion (with absolutely no writing background, experience working in TV, or subject matter expertise whatsoever) the episodes where Torchwood shines the brighest are where they take a simple sci-fi premise (i.e. episodes like Countrycide, Adrift, Ghost Machine, Out of Time, all of Children of Earth and I'd include Meat too) and explore the human reaction to it. When the Doctor isn't there, how does humanity deal with these things? Things that are largely out of our control and/or we have little to no understanding of. The ways we try to make the best out of a bad situation (e.g. Adrift, Children of Earth and Out of Time), how we resist or give into the dark temptation to exploit something we don't really understand for our own means (Ghost Machine, Meat and I'd include Children of Earth by how they select the kids in the end) and how we react when we're completely out of our depth but have to navigate an impossible situation (Children of Earth) and what are the moral implications of these actions.

The driving premise of Miracle Day could have been something as simple as some alien being behind the immortality (could be forced, evil, or even attempting to be benevolent but just didn't understand humans well enough), and the show would revolve around how humanity would deal with this change. How the rich and powerful would try to exploit it, how governments manage an ever-growing population with finite resources, and how these decisions and an ever-worsening situation with no end in sight impact everyday life. With Torchwood trying to find the cause but also mitigate the effects as best they can (like with the previous episodes mentioned). Use the simplified premise to properly explore complex and controversial themes that would inevitably arise.

For a show like Torchwood, I'd say the why or how this is happening isn't important. What's important is that it's happened, so what do we do about it, or what CAN we even do about it? In all the episodes I cite as being my favourites, they never focus on the why or how it happened. Beyond "because of the rift" we don't focus on how or why people are displaced and returned (Adrift and Out of Time), we don't focus on what The 456 or the creature in Meat are where they came from, we don't know what the device is, where it came from or how it works in Ghost Machine and we don't deep dive into the motivations in Countrycide (in fact the simple, "it makes me happy" is far more chilling than any extended lore answer). They introduce a simple sci-fi premise and roll with it, because the why doesn't matter. It's not like they could do anything about it or even have the capacity to understand it in some cases. It's here/happening, so what can we do about it?

By making so much of Miracle Day about the mystery of why it's happening, they set themselves up for failure. It's an abstract sci-fi concept, so the cause will inevitably be sci-fi mumbo jumbo and will never result in a satisfying conclusion (at least not when it's the primary focus of the entire series). Children of Earth wasn't chilling because The 456 wanted kids, it was chilling because of how everyone reacted to the situation and almost gave them the kids. The wrap-up being another Deus-ex-machina-esque resolution to The 456 doesn't spoil it because they were never really the focal point. At the end of every one of these episodes, our characters are left to deal with what they've done or were about to do. The end points we got in Miracle Day (the camps, categories of life, etc) should absolutely be there, but the decline to that point should have been the focus. With the state Torchwood is in at the start, the show is better placed to show the mounting street-level chaos something like this would cause, which could result in these end points.

I think Miracle Day wants to be dark and disturbing, akin to Children of Earth, but it just isn't. The camps and ovens are horrible and shocking, but that's all they are. They don't stick with you like the discussions in the cabinet office, and then seeing the children loaded onto the buses. They don't challenge you, and you can't relate to those behind it. To me, chilling and disturbing are the result of understanding what you're seeing and invoking parallels with uncomfortable realities. Without the groundwork to humanise the things we see in the show, we don't get that understanding, and the result just feels like exploiting real-world atrocities for cheap shock factor. It doesn't make a point (other than burning people is bad, which I like to think most of us already understood), or challenge us on how we think.

Bringing up Children of Earth again, (I know they're completely different stories, but hopefully you can see why I keep comparing the two since I believe Miracle Day wanted to deliver the same kind of effect on the audience) the questions raised aren't "should we give poor kids to aliens?" or "is government evil?". It challenges the idea of "needs of the many vs the needs of the few" and how we do we decide the value of one life over another. No child deserves to be given to The 456, but which kids deserve it the LEAST? How do we make that choice, how would those in charge likely make that choice, and by extension, how would YOU make that choice? Yes, it's totally selfish when everyone in the room exempts their own children from the list, but in that position, wouldn't you do exactly the same thing? Would you give your own children the same 1/10 chance you're giving everyone else's? Is fairness even a factor to be considered in this circumstance? What does morality look like in this scenario? Can it coexist with logic? And if not, when does moral choice trump the logical one? If we can discard our morality in the face of oppressive odds, then what's the point? All of this is absent in Miracle Day. We see the end results, but they don't touch on how we got there (or examine it very briefly), or worse, they hand-wave it away as being part of the master plan of the cartoonishly evil and ill-defined Three Families.

To me, normal people doing horrific things not out of malice but out of desperation, fear, selfishness, or just not being well enough equipped not to is far more chilling and horrifying than comic book levels of evil or insidious evil shadow organisations. Treating the human "villains" as humans and not cartoonishly evil psychopaths will always be more disturbing and is a far more effective means of engaging your audience and conveying your message. When we understand the thought processes, we can relate to the people behind them, even see bits of ourselves in them and, to me, THAT is when things get disturbing and challenge your audience. By no means are we expected to agree with them, and the show makes clear that what they are doing is wrong, but when we can understand WHY they're doing them, it grounds it in reality and makes it so much more unsettling. Seeing the cold logic, divorced from humanity in action, is far more effective and horrifying to me.

The most horrific acts in human history were arguably more the result of indifference than malice, choices made out of a perceived necessity, and following logic driven by an underlying ideology. Decisions made by people so far removed from the ground-level consequences that they just don't care. Even the holocaust (watch Conspiracy if you haven't, it's horrific) was devised out of perceived necessity. The Nazis intially wanted to deport all the jews from the country but couldn't, and "storage" solutions and alternatives were impractical, especially given the underlying ideology of the nazis so they decided this was the only logical way forward (ignoring the obvious of asking wtaf are we doing here, these are human beings). We see the same with Children of Earth, the government doesn't act out of malice but percieved necessity and informed by an underlying ideology (the idea that kids from low income areas are inherently less valuable to society whilst ignoring that they themselves are the cause or at least perpetuators of the disparity in academic performance and career options in these communities). My point is that seeing the human thought processes behind them play out juxtaposed against the final result is far more horrific than just seeing the result itself. So if the show was determined to include these things (the camps, categories of life, the ovens etc) and wanted them to have the same impact as Children of Earth, it needed to dedicate the time and effort that Children of Earth did in showing how we got to this point. Given given current affairs now and at the time of release, handling these ideas maturely is important. Some things should be disturbing and uncomfortable, so that when we see parallels happening in our reality, we're better equipped to recognise them and call them out.

Side note, I'd like to highlight the PERCEIVED necessity, where these groups are responding to the problem as they perceive it to be, whether that's a reflection of reality or not. I am in no way justifying the decisions they made and am horrified by them, as most sane people are.

tldr: Miracle Day was too focused on the convoluted why and how, and should have simplified the cause to focus on the what now and how humanity deals with it.