Torchwood: Children of Earth was something of a disappointment, but that’s not worth a blog post (or at least, my opinion of it isn’t worth a blog post). What may be worth a blog post (you be the judge) is how uncomfortably British the miniseries is, particularly in portrayal of its lead character, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). (I won’t spend too much time summarizing the plot. See the Wikipedia page for a full episode-by-episode plot summary.)

Let’s start with all the ways Children of Earth is affirmatively British (from the perspective of this American science fiction fan, anyway). Like other Torchwood stories, Children of Earth hinges on the interaction between elected officials, civil servants, and quasi-governmental governmental officials (like Torchwood Cardiff). The elected officials, particularly Prime Minister Brian Green (Nicholas Farrell), are almost laughably self-serving caricatures; the civil servants, in the words of one exemplar in the miniseries, “the cockroaches of government,” are dedicated to consistent if morally gray service to Queen and Country; and the quasi-governmental officials are necessary for the darkest needs of the State but ultimately expendable. Civil servants are also expendable, but only to especially cynical elected officials. The civil servants, moreover, become the most interesting and quintessentially British aspect of the series. A long-time bureaucrat in the Home Office, John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi), protects a terrible secret—that the British government surrendered 12 childrent to the 456 in 1965—for decades. When the 456 return, he demands that the previous exchange be taken off the record to protect the Prime Minister and his country’s reputation. Frobisher is then tapped to negotiate with the 456, because the government does not want blood on its hands again. When the 456 demand 10% of the world’s children for their horrifying drug trade (children are morphine to this race), Frobisher is tasked with implementing the plan. And finally, the Prime Minister demands that Frobisher sacrifice his own 2 daughters for the sake of encouraging other parents to do likewise. Frobisher takes a terrible via media, killing his daughters, wife, and self rather than allow his family to be used as political pawns or his children as living drugs.

I spend so long on Frobisher because he is (simplistically, a critic might say) compared in Children of Earth to Captain Jack who, in the miniseries’ climax, uses (and thereby kills) his grandson as a weapon against the 456. That the weapon works in expelling the 456 is not especially important—Captain Jack’s use of his grandson, against the will of his daughter, is supposed to make us uncomfortable. We’re supposed to think of him as morally gray, sincerely working for good but able to do evil when the stakes are high enough. There is a sense in which this is British and unamerican, namely in the sense that Captain Jack is willing to sacrifice the individual for the good of society. Individual liberty is more valued in American than Britain or Europe generally, perhaps because this country was never forced to sacrifice its land and entire generations to its national defense. I think the writers of Children of Earth intend Captain Jack to be a synecdoche for the perpetual national debate between promotion of individual and corporate liberty and security. But they miss the mark.

I read Captain Jack, especially in Children of Earth, as an awkward parody of American rugged individualism. Of course, the character is deliberately constructed as such—the bisexual (tending toward gay) kickass action hero who can cry is most certainly a playful rebuke to John Wayne, Bruce Willis, et al. In many episodes, this works especially well; “Captain Jack Harkness” from season 1 of Torchwood is among the finest TV episodes in the science fiction genre because of this rebuking play on the action hero. Children of Earth, however, shows the limitations of the character, particularly in how he has developed over the past 2 Torchwood seasons. Which is to say, he hasn’t really developed at all. At the series’s worst, Torchwood is driven by Captain Jack’s melodramatic shifts between weakness and brutality, sacrificial kindness and blunt cruelty. The reason that Children of Earth is so overwrought is that these shifts occur minutes apart in nearly all the episodes. This is exemplified by the miniseries’ climax, during which he goes from demanding the government fight back, to weakly resigning to the demands of the 456, to heroically pursuing a way to destroy the aliens, to coldly sacrificing his grandson. I think we are supposed to respect the consistency of the Brit Frobisher and experience discomfort toward the quasi-American Captain Jack, but I just ended up exhausted by the melodrama.

Now I have to bring up the Doctor (warning: I’m referring only to Doctors 9 and 10). It’s not entirely fair to critique Captain Jack by saying he’s not as good or fun or interesting a character as the Doctor, because the latter has had 40 years to develop and the former only 2 years plus 1 miniseries. I do think it’s fair, however, to use the Doctor as a barometer for evaluating whether Captain Jack is at all an effective character. My criteria are debatable, but I think the question is primarily settled by reference to the characters’ national identifications: the Doctor is quintessentially, comfortably British, and Captain Jack (as stated above) is an awkward parody of American action heroes. There is a place for parodies of pop culture, but I find myself drawn to Doctor Who precisely because the character is so well-defined and therefore both compelling and surprising. I agree with Toby Hadoke: the Doctor’s Britishness is defined by his refusal to use blunt instruments (guns, for example) to make arguments. I would add to that, the Doctor understands the need for sacrifice and its resulting sorrow, but he never gives up his principles as a matter of principle (as Captain Jack does ad nauseum). Instead, we find the Doctor making poor choices and learning from them: “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood,” for example, ends with a character’s accusation that the Doctor’s chosen hiding place cost the lives of several innocents, innocents that went unconsidered when he chose to endanger them by his presence. Though his actions are humanly inconsistent, they are characteristically consistent, that is, in terms of the pre-established limitations and expectations of the character. Captain Jack, by comparison, is melodramatically inconsistent, predictably tearing at our heart strings but rarely asking us to think. Not never, but rarely.

I haven’t renounced Torchwood, and I do hope it returns. It’s fun to watch, but it’s not great science fiction. It will be forgotten one day as an interesting but limited experiment alongside the high science fiction giant, Doctor Who. And Children of Earth is further evidence that I’m right in my prediction.