One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

Sacrifice

Nov 09 2018
Sacrifice

I was supposed to have watched this episode on Thursday morning, but I overslept slightly. Just barely enough that I didn't have time to get on the treadmill before my responsibilities for the day. Said day also including a software release with my day job, that meant I had no time at all during the day to make it up. Ah, well. The good news is my release went off without a hitch, my end users are very happy with the new stuff, and today I am back on the treadmill. Woo hoo.

Children of Earth: Day Five

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This episode has the remainder of the Torchwood Three group at its lowest ebb. When this initially aired I figured that story would culminate from Ianto being "fridged" (more on that in a second), thus leading Captain Jack onto a rigteous path of vengeance and honor. That.... is not what happened.

If you are not familiar with the term, "fridging" is slang for the distasteful writing trope of killing off a girlfriend in order to give the hero the emotional boost to overcome some big threat. The term dates back to an issue of the Green Lantern comic book in which GL's girlfriend was murdered by a super villain and stuffed into a refrigerator. In the late 90's writer Gail Simone started talking about this online, which led to the creation of a list of fictional female characters who had been "killed, maimed or depowered", in particular in ways that treated the female character as merely a device to move a male character's story arc forward, rather than as a fully developed character in her own right.

Some have argued that Ianto's death fits the bill, but I would tend to disagree. His death effectively cripples Jack for the remainder of the story, ultimately leading to him leaving Earth altogether having lost too many loved ones. I can see the argument that Ianto's death in some great measure leads to Jack's terrible decision at the climax of the story. Even if grant that, though, one could certainly never say that Ianto was not a fully developed character in his own right. If anything, he was the true heart of the show. 

In any case, the remainder of the story involves the world's governments acquiescing to the 456's demand for 10% of the children in the world. This, even after the aliens reveal that they simply want the kids as drugs.  Knowing this, knowing that millions of human children will suffer for decades at the hands of these monsters, and clearly having to understand that giving in will only mean the 456 will return again in the future and continue to demand their fix, the governing elite concoct a ruse to the general public that will allow them to round up busloads of children and take them to the designated locations for handover. So... ew.

Gwen and Rhys do everything they can to protect Ianto's niece and nephew, as well as several other neighboring children. Jack stews away in a cell. As for the Twelfth Doctor John Frobisher, after the Prime Minister throws him under the bus and asserts that Frobisher's children will be handed over as well, he goes home and proceeds to murder his entire family and then commit suicide rather than seeing his kids turned into alien drugs. It is a brutal scene, done entirely offscreen and with audio. 

Ultimately Jack gets rousted out of his cell and spurred on to action, and he figures out that the children themselves can be used to transmit a deadly signal back to the 456. Unfortunately, to do this he requires one child to be the focal point of the transmission. And the only child available is his won grandson. If this was Doctor Who the Doctor would surely find some other Whatever Technology to get the job done, but the entire point here is that the Doctor isn't here and there are legitimately no other options. It is one child's life, balanced against millions. It is a terrible choice, and Jack does what needs to be done.

It is worth noting, as terrible as the choice is, that this contrasts directly with all of the elected officials featured in the story. They rationalize away protecting their own children, they go full fascist with selecting the "undesirables" to be fodder to placate the 456. Frobisher himself, when faced with the consequences of his actions, chooses to end his family completely rather than stand for any real solution. But Jack, when given this terrible responsibility, takes the responsibility and makes the decision knowing full well it will save the world but damn his soul. It is an awful thing, and although the world is saved it is the furthest thing away from a happy ending.

So this is how Torchwood Three collapses. After six months of wandering the Earth, Jack leaves the planet entirely and Gwen Cooper is left as the sole remaining Torchwood agent in the world. This should have been the end of the series.

Unfortunately, after going out on an amazingly well-crafted five hour high, the corpse of Torchwood got dragged out two years later for a joint American and British production. It didn't go well. 

More on that tomorrow.

STATS:

Featuring: Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams
Episode(s): Children of Earth: Day Five
Steps Walked: 8,267 today, 3,944,982 total
Distance Walked: 4.42 miles today, 2,064.74 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 7,978 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,134 total
Weight: 261.26 lbs (five day moving average), net change -46.04 lbs


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