Miracle Day or Miracle Century?

There is no doubt that the latest series of Torchwood, the ten parter Miracle Day has been a massive hit with fans of science fiction and action drama alike. The joint production with Starz network adding its strengths to the original BBC Television production team has taken Torchwood beyond anything it previously aspired to.

The production brought together an excellent (oops, I’d better not say Anglo American or I’ll get in trouble) Welsh – American cast headed by two Torchwood originals, musical theatre star the Scottish born, Texas raised John Barrowman and Eve Myles, unknown until she landed the role of Gwen in the first series of Torchwood. Joining them, Mekhi Phifer, Bill Pullman shrugging off his usual smooth corporate type persona to play the creepy Oswald Danes, Alexa Havins, Lauren Ambrose and the rest of the cast turning in excellent performances and striking the right balance between “This is serious drama” and “Yeah I know the plot is crazy but it pays the mortgage”.  

The Hollywood gloss of this joint production meant some of the quirkiness of the earlier BBC only series was lost but  the scale of the production made up for that. As well as being hugely enjoyable sci fi hokum (the late, great Douglas Adams once said “The more preposterous an idea is the better fans like it,) the ten parter, Torchwood: Miracle Day has a very serious sub text (because Russell T Davies, a great television writer with a truly unique imagination, is sneaky like that, he doesn’t write his most significant messages on a baseball bat and beat you round the head with with them, but sidles up to you and drives home his point like an assassin sticking a stiletto between your ribs. The series, like the assassin will be gone before most people realise what point Russell T. was making.

The premise of Miracle Day was that people stopped dying. A morphic response, central character Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman ) called it, alluding to the theory of morphic resonancewhich the more pedantic factions among the science academy are fervidlty trying to discredit because it raises so many really difficult questions for the cosy consensus of the research grant phishing scientific community.

Think about this however. Death is becoming obsolete , not because of a sudden miracle but gradually. Life expectancy in the west increased by an amazing 44 days last year. British longevity expert Aubrey de Grey talks of escape velocity – the point at which life expectancy increases faster than time passes.

Ageing populations are already distorting the age balance of society and putting huge pressure on resources. More and more people are living to a great age but for many years at the end of their lives are unable to take care of themselves. This has meant social caring is just about the only growth industry in the developed world.  Perhaps it will dawn on people eventually that that is what Torchwood: Miracle Day was really about.

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