![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lullabelleSo I watched Torchwood in more or less one sitting. All three seasons, during the course of one rainy week in December, when I was laid up with the pig plague.
It took me a couple of days to sort my thoughts enough for me to actually write down what I thought of Children of Earth, and even then this is all very knee-jerk. I did my best not to edit it as I typed it up, because it's what I thought before I became at all involved in the fandom. I think I had a different take on a lot of it because I didn't have any expectations. It was all immediate for me. Looking back on this, even just a few months later, is interesting.
Edited to say: Obviously, spoilers for CoE.
Pacing -- off like a shot, tight storytelling, completely uncampy, but loses its sense of whimsy, which I kind of miss. Improvement of film quality and effects.
The old man was annoying, but he was probably meant to be.
The 456 were a very effective villain. By effective, I mean it made my skin crawl off my body and hide under the bed. I flinched everytime it pussed on the glass, or whatever that was.
TW stumbled across a few cardinal horror tropes and applied them with surprising deftness. 1) Kids are scary. 2) Less is more. Children-are-creepy has been beaten to death recently, but TW brings a new-enough twist to it to keep it from being gimmicky, directing the alien threat towards the kids instead of through the kids and towards the adults. The 456 are an all-but-unseen threat that want 10% of the world's children... so that they can get high. And we've just cranked the evil factor up to 11.
A little lower on the evil scale is John Forbisher, the government fall guy whom you want to feel bad for, but between issuing a kill order on Torchwood and making every bad (read: cowardly) decision available to him, he manages to sidestep pretty much any sympathy you might be inclined to throw his way.
Johnson -- freaky shit, hard as nails, liked that she wasn't mindless and they were able to sway her in the end.
Lois -- really liked her, hope she joins Torchwood, though she might catch hate if she does, since she will essentially be filling Ianto's shoes, and the fanosphere seems pretty unwilling to let him go.
Rupesh -- excellent red herring. Replacement for Owen? Nope! Government plant. Now a dead government plant. Took me completely by surprise. I will note, however, that it bothers me that all the minority characters with the exception of Lois are dicks, and post-Tosh Torchwood is very white. Grumble. Also, the projects where Ianto's family lives? Very white. Just sayin'. Not really going to blow this too out of proportion, because there's only so much you can do in 5 hours, and most of the new characters who are introduced are in some way assholes, so choice rolls are at a minimum. But, still. White-ass projects.
Alice and Steven. Guess it makes sense that, with as much ass as Jack supposedly gets, he'd eventually fertilize someone, but it's still strange to see him in a family setting, and it only serves to drive home how much he doesn't really belong, a point already brought up by the new and awkward note his relationship with Ianto has taken.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel Gwen was underplayed. Oops! Pregnant, can't do shit. The whole Gwen's-knocked-up plotpoint irritated me. It felt like a convenient way to remove her from the show without killing her, since it would be unlikely she'd leave Torchwood otherwise, especially considering she seemed firmly against children until she actually got pregnant. Frustrating. I hope Eve Myles comes back for series four. I really do love Gwen. Another reason her pregnancy bothered me is because it tied her to Rhys more firmly and... well, I've never really gelled to Rhys. He's boring. It's like they created an everyman character and succeeded just a little too well. Gwen and Rhys escape Cardiff in a potato truck just to give Rhys something to do. But anyways.
The real meat of the miniseries, character-wise, is Ianto and Jack, both together and seperately. You get to meet Ianto's family, which is really the first time you see Ianto at all outside the Torchwood environment. The whole Ianto storyline is bittersweet and open to a million interpretations simply because he never gives anything away. You can interpret however you will, but you never really know Ianto's motivations for anything. This makes him interesting. It also, coupled with a cute face, a very nice behind, and a canon relationship with his smoking hot boss, made him a fangirl magnet. He was very much a choose-your-own-adventure character and it made him a quiet kind of wild card. In retrospect, his death shouldn't have come as a surprise. By killing off Owen and Tosh in the series 2 finale, right after revealing their origin stories in "Fragments", RTD had already displayed a penchant for offing characters after major revelations. I know there was a lot of speculation over whether or not his death was homophobic. I'm going to vote a tentative 'no', just because Torchwood destroyed pretty much everything it had, except for Gwen who seems irritatingly immune, and Rhys who is caught up in her magical immunity wake.
I do think there was a little bit of cheap emotional manipulation involved. By showing that Ianto is uncomfortable with his "couple" status outside of the confines of Torchwood, and having people identify him as gay regardless of how he identifies himself, it shows that he is taking his relationship with Jack seriously. He's thinking of himself and Jack in a real-world context and it's troubling him, because they're freaking doomed. I think he's also afraid to let Jack know just how deeply he feels for him, knowing how many people Jack's loved and lost before him, and will after him. Ianto will always be one of many. I think there's some fear of rejection, since Jack's been pretty elusive about quantifying exactly what it is he and Ianto have. When he concedes they're a couple, the very next scene he bitches about how he hates the term couple. Jack may love Ianto, but he's certainly not copping to it. Jack is an elusive douche. But long story short, CoE teases a love story out of a what was mostly an off-screen relationship, and then blows it to bits by killing off the more unrequited partner. He can only tell Jack he loves him when he doesn't fear the consequences anymore. Jack doesn't say it at all. It's pretty fucking tragic, and played for absolute maximum pain. So I feel like I was a little manipulated, but I think they achieved exactly what they were going for here. Which was carnage.
Jack is the focal point for this whole thing. Everything that happens here is a result of his actions. The moral grayness of this whole series is a thing of beauty. I could think about it until my brain pops. It's all a question of what is an acceptable sacrifice for survival. 12 kids for 45 years of safety? 10% of children for an undetermined length of safety? One kid to guarantee they go away, at least for now? What I find unforgivable about the whole thing is that evidently no one feels the need to follow up after the first incident. They get pulled into this alien protection racket in 1965. They pay off the aliens with 12 kids, and that's it? That's 45 years in which Torchwood or the government or whoever could have made sure the 456 never came back and that busload of doe-eyed orphans didn't give up their lives in vain. You don't just forget about impending alien threats like that. Way to be our first, last, and only line of defense, Torchwood, you shifty fucks.
Anyway, Jack's connection to the 1st coming of the 456 is revealed to the appropriate horror of Gwen and Ianto. It's this outpouring of righteous indignation from the peanut gallery that spurs Jack to tell the 456 to fuck themselves. And then the 456 kill everyone in Thames House, including Ianto. And Jack, but he gets better. (And I'm being callous here, but I cried like a bitch. I had to stop and take a walk after Ianto died, only to start crying again when Gwen came in to claim the bodies.) Nice going, champ. This is where RTD says to himself, "Well, Jack can't die, so how badly can we mangle him?" Again, Jack makes the hard decision to sacrifice his own grandson to transmit a debilitating signal to the 456. I admit, the series wraps a little neatly -- the 456 broadcast on the very wavelength that can defeat them? That's almost as bad as aliens coming to Earth who dissolve in water -- but not quite. But it's forgivable as the pseudo-science takes a backseat to the character drama anyway. My big question is, where the hell are they going from here? While I'm absolutely jazzed that Torchwood is coming back for series four, can the show survive on Jack alone? Which is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the return of Eve Myles. That, and she rocks, and I want to bone her into a puddle. And while I'm not freaking out over the death of Ianto, I am still mourning a bit, cuz he was totes my fave, and I was a little... perturbed?.... to hear that Jack got a hook-up on the Doctor Who Christmas special. It's his first outing since CoE, and this guy had better be pretty fucking special, or I'm going to dislike him on the grounds that he's not Ianto. Like, chocolate flavored taint special. And I might still hate him. I'll give the definitive update as soon as I've seen "The End of Time" which should happen sometime this week.
All in all, I give Torchwood: Children of Earth four out of five exploded pterodactyls.
A/N 1: Obviously, since writing this the future of Torchwood has become less certain. :'(
A/N 2: Saw the End of Time. I <3 Russell Tovey to bits and pieces on Being Human. I think he's fantastic. That said, he's goofy looking, and if he were to go down on me I'd be way too tempted to steer him by his ears.
A/N 3: As I've gotten more into the fandom, I've actually become more upset by Ianto's death. It's contagious. (I was also startled by the Gwen hate. That hasn't been contagious, but it's lonely here in the Gwen fan club.)
A/N 4: Also, thinking harder on the ever-controversial homophobia issue, I've become less convinced of my tentative "no", but that's another rant for another time.
It took me a couple of days to sort my thoughts enough for me to actually write down what I thought of Children of Earth, and even then this is all very knee-jerk. I did my best not to edit it as I typed it up, because it's what I thought before I became at all involved in the fandom. I think I had a different take on a lot of it because I didn't have any expectations. It was all immediate for me. Looking back on this, even just a few months later, is interesting.
Edited to say: Obviously, spoilers for CoE.
Pacing -- off like a shot, tight storytelling, completely uncampy, but loses its sense of whimsy, which I kind of miss. Improvement of film quality and effects.
The old man was annoying, but he was probably meant to be.
The 456 were a very effective villain. By effective, I mean it made my skin crawl off my body and hide under the bed. I flinched everytime it pussed on the glass, or whatever that was.
TW stumbled across a few cardinal horror tropes and applied them with surprising deftness. 1) Kids are scary. 2) Less is more. Children-are-creepy has been beaten to death recently, but TW brings a new-enough twist to it to keep it from being gimmicky, directing the alien threat towards the kids instead of through the kids and towards the adults. The 456 are an all-but-unseen threat that want 10% of the world's children... so that they can get high. And we've just cranked the evil factor up to 11.
A little lower on the evil scale is John Forbisher, the government fall guy whom you want to feel bad for, but between issuing a kill order on Torchwood and making every bad (read: cowardly) decision available to him, he manages to sidestep pretty much any sympathy you might be inclined to throw his way.
Johnson -- freaky shit, hard as nails, liked that she wasn't mindless and they were able to sway her in the end.
Lois -- really liked her, hope she joins Torchwood, though she might catch hate if she does, since she will essentially be filling Ianto's shoes, and the fanosphere seems pretty unwilling to let him go.
Rupesh -- excellent red herring. Replacement for Owen? Nope! Government plant. Now a dead government plant. Took me completely by surprise. I will note, however, that it bothers me that all the minority characters with the exception of Lois are dicks, and post-Tosh Torchwood is very white. Grumble. Also, the projects where Ianto's family lives? Very white. Just sayin'. Not really going to blow this too out of proportion, because there's only so much you can do in 5 hours, and most of the new characters who are introduced are in some way assholes, so choice rolls are at a minimum. But, still. White-ass projects.
Alice and Steven. Guess it makes sense that, with as much ass as Jack supposedly gets, he'd eventually fertilize someone, but it's still strange to see him in a family setting, and it only serves to drive home how much he doesn't really belong, a point already brought up by the new and awkward note his relationship with Ianto has taken.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel Gwen was underplayed. Oops! Pregnant, can't do shit. The whole Gwen's-knocked-up plotpoint irritated me. It felt like a convenient way to remove her from the show without killing her, since it would be unlikely she'd leave Torchwood otherwise, especially considering she seemed firmly against children until she actually got pregnant. Frustrating. I hope Eve Myles comes back for series four. I really do love Gwen. Another reason her pregnancy bothered me is because it tied her to Rhys more firmly and... well, I've never really gelled to Rhys. He's boring. It's like they created an everyman character and succeeded just a little too well. Gwen and Rhys escape Cardiff in a potato truck just to give Rhys something to do. But anyways.
The real meat of the miniseries, character-wise, is Ianto and Jack, both together and seperately. You get to meet Ianto's family, which is really the first time you see Ianto at all outside the Torchwood environment. The whole Ianto storyline is bittersweet and open to a million interpretations simply because he never gives anything away. You can interpret however you will, but you never really know Ianto's motivations for anything. This makes him interesting. It also, coupled with a cute face, a very nice behind, and a canon relationship with his smoking hot boss, made him a fangirl magnet. He was very much a choose-your-own-adventure character and it made him a quiet kind of wild card. In retrospect, his death shouldn't have come as a surprise. By killing off Owen and Tosh in the series 2 finale, right after revealing their origin stories in "Fragments", RTD had already displayed a penchant for offing characters after major revelations. I know there was a lot of speculation over whether or not his death was homophobic. I'm going to vote a tentative 'no', just because Torchwood destroyed pretty much everything it had, except for Gwen who seems irritatingly immune, and Rhys who is caught up in her magical immunity wake.
I do think there was a little bit of cheap emotional manipulation involved. By showing that Ianto is uncomfortable with his "couple" status outside of the confines of Torchwood, and having people identify him as gay regardless of how he identifies himself, it shows that he is taking his relationship with Jack seriously. He's thinking of himself and Jack in a real-world context and it's troubling him, because they're freaking doomed. I think he's also afraid to let Jack know just how deeply he feels for him, knowing how many people Jack's loved and lost before him, and will after him. Ianto will always be one of many. I think there's some fear of rejection, since Jack's been pretty elusive about quantifying exactly what it is he and Ianto have. When he concedes they're a couple, the very next scene he bitches about how he hates the term couple. Jack may love Ianto, but he's certainly not copping to it. Jack is an elusive douche. But long story short, CoE teases a love story out of a what was mostly an off-screen relationship, and then blows it to bits by killing off the more unrequited partner. He can only tell Jack he loves him when he doesn't fear the consequences anymore. Jack doesn't say it at all. It's pretty fucking tragic, and played for absolute maximum pain. So I feel like I was a little manipulated, but I think they achieved exactly what they were going for here. Which was carnage.
Jack is the focal point for this whole thing. Everything that happens here is a result of his actions. The moral grayness of this whole series is a thing of beauty. I could think about it until my brain pops. It's all a question of what is an acceptable sacrifice for survival. 12 kids for 45 years of safety? 10% of children for an undetermined length of safety? One kid to guarantee they go away, at least for now? What I find unforgivable about the whole thing is that evidently no one feels the need to follow up after the first incident. They get pulled into this alien protection racket in 1965. They pay off the aliens with 12 kids, and that's it? That's 45 years in which Torchwood or the government or whoever could have made sure the 456 never came back and that busload of doe-eyed orphans didn't give up their lives in vain. You don't just forget about impending alien threats like that. Way to be our first, last, and only line of defense, Torchwood, you shifty fucks.
Anyway, Jack's connection to the 1st coming of the 456 is revealed to the appropriate horror of Gwen and Ianto. It's this outpouring of righteous indignation from the peanut gallery that spurs Jack to tell the 456 to fuck themselves. And then the 456 kill everyone in Thames House, including Ianto. And Jack, but he gets better. (And I'm being callous here, but I cried like a bitch. I had to stop and take a walk after Ianto died, only to start crying again when Gwen came in to claim the bodies.) Nice going, champ. This is where RTD says to himself, "Well, Jack can't die, so how badly can we mangle him?" Again, Jack makes the hard decision to sacrifice his own grandson to transmit a debilitating signal to the 456. I admit, the series wraps a little neatly -- the 456 broadcast on the very wavelength that can defeat them? That's almost as bad as aliens coming to Earth who dissolve in water -- but not quite. But it's forgivable as the pseudo-science takes a backseat to the character drama anyway. My big question is, where the hell are they going from here? While I'm absolutely jazzed that Torchwood is coming back for series four, can the show survive on Jack alone? Which is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the return of Eve Myles. That, and she rocks, and I want to bone her into a puddle. And while I'm not freaking out over the death of Ianto, I am still mourning a bit, cuz he was totes my fave, and I was a little... perturbed?.... to hear that Jack got a hook-up on the Doctor Who Christmas special. It's his first outing since CoE, and this guy had better be pretty fucking special, or I'm going to dislike him on the grounds that he's not Ianto. Like, chocolate flavored taint special. And I might still hate him. I'll give the definitive update as soon as I've seen "The End of Time" which should happen sometime this week.
All in all, I give Torchwood: Children of Earth four out of five exploded pterodactyls.
A/N 1: Obviously, since writing this the future of Torchwood has become less certain. :'(
A/N 2: Saw the End of Time. I <3 Russell Tovey to bits and pieces on Being Human. I think he's fantastic. That said, he's goofy looking, and if he were to go down on me I'd be way too tempted to steer him by his ears.
A/N 3: As I've gotten more into the fandom, I've actually become more upset by Ianto's death. It's contagious. (I was also startled by the Gwen hate. That hasn't been contagious, but it's lonely here in the Gwen fan club.)
A/N 4: Also, thinking harder on the ever-controversial homophobia issue, I've become less convinced of my tentative "no", but that's another rant for another time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: "Torchwood"; Death by Torchwood?
Date: 2010-03-15 11:48 am (UTC)[RTD] talks about Ianto's death like he had no control, and it's a little patronizing. Honestly, I was much more upset about Day Four after I read some of RTD's interviews. Yeah, I agree with you! They have even explicitly stated that Russel wasn't going to have Jack sacrifice Steven to the 456 in the first draft, and this also made me upset. Because it was one of the only things I felt
justified(no not justified) explained their reasoning for killing Ianto. That something had to cloud Jack's judgment & force him to do a horrible sacrifice. But now we find out that they just wanted some "epic-character-death" to make it seem like the threat was real. wtf? Like you said, 456 wasn't that type of threat.I'm not sure if Ianto was quite to the "coming to terms" stage yet... he seemed too unsettled. I realized I used "coming to terms" a bit too loosely here. I actually meant that Ianto was beginning to consider what him and Jack were, what it meant & how. And knife-twisty is definitely the feeling I had! Owen & Tosh's deaths were a lot more resolved in that sense. As well as the fact that they died trying to make a difference, where as Ianto died a meaningless death in Thames House more resembling collateral damage.
Argh, even just hearing Jack say he loves Ianto too would have been a tiny bit of relief in all that angst. Instead we get "don't!" which doesn't cut close even if Jack ment it as in "don't speak, save your breath". I mean seriously, the man is dying! Let him waste all the breath he has left in his body if he wants! DX And the same could be said if it meant "don't love me, I'm not worth it!" which is such a slap in Ianto's face so I refuse to believe that is what Jack meant.
Basically [RTD] said that he'd earned the right to kill off a gay character. yeah, what the hell is that all about? Why was he so set on killing Ianto. Sometimes I get the feeling that he wasn't the one working to give us more Ianto. Especially considering the fact that Gareth was originally wasn't even signed on to regular-every-episode appearances. It was only after the writers fell in love with him & his performance (much like us viewers I'm sure). Coupled with the fact that later they intended to kill him off in Reset (he was actually the one who was going to get shot -- not Owen) which, even if I'm happy they didn't, would have made more sense considering Jack's reaction & resolve to bring Owen back using the glove (I think it would have made more sense, but like I said, I'm glad they decided to go with Owen because it gave him a lot of character-growth). Sure I understood that Jack felt it had been an unresolved death, but he was the one who preached about not using the glove like that and off he goes to save Owen. None-of-that in COE though, where he accepts Ianto's death without a fight. Still I digress, I'm happy it wasn't Ianto they killed off then and there in Reset.
And I've read that AfterElton article you linked: it had me spitting fire. Remind me of my initial reaction as well when reading it. A friend linked it, and I was like "nooooo they did not just say that!!!" but like I said, that's the opinions of the other side. -fumes silently-
My thoughts when the Hub exploded were pretty scattered. Thinking of all the cryo-frozen people & what would happen to them; Gray, Janet the Weevil & poor Myfanwy. As well as lost tech, lost memories & a Torchwood Three in rubbles.
But Russell Tovey. Handlebar ears and a lovely tush. Jack could do worse. Yeah but see that's what I'm worried about. Especially with Borrowman being all for it and saying that Frame would be a good companion for Jack in Torchwood. Even if I might agree at one point (if that's the road to healing he takes) right now I'm still vehemently disagreeing & feeling like it would make Jack even more unsympathetic, with him just quickly jumping from Ianto to Alonso. So to be honest I'm relieved that Borrowman ain't the one writing the scripts. ;)
Torchwood future?
Date: 2010-03-15 11:50 am (UTC)I'm also wondering about the Torchwood!USA talk. Are they planning on putting Torchwood four in the states? Or how else will they explain how Queen Victoria's Torchwood ended up on foreign soil? And will Torchwood work on Fox, and yeah... lots of doubts there.
I will probably also continue watching Torchwood, allegedly through my fingers, but right now I'm just pretending COE never existed and happily living in my series one+two bubble. Between the Torchwood Archives, novels & all the lovely fanfiction I'm pretty much set for the time being. And there is talk of new novels involving Ianto to be produced (at least some before the new series starts). Though hopefully having RTD off the project might do us fans a favor?
From one thing to another, have you listened to any of the Radio dramas? ♥
Re: Torchwood future?
Date: 2010-03-15 05:11 pm (UTC)As far as Jack not saying "I love you" goes... on one hand, it was incredibly depressing that he didn't say it, and made me even sadder if that's at all possible, but on the other hand I think I prefer it this way. I'm afraid if he had said it, what was a genuinely touching scene would have been pushed over into cheesy territory. It's one of those weird situations where, as someone who's really involved with these characters, I wanted to know definitively that Ianto's love was reciprocated (I think it was, but I know not everyone agrees) and Jack dropping an ILU would have sated my not-so-inner fangirl, but I think having him remain tight-lipped was more in character. The critic in me is glad they did it the way they did. I try to let the critic in me restrain the fangirl, but it's a struggle. :)
I agree about Reset. I remember thinking, when watching the episode, that it was weird that Jack would go through all the trouble of resurrecting Owen, and that it all clicked when watching the Declassified and realizing it was originally going to be Ianto. I'm glad it was Owen, though, because 1) I've never really liked Owen and 2) by losing his ability to eat, shag, and sleep, Owen's world was turned more upside-down than Ianto's would have been, and Owen is much more vocal when things are not going his way. Not gonna lie, though, I've been completely tempted to try my hand at rewriting "Dead Man Walking" and "A Day in the Death" featuring Ianto instead of Owen...
I'm actually kind of undecided on the Alsonso front. I'm cool with it as a flirtation, or a one-time hook-up, but I think any deeper feelings I'd have on the issue all depends on how the writers would handle it. Which is actually the same kind of feeling I have towards Torchwood!USA. The FOX thing has me genuinely concerned (Run away, Torchwood. Run away screaming.) since I"m still recovering from how badly they handled Dollhouse. I'm pretty sure RTD is still on Torchwood, it's just Dr. Who that he's left, since he's already said that he's got about fifteen episodes for Torchwood series 4 written. That's one thing that has me excited about a US Torchwood: the possibility of a 22 episode season. That's, like, double the TW. :D
And I have listened to the radio dramas. And loved them to tiny little bits. I heard there might be a new one out in May, which would be pre-CoE, and I REALLY hope it pans out....