Torchwood finale

The final episodes of Torchwood shown as a double bill tonight on BBC3 were a nice start to the New Year. A really good end to the series.

Anything else pales into insignificance after watching The Time Rift open up, finally releasing the Devil over Cardiff. The Rift worked really well in those episodes, the idea that different time zones might co-exist but sometimes overlap in time and space is interesting... you sort of feel like that when you go into a disused building like the old WW2 dance hall, with fragments from previous occupants' detritus scattered around, thinking you hear whisperings or see 'things' out of the corner of your eye.

And quite a sweet storyline for Harkness to have a romantic liaison with the man whose identity he took in 1941, knowing his future fate... he seemed more human (for a non-human) after that.

I thought the death and 'resurrection' of the Captain John Harkness character was quite biblical, with his body lying shrouded in a stone-walled, tomb-like autopsy room after he'd sacrificed himself for the good of ...Wales? Then his eventual return from the dead, after being tended for days by a 'disciple' (well, Gwen, a Torchwood colleague...) also seemed remarkably like the Jesus story.

Very good double bill. I will miss it...wasn't sure about the series before, as sometimes it was a bit too gory and violent for me, but I watched the lot anyway and am sorry it's ended now. I presume Harkness has ended up with the Doctor, as the closing noises sounded faintly Tardis-like!

Actually, I've just looked at the Torchwood entry in Wikipedia, which notes that one of the main themes of the series is mortality. Ooh, so that's why I liked it! Science fiction often explores interesting existentialist ideas and questions aspects of life and death; thought-provoking, even if you're not a hard-core science fiction fan, but more of a dabbler, like me.