SPOILERS for Torchwood: Children of Earth below . . . . . . . . SPOILERS for Torchwood: Children of Earth below
Here are just a few of the things that ruined the story for me: Hostile, bloodthirsty aliens show up and the first thing the government does is assassinate their elite special-ops team of alien experts, and destroy said team's base of operations which contains much technology and alien-fighting weapons. And the kill order goes through a politician's secretary and is sent by email, with a copy of the kill order kept in said secretaries sent-mail box. A pair of ordinary looking contact lenses have a built-in hi-def camera and an energy-source capable of powering the camera AND a high-power transmitter capable of undetectably transmitting video for miles (while being in direct contact with human eyes), but this technological wonder lacks a simple audio microphone. And the people who utilize this technological wonder can produce no other useful defensive or offensive weapons to help them against government assassins or hostile aliens, nothing except ordinary handguns and cell-phones. The government that assassinated their elite alien-fighting team just before encountering hostile aliens does virtually nothing to detect, locate, defend against, or attack the aliens that are demanding they be given millions of human children to be put to a fate worse than death. Instead, said government uses other special-ops teams to pursue the alien-fighting team members (who are still alive) and families of the alien-fighting team. Aliens with the capability to "beam" themselves down to earth from undetectable spaceships (and to beam millions of children back up), able to cause all the children on earth to simultaneously speak for them (or to each speak a different message depending on which country they are in), able to graft human children onto their bodies well enough to be used as something like an adrenal gland, and able to instantly synthesize out of thin air a deadly virus throughout a large government building...said aliens cannot synthesize a desperately-wanted chemical (or chemicals) for themselves. Every country in the world is instructed that they must provide 10% of their children to hostile aliens for either unspecified reasons or a fate worse than death, and this knowledge is somehow kept secret from most of the world's population, not mentioned in the news media. None of the other countries so informed decide to take action against the hostile alien confined in a well-known location, not attempting to capture, interrogate, kill, or bomb said alien. The prime minister of Britain, calmly working at his desk, has a trusted subordinate sent into his office, and casually informs him that the subordinate's two children will be given to hostile aliens to suffer a fate worse than death, and said subordinate will give a news conference saying how happy he is about this. The prime minister then continues calmly with paper-work at his desk. The subordinate, instead of trying to hide his family, calmly asks his secretary to submit the proper form to get a government handgun, then takes said handgun home and shoots his wife and children (one bullet each) and then shoots himself. The chief government assassin, who has spent the past several days abducting innocent women and children and killing everyone in sight, including her fellow agents, has a change of heart and asks one of her attempted-murderees to help her attack the aliens. The aliens who have an undetectable spaceship, and are able to transmit messages to all the children in the world and remotely-control the children to speak as they wish...said attempted-murderee having previously walked up to the alien with nothing but a handgun and declared war on the alien, then lamely shot a few rounds at the bullet-proof glass around the alien while the alien kills everyone in the building. The attempted-murderee, now that he is asked nicely by the chief government assassin, suddenly knows how to rig up a few pieces of equipment in a warehouse to transmit on the mysterious children-remote-control frequency to remotely kill all the aliens, even the ones on the undetectable spaceship, and all he needs is for his grandson to stand there and wirelessly resonate, shake, bleed, and collapse in order to accomplish this extremely timely alien-genocide. Personally, instead of pressing the "KILL ALIENS" button on my Harmony universal remote, I would have pressed the "SEND JUNKIE ALIENS TO BETTY FORD" button, but I suppose that might have over-stressed the government's universal health-care budget. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
