Thoughts on Torchwood: Miracle Day Episode 5

[gnomi]

Warning: May be triggery. Addional trigger detail would be spoilery, see below cut for further warnings.

Warnings 2: trigger warning -- mentions of Holocaust imagery. Trying my best to stay on the correct side of Godwin's Law.

Spoilers: Through episode 5 of "Miracle Day"






Really, RTD and Jane Espenson? Did you have to go the concentration camp/furnaces route? At first, I was hoping they were going no further than the internment camp route, such as were used by America against Japanese Americans during World War II. Reprehensible indeed. Inhumane. But unlikely too graphic for the average viewer. But when they went as far as the ovens, that was when I started to get twitchy. Torchwood is not a documentary. There is no excuse for using the stark imagery of humans being burned in this context. The Nazi atrocities had to be in the thoughts of those who wrote the episode, and if not, that's an even scarier prospect. Yes, we are 60+ years from the end of World War II. But some imagery should be off-limits for television dramas as fodder to mine from for emotional impact.

Comments

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching Torchwood because I felt they crossed the line in terms of off-limits themes and imagery in the Children of Earth miniseries. I guess this makes me feel...validated? I'm sorry that this was a disturbing experience for you. I think I would feel similarly and am confirmed in my decision not to pursue the series.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Torchwood directors would use such footage, if they had to search each face and wonder "Was that my aunt Rifka?" or uncomfortably realize that but for a few mere decades, that would be their fate.

I know Sci fi fans who are also survivors. My grandpa loves BBC and I can't imagine what watching that would do to him. His older sister and brother, sister in law and brother in law, parents, four nieces and a nephew died that way.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I'm resisting watching this episode because I'm spoiled and frankly I'm just not enjoying it at all. I might tell David to watch it by himself, but I'm out of here.

I'll still do links for anyone getting it from me with no other source but if this wasn't called Torchwood I wouldn't be watching it and I'm wondering why I'm depressing myself. It's bleak, depressing, meandering, I loathe the loss of the Welsh feel to it, I miss the old format.


And this is like CoE; they're having people do things in the space of a few days that no government would ever okay so fast. Giving away children, burning people alive...a world of no.

[terri-osborne.livejournal.com]

After reading your reaction, I'm left wondering if such an evocation wasn't the intent. No, it's not a documentary, you're absolutely right. However, the use of such imagery makes me wonder if the intent wasn't to show how far away the human race is from the same brutal inhuman savagery that we all rightfully condemned with the concentration camps. In an overpopulated world where nobody can die? They're already showing how resources will fail. Food will run out, and you have an entire planet who cannot die that will go starving in a matter of time. How far will we go to ensure the continuation of the human race? With Nature no longer able to exert natural population control through epidemics and famine, that leaves humanity to deal with it. And we are not an enlightened, intelligently-motivated species. Individually, perhaps, but as a whole? No. The use of the ovens does evoke the camps, and perhaps it's the easiest way to quickly speak to get across the point of how far they're willing to go. Personally, I was thinking compactors when I first saw them, but they've already gone that route once.

I've got to run, but those are my quick thoughts on the subject.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I also felt that the imagery was upsetting. Also, I'm losing faith that the writers have actually thought all this stuff through. Is the fate of the category 1's part of phiCorp's master plan? If so, what does it profit them? If not, I find the idea that governments all over the world would so quickly and so unanimously (yes, news reports say a few governments have opted out) go to such an extreme option.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

The BBC's anti-American bias is simply astounding: you'll note it's Americans, not Brits, who operate the ovens. An evil American corporation, evil American CIA agents, evil American assassins... there's no end to it.

Given the BBC's record of antisemitism, there's little doubt in my mind that the BBC simply doesn't care about Jewish sensibilities; frankly the crematoriums make sense from a story standpoint, although what the story is supposed to be escapes me.

I watch this in the hope that the old Torchwood magic will reappear, but what's happened instead is that the story has become even more incoherent. Assassins? Where'd they come from and where did they go? Evil corporations -- they think they'll profit somehow? And has everyone lost sight of the basic "science" at the bottom of this episode: Jack becomes mortal/everyone else become immortal? Is the story ever going to start or will they continue to run around pointlessly in circles?