What happened to Torchwood?!
Dec. 11th, 2006 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaNo, seriously, what happened to Torchwood? It got...good...
Cos, you know, at first I watched it because it was set in Cardiff, and I'm from Cardiff, and thus I felt some kind of loyalty to it. And I kept a running tally in my head of how many genuine Cardiff accents I heard (zero, and possibly two halves), and how many people with vaguely neutral british accents, like half the native Cardiffians have (0 until this week, now 1 with an oddly accented brother). And how many times I heard someone speak welsh (again 0, though more defensible as very few people in Cardiff do speak welsh). Oh, and to listen to people saying "Ianto" and making it rhyme with "Panto."
And you know, it was kind of crap. It was fun, and sometimes you got women in metal bikinis covered in barbeque sauce punching pterodactyls in the face. But a lot of the time it was Russell T Davies campness that worked reasonably in Doctor Who let loose and desperately trying to be "adult". Which basically seemed to mean totally gratuitous use of "adult" content and lots of extremely heavy handed explanations of exactly how anyone was feeling at any given moment. Usually Gwen. Asking why she was investigating aliens and shit instead of drinking tea with Rhys.
It was kind of frustrating, because it had this great set up (and yes, I actually am interested in Gwen's changing as she's shoved into this totally shocking new world, but a little subtlety, please?) and relationship triangles that gets kind of wrecked by a) lack of subtlety and trust in the audience and b) a desperate attempt to...prove themselves? Like show they're "not afraid to be 'dark'". Which seems fake and also clashes with the simplistic, camp storytelling they often use.
So, after the ATTROCITY of an episode that was Countrycide - which, seriously, how can an episode with so much genuine promise and suspense become so fucking lame?! To the point where Jack coming in through a wall on a tractor and shooting people in the knees with shotguns didn't redeem it at all... After that I was about ready to give up.
But then....the last three episodes have actually been pretty good. Possibly this has something to do with a lack of Jack - who I want to like, but he's too righteous. The whole, "Yes! I WILL kill people! I'M THAT HARDCORE!" is getting old.
Because, Greeks Bearing Gifts - very traditional New Who plot which was nonetheless pulled off nicely. Good guest actor. Nice to focus on Toshiko for a change. Tosh's speech at the end about drowning in ink was surprisingly un-anvilly, or maybe I was just more "in the moment"? Basically a competant episode that was made surprisingly good by the way they pulled of the gay storyline. It really didn't feel gratuitous. Like, the way the villain was written, it made perfect sense for her to seduce Tosh to get what she wanted - Tosh being the weakest link in Torchwood in this instance. If she'd been a guy the same thing would have happened. Point is, unlike the second episode, this approached the issue very organically and I was impressed by that.
Next up was, They Keep Killing Suzie. Okay, so Suzie turns out to be psychopathic and terrifying, but I really was on board for the ride, with each twist being shocking and sad. I bought Suzie's sorrow and desperation to live. I did not find her unsympathetic. In fact, the heavy-handed monologuing I usually find tiresome in this series got me. The revelation that Gwen was Suzie's replacement in Owen's life too was cutting and is a good example of the subtlety they can exercise when they want to. I still have hopes Gwen will wake up and realise what an asswipe Owen is. If I am lucky, she will actually lamp him one.
And then, we get Random Shoes.
I love that episode. It was everything Love & Monsters should have been but wasn't because they were trying to make it hilarious (as opposed to the quiet, sad humour of this episode) and it didn't have the most fucking disturbing ending I've ever seen on TV aimed at kids. Love & Monsters was just screwed up, Elton wasn't connected enough with the characters to make me care and the bit I did care was ruined by the horrific ending.
Eugene's relationship with Gwen was beautiful and somehow not creepy. It built slowly to the point where when he says, "I'm sorry," and she says, automatically, "It's okay," without realising what she'd done, it felt completely natural. It managed to be a story about one dude with no fantastic or magical elements, but also a story about that magic eye, which really was a magic eye and which gave a reason for what was happening.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending where he was real for a moment. I think I like it, but it was weird. I certainly really felt for Gwen and it was nice to see her investigating and to see her empathy with people not be a cheap trick or ridiculously overplayed to the point of stupidity. I'm not sure what I think about the "Danny boy," bit, but again, I can live with it cos the rest of the episode was great.
Eugene was such a wonderful character that again, his overblown monologuing was not unwelcome. With his character, it worked. Or maybe, I just deal with the heavy-handedness a lot better when I feel they've earned it and I'm enjoying the episode.
But, Random Shoes was beautiful. I don't want to say it was worth putting up with Countrycide, because seriously, that episode was so fucking crap - so cliched and borderline offensive - that I don't want to make it okay. But Random Shoes was beautiful.
So yeah. I don't know what's up with Torchwood these days. We'll see.
What I do know is that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spiralsheep had the BEST IDEA EVER:
From now one, instead of saying, "Jumped the Shark," we should say, "Punched the Pterodactyl."
Personally I worry that Torchwood may have punched the pterodactyl with Random Shoes. I don't see how next week's episode can fail to disappoint now.
Cos, you know, at first I watched it because it was set in Cardiff, and I'm from Cardiff, and thus I felt some kind of loyalty to it. And I kept a running tally in my head of how many genuine Cardiff accents I heard (zero, and possibly two halves), and how many people with vaguely neutral british accents, like half the native Cardiffians have (0 until this week, now 1 with an oddly accented brother). And how many times I heard someone speak welsh (again 0, though more defensible as very few people in Cardiff do speak welsh). Oh, and to listen to people saying "Ianto" and making it rhyme with "Panto."
And you know, it was kind of crap. It was fun, and sometimes you got women in metal bikinis covered in barbeque sauce punching pterodactyls in the face. But a lot of the time it was Russell T Davies campness that worked reasonably in Doctor Who let loose and desperately trying to be "adult". Which basically seemed to mean totally gratuitous use of "adult" content and lots of extremely heavy handed explanations of exactly how anyone was feeling at any given moment. Usually Gwen. Asking why she was investigating aliens and shit instead of drinking tea with Rhys.
It was kind of frustrating, because it had this great set up (and yes, I actually am interested in Gwen's changing as she's shoved into this totally shocking new world, but a little subtlety, please?) and relationship triangles that gets kind of wrecked by a) lack of subtlety and trust in the audience and b) a desperate attempt to...prove themselves? Like show they're "not afraid to be 'dark'". Which seems fake and also clashes with the simplistic, camp storytelling they often use.
So, after the ATTROCITY of an episode that was Countrycide - which, seriously, how can an episode with so much genuine promise and suspense become so fucking lame?! To the point where Jack coming in through a wall on a tractor and shooting people in the knees with shotguns didn't redeem it at all... After that I was about ready to give up.
But then....the last three episodes have actually been pretty good. Possibly this has something to do with a lack of Jack - who I want to like, but he's too righteous. The whole, "Yes! I WILL kill people! I'M THAT HARDCORE!" is getting old.
Because, Greeks Bearing Gifts - very traditional New Who plot which was nonetheless pulled off nicely. Good guest actor. Nice to focus on Toshiko for a change. Tosh's speech at the end about drowning in ink was surprisingly un-anvilly, or maybe I was just more "in the moment"? Basically a competant episode that was made surprisingly good by the way they pulled of the gay storyline. It really didn't feel gratuitous. Like, the way the villain was written, it made perfect sense for her to seduce Tosh to get what she wanted - Tosh being the weakest link in Torchwood in this instance. If she'd been a guy the same thing would have happened. Point is, unlike the second episode, this approached the issue very organically and I was impressed by that.
Next up was, They Keep Killing Suzie. Okay, so Suzie turns out to be psychopathic and terrifying, but I really was on board for the ride, with each twist being shocking and sad. I bought Suzie's sorrow and desperation to live. I did not find her unsympathetic. In fact, the heavy-handed monologuing I usually find tiresome in this series got me. The revelation that Gwen was Suzie's replacement in Owen's life too was cutting and is a good example of the subtlety they can exercise when they want to. I still have hopes Gwen will wake up and realise what an asswipe Owen is. If I am lucky, she will actually lamp him one.
And then, we get Random Shoes.
I love that episode. It was everything Love & Monsters should have been but wasn't because they were trying to make it hilarious (as opposed to the quiet, sad humour of this episode) and it didn't have the most fucking disturbing ending I've ever seen on TV aimed at kids. Love & Monsters was just screwed up, Elton wasn't connected enough with the characters to make me care and the bit I did care was ruined by the horrific ending.
Eugene's relationship with Gwen was beautiful and somehow not creepy. It built slowly to the point where when he says, "I'm sorry," and she says, automatically, "It's okay," without realising what she'd done, it felt completely natural. It managed to be a story about one dude with no fantastic or magical elements, but also a story about that magic eye, which really was a magic eye and which gave a reason for what was happening.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending where he was real for a moment. I think I like it, but it was weird. I certainly really felt for Gwen and it was nice to see her investigating and to see her empathy with people not be a cheap trick or ridiculously overplayed to the point of stupidity. I'm not sure what I think about the "Danny boy," bit, but again, I can live with it cos the rest of the episode was great.
Eugene was such a wonderful character that again, his overblown monologuing was not unwelcome. With his character, it worked. Or maybe, I just deal with the heavy-handedness a lot better when I feel they've earned it and I'm enjoying the episode.
But, Random Shoes was beautiful. I don't want to say it was worth putting up with Countrycide, because seriously, that episode was so fucking crap - so cliched and borderline offensive - that I don't want to make it okay. But Random Shoes was beautiful.
So yeah. I don't know what's up with Torchwood these days. We'll see.
What I do know is that
spiralsheep had the BEST IDEA EVER: From now one, instead of saying, "Jumped the Shark," we should say, "Punched the Pterodactyl."
Personally I worry that Torchwood may have punched the pterodactyl with Random Shoes. I don't see how next week's episode can fail to disappoint now.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 07:52 am (UTC)I think it's especially interesting to compare his behaviour to Paving-Slab-Ursula, where he arbitrarily decided she should continue to live even though she had no means of independent movement or the possibility of interacting with pretty much anyone ever again except Elton, and his behaviour to the Cyber-girl in the Rise of the Cyberman two parter where he arbitrarily decides she should die because she's been cyberised. Even though she, like Ursula, seems to have her intelligence and (thanks to the Doctor disabling her "emotional inhibitor") emotions intact. Yeah, she was freaking out, but he didn't give her any sort of chance to move past that. And at least her mind was in a high-tech vehicle that could give her independence...
*headdesk*