Torchwood or Snorewood?

The "Miracle" of How an Unapologetic In-Your-Face Omnisexual Hero Became a Cliché

When Captain Jack Harness (John Barrowman) burst onto the scene (Doctor Who, "The Empty Child," 2005), what was most refreshing was his lack of bisexual angst. Or at least, what angst there was had nothing to do with his sexuality. Here was simply a man as likely to kiss the Doctor as his female companion, a man who could use his seductive charisma for good, a man who ultimately would run his own "fringe division" as if it were some nontraditional family structure unafraid of sex or sexuality. The real source of angst among the Torchwood team, at least at a personal level, was love and commitment. So what went wrong?

Formula Malfunction

The easy answer is that Torchwood came to America (Torchwood: Miracle Day, 2011), but implied in that are two significant miscalculations (or misunderstandings) of what originally made Torchwood so remarkable.

The first is the least controversial. Miracle Day tries to extend the formula used for surprising poignancy in the third series∗, Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009). Delving into characters' personal family history, in particular Ianto's, gave an emotional wallup to the ending of Children of Earth. In Series One (2006), The character of Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) was so negligible that I didn't expect him to survive the season, at least on our TV screens. I'm hard pressed to remember what he did in that first series other than bring tea, fetch curries and help maintain the façade of Torchwood's secret location.

Ianto's slowly developed romance with Captain Jack mimicked his evolving presence in the series. What started as someone in the background, taken for granted and not very important from week to week, gradually became the focus of our (and Captain Jack's) attention and affection. To then learn more about his childhood and his sister in Series Three brings him to a fully realized character, someone we care even more about.

The back stories are ultimately used for narrative manipulation, both to help us understand why we haven't met his family previously in the series but more importantly to feel Captain Jack's pain when – spoilers, sweetie! – Ianto dies at the end of Children of Earth. Yes, it kicked me in the gut, but it made sense as a narrative development, in the way that tragic love stories always make a certain degree of sense, when glimmers of hope are not enough to survive the crushing external forces at work.

I can see why the people responsible for Miracle Day thought if they showed us that family stuff up front we'd care about these new characters more quickly. But they forgot the benefit of having a couple of years to come to bond with Captain Jack, Gwen (Eve Myles), Rhys (Kai Owen) and Ianto. Any personal info we gleaned from Children of Earth enhanced what we already knew from Series One and Two (2008), what had already drawn us to our television sets in the first place, watching each episode in anticipation.

As a result, it's not surprising that the best moments of Miracle Day are Gwen's – from firing a rocket launcher with baby under arm to her betrayal of Captain Jack. These moments fill in the gaps, the spaces already formed by our long history with her character – they're not using this stuff as the primary building block. In other words, the personal info that gradually developed about Captain Jack, Gwen, Rhys and Ianto over these three series was simply icing on the cake.

Unfortunately, Miracle Day forgot the cake and just gave us lots of icing. Esther's family drama started feeling like a soap opera, though I know it was a desperate attempt to personalize what was happening to Humanity by giving the dilemmas a human face. But this strategy didn't make her more complex, because we didn't have any perspective of her against which to anchor these personal details – they ultimately felt generic in a way that Ianto's did not. And don't even get me started on the digressions into politics, religion and secret corporate power.

Maybe the crux of the problem is that Miracle Day tried too hard to be relevant or important. Maybe it was going for the big message rather than remembering that Torchwood began as a sexy X-Files that never took itself too seriously. Which leads me to the second major miscalculation.

It Gets Worse

To be blunt, Miracle Day suffers from too much "it gets better" propaganda. Now, before you start sending angry letters to me or the editor, let me say that "it gets better" is an important campaign, but even Dan Savage himself has said in effect that people sort of missed the point – instead of sharing all the wonderful things about their lives as inspiration for young people struggling with their sexual identities, many people went on line to leave messages about how much they had been bullied and how bad their lives had been.

In other words, what was supposed to be an uplifting beacon of hope – that there is a better world out there and that you will find like-minded people – often became a "we've been there too" pessimism that in effect is quite the opposite of hope, no matter how good the person's life ultimately turned out.

This is not to discredit the personal stories or lives of any of us who have been victim to bullying or discrimination; my point is that Miracle Day succumbed to sending an "important" message. The series seems to have suffered from premature guilt, fearing the news of the moment: young people are killing themselves and we need to make sure they know that people who identify as anything but heterosexual can ultimately thrive (if they just tough it out now).

Ironically, the original Captain Jack was the best "it gets better" example we could have possibly dreamed of – someone whose sexuality is so unapologetic, so accepted by his comrades and friends, so wonderful as to beg the question of an intolerant world, "what's the big deal? Get over it."

The flashbacks used in Miracle Day to deepen our understanding of Captain Jack end up subverting all the bold queer accomplishments of the first three series. It's not just us (the audience) who have gone back in time, but the series itself, back to a day when queer stories were all about the angst of not being like everyone else. Miracle Day's Captain Jack falls in to the cliché of 99% of the gay representations in media made for "general consumption" by teaching the audience (and Angelo) a lesson about how tough it is to be gay but that we should be able to be anything we want (or some such shit) to reassure his sensitive lover who is ultimately unable to break the bounds of the closet. Now you may say that that's all historically in sync for 1927 immigrant New York (but don't get me started on all the anachronisms present even in that argument), but it is contrary to everything Torchwood had accomplished in terms of queer representation. In effect, Captain Jack (Barrowman) just made a 2011 "it gets better" video that would be more at home in a 1950s apologist drama about "deviance."

An American Jinx?

So is it just that America still has to apologize for sexuality? And by bringing an American production partner (Starz) to the table, did Torchwood lose its edge? Certainly, I have used the clichéd and apologist Philadelphia (1993) in contrast to the brutal French film, Savage Nights (1992) as a case in point for Hollywood's tendency to address sexuality in sanitized and simplistic ways; I can now use Torchwood, pre-America and post-America, as a similar example and, sadly, Miracle Day as the point where the beloved Torchwood took a major step backwards. No one can call it "post gay" now.

All of this despite some talented people on Miracle Day. For example, Warehouse 13 proves that writer Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has the capability of turning clichés inside out just as unapologetically and unexpectedly as the old Torchwood – Pete's reaction to finding out that his co-worker Jinks is gay is one of the best moments of gay television ever –ever – specifically because it turns all the clichés on their ears ("Love Sick," 2011). In fact, Warehouse 13's Jinks storyline has the kind of irreverent and matter-of-fact (if less explicit) treatment of sexuality that was sorely missing from Miracle Day.

While I still carry a torch for Ianto, Toshiko, Owen, Gwen, Rhys and the old Captain Jack, I do not hold out much hope for a future Torchwood, and not just because the best of the new characters died and the least interesting, well, lived. But because of the fact that the mood, tone and unapologetic stance that once set it apart is now gone, meaning that Torchwood has simply become ... boring.

- Josef Steiff