The fourth series of Torchwood was worth watching and the conclusions well worked out although it was written in such a way to enable a future series covering the same subject matter and therefore some issues are left unresolved. My one other critical conclusion is that the story should have been condensed into six rather than its ten episodes.
Torchwood was an original Wales BBC creation born out the Saturday evening adolescent intended time travelling perennial series of Dr Who and intended for adults, although the recent series of Dr Who have concentrated on good acting, and stories with subjects to satisfy adults as much as adolescents with a interest in the concept of Time Travel.
Whereas Dr Who regenerates every couple of series to allow for new actors of proven ability to play the central character, he is as old as eternity and his forays into the future have been limited, include alternative dimensions and inter galactic time travel and the problems between races. Time travel is via the original police call box at a time when such boxes stood on street corners along with phone and AA boxes and contained dedicated phone lines, the idea being that the time travelling vehicle would blend into the UK landscape unnoticed so now it tends to arrive not on the street where it would stick out like a sore thumb in a contemporary landing or pre telephone landscape but in some location where it can remain unnoticed. A feature of the series has been the awareness of beings from different worlds and time periods of each other and a period in the UK future when what appears to be a British led world force called the Unit was set up to counter the periodic arrival of beings from across the Galaxy, usually with the intent of dominating the earth planet or exterminating the people if not the planet.
Captain Jack Harkness, called captain because he first appeared in a Dr Who series set in World War II, is not from the past, but from the future who returns to help out with individuals he has recruited because the UK faced some challenge which threatened the basic humanitarian and democratic approach of its mainstream politics. He therefore knows the past from the vantage of the future and can intervene to change was happens in the present. He is an immortal who can experience pain and suffer in the present and therefore if one wishes to see a biblical reference or make biblical conclusion this is possible.
When the third series The Children concluded it was assumed that it was also the final programme using the concept and central character. His adorable and courageous heterosexual Welsh female assistant, Gwen Cooper had found herself a normal Welsh husband, and because of her past involvement in uncovering the anti democratic wheeling and dealing with aliens on the part of the UK government, sacrificing children to feed a monster in return for a quiet life she has retreated to an isolated cottage on the Welsh coast which according to Wikipedia is the Old Rectory, in Rhossili Bay owned by the National Trust which together with English Heritage manages ancient sites and buildings at arms length from Government.
The couple now have a child and have no direct contact with her parents who continue to live in Wales (Swansea) where one contact is a policeman with a soft spot for Gwen. All the other Members of Torchwood had died and Jack who is immortal but nevertheless can experience pain returned to his normal place of abode. A feature of the series has been that deaths occur of characters that we care about and therefore mourn and wish the outcome had been different.
The latest series Miracle Day began with the execution an American paedophile and child murderer after years of stays while the process of is there justification for a pardon to life imprisonment plays its journey through the courts and the office of state governor. Oswald Danes is brilliantly played by Bill Drummond as inherently evil, calculating and clever with no redeeming features until the final episode.
His survival of the execution acts as the trigger for Miracle Day, the day when everyone stops dying even when they are burnt to crisp or bodies severely mutilated self aware life continues. Such a person to survive is Gwen’s father.
I will not pretend that I fully understood the complex stretch out plot but here goes my best try.
Back in 1927 Immortal Sins (episode 7) homosexual Jack is on a mission in the USA which involves stopping some imported artefact (alien creature) coming to life when he falls in the love of his life with an Italian Immigrant named Angelo who Jack is forced to abandon having promised otherwise when his immortality is discovered by the owner of a Mafia controlled butchers shop in Little Italy and where he is subjected to horrific blood shedding attacks to test his ability to survive whatever they do him and vials of his blood are collected on the basis that his blood has unique immortality properties. More may have been explained about the alien being/force and its potential impact but has now been forgotten
What we learn, subsequently, is that three families related to those who participated in the orgy of attempted killing of Jack, feed Jack’s blood to the supernatural creature to create the Blessing, a force with great power to influence and take over people and who creates a single channel shaft like presence throughout the earth planet with two access points one in Shanghai and the other in Buenos Aires, literally poles apart and that coming face to face with the forces enables individuals to confront all aspects of their personalities and invest them with great powers of insight and power over others.
I believe there is significance in the reference to three families although in this series they are represented by one woman in Shanghai and there also appears to be an important contact in the USA about whom I will also refer later.
After 1927 that is some 93 years later, the families are said to have removed all record of their existence and set about building a world wide net work through a corporation PhiCorp whose emblem is a circle(representing earth) with a slash ( representing the Blessing polar shaft) created from the two blood manufacturing laboratories on the sites where there is access to the Blessing. The network includes placing people within all aspects of government at a political and administrative level throughout the world and it is only in the present that the organisation has become ready to fulfil the purpose of the Blessing on earth.
The idea was to successfully create world wide panic as a consequence of no one dying. There was the problem of the exponential growth in population with disease and old age, accidents and wars having no effect, how is everyone to be fed housed and clothed? The social consequence are horrific in that no one can commit murder any more and the economic catastrophic as the life insurance market collapses one obvious example. The first objective is to create a form of international government with all the governments participating in the building of extermination ovens which reduces the whole human body and skeleton to cinders and deployed on all Category one humans, that is those who should be dead but of course they are not because of the blessing and therefore must experience the horror of being incinerated feeling and aware of what is happening to them in their final moments.
(This is another form of Nazi final solution but applying first to all the undead but also provide the opportunity of getting rid of any opponents of the new order which plans a take over of the world so those in charge can determine what everyone does and does not, how long they live and do not with those in charge having immortality. In the first part of series attention is given to finding out about these special facilities being built all over the world and to expose their actual purpose and how they are being misused but later as financial and social chaos occurs everyone appears to accept the exterminations centres as a necessary evil.
As with Dr Who it is BBC Wales who originally commissioned Torchwood but after the popular series ended someone came up with the idea of establishing an Anglo USA enterprise and originally interested Fox, although I am not surprised they pulled out given their ideology, compared to that of Jack and those recruited to Torchwood. However it was through the Anglo USA financing that the story line and setting became Trans Atlantic and in the first episode after Miracle Day Commences Government agencies throughout the world (presumably) but notably those in the UK and USA receive a one word clue Torchwood. This is investigated by an analyst at the USA CIA office Ester Drumwood and her boss Rex Matheson (the statutory Black guy) estranged from his medical doctor white wife, but the CIA members quickly find all trace of Torchwood eliminated) but persist on their own with Rex travelling to the UK (Cardiff airport) with help from the British Government to locate Gwen and Jack who had returned to prevent what happens happen and extraordinary rendition them back to the USA in episode one The New World.
Gwen is therefore separated from her husband and child and on the plane to the USA Jack is fatally poisoned by an accomplice of the Blessing planted by their boss back in the CIA office. Because while everyone on earth cannot die, the Immortal Jack has become mortal and as he is the only person who can stop the Blessing killing him before he works out what and where is who and what is the only obstacle to plan being put into full effect now that everything else and everyone needed is in place. In Rendition with the help of the medical wife of Rex they save Jack but realising they are not safe the trio go on the run when arriving in the USA and are joined by Esther. So there is in effect a combined USA and Welsh new Torchwood team.
The young attractive ( in an over painted glossy sense) Jilly (Kitzenger) is employed as public relations officer for PhiCorp and is instructed to make contact with the paedophile Oswald Danes and turn him into a kind of second coming John the Baptist announcing the age of the Blessing helping people to prepare for the World Order. He is at first reluctant and Jack attempts to persuades Oswald to tell the truth about what is happening but instead during his world wide telecast he makes the announcement about the Blessing as instructed.
In episode 4 Escape to LA there are two developments with Rex and Esther going to find out what is happening at one of the new special sites where Category 1 individuals are being taken to be managed for their own the public good. When Gwen finds that her father who had a heart attack but did not die is being taken to a site in Wales she returns to the UK in secret to also find out what is going on and uses her policeman friend to gain access to the holding area where her father is being held.
At some point and which I cannot now remember both Jack now mortal and Rex are shot and would have died except for the Blessing and later transfusions of blood from Jack are used to keep Rex alive.
The estranged wife of Rex has become separately involved in trying to find out what is happening and she agrees to pose as a Government Inspector to gain access to the holding area and to question the man in charge about what is going on Rex also gain access with a video camera and enters the inner compound and discovers the existence of the ovens which are yet to be brought into operation. When the man in charges realises that his role is being challenged and he thinks the wife is going to file a bad report about him, he knocks her out and destroys all trace of her in an incinerator with Rex helpless to prevent the murder The Categories of Life episode 5.
In the Middle Men episode 6 Gwen works out that something awful will happen to her father if he remains so with the help of the policeman and her husband they smuggle her father out and hide him in the family home in Swansea. Rex with his video film manages to escape from the site at San Pedro with the man in charge being killed. Rex, Esther and Jack direct their attention to the offices of PhiCorp and learn that the organisation is a front for the Blessing which is connected to the Miracle and to Shanghai, where earlier we had witnessed someone trying to kill themselves after investigating what was going on at a military protected former blood transfusion blood bank centre.
Gwen returns to the USA to rejoin the team only to be contacted by those behind what is happened and told that if she wants to see her husband and daughter again she must deliver Jack to them. Torn between emotions, she puts her child and her husband first.
This brings to the last important four episodes where the story unfolds and as suggested the first six episodes could have been condensed to at least 3.
It is Immortal sins as Gwen prepares to hand Jack over to save her family the two are confronted with truths about themselves and Jack recounts/relives what happened in Little Italy in 1927. With help of her PC friend Gwen’s husband and daughter are rescued so she does not need to hand Jack over, but goes voluntarily on learning that he is to meet the love of his life Angelo.
In End of the Road Jack finds that Angelo has not remained young but has aged in the normal way and is approaching death but then he dies the only person in the earth world to do so. Jack finds that the bed is placed over a special area made of an extra terrestrial substance which has protected or prevented Angelo from the effects of the Blessing. The situation is still a trap for Jack as back in the CIA officer in addition to the Director who was thought to be the individual acting for PhiCorp there is someone else with access to all that is going on and she arrange for CIA to arrive and apprehend the Torchwood people and Jack because of the continuing threat they pose. It is in this episode that Jack is shot and because of his switch from immortality to mortality his life is also in danger.
In the penultimate episode The Blood Line Jack has come to the UK and Gwen arranges for him to be cared for in Scotland where he believes it is important that stocks of his blood are created especially if he is unable to survive the wounding, Back in Swansea the family survive one attempt by the Category 1 finding police to locate Gwen’s father but the man charge says he is not satisfied and will return. Gwen is also aware that the family home is under constant observation.
Early on in the series it had been discovered that for decades PhiCorp had been stockpiling in secret warehouses the world stock of pain killers as means of help to persuade the population to accept that those who should have died but do not and who therefore now suffer in pain want to be incinerated as do their relatives as a means of bringing the pain to and end. Gwen ram raids into a chemist where stocks of the pain killers and drugs are being strictly controlled by the new world order in order to help the suffering of her father which she smuggles into the house through two Pizza boxes. In the USA Jilly’s role as minder for Oswald Danes has come to an end and she is at a loose end when she is approached by someone who appears to be part of the three families network and says she is to have a special role and a new identity and will go to Shanghai to meet a member of the families.
Oswald Danes with knowledge of this comes to the UK and gain entry to the home of Gwen’s family and demands to see Jack threatening to reveal to the authorities the presence of Gwen’s father. While Esther is still a wanted by the CIA individual on the run and on the outside, Rex has returned to the fold and operates independently with only his boss knowing what is going on because it is evident that there is a mole high up in the office and another colleagues has been working on a new programme which will be able to trace any calls made from the office to the enemy.
It is from the contact between Jack and Oswald Danes that they work out that at the two former blood bank transfusion centres poles part that the Blessing is located Jack and Gwen and Oswald head for Shanghai and Rex with Esther head for the location in Buenos Aires with the mole in the service desperately trying to find out what is going on
In The Blood line episode 10 we learn that the role of Jilly is to re write world history as the new world order begins in earnest. Because of the collapse of pension funds as the able bodied are living longer the world has moved into financial Depression and the economy about to collapse world wide. They are also about to blow up the two openings to the Blessing so that the force will able to continue and regenerates on its own without the possibility of being adversely affected. Jack has worked out that if his blood is shed into the mouth of the Blessing at both ends at the same time it will set up a counter force field which will seal the Blessing and ends its power. Those who should have died and will die from the usual natural causes, accidents, murders and wars will do so once more. Normal order should be quickly restored.
Unfortunately the mole at CIA headquarters has found out about the visit of Rex and Ester to Buenos Aires with Jack’s supply of blood and when a troop of local soldiers are about to take Rex and Esther to the site to send Jack’s blood into the Blessing at the same as Jack gives his blood directly, an agent of the Families blows himself, the other troops and the blood supply up. The mole back at the CIA does not know that Rex and Esther survived or that Rex has found out that because of transfusion from Jack to keep active because of the constant loss of blood from being shot, his blood can be used to still seal through a kind of chain reaction the Blessing back into an inanimate state.
Because both sites are heavily guarded the two sets of Torchwood individuals allow themselves to be captured and the Shanghai people do not realise until it is too late that Jack had turned Oswald into a human bomb who will blow them all up and therefore Jack’s blood will stop the Blessing, The representative of the three families explains that this will not work because they have destroyed the supply of Jack’s blood at the other end but then it is revealed that Rex’s has the blood in himself. Gwen is concerned that this could mean the end of Jack and Rex but the two understand that this is the price that has to be paid and we remember that Jack is from the future so he knows the actual risk.
In Shanghai Jilly who has witnessed events now attempts to escape before the place blows from the explosives already in place. Jack who has survived the blood giving and Gwen have to over power Jilly to get into the lift with her. Oswald clutches the Family member and blows to the two up, and the site, as the three others escape, although it looks as Jilly has been killed by the force of the explosion and its fireball.
Jack accompanies Gwen to her home where her husband has been with her father as he experiences the passing that should have happened before, They attend the funeral and Gwen is able to return to normal life with husband a child and live openly.
I cannot remember if she also attend the funeral in the USA of Esther who is shot and does not survive after the Blessing is closed in Buenos Aires. Rex is at the funeral with the Mole alongside having destroyed the evidence of her existence, she believes, but as she is about to depart, possibly as the new CIA head, Rex is able to get a reproduction of the information in the programme about the telephone number and employee name of the leak. When she realises her cover is blown she attempts to shoot her way out and hits Rex before is still able to shoot her and kill her.
What they find is that Rex has now the same recuperation powers as Jack so although he experienced the pain and technically died from the shot his body immediately heals removing all trace of the shooting. He appears to have become another immortal but we do not know if he also has the time travelling powers.
Meanwhile Jilly has survived and has been returning the park bench in hope of meeting her contact. When he eventually arrives he discloses that all is not lost and that what happened was in effect a trial run. The families apart from the lost member continue to exist as do the majority of their people around the world. The implication is that there are also other sources of the Blessing to be exploited. That is here is to be at least another series if the reception and audience figures suggest it is financially profit making! The final thought is that if Rex has become immortal through blood transfusion then why not the Members of the three families and therefore has the woman in Shanghai also survived and what of Oswald Danes?
Torchwood was an original Wales BBC creation born out the Saturday evening adolescent intended time travelling perennial series of Dr Who and intended for adults, although the recent series of Dr Who have concentrated on good acting, and stories with subjects to satisfy adults as much as adolescents with a interest in the concept of Time Travel.
Whereas Dr Who regenerates every couple of series to allow for new actors of proven ability to play the central character, he is as old as eternity and his forays into the future have been limited, include alternative dimensions and inter galactic time travel and the problems between races. Time travel is via the original police call box at a time when such boxes stood on street corners along with phone and AA boxes and contained dedicated phone lines, the idea being that the time travelling vehicle would blend into the UK landscape unnoticed so now it tends to arrive not on the street where it would stick out like a sore thumb in a contemporary landing or pre telephone landscape but in some location where it can remain unnoticed. A feature of the series has been the awareness of beings from different worlds and time periods of each other and a period in the UK future when what appears to be a British led world force called the Unit was set up to counter the periodic arrival of beings from across the Galaxy, usually with the intent of dominating the earth planet or exterminating the people if not the planet.
Captain Jack Harkness, called captain because he first appeared in a Dr Who series set in World War II, is not from the past, but from the future who returns to help out with individuals he has recruited because the UK faced some challenge which threatened the basic humanitarian and democratic approach of its mainstream politics. He therefore knows the past from the vantage of the future and can intervene to change was happens in the present. He is an immortal who can experience pain and suffer in the present and therefore if one wishes to see a biblical reference or make biblical conclusion this is possible.
When the third series The Children concluded it was assumed that it was also the final programme using the concept and central character. His adorable and courageous heterosexual Welsh female assistant, Gwen Cooper had found herself a normal Welsh husband, and because of her past involvement in uncovering the anti democratic wheeling and dealing with aliens on the part of the UK government, sacrificing children to feed a monster in return for a quiet life she has retreated to an isolated cottage on the Welsh coast which according to Wikipedia is the Old Rectory, in Rhossili Bay owned by the National Trust which together with English Heritage manages ancient sites and buildings at arms length from Government.
The couple now have a child and have no direct contact with her parents who continue to live in Wales (Swansea) where one contact is a policeman with a soft spot for Gwen. All the other Members of Torchwood had died and Jack who is immortal but nevertheless can experience pain returned to his normal place of abode. A feature of the series has been that deaths occur of characters that we care about and therefore mourn and wish the outcome had been different.
The latest series Miracle Day began with the execution an American paedophile and child murderer after years of stays while the process of is there justification for a pardon to life imprisonment plays its journey through the courts and the office of state governor. Oswald Danes is brilliantly played by Bill Drummond as inherently evil, calculating and clever with no redeeming features until the final episode.
His survival of the execution acts as the trigger for Miracle Day, the day when everyone stops dying even when they are burnt to crisp or bodies severely mutilated self aware life continues. Such a person to survive is Gwen’s father.
I will not pretend that I fully understood the complex stretch out plot but here goes my best try.
Back in 1927 Immortal Sins (episode 7) homosexual Jack is on a mission in the USA which involves stopping some imported artefact (alien creature) coming to life when he falls in the love of his life with an Italian Immigrant named Angelo who Jack is forced to abandon having promised otherwise when his immortality is discovered by the owner of a Mafia controlled butchers shop in Little Italy and where he is subjected to horrific blood shedding attacks to test his ability to survive whatever they do him and vials of his blood are collected on the basis that his blood has unique immortality properties. More may have been explained about the alien being/force and its potential impact but has now been forgotten
What we learn, subsequently, is that three families related to those who participated in the orgy of attempted killing of Jack, feed Jack’s blood to the supernatural creature to create the Blessing, a force with great power to influence and take over people and who creates a single channel shaft like presence throughout the earth planet with two access points one in Shanghai and the other in Buenos Aires, literally poles apart and that coming face to face with the forces enables individuals to confront all aspects of their personalities and invest them with great powers of insight and power over others.
I believe there is significance in the reference to three families although in this series they are represented by one woman in Shanghai and there also appears to be an important contact in the USA about whom I will also refer later.
After 1927 that is some 93 years later, the families are said to have removed all record of their existence and set about building a world wide net work through a corporation PhiCorp whose emblem is a circle(representing earth) with a slash ( representing the Blessing polar shaft) created from the two blood manufacturing laboratories on the sites where there is access to the Blessing. The network includes placing people within all aspects of government at a political and administrative level throughout the world and it is only in the present that the organisation has become ready to fulfil the purpose of the Blessing on earth.
The idea was to successfully create world wide panic as a consequence of no one dying. There was the problem of the exponential growth in population with disease and old age, accidents and wars having no effect, how is everyone to be fed housed and clothed? The social consequence are horrific in that no one can commit murder any more and the economic catastrophic as the life insurance market collapses one obvious example. The first objective is to create a form of international government with all the governments participating in the building of extermination ovens which reduces the whole human body and skeleton to cinders and deployed on all Category one humans, that is those who should be dead but of course they are not because of the blessing and therefore must experience the horror of being incinerated feeling and aware of what is happening to them in their final moments.
(This is another form of Nazi final solution but applying first to all the undead but also provide the opportunity of getting rid of any opponents of the new order which plans a take over of the world so those in charge can determine what everyone does and does not, how long they live and do not with those in charge having immortality. In the first part of series attention is given to finding out about these special facilities being built all over the world and to expose their actual purpose and how they are being misused but later as financial and social chaos occurs everyone appears to accept the exterminations centres as a necessary evil.
As with Dr Who it is BBC Wales who originally commissioned Torchwood but after the popular series ended someone came up with the idea of establishing an Anglo USA enterprise and originally interested Fox, although I am not surprised they pulled out given their ideology, compared to that of Jack and those recruited to Torchwood. However it was through the Anglo USA financing that the story line and setting became Trans Atlantic and in the first episode after Miracle Day Commences Government agencies throughout the world (presumably) but notably those in the UK and USA receive a one word clue Torchwood. This is investigated by an analyst at the USA CIA office Ester Drumwood and her boss Rex Matheson (the statutory Black guy) estranged from his medical doctor white wife, but the CIA members quickly find all trace of Torchwood eliminated) but persist on their own with Rex travelling to the UK (Cardiff airport) with help from the British Government to locate Gwen and Jack who had returned to prevent what happens happen and extraordinary rendition them back to the USA in episode one The New World.
Gwen is therefore separated from her husband and child and on the plane to the USA Jack is fatally poisoned by an accomplice of the Blessing planted by their boss back in the CIA office. Because while everyone on earth cannot die, the Immortal Jack has become mortal and as he is the only person who can stop the Blessing killing him before he works out what and where is who and what is the only obstacle to plan being put into full effect now that everything else and everyone needed is in place. In Rendition with the help of the medical wife of Rex they save Jack but realising they are not safe the trio go on the run when arriving in the USA and are joined by Esther. So there is in effect a combined USA and Welsh new Torchwood team.
The young attractive ( in an over painted glossy sense) Jilly (Kitzenger) is employed as public relations officer for PhiCorp and is instructed to make contact with the paedophile Oswald Danes and turn him into a kind of second coming John the Baptist announcing the age of the Blessing helping people to prepare for the World Order. He is at first reluctant and Jack attempts to persuades Oswald to tell the truth about what is happening but instead during his world wide telecast he makes the announcement about the Blessing as instructed.
In episode 4 Escape to LA there are two developments with Rex and Esther going to find out what is happening at one of the new special sites where Category 1 individuals are being taken to be managed for their own the public good. When Gwen finds that her father who had a heart attack but did not die is being taken to a site in Wales she returns to the UK in secret to also find out what is going on and uses her policeman friend to gain access to the holding area where her father is being held.
At some point and which I cannot now remember both Jack now mortal and Rex are shot and would have died except for the Blessing and later transfusions of blood from Jack are used to keep Rex alive.
The estranged wife of Rex has become separately involved in trying to find out what is happening and she agrees to pose as a Government Inspector to gain access to the holding area and to question the man in charge about what is going on Rex also gain access with a video camera and enters the inner compound and discovers the existence of the ovens which are yet to be brought into operation. When the man in charges realises that his role is being challenged and he thinks the wife is going to file a bad report about him, he knocks her out and destroys all trace of her in an incinerator with Rex helpless to prevent the murder The Categories of Life episode 5.
In the Middle Men episode 6 Gwen works out that something awful will happen to her father if he remains so with the help of the policeman and her husband they smuggle her father out and hide him in the family home in Swansea. Rex with his video film manages to escape from the site at San Pedro with the man in charge being killed. Rex, Esther and Jack direct their attention to the offices of PhiCorp and learn that the organisation is a front for the Blessing which is connected to the Miracle and to Shanghai, where earlier we had witnessed someone trying to kill themselves after investigating what was going on at a military protected former blood transfusion blood bank centre.
Gwen returns to the USA to rejoin the team only to be contacted by those behind what is happened and told that if she wants to see her husband and daughter again she must deliver Jack to them. Torn between emotions, she puts her child and her husband first.
This brings to the last important four episodes where the story unfolds and as suggested the first six episodes could have been condensed to at least 3.
It is Immortal sins as Gwen prepares to hand Jack over to save her family the two are confronted with truths about themselves and Jack recounts/relives what happened in Little Italy in 1927. With help of her PC friend Gwen’s husband and daughter are rescued so she does not need to hand Jack over, but goes voluntarily on learning that he is to meet the love of his life Angelo.
In End of the Road Jack finds that Angelo has not remained young but has aged in the normal way and is approaching death but then he dies the only person in the earth world to do so. Jack finds that the bed is placed over a special area made of an extra terrestrial substance which has protected or prevented Angelo from the effects of the Blessing. The situation is still a trap for Jack as back in the CIA officer in addition to the Director who was thought to be the individual acting for PhiCorp there is someone else with access to all that is going on and she arrange for CIA to arrive and apprehend the Torchwood people and Jack because of the continuing threat they pose. It is in this episode that Jack is shot and because of his switch from immortality to mortality his life is also in danger.
In the penultimate episode The Blood Line Jack has come to the UK and Gwen arranges for him to be cared for in Scotland where he believes it is important that stocks of his blood are created especially if he is unable to survive the wounding, Back in Swansea the family survive one attempt by the Category 1 finding police to locate Gwen’s father but the man charge says he is not satisfied and will return. Gwen is also aware that the family home is under constant observation.
Early on in the series it had been discovered that for decades PhiCorp had been stockpiling in secret warehouses the world stock of pain killers as means of help to persuade the population to accept that those who should have died but do not and who therefore now suffer in pain want to be incinerated as do their relatives as a means of bringing the pain to and end. Gwen ram raids into a chemist where stocks of the pain killers and drugs are being strictly controlled by the new world order in order to help the suffering of her father which she smuggles into the house through two Pizza boxes. In the USA Jilly’s role as minder for Oswald Danes has come to an end and she is at a loose end when she is approached by someone who appears to be part of the three families network and says she is to have a special role and a new identity and will go to Shanghai to meet a member of the families.
Oswald Danes with knowledge of this comes to the UK and gain entry to the home of Gwen’s family and demands to see Jack threatening to reveal to the authorities the presence of Gwen’s father. While Esther is still a wanted by the CIA individual on the run and on the outside, Rex has returned to the fold and operates independently with only his boss knowing what is going on because it is evident that there is a mole high up in the office and another colleagues has been working on a new programme which will be able to trace any calls made from the office to the enemy.
It is from the contact between Jack and Oswald Danes that they work out that at the two former blood bank transfusion centres poles part that the Blessing is located Jack and Gwen and Oswald head for Shanghai and Rex with Esther head for the location in Buenos Aires with the mole in the service desperately trying to find out what is going on
In The Blood line episode 10 we learn that the role of Jilly is to re write world history as the new world order begins in earnest. Because of the collapse of pension funds as the able bodied are living longer the world has moved into financial Depression and the economy about to collapse world wide. They are also about to blow up the two openings to the Blessing so that the force will able to continue and regenerates on its own without the possibility of being adversely affected. Jack has worked out that if his blood is shed into the mouth of the Blessing at both ends at the same time it will set up a counter force field which will seal the Blessing and ends its power. Those who should have died and will die from the usual natural causes, accidents, murders and wars will do so once more. Normal order should be quickly restored.
Unfortunately the mole at CIA headquarters has found out about the visit of Rex and Ester to Buenos Aires with Jack’s supply of blood and when a troop of local soldiers are about to take Rex and Esther to the site to send Jack’s blood into the Blessing at the same as Jack gives his blood directly, an agent of the Families blows himself, the other troops and the blood supply up. The mole back at the CIA does not know that Rex and Esther survived or that Rex has found out that because of transfusion from Jack to keep active because of the constant loss of blood from being shot, his blood can be used to still seal through a kind of chain reaction the Blessing back into an inanimate state.
Because both sites are heavily guarded the two sets of Torchwood individuals allow themselves to be captured and the Shanghai people do not realise until it is too late that Jack had turned Oswald into a human bomb who will blow them all up and therefore Jack’s blood will stop the Blessing, The representative of the three families explains that this will not work because they have destroyed the supply of Jack’s blood at the other end but then it is revealed that Rex’s has the blood in himself. Gwen is concerned that this could mean the end of Jack and Rex but the two understand that this is the price that has to be paid and we remember that Jack is from the future so he knows the actual risk.
In Shanghai Jilly who has witnessed events now attempts to escape before the place blows from the explosives already in place. Jack who has survived the blood giving and Gwen have to over power Jilly to get into the lift with her. Oswald clutches the Family member and blows to the two up, and the site, as the three others escape, although it looks as Jilly has been killed by the force of the explosion and its fireball.
Jack accompanies Gwen to her home where her husband has been with her father as he experiences the passing that should have happened before, They attend the funeral and Gwen is able to return to normal life with husband a child and live openly.
I cannot remember if she also attend the funeral in the USA of Esther who is shot and does not survive after the Blessing is closed in Buenos Aires. Rex is at the funeral with the Mole alongside having destroyed the evidence of her existence, she believes, but as she is about to depart, possibly as the new CIA head, Rex is able to get a reproduction of the information in the programme about the telephone number and employee name of the leak. When she realises her cover is blown she attempts to shoot her way out and hits Rex before is still able to shoot her and kill her.
What they find is that Rex has now the same recuperation powers as Jack so although he experienced the pain and technically died from the shot his body immediately heals removing all trace of the shooting. He appears to have become another immortal but we do not know if he also has the time travelling powers.
Meanwhile Jilly has survived and has been returning the park bench in hope of meeting her contact. When he eventually arrives he discloses that all is not lost and that what happened was in effect a trial run. The families apart from the lost member continue to exist as do the majority of their people around the world. The implication is that there are also other sources of the Blessing to be exploited. That is here is to be at least another series if the reception and audience figures suggest it is financially profit making! The final thought is that if Rex has become immortal through blood transfusion then why not the Members of the three families and therefore has the woman in Shanghai also survived and what of Oswald Danes?
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