SPOILER ALERT: Do not read any further if you haven't watched the ninth episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. We're launching this blog to coincide with US broadcast dates so there's a place all fans can discuss the show together. Sorry, UK viewers – if you're waiting for the show to air on BBC1, do come back here after Thursday's broadcast..

Dan Martin's episode eight blog

The Gathering

We approach Miracle Day's final furlong two months after the events of the Colasanto residence (although we don't get told this until halfway through), with the Torchwood team scattered across the world, divided as the storylines begin to merge together. That's fairly typical of a team that's been so hapless this year. Deported back to Wales once again, Gwen Cooper, the world's least fuel-conscientious secret agent, is now looting pharmacies for her neighbourhood's medication, like Robin Hood via Tank Girl via Harriet Harman. Actually, this stuff works pretty well.

The pre-credits bit with the old man bemoaning his poor Category One friend who only had a bad back recalls some of the funny, quirky Welshness from the old days. The inevitable conclusion to this arc, as she faces up to finally losing her dad is actually genuinely heartbreaking.

Back in the US, Rex at least seems happy, relieved to be working with some professionals again as the audience. Now he's not being constantly chided with passive aggressive flirting by Jack, he's developed a new bromance with the chain-smoking Q from Star Trek (it can't kill you any more, did anyone mention that?), and Q from Star Trek seems perfectly happy to let Rex chase up any red herring he pleases. The improbable resolution to all this looks like something to do with a pulp fiction novelist from the 1930s and the wiping away of the records of the three families. The CIA sure looks a fun place to work under the Miracle.

Meanwhile, Oswald Danes, the most wanted man on the planet, has boarded a flight to Cardiff undetected, posed as a pizza delivery man to infiltrate the Cooper household, gurned his way into an uneasy position of trust and is now himself a de facto part of the Torchwood team. What's the betting that next week's final awful moral challenge will emerge when it turns out to be Oswald saving the day? Whatever.

We're off to Shanghai for the finale. Shall we kill Hitler or something? Anything?

Aliens. Finally aliens

Of course it falls to Jilly Kitzenger to finally show us some aliens.

Displaying a heroic lack of self-awareness or regard for her own safety, she accepts a job from the families and waits in China for two months for one meeting with a child-man apparently seconded from work experience at Apple who directs her to the Blessing, a gnarly red tree-barky thing bisecting the planet from Shanghai to Beunos Aires. Obviously.

Samesex watch

The Scotland sequence with Esther briefly made me wonder whether Jack was about to revert to fancying the female form, until Torchwood's inbuilt plot swerve which resulted in Rex and Esther being set up to get together in the finale. Meanwhile, Evil Charlotte is revealed as a lesbian. Evil Lesbians! Is there no gay man's fantasy that Miracle Day will not plunder?

Transatlantic tension

Back in Wales, with all the might of the CIA and Torchwood's scavenged alien tech, it's stoic, bumbling Rhys who has the presence of mind to work out the thing about Shanghai and Buenos Aires being on opposite sides of the planet. Go Rhys! Literally, go!

Classified information

• What has happened to Esther's sister?

• What has happened to Rex's dad?

• If Torchwood is now working separately from the CIA once again, and Rhys is having to take a driving job for the overflow camps, who exactly is bankrolling all of these international flights?

• I am beginning to accept that there is probably no way back for Doctor Vera. When things get resolved next week, are we to assume that Rex is going to die from his chest wound? And if he does, will anybody miss him?

• I was supposed to go on Radio 5 Live on Thursday to speak in defence of Miracle Day. I was the nearest they could find to a fan. The item was dropped in favour of Real News. That has to say something, right?