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Torchwood- Season One Discussion (As It Happens) SPOILERS

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Regrettable Juvenilia

07:46 / 27.11.06

If she's bi then she doesn't need to be in denial to crush on Owen. Well, okay, she does, but only because he's such a worm.

Anyway, the thing I did object to in this episode was: since when has Captain Jack Harkness been the kind of guy who cares if his friends change their sex/gender? I mean, I know he's supposed to have a wicked sense of humour, i.e. he wouldn't be above playing such a story for laughs, but still, "and suddenly we're supposed to start calling him Vanessa" [italics mine]? Isn't that exactly the kind of outdated 20th century attitude that Jack's supposed to be beyond?

Whisky Priestess

08:52 / 27.11.06

Sarah off Eastenders chewed the scenery a bit, I thought.

And also, how can you not get that someone is eeeeevil when they are SMOKING CIGARETTES RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU AND USING YOUR EGGCUP AS AN ASHTRAY!!!

I know love is blind, but honestly, Tosh ...

Hydra vs Leviathan

23:19 / 29.11.06

Anyway, the thing I did object to in this episode was: since when has Captain Jack Harkness been the kind of guy who cares if his friends change their sex/gender? I mean, I know he's supposed to have a wicked sense of humour, i.e. he wouldn't be above playing such a story for laughs, but still, "and suddenly we're supposed to start calling him Vanessa" [italics mine]? Isn't that exactly the kind of outdated 20th century attitude that Jack's supposed to be beyond?

Precisely what i was going to say, except expressed better. It would have made some sense if Jack was actually supposed to be the arrogant, authoritarian, sleazy, worst-aspects-of-Americanism bigot he comes across as, but when introduced he was meant to be Sexually Liberated HyperDude From-The-Future - hell, he's probably had relationships with beings whose gender setups are utterly different from our own...

If the makers of Torchwood wanted to portray Jack like this, it would have better if they made him a different character altogether than the Jack introduced in Doctor Who - as it is, it just makes the viewpoint of the programme itself come across as nasty, narrow-minded and transphobic...

Without that line, IMO, this episode would have been easily the best of Torchwood so far. Very Whedon-angsty, but at least (for once) emotionally convincing (well, apart from the just-very-bizarre Gwen/Owen flirting), and part of me (albeit a very shallow part of me) is pleased that both this and the last episode have made by far the most attractive character (IMO) also by far the most likeable...

(tho, i suppose, the attractiveness choices for me between recurring characters are limited to 2, and Gwen really isn't my type...)

Got to say tho i don't think the message actually was that futility and sickness at the world makes you gay, so much as that futility etc. makes you fall too easily into any exciting-yet-comforting relationship, especially one outside the circle in which you feel futile...

Queer sex stuff (especially f/f sex stuff) moves me and allows me to identify with it far more than straight sex stuff ever could. Even though i'm (as far as i'm capable of telling) "straight". Hmmm...

20:06 / 03.12.06

Well, judging from the title, this week's episode could be quite amusing: "They keep killing Suzie"

20:49 / 03.12.06

"I'm sorry Gwen, you're getting shot in the head. Slowly."

I can empathise, as I'm sure can many people who watch Torchwood.

20:54 / 03.12.06

Um. Bit surprised. That was rather good, being both a) dramatic and b) not preposterous balls. Even if it was an episode entirely focused on Torchwood's incompetence.

That was certainly the level of quality I'd been hoping for to begin with, though I'm not sure Jack needed to remind us again just how bloody pansexual he is...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:57 / 03.12.06

Erm, what can two men do in an office with a stopwatch, as opposed to, say, lube?

Although there was some weird moments, Ianto was particularly stiff and robotic this week, and where did this sudden thing about calling Jack 'Sir' come from? I thought the episode started well and then tailed off in the middle, I thought Suzy's plan was unnecessarily finickity, how did she plan on talking someone in to taking her out of Torchwood before the lockdown took effect? But the idea of Gwen slowly getting a gunshot in the head was pleasantly icky. And at least that's got the glove out of the way.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

21:00 / 03.12.06

Paleface That was certainly the level of quality I'd been hoping for to begin with, though I'm not sure Jack needed to remind us again just how bloody pansexual he is...

I was rather glad that someone who was writing scripts remembered the fact. But can we stop pretending that Torchwood are, by any stretch of the imagination, a secret organisation?

21:03 / 03.12.06

There were a fair few logical leaps of faith in this episode: Toshiko suddenly figuring out that it was the ISBN number they needed to input, Jack realising that it was the glove keeping Suzie alive, etc.

I liked how it was in some ways the thematic successor to the Satan Pit duology of Doctor Who, dealing with what's hiding inside the darkness, just out of sight. James Strong's direction (Doctor Who's Pit episodes too) was excellent in some parts, especially when Gwen and Suzie were driving through the night. It was genuinely creepy too, especially Suzie's excellently delivered monologue about what waits after death.

However, not all is top banana this week. John Barrowman's performance was more pantomime than usual, especially when he was using the glove. Equally as dodgy was the humour in the script, which I felt was largely reliant on extremely painful puns. The absolute worst moment was the totally unexpected and implausible sexy talk between Jack and Ianto. Ianto, darling..this man killed your girlfriend and you've threatened to murder him when he least expects it, please leave the inappropriate office liasons to Owen and Toshiko. It'd be wonderful if the writers had read each others scripts before production began..

21:20 / 03.12.06

Having reconsidered Ianto and Jack's final exchange, something else occurs to me. Perhaps Ianto is sexually and emotionally manipulating Jack so that his ultimate betrayal and act of revenge is all the more painful for Jack. If that's the route that they're going to take, then I take back what I just said about the closing moments of the episode.

22:04 / 03.12.06

Having reconsidered Ianto and Jack's final exchange, something else occurs to me. Perhaps Ianto is sexually and emotionally manipulating Jack so that his ultimate betrayal and act of revenge is all the more painful for Jack. If that's the route that they're going to take, then I take back what I just said about the closing moments of the episode.

Of course, what with Jack being unkillable and all, he may just be stringing Ianto along for the thrill of sleeping with a venegence-crazed butler who may betray him at any second.

Not too bad an episode. Bit odd that, after programming a serial killer so she'd get brought back, Suzie's exit strategy was somewhat lacking in tactics (lock them in and run for the coast in a tagged car).

Next weeks ep looks to be soul-crushingly bad. Is it just the weekly disection sessions that are keeping me watching this now? Mmmmmmmm could be!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:41 / 04.12.06

Of course, it might be that the week after next the Torchwood team are called in because someone's been killing people then, with their blood, writing on the wall 'Torchwood- Ask Ianto's ex-girlfriend if you want to know why' and then he reveals he's got the other glove...

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:13 / 04.12.06

Well, the last three episodes have described a progressive upward curve in quality - although I want Susie back again for the season finale. In fact, I want Susie back - she was so much better and more competent than Gwen. Think Gwen could come up with a plan like that? Stroll on.

07:40 / 04.12.06

Thinking about that Ianto/Jack moment.

There's a lot of things you can do with a stopwatch.

Heck, they were just playing Speed Chess weren't they?

Whisky Priestess

08:32 / 04.12.06

Practising holding their breath, probably.

Stopwatch nonsense was totally out of the blue and made just no sense. There's nothing sexy about a stopwatch. It feels like that little exchange was shoehorned in five minutes before transmission by a total cretin - not the idea that they might fancy each other, but the Godawful dialogue.

Apart from that, best ep so far.

Did we ever find out what Susie's father did? I'm guessing beat up/killed her mother?

10:18 / 04.12.06

Heck, they were just playing Speed Chess weren't they?

Speed Chess? Speed Wanking? The Mystery of Chess Wanking?

Yeah, best ep to date. This felt like Torchwood's Impossible Planet, bt more adult and sex obvs.

Best bits: The slow gunshot wound. Susie's lolling half-dead mannerisms at the start. Brr.

So yeah, ace.

Didn't like Susie's cacky cackling at the end. "It's coming for you Jahahahahahahack!". And just Jack in general. He really is less annoying in the main Doctor Who universe.

10:34 / 04.12.06

More on the logical leaps - why the fuck did the police, who were at that point under the impression that they were looking for a line of poetry by Emily Dickinson, not use the resources of the WWW as their first resort as any other person would?

For that matter, what scale of coincidence is it that Suzie's copy of E.D.'s poetry is the same edition, with the same ISBN code, as the one the police buy at the local Waterstone's.

11:28 / 04.12.06

also: dialogue in the car, pitch black, middle of night:

Jack: how long does she have left?
Owen: about 40 minutes

cut to:

Suzie and Gwen drive along dockside road, hotly pursued by Jack & Owen, IN FULL MIDDAY SUNSHINE.

Continuity people, did you just all eff off to the pub? ferchriste'ssake

I also found the premise that Owen was knocking off Suzie even more unlikely than the Gwen affair. She could do sooo much better.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:49 / 04.12.06

Agreed massively on Susie - I am convinced that she totally made that shit up to freak Gwen out. Or that he was using his alien rohypnol.

However, I don't think the continuity is as problematic as h1ppych1ck thinks - it's dark when Gwen and Susie drive to the hospital. The next time we see Owen and Jack in pursuit, it's dawn. When they catch up with Gwen and Susie, it's morning. Seems about OK. And:

For that matter, what scale of coincidence is it that Suzie's copy of E.D.'s poetry is the same edition, with the same ISBN code, as the one the police buy at the local Waterstone's.

Not much of a coincidence. Susie had the Faber edition - they are instantly recognisable by the cover design - an inset line drawing of the poet on a white background. So, Captain Jack could verily easily have identified and specified the publisher of Susie's copy, in order to ensure no textual variation in the poems themselves. The Faber editions are also by far the most likely editions one would come across in a local Waterstone's. If you want to pick that nit, I'd probably go for a) the mental leap of Tosh guessing the code and b) all the key plot elements being at the top of the crates of Susie's possessions - the picture of her father, the poetry book and the Pilgrim headed notepaper.

However, a) is important for the emotional arc - Tosh has made it clear that she felt inferior to Susie, and this is her managing to out-think her, and b) is important for the narrative, and really no less convincing than... oh, anything that ever happened in Doctor Who.

On sex!Ianto - I'm assuming that, rightly or wrongly, everyone has put the outburst about killing Jack down to the heat of the moment, difficult time sort of thing. I don't think the scene necessarily _needed_ it, but I wasn't appalled by it. The entire episode, after all, had been about how working for Torchwood makes you crazy, and it did at least involve neither a) Jack gazing at Gwen or b) Owen demanding to know when Gwen last came so oh God just kill me now.

Whisky Priestess

12:18 / 04.12.06

However, I don't think the continuity is as problematic as h1ppych1ck thinks - it's dark when Gwen and Susie drive to the hospital. The next time we see Owen and Jack in pursuit, it's dawn. When they catch up with Gwen and Susie, it's morning. Seems about OK.

Not sure about this, as right when they discover that Susie's sucking Gwen's life force -

(Owen: She can suck on my life force any time! Fnarr!)

- shut up Owen.

Anyway, as I was saying, when they discovered that, Owen reckoned Gwen had about two hours left to live. And I got the impression it was late evening when they found out, not four a.m. or 2 hours before whenever dawn comes. I was possibly not watching closely enough but the continuity seemed pretty ropy to me.

13:17 / 04.12.06

It was 1am when Jack first contacted the police department after they had been locked in. There's a clock visible just behind Jack's head at that point.

Indira Varma's performance was really excellent throughout and she definitely upstaged Myles in the majority of the scenes they shared. I was really hoping that they were going for the redemptive slant on her return, by having Suzie save everyone's life through her actions and being allowed to live. It would have been interesting to have her be an Oracle from Birds of Prey kind of figure, directing the group's field actions from the Hub. But, no..Suzie's just kerazy.

Whisky Priestess

13:29 / 04.12.06

Yeah, I wanted her back big-time. She could have been their eeeevil nemesis (although I suppose if that happened she'd crush them in the space of about half an episode, bringing the series to a premature close). I miss her already.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:33 / 04.12.06

sleazenation For that matter, what scale of coincidence is it that Suzie's copy of E.D.'s poetry is the same edition, with the same ISBN code, as the one the police buy at the local Waterstone's.

At the time of watching I thought that the police simply looked through the evidence box, then realised that Torchwood had that and not the police, so Jack never needed to phone the police at all.

I suppose Suzy could always make a deal with whatever the thing is that's coming for Jack to help it get at him, does anyone else think Captain Harkness will be joining the ranks of the merely mortal at the end of this series, seeing as they haven't really done anything that interesting with the immortality factor yet?

19:21 / 04.12.06

Apart from shooting him in the head, having him snog a killer alien-possessed person (if memory serves), shooting him with a cyberman, and having a telepath suggest it was as if he were dead, you mean?

20:10 / 04.12.06

My memory gets hazy, quickly, but from what I can piece together, Suzie set up a grand plan to top herself and put in place a series of events which encouraged the Torwoodians to bring her back. Leaving aside her (scuse) psychopathological willingness to sacrifice, grusomely, one or two folk along the way, I assume the aim was to examine what happens after. This was touched on really nicely with Gwen in the car, and it was creepy enough, but if the whole point of the episode was to examine the 'hereafter question', I'm feling a bit let down. I wondered whether Suzie was after some sort of redemption, having made a wonderful (and brave) discovery about the afterlife. Did she forget that whacking a bunch of innocents to find the answer is just not on? What did she expect to happen to her after? Surely she didn't intend, all along (all through her brilliantly enacted plan), to just swim to Lundy? What a waste.

Pfah. I must have forgotten something.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:42 / 04.12.06

It was genuinely creepy too, especially Suzie's excellently delivered monologue about what waits after death.

For me, that was the creepiest thing they've had yet on the programme. That kind of shit always pushes my fear button. Of all the things people have done so far in the series, Susie's motivation in this one (to live, rather than killing her dad- that could, I guess, have been explained better, but was probably more effective being left the way it was- all we really needed to know was that she hated him, and we're left to imagine exactly what it was he'd done) was the one with which I could most easily symnpathise.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:28 / 05.12.06

I wondered whether Suzie was after some sort of redemption, having made a wonderful (and brave) discovery about the afterlife. Did she forget that whacking a bunch of innocents to find the answer is just not on? What did she expect to happen to her after? Surely she didn't intend, all along (all through her brilliantly enacted plan), to just swim to Lundy? What a waste.

I think the problem was that she wasn't expecting Torchwood to get out of lockdown so quickly. All she really needed to do was tool around for a bit with Gwen, until her life force was drained, and she hadn't anticipated being pursued, or Torchwood being able to get access to the weapons locker too destroy the risen mitten. Killing her father, I suspect, was a bonus - the point of the father story was to get Gwen to sympathise with her and bust her out. However, the cripplingly low self-esteem does suggest a pretty unhappy home life.

Whisky Priestess

09:29 / 05.12.06

Yeah, what was all that bollocks about "You're better than me"? Surely the writer was merely tormenting the viewer with how much better Susie was, even in a semi-zombie state, than Gwen could ever hope to be.

I am getting pretty annoyed with the character of Gwen. She's thick, naive and sentimental. And she's doing the nasty with Owen, which alone is surely enough to justify the culling they both so thoroughly deserve?

Actually, as far as I'm concerned, that would be absolutely the best thing they could do, series-, character- and arc-wise: kill Gwen and Owen at the climax of this season. And bring Susie back, of course. That would make my bloody day, that would.

09:53 / 05.12.06

The missed opportunities are really bugging me, still, What with her self-esteem issues and all. Imagine being able to torment Cap'n Jack with first hand knowledge of the one thing he can't experience. That should have cheered her up.

A beautiful tunnel of ghosts

10:49 / 05.12.06

Could someone explain for me how Ianto uses the water tower to relay a mobile transmission to the police? Does it have an antenna, or is it a function of its structure?

11:27 / 05.12.06

Well, he can become sexually aroused by a stopwatch, so sending signals via a water tower is child's play.

Whisky Priestess

11:59 / 05.12.06

I wonder if his time with CyberGirl has made him ferrosexual?

12:39 / 05.12.06

Perhaps he lusts after Jack's relatively oversized clock.

16:57 / 05.12.06

There are screens in the Torchmobile behind the drivers so it looked like deep night at the "How long?" bit.

So, things to do with a timer? Jacks feeling guilty over what Torchwood did to Suzie and his part in it. Ianto is pissed off with Jack? Sado sexual shenanigans ensue in which Ianto kills Jack and times how long it takes him to get better. Over and over again. Until they get over it.

19:35 / 05.12.06

Oh, now that makes more sense than anything else. Well thunk that man!

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