h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I thought some of it was a bit clunky and unnecessary, but then it was written by RTD.

Overall I enjoyed it, though am surprised Gwen has managed to survive in hiding so long seeing as she is SO rubbish at both cutting off contact and not acting suspiciously.

I thought it was a nice touch that the people who didn't die just "got better" as is usual in this kind of thing. I couldn't help but wondering what would happen if someone got put through a woodchipper or dissolved in acid.

Argh! That the people who didn't die *didn't* "get better".

I thought it was very very clunky, pretty much from start to finish. I also know that I will carry on watching.

I started thinking about what the new pattern would be once things started settling down. Yes, billions would starve, but they wouldn't die of starvation. I could imagine hunger just being accepted as a standard thing, and food being much more thinly spread.

Also, great cast! I'm pretty sure Mekhi Phifer was Oscar-nominated for 8 Mile, Bill Pullman has been a star for a couple of decades, and I see that Asian girl from The Dollhouse will be in it later.

Yup ... I couldn't understand their "we'll die of starvation in 4 months" calculations ...

Let's ignore the death rate because that's kind of irrelevant if we assume the current world population is about 6.5 billion people and if no-one dies or is born we'll be static at the figure.

Basically they said there are 500,000 babies born each day ... so that's 15 million per month ... so in four months we'll have an extra 60 million mouths to feed ... I doubt we're that close to starvation worldwide ...

I think it was just the cannibals that would only last 4 months.....

So much of the plot didn't quite work.

And did anyone else find it odd that the blown-up chap managed to someone retain his eyelids and the muscles so he could blink?* At least he would have had no pain sensors left, so he probably wasn't in pain.




*Of course he had to, it was the only way to know he was still alive, but, y'know.

I suspect that's partly because they used a real person for the head (at least I think they did). I imagine there's probably also some kind of psychological thing about real eyes that can blink; a lot of visible emotion is in the eyes.

That kind of thing doesn't bother me as much as it used to...

...

Okay it does, but I make special exceptions for sci-fi because if I can accept a 900-year-old man with two hearts travelling in time and space I can accept someone who's been blown up having eyelids!

I thought it odd that we had to wait 22 minutes before Captain Jack turned up. And was annoyed by the on-screen "Wales, UK" credit. So the BBC version of this (with the extra violence removed to make it more child friendly, apparently) is still aimed at people who don't know where Wales is?

But an interesting premise even if half the episode was the 'Coming Up In The Next Episodes' trailer.

And the baby sequence inspired me to think about writing an article on 'Raising a baby in a science-fiction television series'.

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"the BBC version of this (with the extra violence removed to make it more child friendly, apparently)"

Really? They want Torchwood to be child-friendly? And when said child persuades his/her doting parents to buy the first series DVD and is subjected to Owen Harper the fish-faced date-rapist?

What I found interesting was that they didn't remind people about Capt. Jack's regeneration before they started doing stuff about it being gone. Are they expecting everyone to be familiar with him from previous series (including the Americans)? Or are they being mysterious about it and assuming established fans will play along? Or maybe they just decided early in the process to scrap his regeneration, but couldn't find a less clumsy way to explain it...

According to an interview in Doctor Who Magazine with RTD, they do. Admittedly they have a strange way of going about it, what with having a paedophile character this series, children-used-as-drugs last series and all the sex and swearing in the first two series, but apparently as Captain Jack was in Dr Who they get a lot of children watching Torchwood, and so it is supposed to be child friendly, in an adult way.

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To be fair, the paedophile character is clearly portrayed as a villain. Almost too clearly.

And I have no idea why he wanted to get released. He should argued to be kept inside for his own protection.

I think it's possibly the lesser of two evils... even among the worst criminals there are things You Just Don't Do and criminals are probably more likely to do something nasty and violent to a known paedophile.

True, but that's why you have segregation wings and a lot more protection inside.

Although I'm speaking from the justice system in the UK. I have no clue what happens in the US.

As far as I know there *is* segregation in the US system, but there's also a lot more "let's just dump a load of people in a room together regardless of what they've done". Louis Theroux did a thing on it that I found too depressing to watch.

Why would they need to worry about the world food supply anyway? OK, they might be a bit hungry but it's not like they are going to die of starvation, or anything else for that matter.

I didn't know that the US get a different version though. Do you know if they've broadcast it yet? I'd quite like to compare it to the BBC screening. Not that I know any sites where I might be able to find US TV shows that aren't available in the UK. Nope, nopey nope nope. EEK!

They won't *die* of starvation, but they *will* starve. I don't imagine that'd be very nice.