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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Torchwood- Season One Discussion (As It Happens) SPOILERS

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19:46 / 05.12.06

It's certainly more interesting than them putting it up each other's bottoms or something.

19:49 / 05.12.06

Well if we're honest it's a case of 'well thunk that mans girlfriend'.

My favourite answer to what can you do with a timer? Well, you time things. What do you do with time? We waste it. Where do we put waste? Yes that's right, in the bin...dusty bin. Jack and Ianto relax with the home game of 3,2,1.

22:12 / 05.12.06

Well, now you went for number three, which was a toaster. Who else is a toaster? Pliers from Chaka Demus and Pliers. What can you do with pliers? Mend fuses. Who blew a fuse on Celebrity Big Brother this year? Jodie Marsh. What lives in a marsh? Dragonflies. What else flies? The Dalek mothership. Well done, you've won yourself a trip to Skaro!

Whisky Priestess

07:46 / 06.12.06

I now want the next episode to be entirely made up of Ianto killing Jack in various different and sexy ways. Like Harold and Maude, but for real.

11:13 / 06.12.06

Just cut his head off. He'd have a hard time getting up again from that one.

20:09 / 06.12.06

Big head, or little head?

Sorry.

Having just seen the repeat, I was more impressed than by this episode than many of the previous - but I did miss the two weeks prior to that, so I may have missed out on Torchwood's finest moments. But from reading this thread, apparently not.

I hope the quality keeps going on an upward curve, and that's all, for now.

13:48 / 07.12.06

I hope the quality keeps going on an upward curve, and that's all, for now.

The trailer for this week's episode makes it look like a combination of that crappy MASH episode and Ghost. Still, one can always hope.

On a completely unrelated note, can you imagine the arguments Torchwood Cardiff must've had with the uber-patriotic hyperprofessionals of Torchwood London? It's the Odd Couple all over again.

16:52 / 07.12.06

It is something to wonder about, isn't it?

Torchwood London: (was) (as you say) Hyper-professional massive organisation located in one of the most recognisable buildings in London, portrayed as high-resource, high-tech, bastards who stop at nothing to protect Britain and, if needed, the world.

Torchwood Cardiff: A mildly-psychotic pan-sexual immortal time-traveller and whatever three people he can manage to keep alive for the duration, a flaky civil servant, a pterodactyl, a morgue full of bodies and lots of alien technology just, y'know, lying about.

Are there no 360-degree-management reviews for Torchwood Cardiff?

"Now, Captain Jack, I'm going to use something that's called the compliment sandwich. Firstly, positively, you have a nice coat.

However, on the down side, any time you and yours come into contact with the real world, people die, in varying quantities. That's a negative concept.

To end on a high note, though... Um... Well... Let's come back to that one, shall we?"

17:01 / 07.12.06

They may have thought themselves hyperprofessionals but, at the end of the day, they let the Cybermen build a meth lab inside their home base.

17:04 / 07.12.06

Just as no-one thought "Oh, why is Ianto spending a lot of time in the basement? And why is he carrying a stopwatch down there?"

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:14 / 10.12.06

Oh God, oh god, oh god no. Torchwood production team, do I really have to explain to you how you have not earned the right to try and do a Love and Monsters?

20:24 / 10.12.06

It's practically a remake, isn't it? 'Quirky' soundtrack, check. Protagonist obsessed with the heroes, check. Sentimental 'message' about what makes us human, check.

All it's missing is the concrete slab girlfriend, though Ianto probably has one of those already...

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:43 / 10.12.06

Good God. Even I am not going to try and defend that carcrash of an episode, unless it does something astonishing in the last 2 minutes.

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:48 / 10.12.06

No, only something astonishingly bad.

I like the way Eugene appeared to go to Heaven at the end, as opposed to the black nothingness with something monstrous moving in it that we know waits after death from last episode.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:51 / 10.12.06

All it's missing is it's heart. I know L&M wasn't particularly popular here but this episode is practically a piss-take of that, a bunch of bad actors (video shop guy and fat mate, I'm looking at you, have you ever acted before in your lives or were you just at a loose end the Saturday afternoon they filmed this?) with a bad script that makes no sense and has no redeeming qualities. The awful bit at the end where Eugene goes to heaven while Gwen calls "don't go Eugene!" is physically painful to watch.

The 'eye' is also blatantly a rubber ball.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:55 / 10.12.06

That abomination was written by Jacquetta May. She was in Eastenders for a bit around 15 years ago and appears to have changed from acting to writing. The positive we can take from this is that this was the only episode she has written for the series.

Whisky Priestess

20:59 / 10.12.06

Worst.

Episode.

Ever.

Never have I been so glad to miss the first fifteen minutes of this show. Oh God, you're all so right, it was Sentiment and Pavements all over again. I would like to find out who wrote that excrescence and hurt them in strange new ways.

Is it foolish of me to harbour hopes of the 1950s episode next week, on the grounds that a) Jack is always better "in period" (so to speak) and b) things can surely, please, only get better?

Whisky Priestess

21:00 / 10.12.06

Crosspost.

Jacquetta, I'm coming for you.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

21:03 / 10.12.06

Owen, he hates Eugene so much that he's willing to let Gwen, who doesn't know what she's doing, do his autopsy.

Still, I suppose that explains why the eye isn't found in his stomach.

22:32 / 10.12.06

I'm glad I went for Lost instead tonight.

23:37 / 10.12.06

I feel quite vulnerable about admitting to liking this episode. It finally had Gwen doing what she had been brought to the TW Institute for: investigating things with a degree of emotional sensitivity and passion. I found it moderately funny and it was definite improvement upon the humour of last week's episode. I didn't find the actor playing Eugene as bad as some people on the rest of the interweb seem to, but Gary and video shop guy were blindingly abominable.

The Love and Monsters similarities were a bit jarring and the episode struggled to find an identity for itself, but I felt that the circumstances surrounding the mundane observer (Eugene) differentiated himself enough from Marc Warren's character in Love and Monsters.

I felt that the episode started to fall apart when Eugene's father started to sing Danny Boy (at which point I had a fit of the giggles which didn't end until Gwen almost got hit by a car). I found Eugene's ascension into "heaven" a bit of a cop-out both in the context of the episode and of the season's pre-established mythology (The Great Darkness and the force moving within it).

One thing that annoyed me a great deal about the episode was the scene with Eugene looking out at space from his bedroom window. Clearly visible beside the pre-teen Eugene is a fairly modern CD players and a huge stack of CDs. Wouldn't cassettes have been a slightly less jarring choice, considering that this scene is set some 20 years previously?

Anyway, that was by no stretch of the imagination the worst episode so far. Cyberwoman was worse, and for all of the writing chops of PJ Hammond, Small Worlds was a fairly sizeable and bog-standard disappointment of an episode. If I was pressed to give this episode a rating..it'd get a respectable 7/10.

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:00 / 11.12.06

I didn't hate it quite that much. But. It was a cover version, and not a great one. And the whole bit at the end just smacked of Mary Sue - the geek gets to save and snog Gwen, before ascending to Heaven. Gah!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:52 / 11.12.06

Well, the maths thing was placed as around 1992 I think it was said, so by that point I certainly had CDs so it's not beyond the realms that Eugene also did.

I found his looking so similar to Oz from Buffy to be very distracting. Mmmmm, Seth Green.

So, not only do we have a member of the general public know about Torchwood (secret agency my arse, why not advertise in the local press?) but he knows them well enough that he knows their names? Mickey Smith couldn't hack their database but Eugene could?

The video shop bloke made me cringe. "Hello Missus, fancy a shag?" and Gwen decides to be polite and smile?

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the universe this story is set in. When impossible things happen there is usually a pseudo-scientific reason given to gloss over it (the breaches at Torchwood, the gravity funnel and the black hole) so that it feels emotionally true. So possibly Eugene was still kept aware due to the Eye in his Tummy and maybe when it was taken away from his body it took a while for his intelligence to disengage but it's a cheat to have him become corporeal for a moment to save Gwen from being run over. It's also more piss-poor directing as the car is coming along a straight road and Gwen is not walking out in front of it in order for Eugene to do his hero moment, it's more like the car is deliberately trying to run her down.

Appalling.

06:30 / 11.12.06

The continuity between episodes is dreadful, isn't it? I mean, do none of the writers talk to one another?

Next week's could be better, but it does seem to contain a lot of Owen raping somebody.

miss wonderstarr

07:26 / 11.12.06

I didn't watch last night, but I did know Jacquetta May, pre-EastEnders! in 1988. Just think ~ I could have prevented this episode.

Whisky Priestess

08:32 / 11.12.06

You don't have an eye in the back of your tummy, Wonderstarr. You weren't to know.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:46 / 11.12.06

I've just checked, Cyberwoman and Countrycide were both written by Chris Chibnell, which is why Ianto looses his girlfriend, is fine about it for a week, and then is tortured by his failure and low-level animosity towards anyone that is happier than him the following week. The last episode of the season is also written by Chrissy, so bets for Ianto suddenly remembering he had a girlfriend who died in horrific circumstances after not mentioning it in the previous six episodes?

08:51 / 11.12.06

The last episode of the season is also written by Chrissy, so bets for Ianto suddenly remembering he had a girlfriend who died in horrific circumstances after not mentioning it in the previous six episodes?

Opening shot of him and Jack in bed. Ianto suddenly looks confused, like he's remembered something. "Hang on this makes no sens..."

Cut to the credits.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:10 / 11.12.06

Christ on a pedallo. The team behind Torchwood are so at ease with their sexuality that any same-sex action between the girls gets made the central tenet of that episode. Boy-on-boy is used either as a throw-away joke, as in episode one, or relegated to an easily deletable, can easily be retconned later into not having existed, webpage on the Torchwood site.

10:42 / 11.12.06

Absolutely.

I take it that Sunday's episode shed no more light on the Ianto/Jack situation then?

Pity really, because handled maturely it could have had real potential. With Ianto seeking comfort from the very person he holds responsible for his toastergirl's death, it all getting a bit dark but eventually turning into loving relationship between the two and Ianto being the guy who saves Jack from the Evil In The Darkness.

Whisky Priestess

12:17 / 11.12.06

Nope. No chance.

If only the Torchwood on our screens were as good as the Torchwood in our heads ...

14:02 / 11.12.06

Wouldn't cassettes have been a slightly less jarring choice, considering that this scene is set some 20 years previously?

Consumer CDs launched 20 years ago. He could have been an early adopter.

18:15 / 11.12.06

Apparently BBCs 2 and 3 are fighting over who gets to show the, still yet to be comissioned, second season. On the plus side, second seasons are frequently better than the first season... but on the minus side, well, it's not like Torchwood has been compromised by interference from above...

18:28 / 11.12.06

I don't understand. How did Eugene become corporeal when his body was lying (amateurishly) dissected on a slab? And were they watching his flesh-and-blood body floating upwards at the end?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

18:31 / 11.12.06

Just two of the many reasons this episode sucked.

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