Here's the official synopsis from the BBC, which will be airing the two-day special December 28th and 29th:

The world is struck blind by a solar storm, and millions of man-eating mobile plants are released to roam Britain.

As an expert on the Triffids, Bill Masen knows that salvation rests in the hands of the father he hates, who mutated the Triffids in the first place to produce a green source of oil that the world craves.

BBC has started running their annual Christmas identifications. Although this doesn't offer any clues to the Tenth Doctor's exit, we do get a fun moment with David Tennant playing Santa Claus:

Blogtor Who has nabbed some nice stills from the promo as well.

BBC Christmas Ident [Blogtor Who]
Additional reporting by Josh Snyder.

This recap contains maximum spoilers for last night's Doctor Who. If you're waiting to watch it on BBC America next month, you should stop reading now. Or a funny robot will come and tell you secrets of the future, which you're not supposed to know about.

"Waters Of Mars" was by no means perfect — the scenery-chewing was a bit ferocious for my taste — but it did feel like one of the better Doctor Who stories of recent years. More than that, it felt like a payoff, after all this time, on the promises that Russell T. Davies started making us back in 2005. The Doctor's loneliness, the burden of being the Last of the Time Lords, the boredom, horror and glory of it all... it finally feels like it was actually leading someplace interesting and moving, after a few years of going in circles. Like Davies actually did have a plan for the Doctor's development as a character all along.

Honestly, this is the kind of delving into the Doctor's hearts that I was hoping for all these years — not so much moping after Rose, but dealing with his feelings about the death of his people and his resulting lack of any external compass. You always knew the Rose storyline was never going to end up anywhere interesting, because it couldn't. These kinds of huge questions about the Doctor's place in the universe, though — there's so much potential in them.

There were really only a few episodes in series four that hold up on repeated viewings — "Fires Of Pompeii," "Midnight" and "Turn Left" — and this felt like a mash-up of all three. In a good way. The Doctor arrives at the scene of a huge historical event that he absolutely must not change, and feels torn about it. And he's alone in a tense, claustrophobic situation with no companion to help smoothe things over. And then we get a glimpse of how badly things go when the Doctor isn't around.

But "Waters Of Mars" was more than just a combination of "Pompeii," "Midnight" and "Turn Left" — it was a pretty great story in its own right, building on the themes of those three stories. In a nutshell, the Doctor arrives on Mars, and it turns out to be the day that the first colonists on Mars all die in a horrible incident involving terrifying water zombies. (And I really did like the water zombies — they were a great menace.) The Doctor knows he can't change what happens there because it's an important — until, finally, his compassion and egomania both combine to drive him to change it anyway. And we get a glimpse of how easy it is for the godlike Doctor to go off the rails.

It's interesting, because we're deliberately told that a lone Dalek almost killed the captain of the Mars expedition, Adelaide Brooke, when she was a little girl — but spared her life. Because even the Daleks understand, on some level, that certain things are fixed in time, like Adelaide's death in 2059. (Although presumably, if the Daleks' plan to wipe out the universe had succeeded, Adelaide would have died anyway?)

So "Waters Of Mars" gives us a Doctor who's changing an event that even the Daleks are too scrupulous to touch. I'm reminded of the bit in "Remembrance Of The Daleks" when he chides Ace that even the Daleks, "ruthless though they are, would think twice before making such a radical amendment to the timeline." (Ace almost accidentally leaves a super-advanced boombox behind in 1963.)

The thing that surprised me most about "Waters Of Mars" is that the Doctor actually makes a choice all on his own. I figured it would be the standard plotline, where he's trapped and cut off from his TARDIS, and finally, he's left with no choice but to intervene, just to save his own life. But instead, the Doctor actually makes a clean getaway. And then he stops and thinks about leaving those people to die, and wonders why he can't save them even with his immense power. And then he goes back.

Sadly, it turns out the Doctor really can't save Adelaide, or rather he does such a bad job of it that she winds up offing herself. Of course, you can't help wondering why the Doctor didn't just take Adelaide forward 100 years so she could see that things turn out fine in spite of the Doctor saving her life, and her granddaughter still goes on to be a great pilot. That final scene between the Doctor and Adelaide is frustratingly meta, with the Doctor spouting off about being the "Time Lord Victorious" and Adelaide giving off aphorisms about absolute power. The thing I was wondering that nobody brought up was, how would Adelaide and her crewmates explain the fact that they were back on Earth safe the same day their base blew up? Wouldn't Adelaide be painted as a deserter instead of a hero? We never explore those questions, which you'd think Adelaide would be wondering about. I kept expecting the Doctor to drop the three survivors off in the 19th century, or the 23rd., where they couldn't do any damage to the timelines.

Over the top as that final scene was, it was a fascinating glimpse at what happens to the Doctor when he stops playing by the rules. This is the Doctor we glimpsed back in season one, when he was totally fine with populating Victorian England with thousands, maybe millions, of reanimated corpses. Just because it didn't happen in Rose's timeline didn't mean it wasn't meant to happen.

Normally, you think it's the companions who rein the Doctor in and keep him anchored to humanity, but the reference back to the "Pompeii" episode reminds us that if Donna had been there, she would have been shrieking for the Doctor to save these people. On the other hand, can you imagine how Donna would have reacted if the Doctor had started talking about the "little people" in front of her?

No, the Doctor really needs his fellow Time Lords to keep him from going too bonkers. Otherwise, he starts feeling as though the rules really don't apply to him, and he starts playing God for real. It's really fascinating that just as the Doctor comes the closest he's ever gotten to being like the Master, the renegade Time Lord, he's about to have a reunion with the Master in Tennant's two-part final story, "The End Of Time."

Syfy president Dave Howe explains to the Hollywood Reporter:

"We've always been keen on vampires and werewolves, and we loved the originality of Being Human, the fact that the fantastical creatures in it are very young, accessible and charming."

They loved the originality of it so much, they decided to remake it.

Syfy has ordered 13 episodes of a remade Being Human, which could appear on screens as early at next fall. Across the pond the original Being Human gears up for its second season this January. Howe promised this won't be a poor recreation of the series, seeing as most Syfy watchers probably have seen the original, but we've been burned before.

I was one of the loudest haters of the American-ized Office before it aired, because British humor and sensibilities don't translate well in the States. But the show hired good writers, invested in the production and found a wonderful cast. It's engaging, even though it lacks that dry British wit that made me fall in love with the original, and despite the lack of Ricky Gervais and the arguable fact that the American version has been around for far too long, it's still funny. (Though I shudder to think of Jim and Pam, "the baby years.") That said, for every successful Americanized show, there are many dismal translations, such as Life on Mars, Coupling, and a host of other terribly translated or poorly copied series.

Being Human is a completely different show from The Office. You can not translate the kind of dark humor that parallels the main characters lives, without the flippant British style that manages to just slip in a turn of phrase here and there. That humor is what makes the whole idea that a ghost, vampire and werewolf all living together in real life believable, the whole casualness of it all.

The writing is woven together so perfectly. Take the shocking weirdness that comes when we see one character's vampire porno, in which one person cannot be recorded because they're a vampire. The vampire porno itself becomes a whole other plot point, which I won't ruin here. But it's a good example of how Being Human blends darkness and humor together so perfectly. I highly doubt we can make these kinds of jokes on the Syfy Channel, with American writers and actors.

You can also bet that any and all edge will get stripped away, in hopes of garnering more viewers, so kiss the amazing sex scenes goodbye, along with violence, blood and realistic humor.

Plus you will never, never, never be able to recreate the chemistry and timing the trio over at Being Human have. It is by far one of the better ensemble casts working today.

In short, this is a disaster. The worst case is, we'll end up with just another CW-esque dramedy show about pretty white kids and their magical issues. To me, this is on a par with an Americanized Doctor Who, — it's not needed, and all but impossible to adapt properly.

How can this be saved? If Syfy decided to spend lots of money on hard working writers and producers that can actually Imagine Greater. Even then, they'd have to attempt at translating the dark humor without throwing in a green screen, adding reality-show components or trying to make it any darker than it already is. Then they have to cast three people who can sell this crazy premise. But they could always take that money and create new material, and just air the original Being Human along with said new series, instead of butchering a great UK show. Because if it ain't broke...

If this makes more people watch the original, then that's one thing this new reboot has going for it. Still I honestly just don't think it can be done. And now with the internet making foreign shows more accessible to the masses, I think there will be a surprising amount of push-back from U.S. fans.

BBC Northern Ireland is currently developing the five-hour series, which stars Tamzin Outhwaite as Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint and Emun Elliott as Dr. Christian King. After a series of images are sent to King's laboratory from space, he realizes that they hint at a devastating incident — one that has not happened yet. He teams up with Detective Flint to solve the mystery behind the images and try to prevent the catastrophe from occurring.

"We knew there was an appetite for a big, bold, fresh take on the cop show," explains Murray Ferguson, chief executive of Clerkenwell Films. "Something that might be different from the traditional formula of investigating a crime that has already taken place.

"So, we began to consider what if we could find a means of telling that story in reverse? Is there an original and credible way of a police team finding themselves with the knowledge of crimes or disasters happening in the future? We wanted the show to feel like it really could happen in the world we all know."

But the writers claim that we'll get some actual science mixed with our cop drama, and they've hired astrophysicist Margaret Aderin to consult on the theories behind the show's titular paradox. There's no date yet for Paradox, but the series will air as five individual episodes.

Behind the scenes of BBC's upcoming sci-fi series Paradox [The Geek Files]

Ed Victor, a literary agent who represents the late author's estate, told British humor outlet Chortle that the BBC has Dirk Gently series in the works, although there's no telling when we could see such a show:

He said he had seen ‘a great script – not just a good script' for the planned adaptation, but warned: ‘With the BBC, it can take forever'.

In the books, Dirk Gently is a detective who solves crimes not by looking at the minutiae of evidence, but at the larger picture, figuring out the interconnectedness of everything. In the first book, he goes on the hunt for a missing cat and stumbles on a greater problem involving the ghost of an alien engineer, the writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, time travel, and the very fate of humanity. The BBC previously adapted the Dirk Gently novels as a radio series in 2007.

Victor said the BBC has also expressed interest in remaking their The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy television series, but that would involve obtaining a license from Disney, which currently owns the Hitchhiker rights.

BBC plans Dirk Gently TV series [Chortle via Topless Robot]

Following a preview screening of opening story-arc "Planet of The Judoon" last week, head writer Phil Ford revealed that "events in the first story of season three of the Who spin-off will have a direct link into the events in the upcoming Doctor Who animated series," according to British magazine SFX. Sadly, Ford didn't elaborate on exactly how the "fantastic romp" episodes - which aren't the ones with a David Tennant appearance (That'd be "The Wedding of Sarah-Jane Smith," the fifth and sixth episodes of the season) - would tie into the animated story about the Doctor visiting Roswell in 1958, besides the fact that he's writing both.

Sarah Jane Adventures premieres on BBC One in the UK on October 15th.

Exclusive! Sarah Jane Adventures/"Dreamland" crossover [SFX]

I have to say the new animation style doesn't look quite as succesful as the slightly warmer look the Doctor got in the "Infinite Quest" animated series a while back. Still, every last dose of David Tennant is precious at this point, weird computer-generated face or otherwise.

After "Dreamland" appears via the red button thingy, it will be on BBC2 as part of their children's programming block.

According to the release, "Dreamland" sees the Doctor landing in "the infamous alien hot spot" Roswell in 1958:

During a visit to a local diner he stumbles upon a mysterious alien artefact that leads him on a mission to rescue Rivesh Mantilax from the threat of the Viperox and the clutches of the American military.

Joining David Tennant will be Georgia Moffett (Doctor Who, Spooks) in the role of Cassie Rice – the Doctor's new animated companion.

David Warner (Wallander, Hogfather) also stars as the leader of the ruthless Viperox.

The BBC's Doctor Who site will be hosting a "Dreamland" blog, featuring images, interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff in the run-up to the show appearing.

So let's get it out there right away: Part five is easily the weakest of the five episodes of "Children Of Earth." The pacing is a bit flatter, the storytelling a bit more random, and the characters a bit less compelling — especially poor Gwen, who was kicking so much ass not long ago.

That said, even if it's weak in comparison to parts one through four, part five of "Children Of Earth" is still a rattlingly strong ending to a brilliant story, and this single episode is still better than the entire first two seasons of Torchwood put together. A lesser writer than Russell T. Davies would have saved some of the story's biggest shocks — Lois standing up, Ianto dying — for this final episode. It's a mark of RTD's confidence that he put that stuff in episode four and devoted so much of episode five to the aftershocks. And then when we get that one last shock, in the way Jack defeats the 456 at last, it's that much more dreadful because we're already pulverized.

So in episode five, all hope seems lost. Jack's attempt to bluff the 456 into surrendering has proved a miserable failure, and cost him the life of his lover and comrade, Ianto. Jack is almost catatonic with grief, but he does arrange for Gwen to take Ianto's body back to Wales. There, Gwen tries to honor Ianto's memory by saving his nephew and niece from the mass handover of children to the child-using 456.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Brian Green crosses another threshold, from oily nastiness to out-and-out repulsiveness. The public is swallowing the cooked-up story that the children are being rounded up for innoculations against the "chanting in unison" bug. Green is beginning to think he might actually come out of this mess with his political career intact — and then he overreaches a bit, arranging for John Frobisher's kids to be rounded up, so Frobisher can make a big public appearance in support of the inoculation program. That way, when the kids all disappear, a semi-high-profile public servant can be seen to have been duped as well. Green is so oily, trying to intimidate Frobisher by ignoring him and scribbling on pages in between telling him the news.

This development felt ever so slightly forced, and intended to give Frobisher some kind of closure — but it did feel believable, especially given how amoral and small Green had already shown himself to be. Frobisher, of course, doesn't hand over his kids — instead, he walks into a room with a loaded gun, and we hear four shots. Just when you thought Frobisher's story couldn't become any more barbed and tragic, it takes one last turn into awfulness.

But hey — at least the 456 are using the children for some important, noble purpose, right? Right? Like they're a kind of natural life support system? Or their little childish neurons make a natural hyperspace navigation aid? Or their youthful optimism keeps the 456 spaceship A.I.s altruistic and brilliant?

Actually, er, no. The children of Earth just secrete chemicals that feel really, really good to the 456. And the aliens have the means to keep the kids young and fresh for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, while they siphon the juices out of them. Oh well.

The biggest letdown, for me, is Gwen, who really was winning me over as a great action hero just a few days earlier. Now she's suddenly a bit weak, and she's back to channeling Rose Tyler — her silly camcorder intro was way too reminiscent of Rose's "this is the day I died" intro in Doctor Who's "Army Of Ghosts" two-parter.

Gwen basically gets written out of the story early on in this episode, but we still have to watch her trying to hide Ianto's nephew and niece, and some other random kids, and then hiding, and running, and hiding, and whining, and running. And mostly whining. It does dramatize the horror of what's going on. But we could have had Rhys, or Ianto's sister, trying to hide the kids, and it would have provided the same level of dramatization. Why does Gwen have to be shunted off to the sidelines like this?

Oh yeah. Because Jack "can't stand to look at her." I'm tempted to take the cheap shot and say neither can we. But really, she was doing so well. She was winning me over, big time. And now, she's suddenly mopey and weak.

Ohai. I'm sending you out of the story now:

Instead, Ms. Brown, the woman who blew up Torchwood on Monday, is left in the Gwen role, dragging the also-mopey Jack back into action and kicking him in the ass until he figures out how to stop the 456. And there's an amazing irony that Jack's daughter Alice is the one who insists they get Jack to solve the problem — and it ends up costing her so very much.

After those scenes of Jack and Dekker working together to come up with a completely unacceptable solution to the 456 crisis, I'm totally dying for season four to feature Dekker as a major member of the Torchwood staff. And every time he steps out of line, they could shoot him in the leg again. I just love his weird sad-sack humor and total lack of morals. He's the guy who's willing to do whatever it takes, or whatever the guy with the gun wants.

So yeah, Jack needs to destroy a random child in order to defeat the 456 — and unlike the politicians, who safeguard their own children while sending millions of others to a fate worse than death, Jack picks the one nearest to hand, his own grandson. Who dies screaming/singing, with blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, while Jack and his daughter watch. Jack manages to become the ultimate tragic hero in the same moment he becomes the ultimate antihero.

And then he leaves Earth, because Jack just plain has nothing tying him to the human race any more. Whatever finally brings Jack back to Earth for another romp with the Torchwoodies, I hope it's truly dreadful and we get to see Jack struggling against the need to return to the scene of his greatest crime.

Oh, and meanwhile Prime Minister Green gets his comeuppance in a scene so full of weird holes that I don't know what to make of it. Bridget Spears was recording Green being callous, using those contact lenses — but who was actually recording? Don't you need a laptop to record that stuff? Okay, so Bridget's bluffing, I can accept that. But how does this lead to that creepy woman getting to be in charge? The woman who was the first one to suggest sending poor kids to the slaughter? And in what way could that possibly be deemed an improvement? I'm sort of baffled, and I think RTD was straining too hard to give Green some kind of comeuppance, without fully thinking it through.

Nitpicks aside, though, this was a brain-shattering ending to one of the best pieces of science fiction television ever to come out of Britain. I've had a few weeks to think it over, and I've watched it twice, and I'm still obsessing about it and trying to tease out all its layers. What did you think?

Not that the 456 weren't utterly horrifying — they were. And they vastly exceeded my expectations, since I was sort of bracing myself for a lame reveal. The more we saw of them, the more terrifying they got. And when we got to glimpse the child they'd taken in 1965 — still young, but completely deformed and messed up — it was absolutely wretched.

But like I said, that wasn't even the nastiest part of the episode. I feel like last year's Who episode "Midnight" was just a foretaste of the ugliness that Russell T. Davies cooked up for us this time. The spectacle of the human politicos trying to figure out exactly which millions of children they should hand over to the slimy aliens was just sickeningly plausible.

One of the best things about "Children Of Earth" has been the way it's managed to be both fast-paced and lingering. That is, there hasn't been a single scene that felt like filler, or a waste of screen time — okay, maybe a few scenes, but not many.

And the fact that we've taken our time over these scenes of human leaders figuring out how to lie to their people about the wholesale handover of the poorest, most vulnerable of all the children, makes the whole thing feel more believable, and each step down the road of inhumanity feels like it comes just moments after the last. Paradoxically, lingering over these dreadful scenes helps make the story's pace feel even faster and more blinding.

And you can just about imagine yourself being in the room with them and making the same decisions — maybe you'd be less smarmy about it (RTD has a weakness for depicting moral compromise as overtly smarmy) but you might come up with the same justifications. As Gilbert & Sullivan might say, "You can put them on the list. They'll none of them be missed." Overpopulation is a huge nightmare. Statistically, these poor kids from bad schools are more likely to grow up and become car thieves (like Captain Jack, I guess.) And the 456 itself points out, infant mortality claims tons of kids, and nobody bats an eye.

The moment where Lois finally stands up and confronts all of those self-justifying, pompous, evil baby-killers — oh my God. I am now president of the Lois fan club. I don't want her to join Torchwood, I want her to run Torchwood. The way she slowly builds up steam, first tenatively raising her hand and trying to get noticed. And then saying "Excuse me," like a kindergartener. "I know I'm only supposed to be here to take notes, I am a voter." And you think... oh no, she's going to make a vain speech and nothing will happen.

And then she drops the bomb on them. Torchwood has been recording it all, and it's all going public. Woo hoo! And meanwhile, the odious thug Johnson starts to get an inkling of just who she's been working for, and what they've been up to all this time. Oh, and I loved the bit where Ianto tells the people who are listening to his phone call to save their children, and screw patriotism and all that.

When Captain Jack's daughter says the thing about how a man who can't die is a man who has nothing to lose, at first I thought she was completely off base. After all, Jack has people in his life — he has Ianto and Gwen, plus his family. Just because Jack can't die, doesn't mean he's got nothing to lose.

But then I realized that she was right, and that's part of why Jack is a monster in his own right — he really doesn't see himself, deep down, as having anything to lose at this point. All of the people around him are going to die at some point, and he'll go on — does it really matter to him if they die today, or twenty years from now? The end result, after all, is the same.

Of course, Jack has his lovely moment of posturing, which is so quintessentially Jack: self-aggrandizing and self-loving, but also totally altruistic and self-sacrificing. If only Jack were physically capable of sacrificing himself instead of others. It's interesting to contrast Jack's line, "An injury to one is an injury to all," with another great philosophical statement preceding a shocking death: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Spock's philosophy, of course, is the one that got us into this mess in the first place, since it led to those dozen children being sacrificed for the needs of the many. Still and all, it's hard not to see a bit of a contrast between Spock's death scene and Ianto's, with the glass enclosure, the grand philosophy, the touching goodbye, and sense that the whole thing could have been avoided.

And yes, Ianto's death is totally avoidable, which only makes the knife a thousand times twistier. Why was Torchwood's plan so crap? Why? Far from being a case of lazy writing on the part of Russell T. Davies and company, that question is at the heart of this story's meaning. Torchwood has a weak-ass plan because they've been kept off balance for the past few days, instead of being able to stop and think things through. And that, in turn, is because of the British government's CYA mentality, nearly killing them all and turning them into fugitives. If the British government's first instinct hadn't been to try (in vain, as it turns out) to hide the truth, then Torchwood might have spent the past few days doing what it does best. (Well, apart from snogging.)

Poor Ianto.

After two almost completely solid episodes, part three of "Children Of Earth" got off to a bit of a rocky start. The whole "life of crime" montage was honestly a bit embarrassing. Wheee! We're criminals! Breakin the law breakin the law! And then Jack's big dramatic "I'm back" moment, with his trademark great-coat and suspenders restored to their full dapperness, was almost agonizingly twee. For a moment, I thought we'd been zapped back in time to the bad old days of Torchwood.

Luckily, almost everything else about Day Three adhered to the fantastic high standards the show's established so far. And best of all, we dove head-first into the stew of national politics, international intrigue and interplanetary skullduggery that the first two episodes only skimmed the surface of.

The aliens zap down into Thames House, with a huge blazing pillar of fire, and all the children in the world point their fingers at the dead center (ish) of London. And the crazy dance of alien contact and ass-covering begins.

I have a feeling they could have stuck Peter Capaldi in a room with a popsickle stick and some chewing gum, and he would have sold us on the idea that it was a terrifying, unknowable alien presence. He is that good in his early conversations with the 456, his eyes twitching with horror even as he keeps his body ramrod stiff. And he schools the 456 on proper diplomatic procedure:

Well... Perhaps we do things differently here, but we would consider this to be a diplomatic liaison. Does that make sense? We are both in a sense ambassadors, and according to protocol, ambassadorial procedure is not made public. You wouldn't be speaking to the entire population, but to their elected representatives. That's how it works. That's all I can offer. Is that acceptable?

In other words: We need to do this in a way that will allow us to lie to our people and manipulate the free world, however this shakes out.

And then he goes out into the hallway and collapses on the floor, finally letting his full freak-out show. And Dekker sort of skulks out behind him, keeping a healthy distance from the 456 chamber.

Of course, whatever happened the last time the 456 came to town, it was obviously much more on the down low. The 456 wouldn't be making such a big deal out of the need to "speak with the world" if they didn't need to pull something much bigger this time around.

And then we get all of those perfect scenes of the UNIT and U.S. army brass confronting the U.K. prime minister, Brian Green, with their power grab, having an alien ambassador on British soil and taking the lead on negotiations. It's funny that nobody mentions that just a year or two ago, the British prime minister announced the U.K. was making first contact with an alien species and invited the U.S. president to be there — only to gun the president down, live on TV. (That bit happened before the Master's "reset button" kicked in, right?) In any case, there's a giant pissing match over who gets to control the negotiations, all of which plays into Brian Green's scaly little hands, because it lets him designate John Frobisher as his fall guy — I mean, diplomatic representative.

And then the negotiations begin in earnest, with the 456 being slow and recalcitrant, and occasionally spitting weird scary fluids, every step of the way. The politicos and military boffins are watching on video screens from the office downstairs, while the Torchwood crew watches via the contact-lens cameras they talked Lois into wearing.

So yeah — Lois' finest hour is now in its second hour, with no sign of slacking off. She is magnificent this time around. The contact lenses, which were sort of a throwaway plot device in the giant insect romp last year, now provide yet another way for us to view first contact with a scary alien from an obscured, distorted perspective. And Lois' bravery is worth a thousand action heroes, because she's so obviously terrified and out of her depth, but she goes forward and does the right thing anyway. Somehow, reading those files about Torchwood and finding out just how far her superiors were willing to go to kill them, inspires her to risk everything to help them.

And jeez, the Torchwood people are pushy mofos. She's already committing treason and flying in the face of people who have already proved they're willing to blow up Cardiff to silence voices of the past — and now the Torchwoodies are like "go stand in the middle of the room so we can read Frobisher's lips! Come on! Do a little dance while you're at it!" Oh man. And then they want her to start making notes as well. Utter bastards. Why doesn't she just use a semaphore?

And then of course the 456 explain just what they want, that necessitates such a huge song and dance... "We will take your children." I love Frobisher groping for the idea that there's a problem with the translation software.

And meanwhile, we find out just what Captain Jack's big secret is, and Captain Jack has never been so compelling a character as he is here. Really, two seasons of Torchwood had pretty much killed all of my interest in Captain Jack Harkness as a character, after a promising start in Doctor Who season one. Now, suddenly, he's complicated and tormented and awesome.

And it's extra knife-twisty that Jack's sudden revelation comes right after this wonderful slow moment between him and Ianto, when they really talk about their relationship. They almost go have sex, but then they don't because Rhys is there — and thank goodness for forced chastity, because instead they have to talk about what they're doing together, and whether their relationship has any future whatsoever. And then Jack finds out exactly who those other people marked for death were, and goes off to confront Frobisher.

Jack's conversation with Frobisher is great also, as Frobisher has to face up to what he's done — and what he has yet to do. The bit where Frobisher says Jack won't grab his wife and kids because "you're a better man than I am" would seem trite in most television shows, but here the self-loathing totally works. And of course, we're not quite sure if that's really true.

And it all leads up to the revelation that not only did those awful Brits give the aliens a dozen children before, but Jack was the guy who gift-wrapped the little tykes. "1965, I gave them twelve children... as a gift," Jack says simply. You bastard.

Oh, a couple of other random notes: Clem continues to be a bit annoying, but his portrayal of post-traumatic insanity and twitchiness does drive home just how awful whatever these aliens want with the children probably is. I really could have done without the bit where Clem "smells" Ianto's queerness. I have a feeling that Russell T. Davies was going somewhere interesting with that, about Ianto's denial or closetedness or something, but he missed the off-ramp. Also, maybe if Jack's daughter Alice had spent a bit more time with her dad instead of blowing him off, she wouldn't have been quite such an idiot and gotten herself nabbed. Oh well.

But all in all, this was an amazingly intense hour of television, and it's only going to get more intense from here on out.

So what did you think?

So yes, Captain Jack has never been quite as exposed as he was in part two of "Children Of Earth," where he was stripped down to just a teeny scrap of flesh, and then slowly rebuilt into a dessicated corpse.

And of course, if your taste in nudity extends beyond people's exposed circulatory systems and bones, you had to be a bit happy that the fully reassembled Jack pops up quite a bit as well. (Although I'm basing this on the screeners I got, which were the British version. No clue if any of that got cut for U.S. audiences.) The glimpse of Jack's full-frontal nudity, as flashed on a surveillance camera, is three of the most popular images right now at the Medusa Cascade.

What was it a wise man once said? "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."

I especially liked Gwen handing Naked Jack a coat, and him tossing it over his shoulder while he walks, still naked, to the car.

Oh, and there was also Naked Rhys, which also has proved one of the most popular screencaps from the episode.

But honestly, episode two of "Children Of Earth" isn't really Jack's hour, since he's dead or entombed for most of it.

In many ways, the star of this episode was Lois, the new character who we only just met yesterday. Internet chatter claims that Russell T. Davies wrote in Lois because Freema Agyeman wasn't available to reprise her role as Martha Jones. If that's true, then I'm actually sort of glad that Agyeman had to bow out. (Not that it wouldn't have been great to see both of them in action.)

In any case, Lois really shines in the second episode of "Children Of Earth," going beyond the naive ingenue who took a bit of advantage of her boss' password in the first episode and becoming a full-on rebel. We get to see her putting two and two together, and realizing just what that mysterious explosion in Cardiff was, and then slowly coming around to helping Gwen and Rhys, when she talks to Gwen on the phone. And she's immediately super resourceful — almost too resourceful, since she hands Gwen a rescue plan for Captain Jack on a silver plate. But on balance, the whole thing makes me like her immediately.

The other standout last night was Action Gwen, who was the least wet and useless she's ever been. The role of two-gun bad-ass really suits Gwen, baby bump and all, and I liked seeing her ruthless streak in dealing with her would-be kidnappers in the ambulance.

Her relationship with Rhys has never felt so natural as it does here, and watching the two of them team up to escape the Cardiff dragnet is pretty awesome. It brings them together in a way that hours of processing and relationship wrangling never could.

And poor PC Andy, having his faith in Gwen's inherent goodness and purity tested so much.

Meanwhile, Ianto has an even rougher time, since he doesn't have a Rhys to depend on, and the man he loves has been blown up from the inside out. He's all battered and bruised, and doesn't know where to turn. The bit where he thinks the baddies have caught up to him, and it's just a newspaper delivery van, was pretty heart-rending.

But at least Ianto was forced to open up a wee bit to his sister, and tell her a teeny amount about what exactly his fancy civil-service job involves. And yes, it was a bit of an outrageous coincidence that Ianto shows up busts Jack's concrete slab out at the exact same moment that Gwen and Rhys' "fake undertaker" scam has been rumbled, and he saves the day in his little construction vehicle. But it's the sort of coincidence that Doctor Who and Torchwood have been serving up for decades, so we pretty much have to let it slide.

Meanwhile, we learned a bit more about the aliens, the 456, who are getting built up as an ominous mystery in a way that virtually no other Who aliens have been in decades, if ever. They're genuinely alien and incomprehensible to our feeble human brains. But at least we do know what atmosphere they require for their special chamber — although, as Dekker says, it's not clear if they breathe it, eat it or fart it. And is their chamber an ambassadorial suite, a throne room or a slaughter house? Or all three, depending?

Dekker is definitely my other favorite character. I mean, Frobisher is mesmerizing, as you watch him kiss up to the repulsive prime minister, lie to his wife and kids (The "We want a pony!" chanting was priceless) and depend utterly on the devotion of Bridget Spears. But Dekker is a brilliant character study too — his whole philosophy is based around keeping his head down and letting other people stand out front. He's just one of the cockroaches of government — but in that role, he's also a bit of a court jester, like when he tells Spears she's been holding her nose for years now. He seems to think as long as he never actually takes on any prominence, he can jab all he wants at the people above him.

"Exactly," he says at the end. "Why is that, Mr. Frobisher?" A bit of a mocking smile on his lips. And then he walks up and presses his face to the glass, letting his breath further obscure the already inscrutable fog. Awesomely ominous stuff.

So what did you think? (Without any spoilers for parts three through five, please!)

We were lucky enough to have a one-on-one interview with Gardner, who's supervised both Who and Torchwood for the BBC, the other day. And she shared her thoughts about both shows, going forward. Plus she explained why, exactly, she's moved to Los Angeles.

She says the BBC will fully try to top the current season of Torchwood, assuming it actually returns in 2010. That's "part of the fun, and part of the adrenaline rush of working in TV drama." She adds, "The joy, for me, with Torchwood, is that it's a show that, every single years, has reinvented itself." That's certainly true with the new format of a five-part miniseries airing across five consecutive nights, which Jane Trantor suggested and Russell T. Davies found an exciting challenge.

We're kind of having conversations now, about what the next step is, because I do think it's fun working on a show that reinvents itself constantly. We're looking at all of this, whether another serial arc, or possibly something else.

As to whether series four will show the Torchwood team rebuilding after the challenging events of "Children Of Earth," she says "You go where the story needs to take you. I think it's always possible to rebuild."

"Children Of Earth" started from Davies "wanting to tell a first contact story," says Gardner. "It's not the usual action adventure. It's a story about what could plausibly happen." And he looked at all the terrible atrocities happening in other countries, and how people behave when they're pushed to their limits, and tried to imagine how that could happen in Britain.

So is there any truth to the idea that a Doctor Who movie is in the pipeline? Gardner says at this point, it's mostly speculative. "At the moment, we are absolutely concentrating on the new production of the Doctor Who series." She'd love to see a Who movie, but doesn't see it happening any time soon.

As to what Gardner's doing in L.A., she's not actually working on bringing Doctor Who, or any other British show to American shores. Rather, she's looking at positioning the BBC as a production company, much like any other U.S. production studio, which can create new shows for American networks. Rather than creating American versions of British shows, she says the BBC is "looking at new ideas." The U.S. production arm of the BBC has been there for a number of years, and now the time seems right to move it forward. "The U.K. and American TV scripted industries have never been closer," says Gardner. "There is a shared culture." She may be able to bring some lessons from the BBC to American broadcasting, and she has a lot to learn from U.S. television as well.

Julie Gardner image by Fazzinchi.

Yes, it's River Song (Alex Kingston), the mysterious archeologist who has apparently met the Doctor many times in her past — and his future. Are we about to see their first meeting, from her perspective? And what's that gadget she's holding? To be honest, I'm not sure how I'll feel following the relationship between the Doctor and River Song, all the while knowing that in the end, he's going to trap her in an insipid virtual afterlife with two weird children.

You'll notice, also, that the TARDIS has been redesigned and sports a somewhat more 1960s look, including the St. John's Ambulance cross. [BlogtorWho and The Sun]

How about that bow tie? Also, are those pants TIGHT ROLLED at the bottom? I fear that the new Doctor may be . . . a hipster. Then again, it always takes me an episode or two to warm up to the new face of the Doctor. New companion Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) is stop-in-your-tracks gorgeous, she's certainly giving Rose a run for her money.

Here's a bigger and better picture of the two.

It's Matt Smith's first day on set and the two have been filming the episode titled "Come Alive."

Picture via BBC

So the first two episodes of Torchwood season three, the five-part miniseries known as "Children Of Earth" have already aired in the U.K., and they've vastly exceeded my expectations.

I'll try and keep this review relatively spoiler-free, for all the people who aim to watch the show when it airs on BBC America starting July 20. But be warned: by "relatively spoiler free," I mean I'll try and stick mostly to details that were in the trailers and preview articles that have appeared in official places like the Radio Times. Information the BBC wants you to know before seeing this story, in other words.

So. Honestly, I think the trailers sold this story a bit short. I expected it to be a lot of slow scenes of children being spooky while people wrung their hands, intermingled with sinister government people being sinister. But actually, the thing with the kids stopping absolutely still, and later repeating the alien message "We are coming," was extremely intense and well handled. And most of the credit belongs to Russell T. Davies, who wrote the first episode and obviously worked on the second one as well. Davies knows how to convey the rhythms of family life, and the chatter of everyday people coming and going, so when he gives us children stopping dead and chanting spookily, it doesn't feel at all like a cruddy horror movie. It feels, at first, like an inconvenience — and then the horror of it sort of sneaks up on you. The aspect of this storyline that I expected to be the most annoying turned out to be dead effective.

I often feel like there are two Russell T. Davieses — there's the one who creates storylines like this one, or the Doctor Who episodes "Midnight" and "Turn Left": jagged dramas where people are pushed to the edge and they reveal their inner ugliness as well as their inner courage. And then there's the one who wants you to bathe in a swimming pool full of schmaltz and bombard you with a rough sequence of over-the-top "moments" that are disconnected from each other and from any sense of storytelling — like last season's "Journey's End." Like so many writers, Davies' greatest strengths can become his worst weaknesses, when he gets too self-indulgent. But he's got a lot to prove here, by turning Doctor Who's weak sibling into a genuine success. Davies has said again and again that he'll stay with Torchwood (and the other spin-off, the Sarah Jane Adventures) forever, even though he's leaving Doctor Who at the end of the year. So he's obviously determined to win people over with this one.

The Torchwood team have never seemed as likeable as they do in these first two episodes. Giving both Jack and Ianto family members of their own seems like such an obvious step at character-building, you have to wonder why it didn't happen in season one. Jack's visit with his daughter Alice is, as the Radio Times says, "low-key but poignant" — especially given what we find out about why we haven't seen her before. "I get older... and you stay the same," she says. Meanwhile, all the stuff with Ianto's family is hilarious, and it's great to see a different side to Ianto than the eager-to-please manservant we've grown to love.

As for Gwen — I never thought I'd say this, but she's really growing on me. Davies seems to sense that Gwen has spent too much time in previous outings having her lip tremble and her wall-sized eyes water, so she's thrown into the role of action hero — and it works beautifully. It's hard to believe these are the same people we saw bickering endlessly, and obsessing over who was snogging whom, back in season one. There's still plenty of time for weird/risque humor, but it doesn't drive the story into the realms of the trivial.

And then there's all the political intrigue, something Davies has tackled in the past, with mixed results. This time around, the stakes genuinely feel enormous, and the mystery that unfolds regarding whatever happened in 1965 is genuinely intense. And all of Torchwood's incompetence and silliness, that we've all lamented in the past, finally comes back to haunt them once the government sets out to destroy the team before they discover the truth about what's going on. We saw back in season two that even random old ladies on the streets of Cardiff see the Torchwood van drive by and mutter, "Bloody Torchwood." Now the fact that this organization is possibly the least well-kept secret in Wales turns out to be a genuine liability. And the ubiquitous surveillance state, which the Torchwood crew were so happy to take advantage of in the past (Remember all those scenes in the first two seasons where our heroes check the public CCTV camera feeds?) suddenly turns out not to be quite so warm and fuzzy.

The other thing that "Children Of Earth" is doing really well, so far, is its alien menace. Whatever the mysterious alien threat behind the mind-controlled children and governmental paranoia is, it's being built up as a legitimately huge menace. Without having shown us so much as a tentacle-tip so far, the show has managed to build tons of anticipation for the alien threat to show up — here's hoping it doesn't actually disappoint.

And finally, as the Radio Times says, Jack and Ianto have to deal with the implications of being a couple. And this is the other thing I really liked about those first two episodes. Without dragging us into any long relationship-wrangling scenes, the show gives us several glimpses of just what it might mean for Jack and Ianto to be "a couple," rather than just storage-room lovers. (And no, the show doesn't forget that Ianto used to have a girlfriend, as we saw in the episode "Cyberwoman." Even though we've all tried to forget that episode.) Not surprisingly, this is a subject near to Russell T. Davies' heart — the vast difference between queerness behind a veil of innuendo and secrecy, and proud, open queer relationships in the light of day. He doesn't retreat behind any simplistic archetypes, and instead allows both Jack and Ianto to have complex feelings about their relationship and how public it should be, which are hinted at from various vantage points, rather than spelled out in giant block letters.

Oh and — and this is a bit more of a spoiler — RTD doesn't stint on the nudity. Those of us who worried that the move to BBC1 meant Jack would be covering up more needn't have worried. And I have a feeling adherents to at least one obscure fetish will be very happy about one particular scene in episode two.

Obviously, the show isn't perfect — there are a few convenient coincidences that help our heroes out at various crucial moments. The British civil service seems to be pretty easy-going about handing out passwords to top-secret computer accounts as well. And there are one or two moments, here and there, that fall flat. But so far? I'm pretty riveted.

I can hardly believe I'm actually saying this, but this could be the year that Torchwood becomes better than Doctor Who — at least until Steven Moffat takes over the reins of the parent series. Then all bets are off.

And a warning to people who've read this far and want to remain unspoiled — I have a feeling the comment thread on this post will get quite spoilery. That said, if you've seen the episodes already, please keep your first paragraph of your comment spoiler-lite, in case it crops up on the front page of the site. Thanks!

The series, which literally is about a young werewolf, vampire and ghost all sharing a flat in Bristol together, is like Friends, if the cast mates sometimes murdered people and turned them into bloodsucking immortals and wolf people.

The bumbly little fellow who plays the mild-mannered werewolf, George, is awfully endearing, you should tune in just for him. The ghost is a obnoxious dead lady, but pehaps I would be too if I was stuck wearing the same clothes forever. All in all, its a cute little series (from what I've seen) and if it stays on the "troubles with dating a werewolf" path it will continue that way. Sadly it looks like it's veering off into some strange vampire war that I can't particularly understand, and I'm not sure I care for.

George "Turning" In The Apartment:

Being Human premieres Saturday, July 25, at 9 PM on BBC America.

Paradox, announced recently by the Beeb, is described by its director, the critically acclaimed Simon Cellan Jones, as "an electrifying white knuckle ride [that will] will leave the audience asking themselves dark, complicated questions about fate, the future and who controls it." Starring onetime Eastenders star Tamzin Outhwaite, the series follows a police detective whose beat includes crimes that haven't happened yet. Whether or not the show will include Samantha Morton as a bald psychic named after a famous mystery writer has not yet been revealed.

The BBC is already buzzing about the show, with a spokesman calling it "a fresh spin on the crime genre [featuring] a fantastically bold idea." Shooting on the new series begins next month.

Outhwaite to star in sci-fi drama [BBC News]

According to Variety, Warner Bros. has officially purchased the Primeval screen rights in a "high-six-figure deal," and Akiva Goldsman and Kerry Foster are set up to produce, along with Emily Cummins. Goldsman is planning to hire a writer to draft the script, which will transplant the action of the film from the U.K. to the U.S.

And the U.S. version will ramp up the action, probably thanks to an amped-up effects budget. Says Foster:

There is a solid mythology to the series, but the movie has the dinosaur element of ‘Jurassic Park' and the time travel element of ‘Lost,' and it just feels like the kind of big movie that Warner Bros. does well.

While the big-screen production is clearly a ways away still, the new season of Primeval begins airing on BBC America tomorrow, May 16 at 9 ET (8 Central).

Warners follows 'Primeval' urge [Variety.com]