no guys Jack is a paradox, if everyone's mortal, he's immortal but it everyone's immortal, hes mortal.
Untitled Power Rangers StoryIf we weren't used to writers often taking drama over sense, it should have been obvious that there was a change in Rex when he was shown present at the funeral. Esther got shot. Rex was entirely drained of blood. Who has the better chance of surviving?
A friend called Miracle Day a "ten hour exposition scene". Fairly accurate.
So. Typical RTD finale y/n?
edited 13th Sep '11 3:48:19 PM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogAnd the way the finale played out was a more or less logical continuation of the things seen in earlier episodes. It wasn't "Gee, the words "Bad Wolf" sure show up a lot" to "Bang, guess what? Bad Wolf is Rose, and she fixes everything" or even "Ghosts are everywhere" to "Guess what? The ghosts are really Cybermen."
The narrative structure of the series is much stronger then anything (beyond single episodes) that RTD ever did on Who. Too bad the series couldn't stick with its premisse. Every episode had stuff I really liked, but somehow that stuff never seemed to survive beyond an episode or two, and interesting ideas didn't really get explored.
I think this series shows that RTD has either grown as a writer or has managed to find better people to shore up his own weaknesses, but the tighter narrative structure has also revealed another flaw in his writing: he can't deal with big ideas.
I was thinking in the sense of the series going "hint that says nothing... hint that says nothing... hint that says nothing... finale: here's ten things you didn't know!"
What concepts didn't the series explore well? The whole thing was "what would happen to society if nobody could die?" with a tiny scrap of plot to weave the thing together.
Fresh-eyed movie blogI thought the medical angle from the first five or so episodes was interesting, if not necessarily dramatic. That managed to hold up for a while. I did like the Alien Invasion/Whatever as PR angle that they went with, and played relatively straight.
I did think that a fair bit of it was dramatic dead weight, in retrospect. A lot of foreshadowing, for a pay off that took too long to turn up — presumably because that pay-off wasn't so dramatically interesting. Perhaps if the Shang-Hai business happened earlier. I dunno.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.@ T Paradox: The hints said a lot more then I'm used to from RTD: the flashback episode showed us that the bad guys had access to Jack, at least for a time, so we knew that the new and improved human condition had something to do with Jack's immortality, PhiCorps stockpiling painkillers showed that they had foreknowledge, and that there was a plan to exploit the Miracle. The death of Angelo showed that the Miracle indeed had something to do with morphic fields (even though morphic fields are the worst kind of pseudoscience) and that morphic fields could interact and be manipulated. For an RTD finale, it was pretty well set up.
I didn't think the way the general public reacted to the overflow camps was explored very well. The Holocaust is still very much a part of the social conscience. Governments wouldn't implement extermination camps, even when faced with imminent Malthusian collapse, and the general public sure as hell wouldn't take their creation without a fight. In story, people get a bit miffed when they find out the government is murdering innocent people, and then they go back to their every day lives.
Also, the whole medical angle was interesting, and it looked like it was going places, but then Vera joined up with Torchwood, and the whole issue was dropped.
When it comes to big questions about morality and the meaning of life, RTD is just out of his league. He can tell a decent story, but whenever he tries to be a philosopher he fails.
We had approximately 0.6 major developments per episode. None of them stood alone, but neither did they spend their runtime building the overall story.
Aha. I've got it. They all lean on each other without any apparent underlying support.
Also, did they ever say that the piece of the null field generator that Jack left with wouldn't work without the rest of it? I thought the way to climb off the "Jack got shot" cliff was to use the null field on him, rebooting his immortality.
And in the end, the story directly contradicted everything that was set in stone about Jack's immortality.
edited 14th Sep '11 1:24:12 PM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogYeah, that was my main problem with it. The resolution to the Miracle makes no sense after how much the previous episodes stressed that Jack's immortality had absolutely nothing to do with his blood. Suddenly, with no explanation, it turns out his blood does play a role in the Miracle? If they'd hand-waved it in some way, I wouldn't have minded. But it was a direct contradiction.
The fact that the Blessing could even alter Jack's immortality (which, as a fixed point in time and space, is unchangeable by its very definition) is pretty iffy unless we're supposed to accept that it has reality-altering powers.
edited 14th Sep '11 2:25:45 PM by AXavierB
What does a "Fixed point in time and space" mean in the context of Jack? I thought that it's supposed to mean an event that has to happen in history. If so, does it mean "Jack must live a very very long time until he dies in Utopia", then I don't see a problem, he survived, even though he had been mortal. And now he's immortal again. No paradox.
DumboIsn't he stated to age ever so slightly? Like, a year every couple millenia? He was concerned about the possibility (I think he said he'd noticed some gray hairs), and the Doctor wasn't sure.
Fresh-eyed movie blogI think it's also to allow John Barrowman to age. Every time they see a new wrinkle, they'll throw him back a few centuries and have him catch up again.
Fresh-eyed movie blogOk here I am a week late but here's my opinion... Underwhelmed. Like it wasn't terrible by any means but compared to previous series finales it didn't really have much of a bang and just felt like it was just there to build on for the next series.
Also Rex had a massive hole in his chest which was quite nicely ripped open by the blessing to have all his blood drained out. During his post-miracle survival surely there would have been some notice of his new found regenerative abilities. Or did I miss something?
I guess the villains had interesting motives at least.
And I'm just wondering whether blood transfusions work like that
That's what I thought, pretty lucky coincidence I guess
I think I remember hearing something similar happening in an alternate ending to 28 Days Later but they dumped it for being stupid or something. Anyway that scene really gave me trouble with suspending my disbelief, I know it's sci-fi and all and that crazier stuff had happened in this series but still...
Well, it was a transfusion and it's not like humans have a pouch to store extra blood so I'm assuming that was most of what was in his body. And I am assuming that it was the morphic field switch that made Phifer (I never bothered to learn the character's name) immortal so it doesn't matter than he lost all his blood because it was from about that point that the healing started.
I think that Jack being "a fixed point in time and space" means that there must always be a Captain Jack Harkness somewhere in time and space, it's something that shall always be. That doesn't mean his personal timeline has to match that of the Universe - theoretically, Jack dying could be gotten away with provided that there was a younger version of Jack existing somewhere in the Universe in the immediate future.
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)[Barrowman]I wouldn't be so sure. Why do you think they call it that?
[/Barrowman]

Yeah, Jack is a fixed point in time and space. No matter what happens to him, his body will reconstruct itself.
Which makes the whole Miracle kind of weird. If the Blessing used Jack as a template for making the whole world immortal, why didn't they have the same kind of immortality he did? And why was the Blessing somehow able to undo a fixed point, which by definition can't be changed?
edited 12th Sep '11 1:17:50 PM by AXavierB