TORCHWOOD MIRACLE DAY by BBC Home Entertainment by Various

The fact that Captain Jack Harkness was always getting killed in previous episodes tagged him as mostly ineffectual. His immortality factor is an easy-access crutch. His seeming death once in a while or a season should have sufficed. A more brazen display of martial arts or strategical skill would have offset these shortcomings to complement his irrepressible charm. With Miracle Day's latter episodes, Jack redeemed himself and finally lived up to his potential. Removing his immortality that season was a kick in the pants he needed to exemplify his hero status. However, I will always love Eve Myles' kickass Gwen Cooper, a true heroine.

When I watched this last year on television, I was rather disappointed. 10 weeks watching is just too long a period to remain hooked to one story. You'll always miss some of them (and forget to tape it), while I tended to forget certain parts of the plot during the course of the period. Still, it was a Torchwood series, and owning all the books, as well as most of the available audios that aren't published as a readable version, I just had to buy the DVD set of series 4 too. And did!Watching it again, but now during a marathon session looking at all episodes directly after each other, my feelings are much more positive. You can really see how some of the characters evolve quite substantially during the series, while remaining true to form (Rex and Esther especially), and you get the notion of the similarity between two major characters (Jack and Oswald) whilst liking one of them and hating the other. I rather missed those first time round because I was too busy trying to comprehend all the plot points. And wasn't Jill an absolute gem as a character?Contrary to some, I quite liked the location switches between Wales and the US (even if in reality some of the Wales parts weren't actually shot there) and also the Brit-US language differences brought to the front. At least some humour and fun was brought into the series with that, because generally it shows a rather bleak perspective on humanity, especially in the Western World (although one does presume some pretty nasty things are happening elsewhere as well). I realise there is some over reacting, some population exploding that comes a long too quickly, but, 10 weeks is as I stated already rather too long for a complete story arc. What if one had to follow the real figures of the increases in people, it would have taken even longer!I was also reminded of one particular episode of Doctor Who called "Turn Left" where some pretty nasty disasters on British soil leading to concentration camps as well, not for the dying (or Category 1), but for foreigners. That was a pretty bleak episode in that particular series. However, in this series that is intended to be watched by adults the horror of it all is much more explicit. well done.Obviously some of the episodes are better than others (like many other reviewers I loved the historical one, which is both a somewhat traditional Torchwood story and provides some interesting insights into Jack and Gwen's relationship; beautifully perfomed too), on the whole it is an interesting story line. It doesn't let the good guys always win (and even kills some of them off, which is more realistic than what goes on in most Sci-Fi Detective Action series - I suppose Miracle Day contains all genres at once), although obviously in the end the situation does normalise (in the World, not the cast). I also enjoyed the ending, whether there will be a series 5 of Torchwood or not. I certainly hope so!

I'm not the type of person to compare one series of a TV show to the last. Having recently rewatched Children of Earth, I will agree that it was absolutely brilliant. And then we get Miracle Day. I have to say I really, really enjoyed it. I think everyone's problem is that most of them became Torchwood fans during Children of Earth and expected Miracle Day to be exactly the same - but its not! I have watched Torchwood from the very first episode and I will continue to watch it always. Miracle Day gives us a new Torchwood team, including the annoying and funny Rex Matheson and the beautiful Ester Drummond. Plus we get the extremely twisted Oswald Danes thrown into the mix. Miracle Day gets off to a very strong start and the first five episodes offer the viewers many thrills. I will admit that episode 6 and 7 felt very wobbly but they soon picked things up again and wrapped up the storyline stylishly. I will admit that watching episode 7 with your parents made it quite uncomfortable to view, and it probably was my least favourite episode. I don't understand why they needed to have explore an unnecessary backstory when they could have had an action packed episode where Gwen kidnaps Jack. But yeah, I wouldn't tell anyone not to watch it, because after the backstory it actually is vital to the entire plot plus it throws Jack back into the limelight! I so hope that Torchwood gets a series 5, I think this programme has another few years left in it.Here's my opinion on every episode.1. The New World 10/102. Rendition 10/103. Dead of Night 9/104. Escape to L.A. 9/105. The Categories of Life 10/106. The Middle Men 9/107. Immortal Sins 5/108. End of the Road 10/109. The Gathering 10/1010. The Blood Line 10/102011 was a year of change for the Doctor Who Universe. Doctor Who was different, Torchwood was different and of course we got the final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. People were very negative towards Doctor Who and Torchwood. If people are not prepared to embrace these changes then they clearly are not TRUE fans! That's all I have to say.