The moral quagmire deepens...

“Miracle Day: The Middle Men”

[Spoilers Within]

You know that old proverb, about how all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing? What they don’t talk about is how too many “good” people often will join up with the forces of evil, and for a variety of reasons. Some are for monetary gain, some are for power and position, but those reasons are always selfish. The irony of it is that those people will usually find themselves to be nothing more than middle men, people who have gone along with the game plan are the ones that blame falls on when things go south. Even worse, some of those people find themselves out of their depth and drunk with power, using the age old excuse that they were just “following orders”.

Enter Stuart Owens, played by Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters, The Crow), a PhiCorp executive who is trying to find out some information on the miracle and who’s behind it. When he’s confronted by Jack – who tells him he knows about the stockpile of drugs – Owens tells him that he’s nothing more than a middle man, and that he’s been investigating paper trails and rumors to get to the bottom of it all. His claim is that he needs some insurance, a little something to hold on to in order to keep himself out of harm’s way, but as he tells Jack, this goes far beyond PhiCorp. As he says, PhiCorp didn’t start it, they’re just profiting from it. Someone bigger than one corporation has been planning all of this, moving the pieces on the planet-wide chessboard, and keeping in the shadows. Owens also alludes to something that is only known as “the blessing”, something that came out of the council of ministers in the nineties. They apparently know that someone has discovered “the blessing”, but what it is or has to do with the miracle still remains to be seen.

John Shiban is back in the writer’s chair, and he brings us another episode filled with intrigue and conspiracies. Shiban takes a hard look at those people who are caught in the middle of these conspiracies and plots, twisted webs that are being woven by evil people who never get their comeuppance, but instead place all of the blame on those middle men, all the while staying in the clear to do business another day. He also does well with the common theme of the arc, which is misdirection. First we’re made to believe that PhiCorp is behind all of it, we then find out that they are no more than pawns themselves. Who this mysterious group is will remain a secret for a little while longer.

Maloney (Marc Vann) is feeling the weight of his decisions falling on his shoulders, as the guilt of killing Vera is tearing him apart, even when he sits and tries in vain to convince himself that he was just following orders. Apparently, the burning of category 1 patients is government policy, as politicians in Washington have made murder legal in the name of public safety. His madness comes to a apex when he learns that Rex has been captured and has video evidence of what goes on in the camps, and he attempts to kill both Rex and Esther. It’s not that he doesn’t know what he has done – and still plans to do – is wrong, but he wants to convince himself that he’s doing what is in the best interest of mankind. This is mirrored in a scene with Gwen, as she fights with a doctor over her father’s fate. The doctor informs her that there’s nothing she can do, because she can’t go against the powers that be, to which Gwen tells her that she can say no.

Again, this doctor has justified it because the state of healthcare is breaking down, and the new policies have to be followed. Gwen chastises her for her cowardice, and calls her on it, because she doesn’t have to be there while the patients burn to death, she just has to send them there, like the Nazis of old. In the end, “good” people just follow orders, without any questions, just to keep themselves out of the path of danger. But in the end, they have done more harm than those people in charge.

This new series of Torchwood has been fascinating for the fact that the danger up until now seems to be not alien, but human in nature. It’s a theme common enough in sci-fi, as even The Master and The Doctor would say: Humans, the greatest monsters of them all. All it takes is a catastrophe for society to break down, and all sorts of horrors can be justified when it seems that there is no hope, or that something can be gained for signing up with a new order. RTD knows drama, and he’s delivering it in spades, showing us how simple it would be for society to fall apart. Even when the team gets the video evidence out for the news hounds to release to the public, the government still seems comfortable in their decisions, as it was all done in the name of public health and safety. But as the episode pointed out, where do you stop? You dispose of those who are, by rights, “dead”. But that leads to anyone being a candidate for the ovens: the sick, the mentally challenged, immigrants, the sky’s the limit. It makes for interesting food for thought.

We were left tonight with Gwen getting back to LA, but being contacted (literally, by the contact lenses) by our secret evil-doers. They have her family, and only want Jack in return. What do they want with our fearless Captain, and does it have to do with the “blessing”? We’ll get closer to the truth next week.

See also Caleb's previous review:

Torchwood S4E5 review

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