“Day Four”
July 23rd, 2009
Earlier today, I tweeted that one of the scenes in “Day Four” of the five-day miniseries event that is Torchwood: Children of Earth was one of the most legitimately disturbing sequences I’ve seen on television in quite some time. For those who have now seen that episode, I’m curious to know whether any of you can quite easily pick it out.
Without knowing my threshold for disturbing, it’s really not easy: we get our first good look at the 4-5-6 in this episode, and that glimpse is legitimately terrifying and well-handled. However, like the previous three episodes, the best parts of Children of Earth are those which are the most human, as we see the political response to this event spiral into a place that no one would ever want it to go. It is in those scenes, ultimately, that my skin began to crawl, and ethical dilemma were raised that made me wish this was a full-on season of the show so that we could get more sequences like this one as we barrel towards our conclusion tomorrow evening.
And if I have one complaint about “Day Four,” it’s that things really are moving at a very quick speed, and something tells me that an hour isn’t going to be enough time for all of this to sink in.
Cultural Learnings 