Torchwood: Series 3, Episode 4 – “Children of Earth: Day Four” (2009)

 

Seriously, what happened to Russell T. Davies?  He used to be all about hope and the goodness of decent, ordinary people; his time at Who was full of it.  But somewhere along the way, he seems to have utterly lost his faith in humanity.  Did someone kick his puppy?  Was he devastated by his own ending to series 4 of Who?  My pet theory is that when he was writing “Midnight,” he gazed too long into the abyss, and the abyss gazed into him.  Either way, his watchcry shifted from “Humans are wonderful!” to “Humans are the greatest monsters of them all.”  It grips the final episodes of “CoE,” and it plays a featured role in Torchwood’s “Miracle Day” as well.

 

In “CoE:  Day Four,” the 4-5-6 continue to be awful, evil, and gross – naturally – but there’s more than enough evil to go around.  The 4-5-6 put the screws to humanity, leaving the world’s leaders with a horrific choice to make.  The sequence in which a group of U.K. politicians discuss their options is possibly the most disturbing collection of scenes Torchwood has ever come up with.

 

Frobisher divides his time between attending these terrible meetings and playing the messenger to the 4-5-6.  I’m not gonna lie – his actions here are basically the opposite of pretty.  The most heinous stuff is left to the prime minister and the other politicians, and Frobisher at least has the decency to look like he’s about to throw up and/or cry the whole time, but let’s just say the phrase “Nuremberg defense” comes to mind more than once. 

 

It’s weird that I haven’t mentioned the actual members of Torchwood yet – just goes to show how different “CoE” is than the first two seasons of the show, that it takes four paragraphs to get around to mentioning the lead characters.  In this episode, Jack takes a shot at the Doctor’s go-to move, the one that allows him to save the day at least a few times every season.  Only trouble is, Jack’s not the Doctor.

 

I should also mention that this episode and the next one are positively notorious within the Torchwood fandom.  Both of them caused a massive outcry, and a number of fans parted ways with the show over the events of this episode in particular.  I maintain that Moffat takes the bigger pleasure out of trolling his own fanbase, but RTD sure knows how to hit ‘em where it hurts.