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Well the timeline is probably a little screwy as the Daleks who attacked Canary Wharf had previously been hanging around outside of time/space in the Void
Y'see, this is the thing about continuity in Who - it is and it isn't. There are basically two levels of continuity - Doctor continuity, which is everything as the Doctor experiences it, so that for him and Rose the Docklands Dalek Death Match takes place after 'Dalek'; and linear continuity, i.e. linear time as experienced by everyone else, in which case the events of 'Dalek' (which is set in, what, 2010? Can't remember, but after 'Army of Ghosts/Doomsday') occur after the Sarfothariva Cyberman Submission Screwjob. And the problem, I think, is that RTD really doesn't have a handle on how to integrate these two.
It's hardly the man's fault of course. Continuity for Who, especially the second season, in light of Ms Piper's departure announcement, has been worked out pretty much on the fly, and Torchwood perhaps even more so - but I think it's something that's going to need to be handled at some point, especially in the 'Wood, which would be ten times as interesting if they made something of the fact that Cap'n Jack, a former time traveller himself, is now effectively marooned in Blair era Cardiff. And Owen's drank all the rum, too.
One thing which would have been really interesting - in terms of the van Statten Torchwood theory - would be to have the climax of that plotline in Torchwood terms be 'Dalek' - i.e. retell the episode from the point of view of the Torchwood team who have, somehow, got involved in it unbeknown to the Doctor or VS. It would be tricky, but with clever editing and plotting it could be made quite interesting, it would be a more leftfield way of doing the inevitable Torchwood/Who crossover, and it would be a clever way of handling the linear/doctor continuity differences - Jack, for example, would have to avoid letting the Doctor see him because the Doctor hasn't met him yet. Given Jack's mad-on for the Galifreyan this alone would provide some dramatic tension.
Basically, as absurd as it seems to say it, I'm thinking that B5 handled its use of time travel better than the Whoniverse guys are managing currently, and that wasn't even a primarily time travel oriented show. You could have removed the time travel element - make the sections in the future just 'visions' - and that would require very little changing of the plot, though obviously the framing sequence for In the Beginning would be buggered. Whereas in the Whoniverse, it seems that time travel is probably a more essential mechanic. I mean - why isn't Torchwood trying to build Tardises, for fuck's sake? They've seen one, they've (presumably) given it at least some kind of preliminary scan, they've been following the Doctor for ages, they know about void technology now - why isn't there some loon trying to build one from scratch in a particle accelerator somewhere? And don't give me the 'maybe one of the other Torchwoods is doing it' line, because in that case why are we not getting to see that instead of watching this bunch off heed-the-balls fucking shit up before watching the rugby?
Ranted a bit there, sorry.
One thing that badly should happen, soon, is that whoever is running Torchwood, there should be an attempt to wrest control of Torchwood Five away from Jack. The man clearly isn't functioning right (and why isn't he being used to tell a story about PTSD? Seriously. The man was hunted down like a dog by alien killing machines, then vaporised, then brought back to life by something not of this world. That has to fuck you up), and he's making stupid decisions about his team who, as Haus points out, are responsible for more deaths at this point than any of the aliens we've seen thus far (incidentally, Gwen's getting over killing that guy awfully quick, isn't she?). Basically, what we need is for whoever the Torchwood equivalent of Admiral Caine is to get in there and start going over the logs. And, quite possibly, stay and fire the lot of 'em. |
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