Miracle Day concluded worldwide on Thursday night with 'The Bloodline', and while it wasn't exactly the best Episode I've seen all year, I think it's certainly one of the better Episodes of the Season (for a Finale it started out pretty 'meh' I thought but picked up alot of speed as it went along).
Lets start with my many nitpicks with the Episode first shall me? Just to get them out of the way? So it turns out that Jack's blood has been important all along, even though he's been defiant against it for like the past three Episodes. Wow, big shock there. Like NOBODY saw that coming! And yes, the Miracle was being transmitted by a morphic field, which has been Jacks only theory since Episode 2. You'd think that they'd at least had the brain cells to not go with the most obvious answer since Day One, wouldn't you? Thirdly, Esther's death was completely pointless and a complete waste. She didn't even have a final line or a last heroic stand, it was all like 'Poof, you're dead!' After a minute the characters didn't even remember her! WTF?! Even I was starting to warm to her by now and you just killed her for (seemingly) no reason? It's almost like you introduced her just so you can say that one of the Teammates died at the end...and speaking of pointless characters what the hell happened to Oswald Danes? Yes I liked the fact that they didn't redeem him but what was the point of his character in the end? He made a few evil sneers and blew himself up in some bat-shit-crazy fueled speech! THAT'S IT!!! Where's the awesome pay-off to his character? THERE WASN'T ONE, IT WAS JUST AN EXCUSE FOR ANOTHER BIG EXPLOSION! How can two main characters basically amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things? THESE ARE BIG ERRORS GUYS! And the Blessing? Generic alien plot device No 163. No explanation given, no real resolution, NOTHING. ZILCH! Oh RTD I've come to expect better from you. AND the Families are still at large! Couldn't you have just left it open? Now we KNOW that they're coming back for the next Series, which sucks as they're basically your classic Illuminati VE VANT TO TAKE OVER ZE WORLD! stereotypes that aren't really that interesting. *SIGH* At least they're getting rid of Esther and Rex....wait WHAAA! Rex is immortal now? Well okay, Rex is redeemed I suppose, FOR THE TIME BEING.
And yet despite all my ranting and ravings I did still like alot about this Episode:
Even I have to admit that the last twenty minutes of the show was some really entertaining T.V. You couldn't blink without characters being killed off, explosions, epic speeches played against this epic crescendo score and even a few surprising twists thrown in for good measure. If only the nine hours before it had been chock full of this stuff and this would have been a wildly entertaining ride. Gwen's speech at the beginning was inspired and the character arcs do get a lot of healthy material (excluding Esther and Oswald, of course). Captain Jack was on fine form as well, sacrificing himself for the greater good of humanity and further proving the fact that it's Gwen and him that have made this Series for me. Take out the two lead characters and we'd have had a far worse series for sure. Other stand out moments, like John De Lancie's perfect curse-word-at-exactly-the-right-moment and Rex being suddenly brought back to life (didn't see that one coming!) were also appreciated. The positives only just outweighed the negatives at the last minute, so although it was full of script problems and plot holes you could at least say you had a fun time watching it.
What about the Series as a whole, though?
Well it hasn't been bad, but I can't say that it was great either, just very mediocre. When RTD started working on this show he had just finished riding off the success of David Tennant's last few Episodes and the masterpiece of television that was Torchwood: Children Of Earth. Now he had a great premise in hand, and had all the right tools to do it with but I think he's tried so hard to make Miracle Day like Children Of Earth that he's forgotten just what made that mini-Series so great: Minute by minute escalation (as bleak an outlook as you can get) and NAILBITING tension that just continued to build for five consecutive nights. With Miracle Day, the storyline and characters were just too thin to warrant Ten Episodes. Let's face it, you could have cut out the entirety of Episode 2, merge Episodes 3 and 4 together as well as Episodes 5 & 6 and 8 & 9, add more mystery and suspense, give the characters a overhaul to make them more appealing (like give Esther at least SOMETHING to do!), rewrite the Families and turn the Blessing into something more awesome than what we got and completely eradicate Oswald Danes as one of the main Characters. Maybe bring him in for an Episode or two but that's it. Also give it a sense of escalation as things get more and more out of control with the Miracle slowly turning planet earth into a complete free for all. I mean what happened to the whole of humanity starving in four months? Or the religious repercussions like those funny people in the white masks? Angelo's character and the whole thing about the Miracle cancelling metal plate was never brought up again as well. Maybe even make the villains more prominent from the get go, give us a face to pin all of this madness on? I suppose when you come down to it it's all been wasted potential. Not that Miracle Day was awful, there's just not alot to recommend! It's like half good, half boring.
Miracle Day gets a 5/10 from me Overall. A real disappointment, but it wasn't anywhere near to being 'bad'. Hopefully next Series will be better than this half-assed attempt. Well okay maybe not completely half-assed but compare one scene of Children Of Earth to the entire Series of Miracle Day and you'll get what I mean:
And no I don't think the major decline in quality is anything to do with it being mainly set in America!
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