Elaboration

[kilroy]

In ascending order of offense:

1) TARDIS magic. He fucking TARDIS-magicked Torchwood, and in a way that isn't even internally consistent. Oh, sure, we can use children as transmitters even though we had no fucking idea how the aliens were doing it in the first place! We can use the signal that killed Clem to kill them, even though they would never have used any kind of signal their biology was vulnerable to. Also, we still don't know why they needed to kill him! But that's not important. Let's not have a solution that actually involves hard work and being clever, let's just pull a rabbit out of a hat. Again.

2) Killing major characters. As with Owen and Tosh, I thought that Ianto's death was classily done. But still-- they killed Ianto. They have now killed 3/5 of the bloody Torchwood team in about a dozen episodes. I did not sign on to see all the characters I love destroyed.

3) Mis-characterization of major characters, specifically Jack. Part of Jack's charm is that he can be a coward, but the point of his story with regards to Torchwood is that he's getting better. That the influence of these people is making him a better man. This throws him way back past season one... it's like the last two years never happened. He's a total fucking bastard here, just as bad as the Prime Minister except without the cajones to own it. We don't like seeing Jack weak and defeated. We like seeing Jack weak and getting over it. No one in this whole story is a hero, and we need them. Desperately. Instead, Jack runs away like a gutless punk.

4) The treatment of children. Where to start.
4a) Children used as drugs by an alien species is incredibly horrific. That one unquestionably crosses the taste line, and I'm sure they knew it. It's a cheap flourish on an already totally sufficient ethical dilemma. It serves no dramatic purpose unless the revelation causes the people to say "All right, no. That's too much. No." Which it didn't. Instead, it made me hate every character in the show who refuses to stand up.
4b) Taking that last one back a step, where the hell were the people in power saying "Guys, just no" to the proposal in the first place? If there's anything worth going to war over, it's the lives of children. We needed a voice of dissent, someone who had the necessary ethics of a lead brick, who could say that giving up children is wrong. But no. Instead, the person who decided we can afford to lose certain children looks like the one who's going to end up PM. Way to reward the guilty, slimy, and unworthy.
4c) Killing your innocent children and grandchildren is not acceptable in heroic fiction. I'm sure that's exactly the point RTD's trying to make-- Torchwood isn't supposed to be heroic. But this... children are not pawns to be sacrificed. They are not "protected" by killing them. The correct answer is to fight, to find another fucking way.

But the thing that bugs me most about all of this is the fucking waste. The first four episodes are dark as hell, but they're also stellar television; and there's no reason why the fifth episode couldn't have worked. Here's a quick recipe:

* At the eleventh hour, have the government/heroes/people decide "NO" and actually fight the aliens for their children. Frobischer could have led this one, he was in the right place to do it. And his kids being on the block gave him a great excuse. Proceed to replace all the scenes of futility with scenes of actually fighting the problem.
* Don't mention the drugs thing.
* Clem was clearly biologically altered by his initial exposure to the 456 (or was biologically different in the first place). A detailed post-mortem could have plausibly revealed exploitable information about the aliens. If they killed him because he was a danger, have Torchwood somehow duplicate this effect and use it to stop them.
* Make sure Jack is actively pursuing this process and keep Gwen involved instead of putting her on the sidelines.

And voila, satisfying conclusion. I think in my head I'm going to try and rewrite it so that it worked that way.