Last year was my first year watching Dr. Who. Along with not having watched the Doctor previously, I also missed out on Torchwood. I had heard good things on the mini-series, Children of Earth, so when I saw that Starz was showing the new season, I decided to start watching. The good news is that it is easy to pick up even for a new viewer such as myself. And with the pilot of the new 10 episode season airing this past Friday, I finally got a chance to see what’s going on. Read on for more about Torchwood: Miracle Day.

We start off with three separate stories, that start intertwining. Alexa is talking on the phone to fellow CIA agent Rex who is excited because a colleague’s wife has leukemia. This means that it’s very likely that he’s going to get promoted. Then the word ‘Torchwood’ flashes on their CIA computers and then disappears. After that no one can find any reference to Torchwood anywhere on any computer. Rex gets distracted by the discussion and ends up in an accident that throws 3 pipes into his body.

Meanwhile, Oswald Danes is on Death Row. Not just in jail waiting for his appeals to finish, but laying down with tubes in his arm waiting to kill him. As the poison enters his system, he unexpectedly thrashes around and screams. The lethal injection fails and Oswald is still alive. He then argues with the state that his sentence has been carried out and an act of God stopped it, so he should be set free.

Gwen lives on a remote house with her husband Rhys and their daughter Anwen (hopefully that’s a family name and the girl has a much better middle name that she can use). Gwen and Rhys are so set in their privacy, that they break out weapons when some lost hikers stop to ask for directions. Gwen is ex-Torchwood (which technically doesn’t exist any more) and is worried that someone will come to harm them or worse, ask her to join Torchwood again.

When we find Max in the hospital, it turns out that he’s still alive. Everyone is alive. In the last 24 hours, no one has died. Out plot is afoot, Death has stopped across the world (which was also an episode of Family Guy). Alexa starts investigating and wonders if Torchwood is involved somehow. Some quick number crunch make everyone realize that the overflowing hospital bed and adding an additional million people to Earth per day is a really bad thing. Captain Jack comes in and finds out that while no one else can die, his little injury is getting worse and he might not be immortal any more. Our plot threads pull together at the end of the episode and we’re off on our journey.

The first episode in this series did everything it needed to do. It introduced the characters, set up the conflict, brought in the central idea and threw in enough of a cliff hanger to make sure people were excited to come back next week. Not having seen Torchwood before, I was amazed how easily I was able to catch on, know who was who and grab ahold of the plot without getting confused. And with a cast of close to a dozen characters and a back story, that is a great job. I’m excited by this series and will be looking forward to the following episodes. However, if you are expecting a series about the idea of death being suspended, then you might be disappointed. This seems more like an adventure show about how the Torchwood team will fix the problem. It’s not really a speculative fiction series, but more of an adventure series in a speculative fiction universe. Having said that, I enjoyed it enough that I’m ready to keep watching.