Torchwood/S 4 MS Miracle Day/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Horror

  • When the CIA agent takes a plane to London, you have to wonder - what about the passengers if the plane goes down?
    • They may very well have ended up be as badly off physically as that suicide bomber.
  • If this Immortality doesn't include eternal youth, within 100 years, the world will be overflowing with starving, decrepit, sick old people.
    • The concept of "Miracle Day" in a nutshell is Fridge Horror. What's gonna happen when there's no more food -- malnutrition, sans death, for everyone on the planet? People suffering from something like cancer or a disease, who'll continue suffering but can't die?
    • A trailer for future episodes notes that if the Miracle stops it still might be Fridge Horror, as All bacteria will become super-resistant to antibiotics, since the people who are sick or maimed will continue to live on as incubators for them. So if Miracle Day isn't reversed before that happens, the day everybody would become mortal again could also be the beginning of a worldwide pandemic.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: We are all aware of how horrible tortue can be. Normally the main thing that limits torture is the risk of killing the subject. Now imagine what will happen to these people when the risk of death has been utterly removed, torture technicians around the world will redefine the meaning of suffering now that death isn't a possibility.

Fridge Brilliance

  • Why would a Mook volunteer to possibly get shot or horribly maimed when the results could be eternal suffering? Aha - but before the mook detonates himself he says "wanna bet?" - he either truly believed he would die or whoever sent him lied to him about bombs being actually able to kill him.
    • Or he knew Jack would die
  • What kind of a guy would be walking around shouting out to everybody that he was a member of the CIA, which goes against practically everything the CIA is? Well, one that has lost a lot of blood, been impaled and is probably overdosing on painkillers yet still won't die, that's who.
    • It helps that Rex Matheson appears to be a composite of every single incredibly awesome American stereotype.
  • Why isn't The Doctor dealing with this (well, besides the fact that the Doctor will never make a "full" appearance on Torchwood)? He has more personal things to deal with, and since he's a time traveler, he probably already knows that Captain Jack will handle it.... right?
    • Plus he hasn't been on modern earth since he took off with Amy and Rory.... and given whats happened in his life, hasn't had the time or reason to come back since he was summoned here in the Impossible Astronaut, and even if he did(to pick up Jack or one of his other companions) they'd be be a little preoccupied
  • It bothered me that the Owen Harper reference was passed by so fast, when one hopes the character's name could get a little more time than that. Then you realize: In the same way the show seems not to care who Owen Harper was, the world doesn't either. This is a place where Torchwood doesn't matter.
  • Jack suggests detaching the head of the blown-up suicide bomber. At first this seems like a complete What the Hell, Hero? moment for Jack -- but when you remember that from what we've seen of forced immortality in Torchwood so far (Owen), Jack was probably trying to put the man out of his misery.

Fridge Logic

  • Rex's flight leaves Washington at 0200 and arrives at Heathrow at 9 AM. With the 5-hour time zone difference between the two cities, that's a flight time of two hours. Not even the Concorde could cross the ocean that fast, and in this post-Concorde era it's nearly impossible to get a transatlantic flight less than seven hours long. Is Jack Bauer operating an airline these days?
  • It could just be put down to stress/irritability/RuleOfFunny to set up his Murder Arson and Jaywalking later on but why does Rex seem surprised that he has to pay for the bridge? They do have toll bridges in the US.
    • this is perfectly in character; he finds it ridiculous that he's expected to pay to get anywhere in what he sees as a miserable, backwards little by-water.