The New World

This was the episode I originally watched when I was 15; I didn't see the rest of Miracle Day because my parents then banned me from watching it, but I remember hugely enjoying this episode.

And at 24 (NB: I am now 28), I still do now. It sets up a really interesting premise; I really love the idea of people just suddenly not dying on one single day on Earth, and it's made even more intriguing when Captain Jack becomes mortal as a result.

It's such a thought-provoking idea, and this episode does a great job at setting it up for the rest of the series. We get a nice brief philosophical look at the ramifications of such an event when PC Andy and Gwen are looking at the news reports on the computer too: the point that if people just didn't die, the population would go up and that it could result in serious food shortages. This is brilliantly countered by Rhys's argument that most people would probably make in the circumstances: could it not be a good thing if people suddenly refused to die?

There's a truly epic action sequence in the last half of this episode too, which involves Gwen shooting down a helicopter with a bazooka. That has got to be one of the most badass moments in the entire show.

Overall, this first episode certainly has a different feel to the rest of Torchwood, but I still love it.

I think The New World is an incredibly powerful start to Miracle Day that largely does a good job at setting up our characters, the status quo of this story, and the tone of this ten part series. Though Miracle Day itself has a lot of trouble maintaining this quality, I really think they have a solid start forward here.

We get a sense of the problems with Miracle Day, getting to see it first hand a little bit with the blown-up agent scene. Some of the effects are a little lacking in this episode around CGI stuff like that, but I still found it a striking moment and a clear signal from production that Miracle Day wasn't going to pull back on this plot. We were seeing a science fiction trope being fully explored and challenged - pushed to such a limit that it takes on some pretty horrifying traits.

I like the idea of Miracle Day, even if going forward, Torchwood wasn't able to perfectly execute it. The story is kind of at its best here - full of potential and new ideas, a lot could have been done by this series. The degree to which they succeeded is pretty arguable. On the one hand, you have haunting moments like in The Categories of Life that really pay off a lot of the ideas introduced here in The New World. On the other, ten parts felt unnecessarily long for Miracle Day and it leads to lots of other episodes where I won't be rating them quite as generously because it feels like we waste a lot of time in the other episodes.

Still, the New World feels competitively focused and polished. It has a certain energy and ambition that makes a lot of sense given the success of Children of Earth. Even though this wasn't nearly as strong as Children of Earth, it still feels like Miracle Day was in the right direction for Torchwood - closer to its much better Series 3 as opposed to the far less consistent first two series.

A crazy excellent introduction to the new series. Very camp and the most American thing to hit the Whoniverse since 1996. The vast scale of things is in keeping with series three and the quantum shift in tone / presentation is in keeping with all of Torchwood which continues to never settle into a single recognisable shape. The world is immortal but not invulnerable. Captain Jack is mortal!