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7/1/07 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloTorchwood. Now it's over, I thought I'd try and produce some thoughts on it.
It could be so much better. But it's not. The effects are alright, but it's generally too glossy. Most of it is too easily forgettable. How are the audience meant to react emotionally when the characters themselves don't?
The Sex
There's nothing wrong with the sex, especially the range of relationships, but there's almost never any chemistry. I don't believe Gwen/Owen. I don't belive Tosh/random alien (especially Tosh/random alien, because consideirng it's her first lesbian relaitonship Tosh seems to have no reaction to it at all). I don't believe Owen/fifties lady. Ianto/Lisa I'll give them, and just about Ianto/Jack. Gwen/Reece, too. But the constant sex? At least suggest there's some attraction there first.
The Episodes
The best episodes seem to be human centred ones: the one with the dead guy narrating, the people lost in time, 'Cyberwoman', even 'They Keep Killing Suzie'. The first two are probably my favourites, though I'm biased when it comes to the fifties people because it includes two of my favourite British actresses. Still, the writing was very sharp: comments about bananas and the warnings of cigarettes, the man dealing with the state of his son, Gwen finding it hard to let go of the girl and so on. Cyberwoman uses Ianto perfectly (It's always the quiet ones) and gives him more emotional depth in one episode than the entire rest of the team get throughout the whole series. Ianto is broken. 'Suzie' rather shoehorns the Jack/Ianto in there at the end, though they're one of the few couples with any sort of tension beforehand, but it's not followed up on until episode 12, when Owen uses it to wound Ianto. 'Suzie' flails between good and bad quite wildly; it's one of the few episodes were I found myself respecting the villain. Suzie set all of this up, and it's a brilliant plan. It's just ruined when she keeps going on about how much better than her Gwen is, when Gwen is so clearly not. She fell for the plan, after all.
Torchwood shouldn't shine when the aliens aren't there, but it does. Aliens seem to make up for lack of characterisation, it seems. They get bogged down in the action, and you're left with a bunch of cardboard cut-outs chasing CGI through some interesitng set pieces. They're not a team. They're not even individuals. They're plot devices. When they're forced to put the aliens aside and look at the people on the team, it suddenly gets much better. The characters have to interact. They have to react.They have to act.
The Season
The hints were tantilising. The hints were good. Far more subtle than 'TORCHWOOD?' every single Who episode. Wel, far rarer, anyway.
So it's a pity the giant monster was (a) so poorly rendered and (b) so not what I was hoping for. After all the 'it's coming' stuff I was hoping for an actually scary villain. Something a bit more threatening. Something more representative of death or fate or whatever coming to claim Jack's soul. Not something that for a long time I was wondering if it was the Devil out of the Who episode. I don't suppose they're ever going to deal with the fact it left swathes of Cardiff dead, either. Or was that fixed in the same way Reece got to come back to life? I lost track.
Not good enough, Torchwood. I'm sorry, but no. Your subplot was better with the random people turning up all over the place. Why not focus on the plague? Or the Roman garrison? Torchwood v Romans could have been massive battles and eventual reconciliation. Torchwood v the Black Death could have been a tense fight against the clock. Jack versus CGI demon thing? Meh. Oh, and what was the point of showing 12 and 13 like a two parter? A cliffhanger might have been cool, but 13 really needed to be a two parter on it's own. Build up the threat a little more. Show people dealing with what's happening. More time for the team to react to the people they see. More creepy old guy.
The Characters
Jack: not the guy we met in Who
Ianto: easily my favourite, heartrending
Gwen: you can't be the special one and the normal one at the same time
Owen: still an arsehole
Toshiko: why is it so hard to give her a personality?
Or, in more depth.
Jack isn't the person he was in Who. Might be explainable by his death, and how he got back (and thrity centuries earlier), but for that they might actually have to explain some of that. It's like they're trying to make him angsty, but refusing to explain why. Doesn't work. I miss the charm, I miss the sense of humour. He has no emotional connection to his team, apart from that which is forced upon him by the plot. I can't believe he honestly cares. I can't believe he's capable of it any more, which is sad, because it feels as though they've stripped away everything that made me like Jack in the first place.
Ianto. I liked him first for being the quiet one, the one who was clearly running the joint for all that Jack was leader. I saw Cyberwoman around the same time I saw episode 10, so I was a bit skewed, but, but I'm glad I did see it. Suddently he's The Quiet One and all that it entails. And it's brilliant. He's slightly nuts with it all, and he loses it, and he's broken. Believably so. He even remains broken. And Jack seems to show him some affection beyond the flirting mentioned in earlier episodes. So, while the scene in 'Suzie' seems forced, it makes some sense. And Owen's picking up on it later is perfect. And the only scene in the finale that really got me? Ianto holding Jack's coat and sniffing it.
Why the hell did Gwen's kiss wake Jack? It makes no sense. There's been nothing to suggest any deep ties between them (except the occasional 'look how great Gwen is' moments which were always horribly forced). Gwen isn't that great. She was a relatively competent police officer when we met her, but as soon as she joined Torchwood she forgot all of that. She interesting because she's the 'normal' one, but it seems like RTD is so determined to have her be Speshul as well. It can't work. Let her be normal, let her be the newbie, and let the others save the world. If you're going to focus on her like that, make her kickass. There's no reason she couldn't be, with her background, either.
Oh, Owen. Commits daterape in the first episode. Not a good start (especially played for laughs), though at least it's consistent with his characterisation. He's an arsehole. At least it makes him interesting. There's no real chemistry between him and Gwen, but Owen just about strikes me as a character that would persue the relationship regardless. He's shown of being capable of 'finer' emotion in a variety of episodes, though again it doesn't make sense for him to fall so madly in love with the pilot. Not enough chemistry, and not entirely consistent with previous characterisation. But it's plot convenient. Le Sigh.
And poor Toshiko. Her only reaction to her first ever lesbian relationship (having apparently not even considered she might be bi previously) is that her parents would disapprove as much for the fact her lover isn't Japanese. Tosh never reacts properly to what's going on around her. She's not jaded though, either. She's just there. She spouts the appropriate techno-babble, she provides back up, and mostly she just wanders around. There's no sense of personality. She had an episode devoted to her, and we still don't know about her likes and dislikes, her emotions, her way of dealing with the job. She never even has any real thoughts on Gwen and Owen's relaitonship. She's mildly surprised at best, which considering she was meant to fancy the bloke... Poor Toshiko.
Next Season
What I want, for next season, is some character driven episodes. That don't focus on Gwen.
- A day in the life of Ianto. Makes tea, feeds pterodactyl, saves world quietly, sleeps with Jack.
- A completely Jack-centric episode (saves the day while the others are saving it elsewhere?) that doesn't dodge the obvious questions. Jack the con man.
- Toshiko has hobbies and interests and friends and family and enjoys her job and has an emotional reaction to the events happening around her. Another relationship for her, perhaps.
- Owen's past, explaining why he behaves the way he does now. Where is his family?
- Owen and Ianto are forced to work together to save the day for a whole episode (with some sort of heart warming resolution, or lots of alcohol).
- Gwen lets Reece actually find out what's going on. No sneaking around for the previews this time, please. Reece isn't suddenly compelled to join Torchwood, nor to blurt it's existence out to the world in general.
- Something highlights the fact thatIanto nad Jack are in a quasi-relationship, and that it's probably damaging for Ianto. Ianto gets jealous of the doctor?
I was surprised they were so explicit about the Who crossover at the end. It means this Torchwood and the latest season of Who overlap, and I'll be irritated if Who doesn't acknowledge the events of the final episode of Torchwood, because people from a variety of times all turning up at once? It's something you notice. I want to see the doctor deal with it where ever he is.
So, yeah. Torchwood. It's not bad, but it could be so much better. Maybe next season it will be. A couple of quotes from Girl-Wonder.org that pretty much sum it up to me:
Torchwood London: Hyper-professional massive organisation located in one of the most recognisable buildings in London, portrayed as high-resource, high-tech, bastards who stop at nothing to protect Britain and, if needed, the world.
Torchwood Cardiff: A mildly-psychotic pan-sexual immortal time-traveller and whatever three people he can manage to keep alive for the duration, a flaky civil servant, a pterodactyl, a morgue full of bodies and lots of alien technology just, y'know, lying about.
A friend and I have agreed that the moto of Torchwood is apparently: "Saving the Earth from our own incompetence, one gratuitous omnisexual encounter at a time!"
It could be so much better. But it's not. The effects are alright, but it's generally too glossy. Most of it is too easily forgettable. How are the audience meant to react emotionally when the characters themselves don't?
The Sex
There's nothing wrong with the sex, especially the range of relationships, but there's almost never any chemistry. I don't believe Gwen/Owen. I don't belive Tosh/random alien (especially Tosh/random alien, because consideirng it's her first lesbian relaitonship Tosh seems to have no reaction to it at all). I don't believe Owen/fifties lady. Ianto/Lisa I'll give them, and just about Ianto/Jack. Gwen/Reece, too. But the constant sex? At least suggest there's some attraction there first.
The Episodes
The best episodes seem to be human centred ones: the one with the dead guy narrating, the people lost in time, 'Cyberwoman', even 'They Keep Killing Suzie'. The first two are probably my favourites, though I'm biased when it comes to the fifties people because it includes two of my favourite British actresses. Still, the writing was very sharp: comments about bananas and the warnings of cigarettes, the man dealing with the state of his son, Gwen finding it hard to let go of the girl and so on. Cyberwoman uses Ianto perfectly (It's always the quiet ones) and gives him more emotional depth in one episode than the entire rest of the team get throughout the whole series. Ianto is broken. 'Suzie' rather shoehorns the Jack/Ianto in there at the end, though they're one of the few couples with any sort of tension beforehand, but it's not followed up on until episode 12, when Owen uses it to wound Ianto. 'Suzie' flails between good and bad quite wildly; it's one of the few episodes were I found myself respecting the villain. Suzie set all of this up, and it's a brilliant plan. It's just ruined when she keeps going on about how much better than her Gwen is, when Gwen is so clearly not. She fell for the plan, after all.
Torchwood shouldn't shine when the aliens aren't there, but it does. Aliens seem to make up for lack of characterisation, it seems. They get bogged down in the action, and you're left with a bunch of cardboard cut-outs chasing CGI through some interesitng set pieces. They're not a team. They're not even individuals. They're plot devices. When they're forced to put the aliens aside and look at the people on the team, it suddenly gets much better. The characters have to interact. They have to react.
The Season
The hints were tantilising. The hints were good. Far more subtle than 'TORCHWOOD?' every single Who episode. Wel, far rarer, anyway.
So it's a pity the giant monster was (a) so poorly rendered and (b) so not what I was hoping for. After all the 'it's coming' stuff I was hoping for an actually scary villain. Something a bit more threatening. Something more representative of death or fate or whatever coming to claim Jack's soul. Not something that for a long time I was wondering if it was the Devil out of the Who episode. I don't suppose they're ever going to deal with the fact it left swathes of Cardiff dead, either. Or was that fixed in the same way Reece got to come back to life? I lost track.
Not good enough, Torchwood. I'm sorry, but no. Your subplot was better with the random people turning up all over the place. Why not focus on the plague? Or the Roman garrison? Torchwood v Romans could have been massive battles and eventual reconciliation. Torchwood v the Black Death could have been a tense fight against the clock. Jack versus CGI demon thing? Meh. Oh, and what was the point of showing 12 and 13 like a two parter? A cliffhanger might have been cool, but 13 really needed to be a two parter on it's own. Build up the threat a little more. Show people dealing with what's happening. More time for the team to react to the people they see. More creepy old guy.
The Characters
Jack: not the guy we met in Who
Ianto: easily my favourite, heartrending
Gwen: you can't be the special one and the normal one at the same time
Owen: still an arsehole
Toshiko: why is it so hard to give her a personality?
Or, in more depth.
Jack isn't the person he was in Who. Might be explainable by his death, and how he got back (and thrity centuries earlier), but for that they might actually have to explain some of that. It's like they're trying to make him angsty, but refusing to explain why. Doesn't work. I miss the charm, I miss the sense of humour. He has no emotional connection to his team, apart from that which is forced upon him by the plot. I can't believe he honestly cares. I can't believe he's capable of it any more, which is sad, because it feels as though they've stripped away everything that made me like Jack in the first place.
Ianto. I liked him first for being the quiet one, the one who was clearly running the joint for all that Jack was leader. I saw Cyberwoman around the same time I saw episode 10, so I was a bit skewed, but, but I'm glad I did see it. Suddently he's The Quiet One and all that it entails. And it's brilliant. He's slightly nuts with it all, and he loses it, and he's broken. Believably so. He even remains broken. And Jack seems to show him some affection beyond the flirting mentioned in earlier episodes. So, while the scene in 'Suzie' seems forced, it makes some sense. And Owen's picking up on it later is perfect. And the only scene in the finale that really got me? Ianto holding Jack's coat and sniffing it.
Why the hell did Gwen's kiss wake Jack? It makes no sense. There's been nothing to suggest any deep ties between them (except the occasional 'look how great Gwen is' moments which were always horribly forced). Gwen isn't that great. She was a relatively competent police officer when we met her, but as soon as she joined Torchwood she forgot all of that. She interesting because she's the 'normal' one, but it seems like RTD is so determined to have her be Speshul as well. It can't work. Let her be normal, let her be the newbie, and let the others save the world. If you're going to focus on her like that, make her kickass. There's no reason she couldn't be, with her background, either.
Oh, Owen. Commits daterape in the first episode. Not a good start (especially played for laughs), though at least it's consistent with his characterisation. He's an arsehole. At least it makes him interesting. There's no real chemistry between him and Gwen, but Owen just about strikes me as a character that would persue the relationship regardless. He's shown of being capable of 'finer' emotion in a variety of episodes, though again it doesn't make sense for him to fall so madly in love with the pilot. Not enough chemistry, and not entirely consistent with previous characterisation. But it's plot convenient. Le Sigh.
And poor Toshiko. Her only reaction to her first ever lesbian relationship (having apparently not even considered she might be bi previously) is that her parents would disapprove as much for the fact her lover isn't Japanese. Tosh never reacts properly to what's going on around her. She's not jaded though, either. She's just there. She spouts the appropriate techno-babble, she provides back up, and mostly she just wanders around. There's no sense of personality. She had an episode devoted to her, and we still don't know about her likes and dislikes, her emotions, her way of dealing with the job. She never even has any real thoughts on Gwen and Owen's relaitonship. She's mildly surprised at best, which considering she was meant to fancy the bloke... Poor Toshiko.
Next Season
What I want, for next season, is some character driven episodes. That don't focus on Gwen.
- A day in the life of Ianto. Makes tea, feeds pterodactyl, saves world quietly, sleeps with Jack.
- A completely Jack-centric episode (saves the day while the others are saving it elsewhere?) that doesn't dodge the obvious questions. Jack the con man.
- Toshiko has hobbies and interests and friends and family and enjoys her job and has an emotional reaction to the events happening around her. Another relationship for her, perhaps.
- Owen's past, explaining why he behaves the way he does now. Where is his family?
- Owen and Ianto are forced to work together to save the day for a whole episode (with some sort of heart warming resolution, or lots of alcohol).
- Gwen lets Reece actually find out what's going on. No sneaking around for the previews this time, please. Reece isn't suddenly compelled to join Torchwood, nor to blurt it's existence out to the world in general.
- Something highlights the fact thatIanto nad Jack are in a quasi-relationship, and that it's probably damaging for Ianto. Ianto gets jealous of the doctor?
I was surprised they were so explicit about the Who crossover at the end. It means this Torchwood and the latest season of Who overlap, and I'll be irritated if Who doesn't acknowledge the events of the final episode of Torchwood, because people from a variety of times all turning up at once? It's something you notice. I want to see the doctor deal with it where ever he is.
So, yeah. Torchwood. It's not bad, but it could be so much better. Maybe next season it will be. A couple of quotes from Girl-Wonder.org that pretty much sum it up to me:
Torchwood London: Hyper-professional massive organisation located in one of the most recognisable buildings in London, portrayed as high-resource, high-tech, bastards who stop at nothing to protect Britain and, if needed, the world.
Torchwood Cardiff: A mildly-psychotic pan-sexual immortal time-traveller and whatever three people he can manage to keep alive for the duration, a flaky civil servant, a pterodactyl, a morgue full of bodies and lots of alien technology just, y'know, lying about.
A friend and I have agreed that the moto of Torchwood is apparently: "Saving the Earth from our own incompetence, one gratuitous omnisexual encounter at a time!"
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Date: 7/1/07 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 7/1/07 02:12 pm (UTC)