| |
|
If you genuinely think 'Countrycide' resembled an episode of Scooby Doo or (I assume you mean the recent series of) Robin Hood in content or tone, then we are simply watching two different programmes and shouldn't bother trying to discuss this.
Yes, the scene where the crew were all gathered in the kitchen, every stupid one of them ending up captured, reminded me of Scooby-Doo. I know that comparison can be criticised ~ no, the Scooby Gang didn't get threatened with actual baseball bats and butchers' knives ~ but just the foolish, cartoonish way they all wound up lined up in the kitchen with the big bad reminded me of the way in Scooby-Doo people will get captured ("Zoiks, Fred, he got you too!!!") but it just doesn't really matter because you know they're going to get out of it.
I suppose part of it is also the sense that next week, it's going to be a new episode and new villain, and the same crew bantering at the start before driving off to seek out spooky stuff in their big black Mystery Machine. The lack of any really meaningful continuity or development.
So while I can see that my comparison has its flaws, I genuinely did think it during that scene (ie. I'm not pretending it reminded me of a kids' cartoon, to make a snarky point) and I think there are also some grounds of similarity in terms of tone and... lack of affect. Lack of resonance. Lack of anything really mattering... not genuinely scary, or funny, or moving. (And Robin Hood, too, has that knockabout, childlike quality where everything seems to me only to register on a shallow level: cardboard villains, plots tied loosely together, everything wrapped up to begin again almost from scratch next week.)
I didn't find that for Doctor Who, which despite its irritating traits often did move me and make me feel we were dealing with things that "mattered" to those involved ~ and I didn't find that for The X-Files, which as its fans would admit, did sometimes deal in "Monsters of the Week" but also worked through a long (OK, too long) character and narrative arc, where people changed, and discovered things that affected their lives or understanding of their pasts, and mourned, and loved... and I sound like the sappiest X-Phile there, but again, I'm trying to identify the sense that things mattered. The betrayals, the lust, the deaths in Torchwood seem to leave most people on this thread very cold.
Maybe it's asking too much to compare Torchwood to X-Files or even Doctor Who in that regard, because the former hasn't been running long enough to build up that mythos, depth and resonance. But the signs aren't really promising. Torchwood seems a lot more inept with its characterisation than The X-Files did in Season One, as I remember. People surely cared about Rose and both recent Doctors, even when they were relatively new characters ~ after five episodes, for instance, I think there was poignancy and resonance that Torchwood utterly lacks.
Maybe I am still looking back at my comparison shows with misplaced nostalgia, although it's not as though the last two series of Doctor Who are some lost age of TV heaven that we're remembering in a golden haze. I fully agree that there were duff episodes of recent Who, and very annoying aspects throughout. But it rarely felt quite so flat and... pointless as Torchwood tends to feel, for me. |
|
|
