Alasdair Stuart's Blog

One of the bravest things about Torchwood has always been the show’s willingness to kick things over. It’s second only to Spooks in the Gleeful Murder of Characters stakes, has been cheerfully up front about throwing ideas onto the screen and then abandoning them if they don’t work and with Children of Earth, the last series it completely destroyed its status quo. What two seasons previously had delivered, with a straight face, an episode about alien sex gas loose in Cardiff became a damning, bleak and at times genuinely chilling look at how the world would really end.

There’s a strong case for saying Children of Earth should have been the last Torchwood story. In fact, it recently emerged that it had been designed to be the show finale if needed. Captain Jack leaves the planet, disgusted by what he’s had to do, Gwen and Rhys hang up their guns and retire and the world, slowly, painfully, tries to return to normal.

As is always the case, it doesn’t last. Miracle Day, the fourth season, deals with what happens when everyone on Earth simply stops dying. Relocated to America, Jack and Gwen find themselves forced to team up with Rex Matheson and Esther Drummond, a pair of CIA agents who have their own reasons for being invested in wanting to know the reason behind The Miracle. Esther is desperate to protect her sister, who is cracking under the horrific realisation that soon, diseases will be everywhere and whilst no one can die, everyone can suffer whilst Rex may already be dead. A horrific car accident leaves him with an impossible chest wound that, whilst it’s healing, may yet kill him. That level of finality, for a man like Rex Matheson, is not acceptable and The Men Who Sold The World, Guy Adams’ latest Torchwood novel, explores exactly what sort of man Rex Matheson is.

The novel revolves around a shipment of alien tech, sold by the cash-strapped UK government to America. A series of interludes follow one particular weapon from the point Torchwood recover it, from a dying alien in a Cardiff chip shop, through its discovery in the remains of Torchwood’s HQ, the Hub, to the point where the Deputy Prime Minister signs off on the sale. At no point does anyone, even the Torchwood staff, realise what the weapon is and Adams neatly uses this ‘for wont of a nail’ approach to explore how something that is semi sentient, and can alter reality, can end up in the hands of a quiet, well trained mad man. This is the sort of singularity that Torchwood excels at, how a single piece of equipment can change everything and everyone around it, and Adams has huge fun exploring the weapons’ uses, especially in the closing pages of the novel.

However, Adams truly excels at the unpleasant and gets plenty of opportunity to explore that here. Rex, in disgrace following an ethical act on a dubious mission, is sent to Cuba to retrieve the weapons and is far from happy about it. He’s a pitbull, a relentless bulldozer of a man who knows how to do exactly two things; work and sleep so he’s rested enough to work harder. Adams neatly builds on the way Rex and Esther interact and is brave enough to make Rex a profoundly unpleasant character in several ways. Esther is an asset, one who is useful and nothing more, one who can always be pushed, always be driven. Rex doesn’t thank her, doesn’t treat her as an equal and yet, at the same time, relies on her. He’s not sexist, or at the very least not chauvinist and Adams makes it quite clear he’d be as unpleasant, if not more, to a male colleague. It’s just that Esther has the information Rex needs, and she never quite gets it to him fast enough.

For all this though, Rex is quietly an ethical man, if not a good one. He’s placed in harm’s way because he refuses to sit back and let an innocent get hurt for the good of an operation and this core of decency, this refusal to let people be exploited keeps turning up. Rex isn’t a great man, but he is a good one and there are several moments where he refuses to take the easy way out. He decides to interrogate a suspect only as an act of last resort, makes sure an accidentally stolen pair of sunglasses are paid for and works within the rules, a lot of the time, even when he doesn’t have to. It saves his life more than once in the novel, too.

Pitted against Rex are a CIA Black Ops unit led by a man who is overly fond of violence. Where Rex uses it as a tool, Gleeson uses it as a utensil, communicating through the constant implied threat of betrayal, of murder, to keep his men in line. Again, Adams uses an interlude to explore why Gleeson is like this and the end result is a character who whilst far from sympathetic, is much more nuanced than many villains. This in turn makes his escalating acts of brutality all the more shocking, you can understand why Gleeson is acting like he is, you can understand his reasoning and you can see the holes in it exactly the way he can’t. Sheaffer, the member of the unit who has a crisis of consicence, is equally well realised and he and Rex made a spectacularly grumpy double act. Crucially, Adams’ nails the characters’ voices throughout, with these exchanges in particular very easy to hear in Mekhi Phifer’s grandstanding, flamboyantly snippy delivery.

It’s Mr Wynter though, who will stay with you. Mr Wynter is old, polite, well spoken and is the man who the people who really run the world call when something needs cleaning up. He’s George Smiley with added brutality, a softly spoken old spook who enjoys nothing more than peace, quiet and killing people who stop him enjoying life. He’s a monster in a nice suit, a gentle old man who uses his appearance and physicality as a lockpick the same way Rex uses his like a cosh. Mr Wynter spends much of the novel in the background, quietly observing the chaos Rex and Sheaffer cause but despite this, his scenes remain some of the strongest in the book. His scenes with the real rulers of the world are abstract, almost minimalist discussions of how to deal with the Gleeson problem are delicate, circuitous and filled with menace. Mr Wynter’s eventual solution to the problem is equally menacing, giving Adams a chance to flex his narrative muscles and, interestingly, giving Rex an opportunity to both be the hero and slightly sidelined, all at once. Mr Wynter walks quietly through The Men Who Sold The World but his footsteps echo long after the book has finished and, I suspect, Adams may not quite be done with him.

The Men Who Sold The World is a pared back, bunched fist of a book that hits hard and keeps doing it. Smart, funny, brutal and tightly controlled it’s a perfect example of how to do a tie in book that expands on its core material rather than simply aping it. The story of the quiet, anonymous men who run the world and a loud, obvious man who opposes them, The Men Who Sold The World is essential for anyone who’s following Miracle Day or anyone who wants to get a different perspective on Torchwood’s newest, grumpiest leading man.

(The Men Who Sold The World is released on the 18th of August, 2011)

The title could refer to the Doctor as much as the Apollo spacesuit filled with alien technology and a terrified little girl at the center of the story. He revels in the impossibility too, gleeful even as he arranges his own unknowing funeral party and even more so when he talks his way out of, and into the Oval Office. This isn’t the Lonely God of the 10^th Doctor’s era, this is Puck in a bowtie, cheerily blasé about the important things and utterly invested in the trivial. This is a man who invites himself to his own funeral, knowing he’ll be late, and knowing that may save his life, a man desperately interested in everything that could hurt him and desperate to protect his friends. This is, above all else, the Doctor, a very English hero, and, two hundred years into his future, a very dead English hero. It’s a romantic, almost Byronic image, the quiet, polite English hero riding to a possible doom with only the slight hint of a plan to save his life. That idea, the romance of possibility, the romance of space and time travel, the inherent romance of the Doctor is what lies at the heart of the episode.

It starts with a very deliberate and fascinating image; a spacesuited figure murdering an impossible man in a bowtie, the rational walking out of the middle distance and ending the irrational’s life. Space travel as a science kills space travel as an art, an adventure, a romance and all that’s left is to burn the body and salt the ashes. That’s quite a subversion to open a season of what’s nominally still just a children’s TV show on.

Except of course, the Doctor is a time traveller, and does everything and nothing all at once. So his funeral is attended by two dear friends, a woman who will one day be his wife even though they’re meeting backward and Everett Canton Delaware III, a man none of the others know but who knows them very well. We see the end of the Doctor’s story first, we see Everett for the last time before we even meet him and then we’re off at the gallop, into the second romance of the episode; America. ‘Space: 1969′, a delicious pun delivered with relish, opens the door to the year of the moon landings, Richard Nixon and a wide variety of excellent suits. There’s an interesting collision here too, with the slightly mundane world of BBC Wales colliding with the lush location shooting in America to create something which feels not unlike the Doctor himself. TV and film, quarries and the Valley of the Gods collide to create something which is uniquely mundane and surprisingly arresting. This is a world of serious people in serious suits, two fisted idealists and a President who can be reached anywhere, any time by a terrified little girl in a spacesuit. This is a world we’re more accustomed to seeing on the big screen, and, like the Doctor, we’re just tourists. Like the Doctor, we’re fragile too.

This feels big, bigger than any episode before simply because for the first time we’re in a country where you need to travel for hours to see a coast, a country that takes more than a day to cross. The US locations are used sparingly but they all score, the big, wide expanses and ornate militarism of the White House providing an unusually large canvas for the story to play out on. One tiny throwaway scene, of Amy being escorted to a bathroom by a secret service agent, involves a busy corridor and a sense of multiple other stories happening around them. Yes the world may be ending, yes President Nixon’s getting mysterious phone calls from a little girl, but there’s the business of government being carried out too. Somewhere, far beneath that corridor is the Situation Room where, one day, President Jed Bartlet will battle with his distrust of the military, nearby is the briefing room where Jack Ryan will be told about a nuclear weapon heading towards American shores. This the White House, a place where stories connect and fiction and history intertwine. The Doctor looks rather at home there, relishing finally getting to sit behind the President’s desk and demanding SWAT teams, street maps of Florida, 12 Jammy Dodgers and a Fez. Everything and nothing, romance and silliness meet pragmatism and horror. The 1960s become a glorious, lush time of austere suits, good men in bad situations and aliens wearing excellent suits.

Which brings us to the third romance of the episode; the Greys. The episode’s villains are the Silence, and much like the Doctor steps out of fiction onto the stage of history, the Silence have stepped out of very nearly every UFO report for the last three decades. The series cleverly combines them with the Men in Black, human simulacra in old fashioned suits with no idea of how to interact with people to create an arresting but familiar image; the Silence are taller, more menacing than the Greys but they’re Greys nonetheless, aliens that have walked through the nightmares of everyone from Whitley Streiber to, allegedly, Boutros Boutros-Ghali Former Secretary General of the United Nations. They’re nightmares, and the episode’s twist, that their defence mechanism is you can’t see them unless you’re looking right at them and forget the second you turn away, is typically elegant. This is expanded later with the revelation that the Silence have tunneld through the entire surface of the Earth and have been here for centuries. It’s a simple and chilling idea that instantly puts the episode at the intersection of history, conspiracy theory, myth and fiction. Suddenly, a line from the old X-Files episode, ‘Deep Throat’ becomes relevant;

‘They’re here, aren’t they?’

‘Mr Mulder, they’ve been here for a long, long time.’

There’s another UFOlogy term that seems relevant here, coined by English UFOlogist Jenny Randles. ‘The Oz Factor’ refers to the sense of otherworldliness, of surreality that surrounds many UFO encounters. For some it’s a defence mechanism, for others it’s a means of coping with experiences that they can’t otherwise deal with and for others it’s a sense of running off the edge of the film strip, seeing what happens at the edge of reality. Here, the edge of reality is an idealistic former FBI agent, a man who is late to his own funeral and a romance lived in reverse. The Silence fit right in.

That romance in reverse is the heart of the episode. River Song has been a fascinating presence in the show for three years, ever since she was introduced in ‘Silence In The Library’. Here we see her not only finally meet a Doctor who knows everything she knows but finally realising how finite her relationship with him is. There’s a wonderful, sparky, flirty back and forth to their exchanges but undercutting it all is River’s desperate sadness as she realises every time she sees him is a step closer to him not knowing her. They will meet in the middle and, for too little time, be absolute equals. Then he’ll move forward and she’ll move back and meet him for the last time, just as he meets her for the first time. She’s brilliant, and devious, and crippled with guilt and knows far more than she’s letting on, but she can’t hold on to that forever. River loves him, he’s going to love her but never for long enough and the realisation of that is in the process of breaking her. Alex Kingston plays River with a combination of playfulness and forcefulness, and she gets some of the best scenes in the episode, fixing the TARDIS, admitting she knows she doesn’t have long left to Rory and tearing into the Doctor after they’ve returned from his funeral. Her normally playful catch phrase of ‘Spoilers’, when he asks about something he hasn’t done yet takes on a different, darker, sadder tone. River knows everything, knows it won’t be enough and knows she’s going to try anyway. She’s a time traveller and like the Doctor she does everything at once and nothing at all.

In contrast to the reverse romance of the Doctor and River, Amy and Rory Pond are remarkably grounded. Karen Gillan was criticised last season for being too one note but in the space of an episode she opens Amy up. The spiky, distanced, angry Amy of the previous season has been replaced by a woman who is calm, grounded and happy. She’s also, for the first time, part of a marriage of equals. She and Arthur Darvill as Rory have an easy chemistry, an ability to finish each other’s sentences that feels real but never feels sweet or driven by a writer. These are two people who love one another, have spent time together and instinctively give and take as they go. The wonderful moment where she tells Rory that he gets to tell Canton about the TARDIS because he’s ‘newest’ is a perfect example. Rory’s not inferior, he’s just closer to Canton than her, still amazed by the impossible life they lead, still entranced by the mad man in a box.

Gillan gets to build on this familiarity and subert it with her grief stricken reaction to the Doctor’s death, shutting down, showing us the cold, hard Amy that was present for much of the last season. People leave Amelia Pond, and she hates it, and when the Doctor leaves her, again, she decides to push back and push back harder. Amy’s a fighter, and here, she’s handed three fights; saving the Doctor’s life, saving a little girl and defending the Earth. She’s so intent on the first that she’s willing to commit murder and it’ll be fascinating to see how her actions, and what she knows, affects her relationship with the Doctor and Rory.

Finally, W. Morgan and Mark Sheppard continue their semi-regular party piece of playing the same character at different times in their lives. The elder Sheppard gives his brief appearance as Canton an easy sense of dignity and authority whilst the younger remains one of the most pathologically watchable actors working today. Sheppard has the same energy as actors like Kenneth Branagh and Val Kilmer, small, intense, fiercely intelligent and never stopping thinking. Canton adopts to the TARDIS in record time, with Rory’s help, and is on the same page as the Doctor within seconds of meeting him. He’s an easy, physical addition to the crew and serves as a bridge between rationality and romance, America and England, the past and the future. He’s of his time in exactly the same way the others aren’t, and as a result eases every transition, helping to create an episode which feels unlike very nearly everything else that’s gone before it. Canton’s a hero, like the Doctor, but he’s a different type of hero. Different approaches, different times, different places but the same result; standing between humanity and the things we don’t know about, but know about us. It’s a romantic notion but this is a romantic episode. The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor.

The Apollo 1 fire still haunts NASA, its shadow cast over the entire history of American manned spaceflight, coloring accident investigation, astronaut safety, engineering, every element of the process. Manned spaceflight has lots of ghosts, and whilst Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White weren’t the first, they have stayed at the banquet for decades and show no signs of leaving

Three men inside the capsule, four men outside. Graham Yost’s script focusses on Harrison Storms, the head of North American Aviation’s Apollo Program, Joseph Shea, his opposite number at NASA, Deke Slayton, the Head of the Astronaut Program and Frank Borman, the astronaut detailed to the investigation. Grissom, Chaffee and White are present too, of course, but in black and white flashbacks, matinee idols with chiselled jaws and gentle, total self-belief.

James Rebhorn is an actor best known for playing adversarial figures of authority and superficially, that’s what he plays here. Storms is an arrogant, confrontational figure, attacking the relationship with NASA and Shea in particular rather than accepting his own role in the tragedy. At first glance, he gives every indication of being the villain of the piece but no one is allowed to be something as comfortable as just the villain of the piece here. The moment where we see Storms, from a distance, weeping with grief at what’s happened, is one of the most affecting in the entire series as is the point where Storms goes into battle for the jobs of his colleagues and himself only to be told that’s not what this is about, and it never was. It’s about Grissom, Chaffee and White. Four men outside the capsule, three men in.

Kevin Pollack, as Joe Shea, plays to his past work the same way Rebhorn does, and, like Rebhorn, is given the opportunity to subvert that. Pollack is both a gifted character actor and a professional stand-up comedian and his combination of reservation, reticence and barely contained energy lights up every scene he’s in, especially his confrontations with Rebhorn. Shea was a famously bullish figure, a man who rode North American Aviation mercilessly and Pollack brings not only that, but a quiet intelligence to the role. Shea and Slayton were, at one point, supposed to toss a coin to see which of them sat in the capsule during the test and the fact neither of them were in there haunts both men. For Slayton, it’s a failure to care for the men under him but for Shea, it’s a chance to save lives, an opportunity that passes so close to him he can feel it. If NASA is haunted by Grissom, Chaffee and White, Shea is haunted by the ghost of what he could have done, what he feels he should have done.

Frank Borman, played by David Andrews, is, superficially, the least important of the four. He’s the astronaut on the investigative committee but in the light of the Apollo 1 fire, the astronaut corps are clearly portrayed as lesser, fragile, mortal. Andrews is a thoughtful, considered actor and those qualities mesh perfectly with Yost’s writing, portraying Borman as a quiet, centred man, an academic in an aviator’s buzzcut. Yet it’s Borman who holds the power as the Senate Enquiry into the accident begins. His friends are dead, because engineers made a mistake and there’s a perception that Borman may have an axe to grind. In fact, there’s a perception that Borman deserves to attack the program.

Borman’s testimony is as stereotypical as it is fascinating. He starts off as a typical military pilot, tight, controlled posture, precise language but when he’s asked about the astronauts, the men, not the mission, he lights up. Andrews’ posture shifts, his voice changes, he becomes more relaxed, more open. There’s still the formality that comes from military training, the consideration that comes from the unique combination of scientist and soldier that an astronaut needs to be, but suddenly, Grissom, Chaffee and White are in the room, still dead but somehow closer, more real which makes the second half of Borman’s testimony all the harder to listen to. He transitions from recollections of his friends and colleagues to a passionate defence, using Grissom’s own words, of the program to a dispassionate, intellectual description of their deaths. Not because he doesn’t care, he does, that much is certain, but because the reasons why they died are as important, as defining as their deaths. Borman’s message is as clear as it is unsaid; We got it wrong, all of us, let us get it right, for Gus, Ed and Roger.

A quarter inch to the left or the right tonally and the episode would collapse under the weight of Borman effectively talking the project back into life. Instead, through Andrews’ quiet, controlled performance and Yost’s writing, this becomes a hinge around which history turns. The program starts again, the men are remembered, the mission continues.

The episode begins and ends with Deke Slayton, the Chief Astronaut. Played by Nick Searcy, Slayton was one of the most fascinating figures in modern spaceflight, a Mercury project astronaut grounded after one flight, and seemingly forever, by a heart condition. He became the head of the Astronaut Corps and Searcy plays him as a quiet, almost reticent figure. He’s somewhere between everyone’s father and older brother, an unusual combination of a man both broken and defined by his place, halfway between the launchpad and the boardroom. Just as Slayton was the connective tissue between multiple incarnations of the space program, Searcy is the connective tissue between each episode of the series, each level of the bureaucracy, from the NASA hierarchy to the astronauts’ families and he’s rarely better than he is here.

As the episode opens we see Slayton in Mission Control, and, as it closes, we see him visit the wives of the dead crew who give him a present from their husbands; an astronaut pin. Like Borman’s testimony it’s a moment which is a quarter step away from crass emotional manipulation but here, the writing, directing and performance meshes to create something extraordinary. Throughout the episode, the flashbacks to the fire are shown in black and white. In the final seconds, that changes as we see Slayton looking at the capsule as Grissom turns, nods to him and smiles. The physical, practical and spiritual combine, the burden of grief and blame and guilt is lifted just a little. As the episode closes, as Grissom moves back into colour and prepares for a very different kind of launch, the message is as clear as it is unspoken; time to go back to work. The man spearheading that return, Commander Wally Schirra, is the focus of the next episode.

Apollo 1

The Apollo 1 fire still haunts NASA, its shadow cast over the entire history of American manned spaceflight, coloring accident investigation, astronaut safety, engineering, every element of the process. Manned spaceflight has lots of ghosts, and whilst Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White weren’t the first, they have stayed at the banquet for decades and show no signs of leaving

Three men inside the capsule, four men outside. Graham Yost’s script focusses on Harrison Storms, the head of North American Aviation’s Apollo Program, Joseph Shea, his opposite number at NASA, Deke Slayton, the Head of the Astronaut Program and Frank Borman, the astronaut detailed to the investigation. Grissom, Chaffee and White are present too, of course, but in black and white flashbacks, matinee idols with chiselled jaws and gentle, total self-belief.

James Rebhorn is an actor best known for playing adversarial figures of authority and superficially, that’s what he plays here. Storms is an arrogant, confrontational figure, attacking the relationship with NASA and Shea in particular rather than accepting his own role in the tragedy. At first glance, he gives every indication of being the villain of the piece but no one is allowed to be something as comfortable as just the villain of the piece here. The moment where we see Storms, from a distance, weeping with grief at what’s happened, is one of the most affecting in the entire series as is the point where Storms goes into battle for the jobs of his colleagues and himself only to be told that’s not what this is about, and it never was. It’s about Grissom, Chaffee and White. Four men outside the capsule, three men in.

Kevin Pollack, as Joe Shea, plays to his past work the same way Rebhorn does, and, like Rebhorn, is given the opportunity to subvert that. Pollack is both a gifted character actor and a professional stand-up comedian and his combination of reservation, reticence and barely contained energy lights up every scene he’s in, especially his confrontations with Rebhorn. Shea was a famously bullish figure, a man who rode North American Aviation mercilessly and Pollack brings not only that, but a quiet intelligence to the role. Shea and Slayton were, at one point, supposed to toss a coin to see which of them sat in the capsule during the test and the fact neither of them were in there haunts both men. For Slayton, it’s a failure to care for the men under him but for Shea, it’s a chance to save lives, an opportunity that passes so close to him he can feel it. If NASA is haunted by Grissom, Chaffee and White, Shea is haunted by the ghost of what he could have done, what he feels he should have done.

Frank Borman, played by David Andrews, is, superficially, the least important of the four. He’s the astronaut on the investigative committee but in the light of the Apollo 1 fire, the astronaut corps are clearly portrayed as lesser, fragile, mortal. Andrews is a thoughtful, considered actor and those qualities mesh perfectly with Yost’s writing, portraying Borman as a quiet, centred man, an academic in an aviator’s buzzcut. Yet it’s Borman who holds the power as the Senate Enquiry into the accident begins. His friends are dead, because engineers made a mistake and there’s a perception that Borman may have an axe to grind. In fact, there’s a perception that Borman deserves to attack the program.

Borman’s testimony is as stereotypical as it is fascinating. He starts off as a typical military pilot, tight, controlled posture, precise language but when he’s asked about the astronauts, the men, not the mission, he lights up. Andrews’ posture shifts, his voice changes, he becomes more relaxed, more open. There’s still the formality that comes from military training, the consideration that comes from the unique combination of scientist and soldier that an astronaut needs to be, but suddenly, Grissom, Chaffee and White are in the room, still dead but somehow closer, more real which makes the second half of Borman’s testimony all the harder to listen to. He transitions from recollections of his friends and colleagues to a passionate defence, using Grissom’s own words, of the program to a dispassionate, intellectual description of their deaths. Not because he doesn’t care, he does, that much is certain, but because the reasons why they died are as important, as defining as their deaths. Borman’s message is as clear as it is unsaid; We got it wrong, all of us, let us get it right, for Gus, Ed and Roger.

A quarter inch to the left or the right tonally and the episode would collapse under the weight of Borman effectively talking the project back into life. Instead, through Andrews’ quiet, controlled performance and Yost’s writing, this becomes a hinge around which history turns. The program starts again, the men are remembered, the mission continues.

The episode begins and ends with Deke Slayton, the Chief Astronaut. Played by Nick Searcy, Slayton was one of the most fascinating figures in modern spaceflight, a Mercury project astronaut grounded after one flight, and seemingly forever, by a heart condition. He became the head of the Astronaut Corps and Searcy plays him as a quiet, almost reticent figure. He’s somewhere between everyone’s father and older brother, an unusual combination of a man both broken and defined by his place, halfway between the launchpad and the boardroom. Just as Slayton was the connective tissue between multiple incarnations of the space program, Searcy is the connective tissue between each episode of the series, each level of the bureaucracy, from the NASA hierarchy to the astronauts’ families and he’s rarely better than he is here.

As the episode opens we see Slayton in Mission Control, and, as it closes, we see him visit the wives of the dead crew who give him a present from their husbands; an astronaut pin. Like Borman’s testimony it’s a moment which is a quarter step away from crass emotional manipulation but here, the writing, directing and performance meshes to create something extraordinary. Throughout the episode, the flashbacks to the fire are shown in black and white. In the final seconds, that changes as we see Slayton looking at the capsule as Grissom turns, nods to him and smiles. The physical, practical and spiritual combine, the burden of grief and blame and guilt is lifted just a little. As the episode closes, as Grissom moves back into colour and prepares for a very different kind of launch, the message is as clear as it is unspoken; time to go back to work.   The man leading that return, the commander of the first manned Apollo mission to reach space, would be Walter ‘Wally’ Schirra, a veteran astronaut and the focus of the next episode.

The history of manned spaceflight is defined by inconceivable scale and fragility. Hundreds of thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of pounds of thrust, millions of hours spent designing, testing, flying, all for a small group of desperately human, utterly fragile people who would travel higher and further than anyone ever had before. A unique combination of desire and courage, design and persistence. The knight class of society put in flight suits and fired out of the atmosphere on top of the largest rockets ever developed and nowhere is this combination more evident, more compelling, than in the Apollo program.

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks’ mini-series, From The Earth to the Moon attempts to place this unscalable, inconceivably huge project in historical and personal context. The thirteen episodes explore the project in its entirety, from the initial announcement through the frantic scrabble to be ready, the loss of the Apollo 1 mission and, crucially, past Apollo 11 and the first man on the moon. This is not just a series about Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, it’s a series about what happened to place them at the tip of history and what it was like to be the people who followed them.

Sitting at the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, it’s tempting to buy into the conspiracy theories that the moon landings never took place. As I write, the space shuttle program is about to be shut down, its replacement is several years away and whilst NASA have, again, announced a plan to return to the moon, there’s little chance of it happening in the immediate future. There are interesting developments, to be sure, and I’ll be looking at the Hundred Year SpaceShip program soon, but the moon is so far away, so distant, the Apollo project such a distant memory that it’s passing into modern myth. Tikur Bekmambetov, director of the Nightwatch movies, is currently producing Apollo 18, a found-footage horror movie about the ‘real’ last manned mission to the moon with the tagline:

THERE’S A REASON WE NEVER WENT BACK.

But why did we go in the first place? That’s what this first episode sets out to explore and does so in a clever, even elegant way. The project is inconcevably vast, inconceivably ambitious and instead of trying to look at it from a particular viewpoint, this first episode embraces that scale, embraces that moment of abject shock as the project is announced and asks the titular question;

Can we do this?

That question falls squarely on the shoulders of James Webb, played by Dan Lauria. As Russia gets the first man into space, and then the first space walk, it’s Webb who is put under continual pressure to try and get the Americans ahead of the game and that pressure, that need, is written all over Lauria’s perpetually hangdog face. The Americans were systematically out manouvered for much of the history of early spaceflight and the episode neatly contrasts the flight of Yuri Gagarin and the first space walk, conducted by Alexi Leonov, with scenes of worried men in suits trying to work out where they went wrong. The Russians are in flight, the Americans, it seems, are still trying to work out how to get off the ground.

That process begins with the Mercury and Gemini projects and culminates in Kennedy’s famous announcement, which is also part of the series’ opening credits. It’s a beautifully played moment as we see Webb and his colleagues react to the speech. There’s a long pause and then Webb asks who wants his job. His colleagues laugh and after a moment’s conversation, Webb again asks who wants his job and this time, no one laughs. Ten years to get an American on the moon. Ten years to get from pressurised cannisters lobbed over the horizon and back again to a world wide net work of communications and sensors and technology, designed from scratch, that could transport three people to the moon and back again. Needless to say, no one volunteers to take his job, and slowly, the impossible is rendered down to the merely all but impossible. Goals are defined, engineering contracts are developed, design work begins and the next step is defined; Gemini. Two men where Mercury was one, a chance to get more astronauts in orbit, more experience and begin achieving the seemingly endless list of objectives needed for a moon shot.

All of which begins in a hotel in Houston, where a man called Max Peck checks in over and over and over again. It’s a moment of quiet, slightly desperate comedy, as the new astronauts all check in under the same code name but the scene also carries a resonance that echoes through the rest of the project and the series. These men are all unique and all the same, each part of the mission but none more important than the others. Max Peck will walk on the moon and each of them is Max Peck.

But not all Max Pecks are created equal, something which becomes clear as the new astronauts make their way out into the country to help raise the profile and funds of the project. At one particular fund raiser, astronaut Elliot See is greeted with polite enthusiasm by some and barely contained derision by others, because unlike several of his colleagues, he hasn’t flown yet. An astronaut isn’t an astronaut unless he’s been above the atmosphere, unless he’s pitted his fragile humanity against inconceivable scale, inconceivable distance. This idea, that the astronaut corps are defined by their work rather than their personality, is something that continues to haunt the American space program and is explored throughout the series, most notably in episode two, Apollo 1, and episode 3 We Have Cleared The Tower.

Matched with this need to build a reputation is the brutally simple fact that everything about the project is dangerous. The very real human costs of the project form the focus of Apollo 1 but they’re foreshadowed here, through See and Ed White, the first American to walk in space. See never flew, killed in a plane crash, whilst Ed White’s space walk was one of the defining moments of American space travel and is presented here as the moment the program really gained momentum. One of the final scenes of the episode is White, sitting astride his Gemini capsule as it orbits the Earth, pointing, just for a moment, at the moon. It’s a beautiful, complex image, evoking Doctor Strangelove as much as the heroic ideal of the Astronaut, the pressure-suited knight riding a steed built by hundreds of people towards glory. Arrogance and persistence, hard work and vision, cinema and history combine in a moment which is iconic, complicated and tragic.

It’s revealing that the episode doesn’t finish with this but rather with a group of astronauts being informed that they will be the staff for the Apollo project, that one of them will walk on the moon. Once again, there’s the idea of scale vs individuality, of one historical moment that any of them could carry. This scene answers the question at the top of the episode, definitively and with absolute confidence; we can do this, we will do this and one of these men will be the one to do it. Max Peck is going to the moon, but as episode two shows, the price of getting there is far higher than anyone in the project realises.

Darkness subtracts. Darkness doesn’t just take away where you’re going it takes away where you’ve been, stranding you in an eternal present you can neither see nor touch. That removal of outside stimuli not only forces us to look inward it also brings our inner selves to the surface, reveals things we may not want ourselves, or anyone else, to know. In the dark, the wild things come out to play.

The fourth episode of Stargate Universe, explores the concept of darkness as both an external and internal problem. Externally, that darkness is caused by a sudden collapse in the ship’s power systems, one that Rush blames entirely on Col Young’s deployment of research teams around the ship. In an instant, the Destiny loses everything from lighting to propulsion and coasts, apparently out of control, further out into space. The crew are, literally, powerless and that realisation throws the internal darkness of several major characters into stark relief even as the Destiny slips further into the night.

For Col Young, the darkness gives him a moment to draw breath. A leader who has been almost incapable of leading for the last three episodes, Everett Young takers centre stage for much of this episode and Louis Ferreira’s dialled back, pensive performance gives the commanding officer as much fragility as it does authority. Young’s still badly injured, still trying to function and still doing what he thinks is best, but he’s operating in the dark in every major way and what he finds there surprises both him and the viewer. Young chose his career over his marriage and when the lights go out on Destiny he’s forced to re-examine that decision. There are no histrionics, no over wrought emotions here, just a cautious, reticent, dialled back man trying to re connect with a wife that he abandoned. He’s a good officer and a good leader but when the lights go out he has no idea if either of those things really matter.

For Nicholas Rush, the darkness is a brick wall, too high, too wide and too close. He’s clearly brilliant but he’s not quite brilliant enough, his inability to work with people combining with Young’s drive to get home to drain Destiny’s power. The only thing worse than that fact is that Rush knows it, his relentlessly analytical mind throwing up his mistake again and again until it’s all he can see. The moment where he breaks down is particularly interesting, his anger at Young clearly masking his own guilt and putting his shame and terror at his own failing to the fore. Whether Rush admits it to anyone else, he’s in the wrong and he knows it and that knowledge almost breaks him.

For Tamara Johannsen, the darkness is a chance to take comfort in what she knows. Alaina Huffman is rapidly becoming one of the show’s strongest cast members and TJ’s quiet, pragmatic compassion leads to one of the best scenes to date. Her conversation with Rush, after he wakes up, is the most open either character has been to date, Rush admitting his weaknesses to the one person that he doesn’t think will judge him and TJ taking clear and immense comfort in the doctor/patient relationship. It’s a moment for both of them to catch their breath, to be given support and validation without having to ask for either and it’s remarkable to watch.

For Eli Wallace, the darkness is an opportunity. David Blue’s slightly nervous comic timing is put to tremendous use here as Eli finds himself in three difficult situations, each of which tells us more about him. The first sees Lt. Vanessa James drag him away from a conversation with Chloe to talk to him ‘alone’. The sexual connotation is openly acknowledged in the next scene where James instead takes Eli to an impromptu council of war of the lower ranked soldiers aboard. Eli, to the surprise of everyone there, not only faces them down but acknowledges that their concerns are valid, becoming a bridge between the different crew factions as he does so. It’s a nicely played moment for everyone, where no one is quite right and no one is quite wrong. James may manipulate Eli but she does it for the good of everyone she works with and Eli’s acknowledgement of that is a clear step forward for both characters.
The second moment reinforces this as Volker and Brody, two of the engineers aboard report to Col. Young that there’s no way to solve the power outage. When Eli puts forward a solution, he’s not only thanked by Col Young but also used as a stick to beat the other two men with. Eli is an undisciplined college dropout who, on the first day on the job, was put in the worst situation possible. He’s still working, still doing everything he can and simply by doing that he not only becomes something more than the young man he was when he arrived but also becomes the first member of Destiny’s crew to accept and begin to adapt to their situation.
The third situation neatly undercuts that as Eli and Sgt. Hunter Riley are found using one of the ship’s Kinos to spy on Lt. Vanessa James. Operating in the dark, the two men have reverted to basic adolescent behaviour, a recent memory for both and the end result is a well written but deeply uncomfortable scene. Col. Young’s overt, deadpan disappointment with the two of them is a welcome break in the tension but the fact remains that one of the ship’s best scientific minds and one of the ship’s only Gate technicians are caught using alien technology to spy on a colleague in her underwear. No one’s perfect in the dark and whilst the sexism is in context, it’s still difficult to watch.

Darkness focusses. When you can’t see anything, you find yourself turning to what’s important to you, a fact neatly reflected in the testimonials Eli spends the episode recording from other characters. From Vanessa James’ simple plea to not die out in space to Matthew Scott’s prayer, each one of them turns inwards and only some of them like what they find. Not all of these people are likeable, or even like each other, but all of them are fragile, all of them are human and all of them, in the end, are alone in the dark.
Even then, darkness doesn’t last forever. As the episode finishes, the crew realise they’ve dropped out of Faster Than Light travel on the edge of a solar system, itself an incredible coincidence. When that system is found to have habitable planets, the situation changes and suddenly, the crew find themselves with a tiny sliver of light, a reason to hope. They relax and watch as the Destiny, huge but dwarfed by the gas giant it’s flying through, aerobrakes into the system. Under deep blue, almost marine light, the Destiny’s crew take a moment to revel in the incredible place they’ve found themselves in. Until they realise that the ship is heading directly for the system’s star, the light at the end of the tunnel becomes all too clear and, suddenly, darkness looks like a luxury they will soon miss.

Light overwhelms. Light doesn’t just show you how far you’ve come it shows you how far you still have to go, stripping you of complacency, of the comfort of not being able to see all the way ahead. That flood of external stimuli forces you to fall back on instinct, on what we know best even if we’d prefer not to. In the light, all the lies we tell ourselves are stripped away until our true selves are exposed, whether we want it to be or not. ‘Light’, the season’s fifth episode, uses the backdrop of a lottery to decide who will leave the ship on the only shuttle to explore what happens when every weakness, every fault and every strength are illuminated.

In the light, Matthew Scott and Chloe find comfort in nothing but each other. The relationship, already forged in adversity through the death of Chloe’s father, is consummated in the light of the star that will kill them, a moment of desperate human intimacy that is all they can hope for and all they really want, It’s not quite love, not yet, but it’s the closest either of them will get. It’s also a moment that shows not only far they’ve already come but how far they still have to go. Chloe is painfully aware that she’s a fifth wheel, lacking even the scientific skills of most of the rest of the civilians whilst Matt is blissfully unaware of anything else, using his time with Chloe to delay the inevitable. He holds onto the belief that she’ll be one of the people picked as long as he can and when that’s stripped away, he falls back on the two pillars of his life; duty and faith.

In the light, Vanessa James remembers who she is. Despite her anger over the relationship between Matthew Scott and Chloe, she does her job, stands her post and looks after her people because in the end, that’s what she knows best. The relationship dies the moment she finds Matt and Chloe together, but something new, something deeper, is born the moment she meets his eyes when she arrives at the shuttle. Everything is said in a single glance and then she turns and guards the airlock, prepared to shoot any of her friends and colleagues who weren’t picked. It’s a moment of silent heroism that not only shows exactly how bad things have got but how strong James is. She’s rapidly becoming one of the most interesting second tier characters and it’s going to be fascinating to see how she’s developed.

In the light, Ron Greer and Nicholas Rush are given the last thing they expected; a moment of peace. Serving with unfailing loyalty, Greer accompanies Colonel Young on what he believes will be his last walk. The moment where Ron apologises for letting Colonel Young down and Young responds with a simple ‘At ease, Ronald’ is heartbreaking, an acknowledgement of a friendship and respect that never feels forced or tawdry.
Rush, for his part, is transformed by their apparent death. He becomes open, calm, even friendly, apologising to Eli and making his peace with Colonel Young. He welcomes their apparent doom for the same reason Ron does; as a chance to lay down his burdens and end his life in exactly the place he wanted to be.

In the light, Eli Wallace remembers who he is. The arrested adolescent who spies on women in their underwear is replaced by a young man who has, he thinks, come to the end of his life and likes where he and who he is. Like Lt. James he’s hurt by the relationship between Matt and Chloe and, like James, he deals with it. It’s Eli who comes up with the idea of recording final messages, Eli who gives Rush the gift of seeing the ship from the outside and Eli, along with Chloe, who faces their fate head on. He’s a good man, not a perfect one, but at long last he realises that he’s good enough.

In the light, Camille Wray gets her priorities right. Ming Na has been the least used of the cast so far but there’s clearly a slow build with Camille that will pay off later in the season. Her Kino message, a simple, honest expression of love for her girlfriend, is one of the episode’s most affecting moments and gives her, and the situation the crew are in, welcome depth.

In the light, the Destiny’s crew learn they have no idea what’s happening to them. The episode’s closing scenes are where it really flies, as the ship plunges into the star to refuel instead of to die and the crew’s celebrations are cut short as they realise the shuttle and it’s crew can’t catch up to them. As Rush, Eli and Scott frantically cobble together a solution it becomes clear that the final lesson the crew learn is devastatingly simple; they must rely on each other to survive. For the first time, the Destiny’s crew are truly united in dealing with a problem and, whilst Rush recoils from his perceived weakness, that bond looks set to stay in place. They’re the wrong people, in the wrong place but,whether in darkness or light, they have no one else to rely on.

Aboard a spaceship as vast and beautiful as it is broken, a Stargate explodes into life. A young man collapses through it, instantly aware, instantly combat ready, instantly terrified. Behind him, a trickle of humanity becomes a flood as civilians, soldiers and supplies are hurled through the gate out into the ship. There’s nothing orderly about their arrival, nothing civilised. These people are frightened, on the run and completely out of their depth. These are our heroes, a group of men and women completely unprepared for the situation they’re in and their relationships are sketched in this opening scene with real elegance. Eli Wallace is captivated by everything around him whilst Camille Wray looks on in shock, unsure of how she fits in this new environment. Behind them, Tamara Johansen sticks to her training, helping tend the wounds she can whilst Chloe Armstrong lets her badly wounded father lean on her even as she pushes against him. Behind them, Ron Greer keeps people moving, keeps them on their feet. At the other end of the ragged column, Matthew Scott, the first man through, does the same. Above them, Doctor Nicholas Rush looks down on the shocked, frightened group with something between satisfation and resignation. He isn’t frightened at all.

Just as Scott and Greer catch their breath, their commanding officer, Everett Young, is catapulted backwards through the gate. It closes and Young barely has time to give Scott command of the survivors before he seizes and passes out.
The message is clear; these people are in trouble, in every conceivable way. The challenge the show faces is to make us care about them. It does this, ironically, by using the same methods as Stargate Command absorb alien technology; learn accepted wisdom and then turn it on its head.

It’s traditional for a new TV show in particular to have a ‘viewpoint’ character. These are the people the viewers can identify with, the ones who are as ignorant as we are and by extension, we have as much potential as. Viewpoint characters are two way mirrors, people we both identify with and look up to, the bridge between the fictional and real. This particular concept is something that clearly fascinates the Stargate:Universe creative team and the show takes three unique approaches to it.

The first is embodied in Matthew Scott, the first person we see and as a result clearly intended as a viewpoint character. He’s young, handsome, fit and has every appearance, at first glance, of being an  industry standard action hero. At first glance, Scott has Han Solo’s swagger and Lee Adama’s natural authority, a young man who steps through the stargate into the unknown with his eyes open and his gun steady. Until you notice how much his hands are shaking.
Brian J. Smith is given one of the toughest jobs in recent genre tv history here, as he is asked to make Scott not only likable but flawed, inexperienced and at times completely out of his depth. He clings to his training like a life raft, contradicts himself and at times is startlingly tactless. In ‘Air‘ Part 3 he tells a series of kind, affirming lies to Eli about why he’s splitting the team into two and successfully sells the younger man on the concept. Then, in full view and clearly audible to everyone else he strides off at the head of his team, saying ‘Now we can make some TIME.’
Scott is an action hero, that much is certain but he’s un-tempered, untested and at times unlike able.  Compared to Jack O’Neill and John Shepherd, his unflappable predecessors he’s not just a viewpoint character he’s a direct stand in for the audience.  Scott reacts how we would, clinging to what he knows, lashing out at what he doesn’t.  He’s not perfect, he’s not experienced but he’s interrogating his situation, trying to understand it from the second his boots hit the deck and that tenacity leads to moments of startling honesty.
The same episode, ‘Air’ Part 3, sees the characters frantically searching for a mineral they need to get the Destiny’s air scrubbers up and running.  The only planet they can access is a desert and, as Eli’s team turn back, followed not long after by Rush and a reluctant Greer, Scott finds himself alone. 

Except, he may not be.  Throughout the episode, Scott sees a dust devil which no one else acknowledges.  He follows it, past the point of no return and begins to hallucinate, seeing the Catholic priest that raised him and reliving the events that led him to join the military.  Finally, he passes out in front of the hallucinations which stop at the edge of the dry lake bed he’s been searching for.  With the help of Greer and Eli he makes it back to the Destiny but says absolutely nothing about what he experienced.  Scott’s new but he’s not stupid and he knows that talking about an experience which sits on the boundary line between first contact and a spiritual event is the last thing he needs to do.  Through this, his uncertainty becomes a certainty, a strength to accept the absences and questions that his life has already left him with.  Matthew Scott is a good man but he isn’t a perfect one, and as a result is far more interesting than a perfect man could ever be.

If Scott’s doubt is quietly revolutionary, his relationship with Eli is, at first, traditional.  Scott and Eli are the latest iteration of a partnership that begins with Kirk and Spock, runs through the likes of George Francisco and Matt Sikes in Alien Nation and culminates in the Jack and Daniel and Mckay and Shepherd double acts of the previous Stargate series.  In each case one is the heart and the other the mind, one impulsive and one intelligent, one physical, one intellectual.  However, with Scott and Eli, the boundaries are a little harder to define.

David Blue is faced with as much of a challenge as Brian J. Smith.  Superficially, Eli is a geek wish given form; a gifted young man whose skills are recognised and is whisked away from his life playing computer games and watching TV to assist the most important experiment of all time.  If Scott is who we’d like to be, Eli is who we are, a normal young man in an abnormal situation.
Except, even here, things aren’t as simple as they first seem.  Eli is phenomenally clever, certainly, but he’s also more than a little angry.  In short order, we find out he had to drop out of university to look after his mother, took a wide variety of dead end jobs and discovered his intelligence meant very little out in the real world.  He’s charming and gentle, a funny, self deprecating figure who’s a little easier to like than Scott, but a little harder to respect.Â
Until someone tries to push him and Eli digs his heels in.  Blue plays Eli as a young man who is nice until he isn’t, hardened by the events of his life into someone who is desperate to be liked but at the same time completely unwilling to compromise.  There’s a wonderful moment at the end of ‘Air’ Part 3 where a Marine detachment sent through to look for Scott and Greer are pulled back to the Destiny.  Their CO, 2nd Lt. Vanessa James tells Eli to go back through, that she’ll wait for them.  Eli refuses and there’s a tiny beat where James clearly looks at him in a different light, seeing something different to the chunky, fast talking civilian who came aboard the Destiny.Â
Eli is definitely the show’s joker, but there’s much more to him than that.  Like Scott, he’s powered and defined by a difficult past and, like Scott, Eli is a very different kind of hero.  The soldier and scientist double act lives on but in these two men, it looks set to break some new and very interesting ground.

Scott and Eli are neatly set up as the show’s viewpoint characters but their perspectives aren’t the only ones we see.  One of the others is part of the Destiny itself, a series of automated spherical cameras Eli finds and nicknames ‘Kinoes’.  The Kinoes, at first glance are a neat work around for the characters’ lack of resources.  The Kinoes are used to scout ahead, examine locations and worlds and make sure they’re safe, just as the MALF did on the original show.  However, it soon becomes apparent that the Kinoes have two other, far more impressive roles to play in the show.
The first becomes apparent at the end of ‘Air’ Part 2 as Rush and Colonel Young get into a blazing argument in the Gate room.  We see Rush, framed by the gate, at a high angle as he tries to explain why he’s not tried to dial Earth yet.  It’s a great shot, showing off both Robert Carlyle’s frantic, desperate performance and the faded steampunk grandeur of the Gate room itself but there’s something a little off about it.  It takes a few seconds to realise that the shot is from the point of view of a Kino, slowly tracking events in the room.  This technique is used several times and in most cases is done so subtly we don’t even notice, not only adding a very different, very intimate tone to the story but also making a direct connection between the viewer and the characters.  We see through the eyes of a Kino and by extension are in the scene instead of simply viewing it.  The sense of immediacy that brings is surprisingly intense, tying into the fragile, off balance nature of the characters to create a palpable feeling of unpredictability and danger.  It also makes the fact that the Kinoes are active the first time we see them even more interesting; are they an automated system?  Or is someone else onboard the Destiny?  These are big questions for a pilot episode to raise and to do them through something whose perspective we’re set up to trust is extremely impressive.

The third approach the series takes to its viewpoint characters is both the darkest and most playful, set in motion by the Ancient communication devices Col. Young brings on board. The devices allow the user to swap consciousness with a volunteer back on Earth, giving them the chance to touch home but never stay there. It’s a tantalising and horrific concept, a jet black mirror designed to give the characters everything they want but never letting them keep it. Three episodes in it’s effects are already being felt by Everett Young, David Telford and Nicholas Rush in particular.

In a kinder series, Young and Telford would be the heroes, both experienced SGC Officers who are accustomed to command and the difficult decisions that come with it.  Here, they’re something a little more human and a lot more desperate, Young taking the command of Icarus Base despite his wife’s objections and Telford finding himself the Commanding Officer of a mission that got underway without him.  Originally intended to lead the expedition to the Destiny, he instead finds himself a reluctant, ill tempered visitor to the ship, out of his depth and an active danger to Col Young in particular as he pushes the other officer’s seriously injured body past tolerances.  Louis Ferreira and Lou Diamond Phillips are already one of the show’s most interesting pairings as the two officers and the contrast between the quiet, considered Young and the tenacious, pitbull-like Telford is neatly drawn.  Both men are heroes of their own stories but not quite heroes here and that sense of displacement and discomfort is one of the show’s most fascinating aspects.  The connection with Earth, if anything, only drives home the isolation these characters feel as Young struggles with his new command, Telford struggles with his lack of one and everyone else finds that the only thing worse than being cut off from home is being able to visit but never quite stay.
Even the presence of the communication stones proves troublesome, as Dr Rush takes credit for bringing them aboard, despite Col Young doing so.  Rush, once again, should be the hero especially given the Stargate franchise’s long-standing respect for the idea of the Hero Scientist.
Superficially, Rush is just that. Played by Robert Carlyle, he’s brilliant, difficult and driven, a man who has sacrificed everything for his work and yet seems all too aware of that.  Carlyle has the toughest job of all here, having to sell a character who is both vital to the mission and possibly responsible for it, a man whose heroic actions are tempered by self interest and whose palpable hostility towards Scott and Greer walks the line between irritability, snobbery and racism.  He’s very difficult to like but impossible not to watch, a still point in the constant, whirling chaos of life onboard Destiny who may be the crew’s salvation, their biggest problem or both.Â
In fact, Carlyle plays him as a modern Prospero, a distant, aloof figure who at times gives every appearance of hating everyone around him.  But, like Prospero, Rush is capable of moments of startling kindness, whether it’s congratulating Eli on his bravery on the desert world or offering comfort to a grief stricken Chloe.  His best moment though, comes in a confrontation with Scott where he refuses to let the younger soldier bully him into achieving the impossible.  Scott takes two steps towards him, the threat and confidence in his face crumbling as he says one word that encompasses everything everyone in the room is feeling:
‘Please.’
Rush’s response is gentle, understanding and even then, a little mocking.Â
‘What makes you think I won’t try?’

All three men orbit around the communication devices and, by extension, control of the mission, each drawn to the other and each struggling not just for control of the mission but control of themselves. Later episodes promise to add characters like Camille Wray, the senior civil servant aboard to this mix but even without them, the communication devices make the constantly shifting power structure on the Destiny part of the viewer’s perspective. The unreliable narrator is part of the architecture and if no one can be trusted then everyone has to be watched.

Stargate:Universe is ambitious and confident in exactly the way it’s characters aren’t, a series filled with complex, flawed people who are constantly forced to scrabble for the tiniest, most elemental victories. The final moments of ‘Air‘ Part 3 demonstrate this beautifully as we see a montage of the air scrubbers being repaired and every character reacting to the new, clean air. As ‘Breathe‘ by Alexi Murdoch plays we see each one of them realise where they are, see each one of them realise how much trouble they’re in, what’s behind them and what’s still to come. Clean air is a victory for these people, a tiny assertion of control. It’s all they’ve got and even that is taken away from them as, in the last seconds of the episode, something breaks free from the Destiny and flies off. The final message is clear; the Destiny crew are alone, out of their depth and the only people they can rely on are the last people they want to, each other. Whether they can, and what happens when they fail, remains to be seen.

A nine minute trailer for The Prisoner remake is now up at The Prisoner Online. As well as the gorgeous setting, it seems to have neatly co-opted the original series’ surreal touches and used them to play three card monte with the viewer. Is it a conspiracy? Time travel? Aliens? Either way, it looks great and can’t turn up quickly enough for my taste.

Bleeding Coolare reporting that the BBC have now commissioned the Moffat/Gatiss Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock, for a series of three ninety minute episodes.
The series will update the classic detective to the present day and feature Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson and Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade. No word as yet on when it will air but I suspect we’re looking at a mainstay of either the Autumn or Winter schedules.

(This essay discusses the entire series in detail. Spoilers for every episode abound.)

In 1966, something terrible makes contact with the British government. Something worse delivers twelve children to it. One escapes to a life of homelessness and mental illness, a life of misery and nightmares of a man in a long coat who promised safety and lied. The others disappear.
In 2009, a voice speaks from the throat of every child in the world and the child who escaped, the man in the long coat and a group of civil servants, politicians and innocent bystanders find themselves at the centre of an event that marks a very intimate apocalypse.

Torchwood:Children of Earth throws everything the previous two series built up around themselves out and replaces it with something which is both infinitely darker and far more contemporary. Five episodes long, each one of them equating to a single day, it’s a story that deals with powerlessnes, societal collapse and what it means to face total, absolute change. These big ideas are all viewed through the lens of small, personal apocalypses, a very human look at how the world ends that hasn’t been seen on British television since The Day of the Triffids. Both are stories about normal people in impossible situations and both follow what happens when those people do the only thing they can; break.

This is clearest in John Frobisher, played by Peter Capaldi. Frobisher is a resolutely average man wth a wife, two daughters and no chance of moving any higher in the government. When the children begin to speak, he is placed in charge by the PM and finds himself giving the order to kill the only people who could uncover the British government’s previous interaction with the alien race known as the 456. When faced with this responsibility he does what almost anyone would do; delegates it to his assistant and murder becomes an item on someone’s to do list. Six people have their death warrants signed before the first coffee run of the day, thanks to something as innocuous as it is disturbing; a blank piece of paper.

Frobisher is at the heart of the story’s strongest element; it’s political dimension. Approaching an event of this magnitude from the perspective of a government allows the writers to take the impossible, fantastic events of the five days and not only ground them but curdle them. This is second contact presented as a policy issue, an action item and as a result this is a moment of singular, abject change that is tainted with the same air of polite sleaze and passive aggressive corruption that has tainted British politics for as long as I’ve been alive. Frobisher is a middle manager put in charge of negotiations with an alien race for no reason other than his diposability, a useful tool in the same way a pen is, or a gun.
He’s a flawed, unfaithful man who signs off on murder but is all too aware of what he’s doing. He knows why he has the job, knows he can never escape it and knows exactly who he’s dealing with. In one of the story’s best moments, he tells Jack that he has his daughter and grandson. Jack threatens to kidnap Frobisher’s wife and Frobisher smiles, apologises and tells Jack that he won’t do that, because he’s the better man. John Frobisher is not a good man, by any stretch of the imagination, but he knows exactly what he is and that makes for queasy, uncomfortable and riveting viewing.
Frobisher, in the end, is not even a monster, he’s the man who stands next to the monsters and in the end, that leaves him with no choice but to become one. His final scene, played out over Bridget explaining that he was a good man is heartbreak in needlepoint, an average life collapsing into horror in one of the series’ many quiet targedies. Frobisher returns home, and Bridget explains how they met. Frobisher sends his children upstairs, and Bridget remarks that he always worked hard and that that isn’t appreciated enough. Frobisher takes a gun from a box, his hand shaking and walks upstairs to the only conclusion he has left, the only way he can still protect his family.
Bridget, his aide, appears to be stronger than Frobisher for most of the story. She’s a career civil servant, a woman who is as calm as she is disillusioned, grinding her way through the same tasks in the same office for yet another decade. It’s only as the series continues that we see who she really is, a fiercely competent woman who has been overlooked and ignored her entire life and has come to accept that. Like Frobisher she’s not exceptional, like Frobisher she’s doomed the moment the job is passed to them but unlike him, she is lucky enough to be given a means of escape. Her final scene, calmly informing the Prime Minister that everything he’s said has been recorded could be played as triumphant, as a final victory but instead it’s played as the closing note of a career that stalled years previously. Bridget was in the room just like everyone else, she said nothing, just like everyone else but in what is surely the last moments of the government, she finds the strength to do the right thing.

If Frobisher and Bridget have greatness thrust upon them and are crushed by it, then Brian Green, the Prime Minister embraces it for all the wrong reasons. Nicholas Farrell has the hardest job of all, playing a man who could and in some ways should be a caricature, a politician who sees nothing but an opportunity in the greatest crime ever committed against humanity. He’s polite, plausible, slippery and utterly convincing, telling Frobisher his children will be taken so the government can appear to be ‘victims’ too with exactly the right amount of sympathy needed to get him out of the door. Green is the embodiment of decades of failure in English politics, a man who exists to do one thing; continue to govern. After all, there are things to be done, policies to be made, elections to be won.

This attitude leads to the series’ most horrific and best scene, the axis around which everything else ultimately revolves. The 456 issue their demands for ten percent of the world’s children and the PM and his cabinet begin discussing the logistics. In the space of ten minutes, they go from the absurdity of attempting to haggle, to excusing their own children from removal to discussing how to ‘spin’ the biggest crime in human history to a single line which embodies the series’ uniquely horrible approach to science fiction:

‘”If we can’t identify the lowest achieving 10% of this country’s children, then what are the school league tables for?”

This is it. This is the moment that Torchwood has talked about for two years, the moment ‘where everything changes’ and it’s only when it arrives that two awful truths become clear; the wrong people are presiding over it and no one ever said things would change for the better. This is the end of the world decided by committee, a very English, polite, sickening apocalypse.
In isolation, this would simply be disturbing. However, we see it through a resolutely normal perspective, Lois Habiba, a new secretary played by Cush Jumbo and that’s what makes it truly horrifying. Lois is a normal young woman who finds herself, along with Frobisher and Bridget, in the middle of history. She’s also the key to the rest of the characters’ survival, the only woman who is prepared to believe not just in Torchwood, but in the idea that something other than appeasement is possible. The series has already been criticised for its jet black ending and the incredibly cynicism with which it views humanity but Lois embodies the best elements of us, the quiet, polite young woman who still believes in doing the right thing, even in the face of incredible pressure to turn the other cheek. She grounds the political scenes, reminding the viewer that millions of lives are being weighed against billions and that each and every one of them is a child, is innocent. They all know they have blood on their hands but Lois is the only one horrified enough by it to do something.

She’s also where the real hope of the story lies, not in the people we are expected to trust but in the people who are just like us. It’s given voice by both Lois and Ianto and Jack’s families, resolutely normal people who are consumed by the bad choices made further up the line. Ianto’s sister Rhiannon (Katie Wix) and brother in law Johnny (Rhodri Davies) provide much of the comic relief with Johnny’s cheerful approach to petty crime a stark contrast to the resolutely proper Ianto. However, for all this they’re compassionate, nice, normal people. They worry about what Ianto does, whether or not he’s gay, cheerfully pump him for information on Jack and are all but destroyed by both his death and the total betrayal of the population by the government. They’re everyone, a normal couple trapped at the end of the world and despite everything, desperately concerned with keeping their kids safe.
In stark contrast, Jack’s daughter Alice knows exactly what her father does and wants no part of it. Where Rhiannon and Johnny are brash and honest and open, Alice is closed off, cautious. Through her, we see what a life lived next to Torchwood does, see a woman who never quite relaxes and who is sharp enough to know her father is prepared to use his own grandson as a test subject. She’s played with total reticence and reserve by Lucy Cohu and like many characters gets a final scene of incredible emotional weight. After Jack has sacrificed Stephen, he’s sitting, alone, in a corridor. She walks through one set of doors, pauses, then turns her back on him. Jack looks at her, then leaves via the other doors. In any other series it would be a moment of redemption and triumph, two people finally breaking away from one another to build their own lives. Here, it’s a moment of acceptance as Jack heads for a future stripped of everyone he loves, or at least, those who’ve survived.

For two years Torchwood has described itself as being beyond the government and above the law. If the idea that the government are to be trusted is the first great lie of Children of Earth, this is the second. Every single weakness of the previous two years is exposed and used as a weapon against the team, from the open secret of their existence to their uneasy relationship with the government and Jack’s immortality. By the end of episode one they are cut off from their support structure, their headquarters and their past. By the end of the story they are decimated, reduced to one member with their status in what is surely a very different world unclear.
This is also their finest hour as every single one of the series regulars turns in career best performances. After two seasons of being told how charming and human Gwen is, Eve Myles is finally allowed to show us that side of the character. For the first time we not only see the quiet, friendly, commanding young woman that Gwen is supposed to be but also the very natural and surprisingly poignant relationship she has with her husband, Rhys. Myles and Kai Owen are an incredibly charming double act, finishing each other’s sentences and bantering with one another like people who’ve spent years of their lives together. The moment where Rhys finds out Gwen is pregnant and insists on carrying her rucksack is another of the series’ best and quietest moments. Gwen has survived a bomb explosion, fought for her life against government assassins and kept the pair of them alive but Rhys is damned if he’s going to let his pregnant wife carry a rucksack. They are the heart of the story and the chilling, bitter monologue Gwen delivers at the start of episode five is made all the more affecting by the sight of Rhys, tears rolling down his face, filming her.
Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto is also given some great material, especially in his interactions with Jack and his family. For the first time, we see something beyond the proper, old fashioned young man with a fondness for good suits and the moment where he arranges to meet Rhiannon where their father broke his leg is another of the series’ best moments. Rhiannon defends their father, Ianto holds his ground and in less than ten seconds we all that we need to see. Ianto decided to be a good man a very long time ago and whilst he’s not always succeeded he’s never stopped trying. His final moments drive that home and for a character who started out at the heart of many of the show’s weakest episodes, his death is the most affecting of them all.

At the centre of it all though stands Jack Harkness. John Barrowman’s work here is exemplary, balancing the playfulness of Jack’s personality with moments of total emotional collapse. His reluctance to treat his relationship with Ianto as something serious makes for some of the best jokes in the series but has a real edge to it as we see Jack run, time and again, not just from happiness but from responsibility. He knows what he’s done, knows how Ianto will react when he finds out and keeps himself at arm’s length because that’s where he feels he deserves to be. The events of Children of Earth do nothing to change that.
Just as the Gwen we see here is the one we’ve always been promised, this is the Jack Harkness that should always have been at the heart of the show. He’s a matinee idol fifty years out of time, a man who doesn’t age but knows death and who has done terrible things for what he thinks is the greater good. He’s the dark mirror of the Doctor, a man who does bad things for good reasons and who is covered in so much blood, a little more won’t matter. Here, at long last, the writers let Barrowman show the weight of Captain Jack’s thousands of years of life, the damage done to a man who can do nothing but live. Yet again, his best moments are the quiet ones, his distraught reaction to Ianto’s death, the scene with Alice in the corridor, the moment where Gwen asks if he’ll come back and he says simply ‘Why?’. Jack has done it all, the bad far more than the good and he can no longer take it. He’s a broken hero in a broken world and in the end does the one thing he can do; leave.

Ranged against all of them is the 456, an alien we never see as anything but an abstraction of beaks and mucus. This is the true genius of the piece, sidestepping the traditional, slightly poor Doctor Who monster for something which is as implacable as it is invisible. The 456 repeats the same phrases over and over, utterly confident in its superiority and presented, at least at first, as just that; a superior force, an alien that can’t be seen or stopped, only communicated with. When that fades, when the 456 are revealed as nothing more than junkies wanting children for the chemicals they secrete, it’s shattering, the accepted wisdom of modern science fiction in general and Doctor Who in particular collapsing as we realise we’re not even important enough to conquer, just to farm. Again, everything changes and we’re shown not only how small we are, but how cruel the universe around is. We’re cattle, to paraphrase Charles Fort and Clem, the only survivor of the 1966 incident played with tremendous strength and dignity by Paul Copley, is defective cattle. His death is as casual as Ianto’s, as cruel and whilst it holds the key to defeating the 456, he’s still dead and he is far from alone.

Children of Earth is stunning, in the most literal sense of the word. It evokes classic British science fiction but does so with an approach which is modern without once being self conscious or mocking. This is a story about what we do in the face of total disaster, of tiny disasters and tiny victories and the way they weave together to make history, for better and for worse. Packed with incredible performances, it’s a relentlessly grim exploration of the moment everything changes for humanity and what happens to those left behind. It’s a modern classic in every sense, a story that takes old elements and makes them timely and new. 21st century TV drama has rarely been better.

For a ‘gap’ year, there’s a lot of Doctor Who news around at the moment. First off, the long awaited movie version has been officially announced by the BBC. On top of that, David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Euros Lyn are all at the San Diego Comic Convention this month, leading a lot of people to believe an announcement is forthcoming.
If so, the project couldn’t have stronger figureheads The kudos of having a project fronted by one of the most popular Doctors, produced by the man who resurrected the series and headed by one of its most successful directors can’t be over estimated. Nor, perhaps, can the fact that Lyn will be appearing on the back of his work on the Torchwood: Children of Earth mini-series.

Next up, Tennant will be returning to Elsinore as the RSC‘s superb Hamlet will be filmed for both DVD release and broadcast. It’s a staggeringly good production with the first definitive Hamlet of the 21st century at its head and I can’t wait to see how it holds up to being recorded.

Finally, Cubicle 7 have announced the Doctor Who roleplaying game will be published in October. It’s a boxed set, and I can particularly recommend the adventures booklet…