Sneak peek scenes released for Torchwood: Miracle Day

Some scenes and spoilers have shown up on the BBC website.

Torchwood: Miracle Day begins in just a few days for American viewers, and in about a week across the pond. To help keep us anticipating, BBC One has released three more sneak-peek scenes on their website. Of course, those aren’t available in the US, so see the embeds below from an intrepid YouTuber. No guarantee they’ll stay up, of course. Thanks to the girls at GG♥SF for pointing them out.

The first one is nothing new. It’s a scene we’ve glimpsed over and over, as they show it in all of the featurettes:

It’s a good example of Captain Jack’s classic personality.

The second is something new. Much of the actual information is for those who haven’t seen Torchwood before, as Captain Jack breifly describes the history of the organization to newcomer, Esther, but it does have a bit of a spoiler:

The telling thing here is that quick line at the beginning. Captain Jack has been injured, and minutes later, it still hurts. This is odd, since, as regular viewers know, Jack is immortal and uninjurable. It takes him mere seconds to recover from a bullet in the brain. Hitting his arm against the bottom of a fountain should barely even faze him. Does this mean that while everyone else in the world has become unkillable, the immortal has somehow become vulnerable? This adds a new twist to the series’ mystery, possibly even tying the plot to The Doctor and his TARDIS, as that’s the source of Jack’s invulnerability.

The third clip gives a closer look at one of the darker characters in the story, Oswald Danes, a convicted child rapist and murderer who is released from the system after his failed execution. Here we get to see the argument he and his smarmy lawyers use to get him free:

I have a feeling that we will all love to hate this Danes guy, and the nature of the character gives the writers an opportunity to create a telling commentary. On what? I’m not sure yet.

If you haven’t already heard: Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin-off, has been a BBC production for a few years, but starting with this story, it has been picked up by Hollywood production company Starz, and the new base of Torchwood will be Los Angeles.

Barrowman and Myles are returning to the cast as Capt. Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, and a few other secondary characters who survived Torchwood: Children of Earth will also be back.

Joining them will be Mekhi Phifer, Alexa Havins, Arlene Tur, and Bill Pullman.

The plot will center on a strange immortality, which seems to have struck the entire world at once. At first seen as a miracle – thus the subtitle of the series – it soon becomes a nightmare, as the hundreds of thousands of people who are supposed to be dying each day around the world are quickly starting to overbalance food supplies and other resources.

Gwen and Jack team up with the CIA to solve the mystery of this “curse,” which will span ten-episodes.

Torchwood: Miracle Day is slated to premier July 8, 2011 on Starz.