The recent relaunch of Doctor Who spinoff cum anagram Torchwood – this time in its American incarnation – has gotten me thinking again about the series as a whole. The fact that the 30 Day Doctor Who Challenge has a “favorite spinoff” entry coming up has exacerbated the situation, as Torchwood is one of the obvious possibilities. I hear a lot of bad-mouthing of Captain Jack’s little gang and their adventures (even do a little myself, on occasion), but how bad is it, really?

I will admit that I watched the first two series mostly for the completeness of it – there was Who crossover, and I wanted the whole story. There were an awful lot of those stories that I’d rather not see again. I count Cyberwoman, Countrycide (worst. episode. ever.), and From Out of the Rain among those.

On the other hand, there were a few that I found quite engaging:  series opener Everything Changes, They Keep Killing Suzie (loved the premise), Random Shoes (similarly enjoyed this premise), Captain Jack Harkness (it was nice to get a little more background on Our Hero), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (OK, yeah, I just really like James Marsters), and the rather disturbing Meat (not least because heroine Gwen’s hubby Rhys finally gets let in on the big secret of Torchwood’s existence).

The rest up through the end of 2008 exhibited varying levels of mediocrity, and usually included at least one “yea! we’re post-watershed!” gratuitous sex scene (with about 90% of those being same sex liaisons, or at least that’s how it seemed). Not to say said scenes were absent from any of the aforementioned episodes.

Then came the 2009 series.

Torchwood‘s Series 3 was different from the get-go. It wasn’t a full series of thirteen 45-minute episodes; instead, it was a “mini-series” of five episodes that were an hour each. The significance of that “mini” designation is that all five episodes were part of a single story-arc: Children of Earth. And this time, RTD wasn’t just the “creator,” he was the writer.

I like to point to Torchwood: Children of Earth as evidence that (a) RTD really can be a good writer and (b) he should never write stories in single, 45-minute chunks (OK, almost never – Midnight was brilliant, too). When he does, he is far too prone to use deus ex machina endings that throw what might otherwise have been a good story right into the crapper. In contrast, when he is given a full five hours to tell his story…  Wow.  Just wow. I tell you, when the motivation of the series’ Big Bad is revealed at the beginning of Day Five, it leaves the viewer breathless (at least it did me). It was horrifying, as was much of what was going on throughout TW:CoE. We got to see some really unpleasant sides of humanity here, and they all rang true. But there were some heroic moments, too. Most importantly, it all hung together as engaging drama – at least, that’s how it struck me.

So after a two-year hiatus and a switch of continents for the production team, here we are at the beginning of Series 4. Will Torchwood: Miracle Day continue the upward trend, or will it crash and burn? It’s too early to say (only the first episode has yet aired in the US, and won’t air till tomorrow in the UK), but based on the opening salvo, I have to say I think it has potential. Somewhere between the two formulae – the series will be 10 episodes long, and they will run between 50 minutes and an hour, depending on which continent is doing the broadcasting (or so the rumor goes) – it could either take the best of both worlds or the worst (will more, longer episodes make the story more or less coherent?). So far we’ve had the setup:  no human is dying anywhere in the world; Jack is “back”; Gwen and Rhys, along with infant daughter Anwen, have been roped back into the danger; and our CIA hotshot has yanked (couldn’t resist the pun) the team back to the good ol’ US of A. What follows could be fun to watch unfold, or it could be a train wreck in action.

For now, though, I’m going to keep my hopes up. Because when all is said and done, I actually like these characters and some of the positive human qualities they display. So go get ’em, Torchwood. I’ll be watching.