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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Torchwood- Season One Discussion (As It Happens) SPOILERS

  
  

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Mouse
21:35 / 21.11.06
I thought his trousers were pansexual.
 
 
Feverfew
23:03 / 21.11.06
Or the crossover episode;

"Trousers! Brilliant! Two legs and zips or buttons and only humans could come up with something so Brilliant! Brilliant! And... Like... Pockets!"

Sorry...
 
 
■
00:34 / 22.11.06
You are absolved.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
07:38 / 22.11.06
... "Now how do I put them on?"
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
18:42 / 22.11.06
Am I the only one thinking that the climax of the series is going to be either Ianto going bugshit mental and trying to kill them all or elsewise the ghost of Christmas Present turning up and allowing him to feel a real emotion for the first time in his life? For the rest of the lifetime of this show I shall refer to him as Datianto, or until I forget, whichever comes first.

Yes, this episode had flaws but, to me, this was the first episode where they seemed to be making an effort to not suck. There were some attempts at continuity (although it did unfortunately remind us of that fucking awful Cyberwoman episode) and, although mistakes were made, there were points in the episode where they started behaving like an elite of the elite team should act, despite talking tactics in front of a burgervan. ("Yeah, five beefburgers please. By the way, could you tell me whether you do a discount for supersecret government teams? Oh, you don't? Just checking.") When Tosh and Ianto are locked in the basement, they start talking as though they know there are good and bad ways to try and escape from a locked room.

It has the Doctor Who approach to continuity. An episode can end with Rose upset because her alterna-universe Mum was a Cyberman, her alterna-universe Dad doesn't want to have anything to do with her and her own Mickey isn't going to hang on her merest whim but is going off to have his own life but she'll be fine at the start of the next episode and we accept that. They're trying that with Torchwood but they're just basing that on the big things, not the little ones. If we try and pretend that Owen never did the thing with the perfume in the first episode then it becomes interesting. But, where was the development in the last episode or two that Gwen was beginning to find domestic life dull? This came out of nowhere. Hopefully they will do something interesting with this relationship/casual fucking but the omens for it being anything more than an excuse to write out the civvie are currently strong.

Re: Gwen and the eeeeeevil. It reminds me of that episode of Buffy where some nastyness occurs and it's thought that it was the work of usual humans and not unusual monsters and SMG delivers the line: "Someone with a soul did this?" as though humans don't do anything nasty in the Buffyverse ever. It's like the belief that children are all cute, innocent and cuddly, when the truth is that they are evil and must be stamped out. Kill one and ten arise to take it's place. If it was played as Gwen being mildly curious and conducted between house and policecar then it wouldn't have seemed as ridiculous as it did.

The second half of season one of Who was stronger than the first half. Right now I'm holding on to that, along with the hope that someday Pinnochianto will become a real boy.
 
 
Ganesh
21:50 / 22.11.06
As I kinda said earlier, I have the opposite problem with Ianto. I'm happy to believe he's super-repressed and never knowingly presents an emotion to the world - the Perfect Servant/Butler/Valet - but I'd hoped they were going to do something interesting around that, particularly with regard to his sexuality (as the early "I don't care" seemed to hint). The Cyberella episode shot that to pieces, though, in terms of his overacting and him apparently having had a straightforward relationship with an attractive human of the opposite sex (who, okay, was then unlucky enough to be turned into a cyberwoman dadah dadah dadah). I still think it'd be an interesting set-up if there some acknowledgement of and perhaps focus on Ianto's creepiness. If they'd looked at his possible investment in the skewed power dynamic of having a tin-titted dependent locked away in the basement, rather than simply casting him as the more conventional devoted boyfriend, he might have developed as a character.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
07:56 / 23.11.06
That scene in the middle of the episode was interesting for what it said about Tosh's sex-life, albeit in a hil-la-rious 'she hasn't had any action for months!' kind of way. I think Tosh, for some bizarre reason, fancies rat-boy as well (when Owen reveals his last snog was with Gwen her faces falls and she asks when).

So, so far we've had two incidents of same sex snogging, with all indications being some more next week. On every occasion those doing it have been under the control of some other force. And the only openly gay character has done nothing in this series to acknowledge that and doesn't appear to be getting any, playing instead the tortured loner in case he has a moment of pure happiness and loses his soul or something.

I'm getting increasingly concerned about backward sexual mores on the production team. Captain Jack kissed the Doctor at an emotional moment on what was supposed to be a 'kids show'. A man kisses a man for a cheap laugh on what is supposed to be a 'young adults' show. What the fuck?!
 
 
Whisky Priestess
08:05 / 23.11.06
Perhaps Tosh is so starved of affection and human sexual contact that she thought Owen didn't try to snog every woman in sight? That their kiss, you know, meant something?

Now if I thought that, obviously I'd leave the country and change my name, but it seems like Tosh is only holding a torch for Ianto because - well, he's the only person who's shown the faintest interest in her in the last year. So it seems that she's ripe for the plucking by an evil cigarette-smoking sexy lesbian who wants to infiltrate Torchwood.
 
 
DaveBCooper
12:35 / 23.11.06
Didn’t like the episode much, frankly. The Gwen-Owen thing is thankfully not what I was expecting, but as noted elsewhere her disenchantment with her boyfriend rather came out of nowhere.

Re the Buffy (and even the X-Files) comparisons, I think the main difference is that Torchwood has basically failed to convince me to give a damn about anything in it. BTVS and TXF both took essentially questionable premises and somehow invested enough skill in both writing and delivery to make me feel a sense of concern about whether a monster with a face that looks like a rubber mask (be it the Master or that Tapeworm monster) might run amok or harm our heroes. I don’t really care much what happens to any of the characters in TW, and they’re certainly not convincing me that it ‘matters’ that they stop any of the baddies.

As regards the sexuality of the characters, my only exposure to RTD’s work comes from this and Who, but in all honesty I’m not entirely convinced that he’s very good at writing (or orchestrating the plotlines concerning) straight relationships … or relationships in general, to be frank. The interactions in TW feel like they’re born more of plot requirements than pre-established traits of the characters, and stuff like the Jack-Doctor kiss in Who smacked more of something he wanted to write and shoehorned in, rather than something naturally dictated by the plot. Slash fiction writ large, almost.

I don’t doubt his writing abilities generally, as he does some good dialogue and plot developments (though if people will persist in the Buffy comparisons, I’m afraid I’ll have to point out that he seems to be nowhere near as in control of his material as Whedon was with his TV shows), but I just think that the relationship elements of both shows arethe weakest elements, and have been dabbled with on-screen at the expense of potentially more interesting elements – the most obvious being that of the central character.

Am I the only one who thinks that this ? Others have said that TW feels like it’s playing at being adult, and I certainly feel that its attitude to relationships generally is rather adolescent and oddly ignorant, though given the thinness of the characterisation that may be almost inevitable.
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
14:27 / 23.11.06
though if people will persist in the Buffy comparisons, I’m afraid I’ll have to point out that he seems to be nowhere near as in control of his material as Whedon was with his TV shows

Tourchwood is simply not as clever as it thinks it is, while Buffy was. And also, Buffy appeared to have people who were aware of a little thing called acting. I don't know what's more unbelievable - the way the actors hold there guns or the way they deliver thier lines.

Still watching it though. Even if it is a big pile of shite.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:14 / 23.11.06
I liked the way this exchange began:

OWEN (preparing to inject local anaesthetic into GWEN's shot-peppered stomach): Can I tempt you with a joke about a little prick?

GWEN: No, but thanks for asking.

However, the answer should have been:

GWEN: NO.

Or even better:

GWEN: Shut the fuck up and give me the fucking anaesthetic you crypto-rapist weasel-faced twat! I'm in fuckin' pain here!!!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:25 / 23.11.06
People who insist on Buffy being the be-all and end-all of top quality fantasy telly usually turn out to have diagnosed or undiagnosed brain trauma which results in them forgetting how god-awful most of the post-high school stuff was. At the moment TW is cruising around the level of Doublemeat Palace or most of the episodes with The Initiative in.

DaveBCooper The interactions in TW feel like they’re born more of plot requirements than pre-established traits of the characters, and stuff like the Jack-Doctor kiss in Who smacked more of something he wanted to write and shoehorned in, rather than something naturally dictated by the plot.

Okay, you are on crack. Bad crack. Made from the powdered bones of dead babies. Baby seals. Cute baby seals and baby armadillos. How can you sit there with a nose full of pure grade Columbian dead baby seal (and/or armadillo) and type these things? How? HOW?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
16:15 / 23.11.06
Remind us of the context of the Jack/Doctor kiss again?
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:36 / 23.11.06
People who insist on Buffy being the be-all and end-all of top quality fantasy telly usually turn out to have diagnosed or undiagnosed brain trauma

I sometimes wonder about this. Having, as I confessed recently on this forum, seen maybe one episode of Buffy, I'm never quite sure whether I've missed out on something stupendous or whether its fans are celebrating it out of all proportion. Certainly, the existence of Buffy Studies journals, academic websites, even entire conferences tends me towards the latter view. I was recently at a conference where one panel was based entirely on a question like "post-Buffy: has there been anything remotely good on TV, and how are we surviving"?

Off-topic though.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:50 / 23.11.06
The Doctor/Jack kiss is in the completely off-the-wall shoehorned context of Jack coming from a much more sexually fluid culture and about to go and fight and die in the hopes of buying the Doctor enough time to build a device to destroy the Daleks. He doesn't expect to survive and, because he cares so much for Rose and the Doctor, he kisses each of them farewell, showing no special favour to either kiss. I'm not so sure that DaveBCooper is allowed to have a five episode sized shoehorn here, especially when it relates to the fundamental nature of the character of Jack.

To attempt to drag things back topicwards, it's noticeable that we haven't seen anything along the lines of the "Why don't you kiss me like that?" "buy me a drink first" banter from Boom Town. It's like TW is being produced by people who didn't watch season one of DW (quite possible), didn't like DW (possible but unlikely) or who were given copies of a series bible that has some pages missing.
 
 
Ganesh
18:43 / 23.11.06
I think Tosh, for some bizarre reason, fancies rat-boy as well (when Owen reveals his last snog was with Gwen her faces falls and she asks when).

Yeah, I assumed that's what was being signposted here. However, according to that organ of all things televisual, Heat magazine, this week's episode sees Tosh's alien thought-reading pendant "turn her lesbian". Quelle surprise.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
21:01 / 23.11.06
Isn't it always the way with those alien mind-reading pendants? They're even worse than bread...
 
 
miss wonderstarr
21:05 / 23.11.06
Seeing Barrowman on "Buzzcocks" just now brought it back home how much more charismatic, sexy, youthful, campy and fun ~ joyful even ~ the Captain Jack of DW was (apparently like the actor's natural tendency), compared to that of TW.
 
 
DaveBCooper
22:12 / 23.11.06
Crikey, I step away from the internet for a couple of hours and return to find that allegedly I'm on crack, and that I appear to have given the impression that Buffy is the best fantasy programme ever to have been on TV.

Lady makes a fair point about the DW-Jack kiss, so I'll happily concede that was a bad example. But I stand by my general assertion that all the snogging and the like in Torchwood feels like a rather feeble afterthought. And while I agree that the Buffy Initiative series was probably the weakest, at least they made a token reference to the overarching plot in each 'monster of the week' episode (usually one token line about 'shouldn't we be looking for Adam?'), but Torchwood doesn't even do this - because it's not really clear to me as a viewer what the overarching plot IS (I can only hope/assume the creators know). The 21st century is when it all changes, apparently. When what changes? Why ? How ? And so on, to the point where the overarching plot's almost invisible. So I think Buffy, even in its weaker moments, has the upper hand there (Miss Wonderstarr, you might like to give it a go; it's not the best TV show ever - obviously that's Twin Peaks, ahem - but it's enjoyable, funny, occasionally quite touching, and they're not afraid to rattle the status quo. You might enjoy it).

The Buffy comparison isn't mine in origin, and I wouldn't have made it had others not done so; Torchwood wants, as has been suggested, to be like Ultraviolet, or even The X-Files, but at the moment it reminds me of nothing so much as the Kolchak series, or the V TV series, really. I mean, for god's sake, despite Torchwood's apparent wish to suggest a seething undercurrent of passion and romantic intrigue, the short-lived TV show Virtual Murder had a better level of flirty banter, and in itself that was pretty much copied from the Steed-Peel era of The Avengers.

By the way, did anyone else see Barrowman interviewed on Andrew Marr's 'Sunday AM' programme on 12 November? They showed a clip from him in a musical, and at least twice Marr said he was 'fabulous', which seemed a bit.. well, contrived. And then later the same day, I saw him in 'The Producers' film, where Barrowfans might like to take note of his aryan hair colour...
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:13 / 24.11.06
I'm not sure whether TW needs an overarching story, a la Bad Wolf or, erm, Torchwood. However, what it can't do is it's pick and mix relationship to continuity, why exactly is Ianto working for Torchwood a week after putting them in a situation where they could be killed and threatening to shoot Jack himself? Why is Tosh doing medical examinations of a corpse and completely failing to notice he's got a mouth full of rose petals until Gwen sees it from several meters away?
 
 
Billuccho!
03:22 / 26.11.06
So I've finally caught up with watching this series, and it's nowhere near as good as Doctor Who, no, or Buffy (and the Initiative-riffic season was good, dammit, as long as you ignore the arc-y stuff in the middle).

Still, it's improving episode-by-episode. Cyberwoman was decent because it was hilarious (unintentionally, perhaps, but still) and had a Cyberwoman/Pterodactyl fight. Small Worlds was miles ahead of previous episodes, and Countrycide is the best episode to date. Yeah, there are still scenes and dialogue exchanges which are just godawful, and the characterization is nonsensical, but the show's getting better. It's still all over the place, but by the end of the year, hell, it might be a damn good show.

Anyone else think the roadside Hepatitis burgers were made of people?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:07 / 26.11.06
Tosh: "We're supposed to be professionals!" Episode 7 and someone finally realises. Thanks!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:14 / 26.11.06
Poor old Tosh. Should have stayed at Sun Hill.
 
 
Ganesh
20:35 / 26.11.06
Or as Saffy's excitable friend in Ab Fab.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:44 / 26.11.06
Jack: Girlfriend killer!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:51 / 26.11.06
A second great episode! And actions are starting to have consequences and ramifications like a real grown-up drama! And next week looks very exciting.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:57 / 26.11.06
... Of course, what would have been great is if they didn't have Tosh's girlfriend saying one minute "Don't take me to Torchwood!" and then five minutes later saying "You must take me into Torchwood!", or saying how Tosh couldn't read Jack's mind when she does read his mind telling her not to worry (rather pointless as she doesn't need to do anything to help his plan to defeat the nasty). But otherwise, yeah, good stuff!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
21:00 / 26.11.06
saying how Tosh couldn't read Jack's mind when she does read his mind telling her not to worry

See, it was quite pointed in the way she couldn't read Jack's mind the first time... the second time he wanted her to, as his thoughts were directly addressed to her. I have no idea what that means in the greater scheme of things, but it was a big difference.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
21:04 / 26.11.06
I wonder if she did read his mind, and what she read told her to say that she couldn't and it was like he was dead... but that's probably too clever for this show.
 
 
Evil Scientist
21:49 / 26.11.06
Another exercise in Torchwood professionalism. It's a wonder Torchwood's managed to remain a secret for so long if all it takes to get their operatives to start talking is a few glasses of the house white.

Pretty lacklustre episode I thought, but at least they're consistantly amateur hour.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:46 / 26.11.06
I am also seeing some signs of improvement here - the lesbian sex wasn't totally bolted on, at least, although the message - that futility and sickness at the world makes you gay - could do with some work. Compare Mary and Jack - Jack is unreadable, Mary can make Tosh hear exactly what she wants to hear to make her compliant. Thus the "take me to Torchwood" and "don't take me to Torchwood" - don't take me in to be incarcerated by the team, do take me in when there is nobody else around. Perfectly good manipulation.

It's revealing that Jack appears not actually to know that you can sack people, which actually explains a lot. Also nice that Ianto and Tosh can now bond over their inappropriate girlfriend choices.
 
 
Lama glama
22:54 / 26.11.06
This was probably the best episode to date. It was consistently funny, but not in a puerile Chris Chibnall way and I can't (just yet) find any glaring plot holes. This fanboy appreciated the UNIT references, but this TV watcher appreciated Whithouse's attempts at furthering the development of characters. Ianto's role always seems to be compromised in favour of pushing Gwen and Owen down our throats, but I suppose that's unavoidable as their affair (which was thankfully penis joke, and revolting over-egged kissing free this week) is shaping up to be the second most important arc of the latter half of the season. The first, of course is: What the heck is up with Jack?

I'm nervously hopeful about the show improving over the coming weeks and if things continue in a similar fashion to tonight's episode, then it's quite possible that we'll get a decidedly better second half to the season--much like Doctor Who season 1.

It was nice to see Jack being a bit more playful and humorous this week and his excitement at the transporter device reminded me of his similar reaction to the galactic surfboard in Boomtown. Barrowman's line delivery and emoting seemed far more natural this week too.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:00 / 26.11.06
Oh, plus:

Anyone else think that the team doesn't actually have that much combat experience aside from duffing up the odd Weevil? All the special ops Torchwood soldiers must've got killed during Doomsday leaving only the lab staff.

This would, if it was explained, make perfect sense - a hell of a lot more sense than the medical expert and computer whiz being given guns and sent into combat zones. Having said which, in Countrycide they aren't expecting a stand-up fight; one might conceivably think that they are recceing the site, and if things get tasty they will be able to call in backup - either some kind of armed Torchwoood response force or regular military.

More fanwank, but so far the situations have largely been ones in which military force is either not immediately available or not initially seen as necessary, so it is at least possible...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
23:43 / 26.11.06
Worth noting that at no point are Tosh's sexual history or preferences prior to meeting Mary, or even having a crush on Owen, mentioned - i.e. the assumption that Mary "turns" her in that sense is only as possible as the option that she's always liked both girls and boys, but just doesn't like to talk about sex much, possibly because she hasn't had any with anybody for a while.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
05:56 / 27.11.06
Well, it's ambiguous isn't it, there's her reaction when Mary kisses her the first time, but on the other hand this episode presents her as completely lacking in self-confidence to the degree that she could be gay/bi and, partly spurred by parental disapproval, in denial to such a degree that she tries to crush on Owen rather than sort herself out.
 
  

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