TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY: 11 New Minutes of Fun, Sexy Footage

My relationship with Starz and its preview material for TORCHWOOD is beginning to get precarious. On the one hand, I will do anything to get my grubby little hands on more. On the other, we’re less than two weeks away from the premiere and these clips are now only serving to ratchet my anxious anticipation up to heights previously thought unreachable.

The newest featurette, a full eleven minutes of new footage and behind-the-scenes interviews, gives us even more teases about Miracle Day and the events that follow…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj6ppmOND8g[/youtube]

Help me out here. At 0:50, there’s a few seconds of two characters having intense, premium-cable sex. One of them is Rex, and the other is…well, people, I think it’s Gwen Cooper. I spent all afternoon trying to convince myself that it’s not her, but after serious investigation, I can’t identify another character who this could be. If it’s Gwen, then she and I need to have a serious talk. She cheated on Rhys once in the past, but that was before they were married and had a baby, and we all moved past it. But now? Gwen, how could you? Please offer alternative theories in the comments below, if only to shut down my crazy.

We’re introduced to a new character here, Vera Juarez (Arlene Tur, whose hair looks too light and long to be Rex’s bed partner — I checked). She’s a doctor who gets involved with the Torchwood team, and it is suggested in this video that through her eyes, we’ll see a critique of our current healthcare system, which apparently breaks down pretty quickly in the wake of the Miracle.

There’s also a hint here that Torchwood itself has ties to the Miracle. Says Rex, “There’s a link between your old Institute and the Miracle, and now they want to kill you for it.” Is the link Jack and his immortality? Or something more nefarious that the Institute was engaged in back when it was a larger organization? (As it stands, Torchwood doesn’t exist beyond Jack and Gwen. At one point, Rex yells, “There is no Torchwood!” to which Jack yells back, “It’s us!”)

I find it interesting that Starz, at least in its promotion of the show, is downplaying two themes that were crucial to the first three seasons of TORCHWOOD: sex and aliens. This featurette gives us the first glimpse at a sex scene (the aforementioned romp between Rex and Maybe Gwen). John Barrowman told EW last month that his character (who is omnisexual) would be seeing some action this season with a man, and gay relationships are certainly not something this show has ever shied away from depicting. But not once has Starz hinted at Jack’s indiscriminating sexual appetite in its preview materials for the show.

As for the aliens, only time will tell if they’re behind the Miracle, but everything seems to be leading toward a more terrestrial culprit.

TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY premieres July 8 at 10:00 PM on Starz and on July 14 at 9 PM on BBC1 in the U.K.

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