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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 11:21 pm (UTC)Random Shoes has been the first episode of Torchwood to provoke random reactions and disagreement among my flist. I don't think I'll watch it though. I'll save my short attention span for watching tv and use it on seeing the Thomas Crown Affair for the gazillionth time.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 12:54 am (UTC)And you've basically summed up why I quit watching after the second episode. It's when we had the alien entity that had to have sex to survive (which substitute demon and it was an ep of 'Angel') and they had to very graphically show the couple going at it. BSG looked tame in comparison. It added nothing to the story and I felt they were just seeing how much they could get away with. It's like the swearing or the graphic violence. It was all screaming "Look how dark and edgy and adult we can be!"
Of course, my real breaking point was when Owen used a date rape spray on women and it was played as a joke and no big deal. The cluelessness of the writers was offensive.
Now Owen is with Gwen? Was she the female cop? I thought she was getting paired, sort of, with Jack. And Jack's been MIA? I heard he was doing some 'Who' eps, maybe he's off filming those.
You are tempting me to download one of the more recent eps just to see the improvement. Damn you!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 08:00 am (UTC)Owen's a skeezy, skeezy bastard, but to be honest with you, playing the alien pheromones thing for laughs was, in my opinion, nowhere near as dodgy as the end of Love & Monsters, where forcing someone to live, for eternity, as a paving stone (and one that was suggested was being used as a sex toy). Sorry...I have a grudge. A huge one.
Yes Gwen is having some sort of semi-affair with Owen as a result of cracking up just a little and having to compartmentalise her life - not being able to share it with anyone, err, except Owen, apparently. Who was apparently also screwing Suzie back in the day.
Jack isn't MIA he just hasn't been quite so much of a focus during the last few episodes and his posturing about how badass and morally ambiguous he is has therefore been kept to a minimum. I'm not sure if they're pairing him up with Gwen (eventually) because I don't think we are supposed to entirely like Owen, or if they're pairing him off with Ianto (after a very bizarre conversation they had at the end of "They Keep Killing Suzie.")
If you're going to download some more recent eps to see the improvement, just remember, I didn't say it was spectacular! But yes, it is, in my opinion, much better. If you're in the mood to watch quite a few, then go back and watch from Greeks Bearing Gifts (the last three), if you're in the mood for two, watch from They Keep Killing Suzie (last two), but if you just want to check out one, then go for They Keep Killing because the last episode was something of a "novelty episode". Also, They Keep Killing is, my god, all about consequences and doesn't really strive to make Torchwood look "emoishly tortured" as a result.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 08:08 am (UTC)And indeed, that sounds like a fair use of an attention span. Also, "Ptp ftw!" is my new battlecry.
Do people dislike this episode? I'm guessing because it didn't focus enough on Torchwood or they didn't like Eugene? Eh, well, I was equally confuzzled when people thought the end of Love & Monsters was sweet (yes, there's the grudge again...)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 05:40 pm (UTC)And now I'm waxing lyrical. Damn it I hate it when that happens...
I need a PTP FTW! icon.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 04:02 am (UTC)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*