Torchwood: 4 Things Miracle Day Got Wrong (And 4 Things It Got Right)

5. Too Many Episodes

The concept of Miracle Day is extremely ambitious but ultimately there just wasn't enough substance to justify it being told over 10 hour long episodes. It's odd really, because a story about death ceasing to exist opens up a can of worms for the human race of the like it's never experienced before and you'd think that a premise as strong as that would be accompanied by a never ending supply of arcs and avenues ready to explore. Alas, this wasn't the case, and the more meatier aspects of the Miracle and its consequences on civilisation were largely explored within the first few episodes and after that the story as a whole quickly began to lose its momentum just as fast as it had gained at. The proceeding episodes were nothing but 'fillers', and awful ones at that, as the plot slowly showed signs of building things up for its finale while failing to make the rest of the story appealing in the meantime. Viewers sat through useless character arcs while all of the aspects which actually had the potential to become something interesting - such as the Soulless (above) - were mentioned once and never referred to again. That' the sort of thing fans wanted to see, not a poorly executed montage of Jack and Rex bedding the latest of their respective conquests (although, admittedly, the aforementioned censorship meant that UK viewers didn't see much of that, either). And what was with Jack's bizarre back story which was written off in a line in the next episode and ultimately served to contribute nothing to the overriding narrative? Not even the Face of Boe would be able to get his giant head around that one and its relevance to the plot. The idea to build on the success of Torchwood's third series by doubling the number of episodes was a bad move as it ultimately failed to deliver a story which lived up to the promises of its initial premise. It's quality over quantity, after all, and in the case of Miracle Day, viewers got way too much but gained far too little.