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Torchwood- Season One Discussion (As It Happens) SPOILERS

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:14 / 11.11.06

I ask again- what is wrong with this show being stupid? It's everything we were sold it as- dumb, Wales-based fun with Captain Jack and some silly alien shit. I'm a big Who fan, and have since I was a kid expected little in the way of plausibility, or indeed continuity, from that. Why should I expect it from what was, as far as I can tell, billed from the outset as a more gung-ho, sillier Who spinoff? Who has had some absolutely fantastic, emotionally wrenching and dramatic moments- but they've been far outweighed by the really really dumb shit. Which was always fun anyway. In its best-part-of-four-decades history, there's been a lot of shit that was WAY worse than anything Torchwood could dream of.

Really, I sometimes think I'm watching TV programmes from a completely different place than most people are.

This is like the old Children's Film Foundation adventure stories they used to have on. Which I thought were great. Only with swearing. Which I think is great. And without Keith Chegwin. Which I think is even better. Why anyone expected anything else is completely beyond me.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

22:43 / 11.11.06

Part of the problem for me, Stoats, might be that I haven't been subject to any promo material or any exposure to Torchwood at all except for Torchwood in Doctor Who Season 2, where they were portrayed as a high-class, antiseptic, well-organized, hyper-efficient organization with bottomless funding, a well-trained army of staff and a serious mad-on to "protect" Queen and Country from The Great Unknown.

So, bereft of any advance knowledge of how goofy Torchwood is "supposed" to be, I'm dropped into a show with a bunch of goofballs working in a cave where they don't even do inventory to the point that they know there is a CYBERMAN CONVERSION UNIT IN THE BASEMENT.

There's this crazy shift from what I've seen of Torchwood in Who -- slick cool morally ambigous Torchwood -- to Torchwood Three, which is apparently hard-pressed to defend the UK from an agoraphobic Welsh senior citizen and a half-naked woman with a steel dowel running through her head. The organization has a direct due-to-incompetence body count that includes a pizza girl, for God's sake, and nobody seems all that bothered about it. They have a leader that spends more time standing on the roof than checking for things like Cyberman conversion units leeching off the power grid. They have a pterodactyl flying around loose that will kill anybody with barbecue sauce on their shirt, which being a messy eater I find super troublesome.

Believe it or not, there are things I like about Torchwood, but they all sort of hinge on somebody doing something with the fact that this is obviously a rag-tag half-assed branch of a shattered and headless organization. At the moment they're trying to play it both as cool and efficient as the Jack Bauer 24 Squad and as weird and wigged-out and on-the-fringes as the X-Files, and they just can't have it both ways.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

23:00 / 11.11.06

Come to think of it, every dead person on the show, save one, has died as a direct result of Torchwood. The only exception is the building super who got killed by the Weevil.

- Torchwood staffer is a serial killer that kills people to get chances to use her glove.
- Torchwood newbie hurls a chisel at a meteorite, releasing alien gas which possesses a teenager and kills people.
- Torchwood dicks around with an alien artifact, starting a chain of events that ends with near-murder and suicide-by-cop.
- Torchwood staffer brings a Cyberman home and installs her in the basement with some power tools.

This is kind of weird.

23:07 / 11.11.06

Didn’t get the whole Ianto worship going on here, to be honest – handsome man, yes, but the character was so underwritten that everyone seemed to be projecting their hopes onto the blank space.

I suppose his blankness was a big part of Ianto's appeal. It certainly made the few lines he had appear more significant than they were. Having read all the interview bumph about bisexuality/pansexuality, his initial "I don't care" regarding sexuality intrigued me. Given his apparent role in the organisation (looking immaculate, tidying up), I thought he might be a sort of updated Jeeves/Albert archetype: the ever-resourceful, somewhat asexual manservant who has chosen to sublimate himself and his libido in servitude. I wondered whether there might be elements of masochism underpinning that largely inscrutable exterior.

But no. His character isn't that well-constructed, t'would appear - and his sexuality (or, at least, his 'romantic' nature) is apparently focussed on his dead Cybercheesecake.

Is no-one at Torchwood interested in their colleagues' private lives? For a group of people who work closely together, and appear to eat/drink/socialise as a team, they seem bizarrely incurious and/or lacking in perception of what makes 'em all tick. When Gwen arrives, it's clear that they know fuck-all about Jack himself (they can't have tried too hard to get the information out of him; all it takes is a bit of high-up horizon-staring), and they'd never sussed that Ianto might not live solely for clearing-up.

miss wonderstarr

20:56 / 12.11.06

It's everything we were sold it as- dumb, Wales-based fun with Captain Jack and some silly alien shit. I'm a big Who fan, and have since I was a kid expected little in the way of plausibility, or indeed continuity, from that. Why should I expect it from what was, as far as I can tell, billed from the outset as a more gung-ho, sillier Who spinoff?

I don't think that's how it was billed. Here's a reminder from Wikipedia.

In the announcement, on October 17, 2005, BBC Three controller Stuart Murphy said, "Torchwood is sinister and psychological... as well as being very British and modern and real." Davies was quoted as describing the series as "a British sci-fi paranoid thriller, a cop show with a sense of humour... dark, wild and sexy, it's The X-Files meets This Life."[5] Davies has since denied ever making this comparison, instead describing the show as "alleyways, rain, the city".[6]

According to Davies, the name originated during production of the new Doctor Who series, when television pirates were eager to get their hands on the tapes. Someone in the production office suggested that the tapes be labelled "Torchwood" instead of "Doctor Who" to disguise their contents en route to London. Davies thought it was a good idea and connected the name to an idea for a modern British telefantasy programme in the style of American dramas like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel that he had been developing before he began work on Doctor Who.[7]

As Torchwood is a post-watershed show — that is, after 9.00 pm — it has more mature content than Doctor Who. Davies told SFX:

"We can be a bit more visceral, more violent, and more sexual, if we want to. Though bear in mind that it’s very teenage to indulge yourself in blood and gore, and Torchwood is going to be smarter than that. But it’s the essential difference between BBC One at 7pm, and BBC Three at say, 9pm. That says it all — instinctively, every viewer can see the huge difference there."[3]

Having said that, I enjoyed tonight's episode ~ the parts I didn't sleep through (not the programme's fault) seemed very reminiscent of Seven Soldiers' Sheeda.

20:59 / 12.11.06

Yes, tonight's wasn't bad - although perhaps a little well-trodden to comic-reading Barbeloids. Next week's looks a bit Blair Witch.

21:01 / 12.11.06

Well, I thought that episode was a bit more interesting, but I may well have been biased by the fact it was Peter 'Sapphire and Steel' Hammond doing the writing.

Almost echoing MattShepherd's remark about Torchwood being pretty much responsible for the deaths in previous episodes, they didn't do too well in preventing deaths in ep4 either. Arguably the only saving that went on was Gwen saving Jack.

Not entirely convinced by the 'Young Indiana Jones'-like suggestions of Jack being at various places at various times, to be honest - the creators may need to make it a bit more clear if he does so as a matter of choice or whatever, and whether he's stuck/choosing to remain on earth at this particular point in time.

I guess that as far as we know he was present on Earth in WW2, then zipped off with Rose and the EccDoctor, fought the Daleks and died and came back, and now is choosing to stay in present day Cardiff. Does that hang with the facts ? So presumably he was in Lahore before his WW2 escapades, but from his appearance it doesn't seem like he stuck around linear-ly from 1909 to 1940-whatever...

21:57 / 12.11.06

He was in Lahore on another con, before popping back to the future, and then back to the blitz, I suppose. That sequence on the train looked fantastic, with the rose petals beautifully contrasting with the muddy, washed out filter used on everything else. It was definitely the best looking episode so far, in terms of direction, even if the monster's persona was used a little too often.

The faeries weren't as bad CG as I was expecting. Sheeda-esque, like commented upon above, but when there were occasional close-ups, I thought that they looked more like Gollum.

One question though: Could somebody clarify what exactly the faerie's plan was? Am I right in thinking that they wanted to use Jasmine (because she was a chosen one..) to reclaim their lost forests? I was listening and all, but the exposition in Gwen's flat was a bit rushed and Barrowman decided to deliver it in a murmur..

22:00 / 12.11.06

I thought that they looked more like Gollum.

I thought they looked like Big Brother's Glyn, sprayed green. Moved a bit like him too.

22:14 / 12.11.06

I thought they looked like Big Brother's Glyn, sprayed green. Moved a bit like him too.

It was in the eyes..and the teeth were similar too.

"I'm stealing a child for the very first time a-woo, a-woo." etc.

Whisky Priestess

10:43 / 13.11.06

Thank you Llama. Classic.

13:53 / 13.11.06

I thought it was a little unnecessary to have the step-father being low-grade abusive, almost like they wanted to justify killing him. I'd have prefered the writers just left him as a normal person. It had already established that the fairys had no problem killing innocent old ladies for taking snaps of them, and if the plot is happy enough to let the little girl wander off with her old lady killing friends then does it really need the step-dad to be hitting her and calling her a b**ch?

Other than that it was an okay episode. The ending reminded me of a line in Preacher: "There are hundreds of stories in the naked city. Not all of them have a moral."

Next week's one looks like they go a little "Dog Soldiers".

14:05 / 13.11.06

if the plot is happy enough to let the little girl wander off with her old lady killing friends then does it really need the step-dad to be hitting her and calling her a b**ch?

Reminded me a little of the final Sex and the City where they had to invent a reason for Carrie to blamelessly get back with Big, so they had Mr Ballet uncharacteristically flip out and hit her.
While I really enjoyed this ep, it failed to involve any more of the team AGAIN, so it was basically Jack as the "I'm so sorry" tragic hero, backed up with Gwen as someone to give exposition to.
The thing about the fairies having a plan is probably irrelevant. Hammond loves his inexplicable beasties from outside time (in S&S the enemy usually was Time) which have an agenda all their own. That's proper horror, that.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

16:31 / 13.11.06

so it was basically Jack as the "I'm so sorry" tragic hero, backed up with Gwen as someone to give exposition to.

A bit like the latter half of season 2 Who then?

16:45 / 13.11.06

Stoats: It's everything we were sold it as- dumb, Wales-based fun with Captain Jack

Actually, that's the other thing that rags me about Torchwood - that it's not even Captain Jack now. Okay, so he's gone through some shit since the end of the first season of New Who, but fuck it - this was sold on the back of that show, with the promise of more from an underdeveloped character who people enjoyed watching. Torchwood's Captain Jack is a totally different person than Who's Captain Jack, bar the pretty face. He's a fucking mopey bastard. In those terms, even "dumb fun" is a stretch.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:35 / 13.11.06

Good point Zed, whenever I talk to people about the show the fact that Jack isn't who we expected him to be is a major talking point.

22:13 / 13.11.06

I miss the Jack of "Boomtown," the Jack that made whatever-shapes with his fingers at Mickey Smith, the Jack that got excited like a child over a space surf-board thing. The Jack that RTD writes.

Some of Jack's old spirit and charm was present in "Everything Changes," and that was probably because of who it was penned by. Jack in subsequent episodes is a joyless cross between the 9th Doctor in some of his sulkier moments and Angel throughout most of season 2 of his own show.

But, as has been pointed out above, people change. Especially when they've been brought back to life after being exterminated.

Whisky Priestess

10:13 / 14.11.06

Even Angel was a bit more humorously self-undermining re the broodiness and black flappy coats than miseryguts Jack at the moment. Not that I want him to leap and gurn like the Doctor, but ... he's had a face like a smacked since the end of Episode 2, pretty much, and it's just a bit dull.

I notice no further development of Owen or reference to his snog with Gwen in this episode. Given that so fucking little screen time is spent on developing ANY of the characters (as opposed to reinforcing what we already know, e.g. time-travelling immortal brooding sexypants Jack, yawn) it sometimes makes me wonder where, exactly, the 50 minutes go.

And when was the last time Jack tried to pull a con? IMO Torchwood should be more like a hi-tech Cardiff A-Team and less like the cast of an especially depressing Mike Leigh film. The miserable bunch.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:48 / 14.11.06

I liked this one- liked the Yeats stuff I've always loved that poem), though the bit right at the end was a little heavy-handed, although I guess they needed some sort of coda after the plot ended the way it did.

I especially liked way it was(n't) wrapped up- there are always so many complaint about deus ex machinae(?) in TV sci-fi, it's quite nice to have one where our heroes get confronted by an unstoppable menace, and just... have to back down and, y'know, not stop it.

wonderstarr- actually, now I come to think of it I do remember them chucking around words like "psychological" and "intelligent"... I guess I just didn't really believe them, especially after seeing the promo posters and trailers.

Whisky Priestess

15:08 / 14.11.06

Yeah, I did like the fact that Jack didn't conquer all. Fingers crossed the evil fairies, ebing (so far) unbeatable), will recur ...

19:02 / 14.11.06

Come to think of it, every dead person on the show, save one, has died as a direct result of Torchwood. The only exception is the building super who got killed by the Weevil.

- Torchwood staffer is a serial killer that kills people to get chances to use her glove.
- Torchwood newbie hurls a chisel at a meteorite, releasing alien gas which possesses a teenager and kills people.
- Torchwood dicks around with an alien artifact, starting a chain of events that ends with near-murder and suicide-by-cop.
- Torchwood staffer brings a Cyberman home and installs her in the basement with some power tools.

This is kind of weird.

I'd forgotten about that chisel. Prior to this I'd worked out a bodycount which was about one in favour of Torchwood but now - fuuuuuck, they're responsible for all the deaths!

And in the last episode (missed it this Sunday, watching V for Vendetta on DVD they get beaten, you say?

If someone from HQ doesn't show up in the next two weeks I'm calling shark-jump on this bee-yatch.

Hydra vs Leviathan

10:02 / 15.11.06

I wasn't impressed by the fairy episode tbh. "I need a drink" was a fucking awful, moment-breaking line (maybe it was the way he said it, but it reminded me of Young Vader's "NOOOO!!!!!11!"). Estelle being presented as Jack's OneTrueLove, rather than one of the many wartime sweethearts whose hearts he broke in many wars, in many times and on many planets. Really, really shit CGI (why did the fairies - these mysterious beings which havbe hidden from direct viewing by any humans but their Chosen Ones for millennia - have to become visible at a fucking garden party, when they could just as easily have killed the stepfather the way they killed the others?). Some nice concepts, but cack-handed execution, IMO.

(I think the fairies should have actually killed the 2 girls who bullied Jasmine, as well as possibly the teacher for trying to save them, to better show their, and Jasmine's, inhumanity, while still making Jasmine the character who the viewer [or at least the viewer who had a childhood anything like mine] thoroughly identifies and sympathises with - now that's good horror...)

anyone else get a slight Roald Dahl vibe?

11:43 / 15.11.06

I actually quite enjoyed it. I guess it comes down to the fact that I'm accepting it as fluff and not expecting better. I liked that there was no big deal made of Jack being in love with someone so much older than him.

I would have liked to see at least some mention of Ianto's screwup and departure in the previous episode though, instead of him just being back there like nothing happened. Might also have been nice to see Japanese lady* get more than her customary handful of lines too.

* shee, I can't even remember her name - way to go, writers.

12:03 / 15.11.06

Might also have been nice to see Japanese lady* get more than her customary handful of lines too.

Toshiko Sato. Wikipedia is only a click away.

12:17 / 15.11.06

Aye, but I was trying to make a point.

06:47 / 16.11.06

Yeah, it was odd that nobody had a pop at the guy whose evil robot girlfriend tried to kill them all and duff up their pterodactyl recently. You would think a thing like that would linger in the mind...

Maybe Ianto's slipped them all the retcon pill?

Whisky Priestess

09:30 / 16.11.06

I beg to differ! Jack did grasp Ianto fairly hard by the shoulder early on the episode, and if I'm not mistaken he also gave him a bit of a look. You know the kind. The kind that says it all, obviating the need for tedious explanation.

I guess you had to be there.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:26 / 16.11.06

It seems to suggest that all the episodes might have been written at the same time - although if an actual arc materialises, that might shed a bit more light on that.

17:13 / 16.11.06

Yes, I saw the bit of a look, too.

I'm just not grasped by Torchwood yet. Which is bad, what, five episodes into the season? Jack's "What was I supposed to do?" should have been a better moment than it was, but at least it tried, over and beyond expecting the Fairies to say "My precious..." at any point.

I want to be grabbed by this. I really do. But right now it'd take something major or at least someone else in the Torchwood organisation stopping and considering that Torchwood Cardiff seem to have a prodigious mortality rate in their work and calling in a 360-degree management review to keep me relatively interested. But then that doesn't matter, because I'm one person, and opinions are like elbows...

It's also more that I seem to see bits thieved from other shows whenever I watch an episode. Standing-on-the-roof a lá Angel, the basketball game a lá Firefly, invisible assassins a lá Stargate SG-1 (although what they haven't done there is debatable)...

When the a lás' stop and the orginality creeps through, I think that will be the time to watch. Also, when Captain Jack stops taking the amitryptaline, but that might be a side point...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:31 / 16.11.06

I did quite like this episode, right up until the last five minutes. I wouldn't mind them losing if it didn't yet again, undermine their claim that they're capable of doing anything (if,as Captain Jack reminds us, the 21st century is when it all changes, then on the evidence so far Torchwood are going to have zero effect), but also that if you edited every incidence of the team out of the story it doesn't change what happens one iota. I assumed at the very least that Captain Jack would realise that fairies tended not to like steel and that he was carrying a gun that fired pieces of metal at quite fast speed, but no. I presumed that it was important to the story that the fairies slaughtered everyone but him (seeing as it wasn't him that ran over the child and presumably the rest of the squad couldn't have all fit into the one car), but no, it turned out that it wasn't.

Plus it seems like we're in danger of forgetting that Captain Jack used to be a dashing rogue and thinking that he's actually fucking Highlander, though I suppose this whole thing in India could be when he worked as a Time Agent and had some morals.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:34 / 16.11.06

I presumed that it was important to the story that the fairies slaughtered everyone but him

I just assumed the fairies couldn't kill him.

22:13 / 16.11.06

Over on the second Torchwood website there's a letter in the Captain Jack section that indicates that the Lahore incident takes place after his time with the time agency, but before The Empty Child. So, he was a con-artist at the time.

The letter is here.

It's interesting that I've learned more about the characters from imaginary IM conversations on a website that most of the viewers don't read. Nice move, production team.

14:12 / 17.11.06

My son spotted something on one of the old Dr Who DVDs that might be of interest to Torchwood followers. In the Patrick Troughton adventure "The Mind Robber" - I bet this is common knowledge, right? I'll carry on regardless - there's a chap, a writer, who says (and don't expect this to be word for word accurate):

"Have you ever heard of Captain Jack Harkaway? I wrote his adventures in Epic comic. 212 of them!"

I know the surname isn't exactly the same, but it's close, eh?

14:25 / 17.11.06

Ooh, nice spot that lad. Also, anyone notice the refernce to possibly the worst Davison stories ever when Jack mentions the Mara? I wonder if the fairies were modelled on Tegan?

Whisky Priestess

15:10 / 17.11.06

Oh my God ... 212 episodes of Torchwood? The mind boggles.

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