Torchwood - Miracle Day

For those of you not familiar with "Torchwood - Miracle Day", here's the downlow. On Earth, in 2011/2012, a day occurs where no one dies. Then the next day, no one dies. And the next, and the next. It'd be safe to say that humanity has stopped dying. The day when this has all started, has now been dubbed "Miracle Day" all across the world.

But this miracle quickly turns into problems when it is now known that people no longer die. People who would have suffered fatal wounds haven't died, but are in constant pain as a result. A suicide bomber detonated his device, and his mutilated corpse was found, most of the flesh burned away, but he was still moving, still sensing, and stillf suffering, even when his head was removed. Basically, people can stull suffer from injuries and disease but no death takes place.

This quickly has led to two uprisings. One of which is led by Phi Corp and a man called Oswald Danes, a convicted rapist and murderer who killed a 12 year old girl a few years before. He simply said at her trial "she should have run faster". Due to for execution via lethal chemicals, Oswald, the most hated man in the state now finds himself immortal and survives the execution, and talks his way into a full pardon from the state.

After appearing on National Television, appearing to grieve and remorse over his past actions and beg for forgiveness, the world starts to see not an evil man, but someone wishing for redemption. Now, after several press conferences where he tries to bring change from the government to help people who haven't died because of the Miracle Day, he is now seen across the world as an icon, a man seeking redemption and forgiveness, by urging the world to allow Phi Corp, a drugs manufacturer, to allow these undying people unlimited access to painkillers so they don't have endure the pain of not dying. However some aren't convinced by his acts of philanthropy.

Another group, on the other hand, called "Dead is Dead" wish to remove all human rights from the people that have died and have them isolated to prevent them spreading disease. Led by a lesser known woman from an extreme right wing group, it tries to do all it can to prevent Phi Corp delivering the drugs and withdraw human rights to the undead. However, this woman is later durgged and left in a car which has now been crushed, with a recorded message playing about how they found her strategy admirable, but dangerous. This unknown organisation, represtented only by a triangle, remains unknown.

When the possibility that Torchwood might have some involvement into this, Esther and Rex, both CIA agents, look into it further and meet Gwen and Jack from the formerly disbanded Torchwood. The Torchwood team is now reassembled, but is hunted down by Phi Corp, who fear that Torchwood knows too much. In a recent confrontation with a Phi Corp agent, the entity behind this miracle has met Jack before.

Jack Harkness, who is known to be immortal, now suffers from an unfortunate truth. Whilst the rest of the world can no longer die, he now can. Now, desperate for his life, he strives to find out how this miracle removes his immortality, before his time is up.

World governments now plan to move the undying to these overflow camps for treatment, where Phi Corp has plans for the undying humans.

We so far know the following;

• Jack is now mortal and can properly die.
  
• Phi Corp seems to be greatly involved in this, prepare to retail biblical proportions of non-narcotic painkillers without prescription.
  
• Jack has had dealings with this miracle day entity in the past. Whether we would know them as well varies between not important or quintessential at this time.
  
• Gwen's father has been taken to one of these overflow camps.
  
• The current progress of the Dead is Dead campaign is uncertain, but Oswald Danes' campaign moves forward with great progress.
  
• Despite being amputated or badly wounded, bodies are still capable of feeling and moving.
  
• The entity is everywhere and no where and soon its family will join them...
  

In a distant part of the galaxy is a civilisation that has highly developed medical technology. There technology is so advanced, death is now out of the question, as their entire world is incapable of dying. As a result of this development, evolution takes a turn that prevents them from reproducing. Fearing the diminishment of gene variation in their species, this entity travels across the universe to find a race that can be used as a host species for their own kind. Preferably a race that is versatile, fragile, cares for their dead and is superstitious. Humanity seems to be the most optimal surrogate.

Humanity is a versatile race, capable of a great variety of things, but is incredibly fragile; a person can die with a fault in only one of their organs, but others will still be in tact. They care a great deal about their own kind and believe in the likes of miracles, so would welcome a change such as this.

This entity produces the morphic shield that gives the world immortality, such that it cannot perish, but not so that it can mend itself entirely from damage, possibly one of the reasons that this entity lost the capability of breeding. Humanity welcomes this miracle and the world begins to react. With people no longer dying, but still being in pain, the demand for pain killers rises, which is a catalyst for something useful.

This entity stores some of its cells within Phi Corps pain killers (hence the everywhere part of their threat as you can buy painkillers almost anywhere), inert, but capable of multiplying. When the undying popoulation takes the painkillers to cope with unending pain, the bodies are impregnated with mass amounts of these alien cells, virtually undetected. Once accumulated, the alien cells activate and converge the bodies to become alien. These aliens, still capable of breeding will act as surrogates to reproduce the species, to save it from its own demise (hence mentioned the family element in their final threat). This new civilisation of human and alien walks hand in hand (hinted at by the Phi Corp agent who said he wanted to be part of this new world order) and humanity needn't know anything was even going on.

That, at least, is the theory, for humanity to be used as a surrogate for a species that can no longer die. But Jack may have had past involves with them, in the sense that he may have consulted them regarding his immortality. This meant they would have some genetic smaple of his and knowing he was immortal would be able to use his immortality on a global scale, preventing humanity from dying, but meaning Jack would be mortal.

You're forgetting the soulless.

Also, whilst you're theory sounds good, the theory as a whole doesn't really involve Jack... and he's been a central plot device thus far.

After watching episode 5, I can add;

If the intention is surrogates for alien spawn, they should probably act soon because mankind has made a... drastic solution for the "undead", which renders them useless as vessels. I won't spoil what they're doing though, in case you haven't seen it.

Oh yeah, I just thought. If Triangle were on Dead Is Dead's side, then they are unlikely to be affiliated with Phicorp... since Dead Is Dead was against Phicorp.

I meant the Triangle are against the Dead is Dead campaign. It is frequently seen on communications devices associated with Phi Corp agents. When Rex has his phone traced in episode 3 the Triangle is seen.

The latest information about what happens to the undying doesn't change much. Category 1 are in a state which means they are too damaged or lack brain function. If you were trying to use a body as a surrogate, you'd prefer one that could consciously move or was in better health. Category 1 is assigned to make space, so ther likes of Category 2 and 3 can have treatment.

Wait...if all humans are driven to stay alive and conscious, and life is being maintained...and the remains of every category one are in the air floating around...Wouldn't that possibly create some supermind/collective consciousness.

Possibly. They mentioned this when Owen died. He wasn't actually dead, just millions of particles of living dust.

Can someone explain me what the "soulles" are?

they're a group that believe that because humans can no longer die in the torchwood universe that humanity no longer has souls.

They haven't really featured in a couple episodes.

It's possible that they are there for foreshadowing... something introduced as a minor plot device early in the story, so that it can be used later in the story without people saying "Well how the f*ck were we suppose to guess that..."

It's just slipping into the region of Lost if you ask me. My idea had some plausibility, right up to episode 7...

But this massive hole in the world makes no sense.

I don't think any series can be as bad as Lost. No offence to people that liked it... but it really did seem like they got a team of writers to each write a story--without talking amongst each other--and then they aired it.

But I sort of agree... the episode with Jack's gay lover and the episode after were both just filler episodes that provided nothing to the plot. Except for introducing the families and getting Jack shot, all characters that were introduced turned out to be red herrings and were all subsequently killed off... as such they served no real purpose, in my opinion. That null field also hasn't been mentioned or given us anything to go on to make us think it might be important.

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Anyway. In all honesty, Morb, your idea wasn't that great. It was basically just Children of Earth... except humans were playing the role of surrogates rather than drugs. Also, I'm sure that story's been done before.

I think the current plot is interesting, and I can't wait to see how it ends (particularly since we know how Jack became immortal, so it will be interesting to see if that factors into the plot at all, and that he's supposedly the Face of Bo...).

3mpty, have you noticed how Jack keeps mentioning that the course of history can be changed - he told his boyfriend it in the flashback and said it again when talking about the null field.

Perhaps we're being prepared for Jack dying and history changing so that he won't become the Face of Bo?

By the way, I've just finished episode 9 and (as I mentioned in the Doctor Who discussion) am terrified of spoilers, so please warn me if you've got spoilers for episode 10 before it airs in the UK

It's not aired until tonight, and I won't have downloaded it until tomorrow.

I'm okay with this.

I wasn't TOO far off was I?

The Miracle WAS caused by something which sought a symbiotic relation with humanity AND Jack was the epicentre of it all.

In the end, that's all that was needed to be known.

Rex is immortal? EPIC!


Oh, and good guesswork, Morb. Beats my guess - I thought aliens did it...

I personally didn't see any connection to what you said, Morb, to the plot. The fact Jack was at the epicentre was obvious, and you were going on about surrogacy and alien races.

Through the unique circumstances of the events of Miracle Day, it is now possible for Jack to finally die of old age, extremely old age.

When Jack was made immortal originally, he was done so by the means of becoming a fixed point in time. This meant he would last for as long as time was still flowing. However, when the Miracle Day was triggered by his blood being released into the Blessing, the event of Miracle Day changed not only the history of Earth, but would have had repercussions for the whole universe. This would have changed time completely, meaning the fixed point in time keeping Jack alive was no longer doing so.

However when his and Rex's poured his mortal blood back into the blessin, both were made immortal. This suggests now that jack's longevity is tied with the Earth's own natural lifespan. Once the Blessing is destroyed at the end of the world in the year 5 billion, Jack, now the Face of Boe, is made mortal again. This explains why the Face is found in New Earth hospital in New Earth dying of old age and how it comes to die in Gridlock. By this stage, he is now living on his natural mortality and will die of old age, now that the means of the Earth keeping him alive was destroyed in the explosion of the Sun.

Apologies for the number of spelling mistakes, I was typing out 100 per minute.