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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Torchwood, Season 2 (NO SPOILERS)

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ONLY NICE THINGS

20:56 / 05.03.08

"I AM BROKEN, TOSH. LET ME SHOW YOU!"

"Owen, why does your bachelor pad have a giant bacon slicer?"

"SEE? NO ARMS!"

"Well, we can't possibly send you out on a mission now. How would you hug Richard Briers?"

This doesn't sound like a good thing, but it would resolve the main issues with quite a nice character episode. To wit, that it didn't make any sense, or more precisely that Owen's deadness doesn't make any sense. He talks and he gasps, so clearly he can move air in and out of his lungs when he needs to, so why can't he resuscitate the Briars? Does the air get deadness on it inside his body? And when he "absorbs the energy of the Pulse", does he actually? Or does it turn out to be a false alarm? Why send an exploding message of peace?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:24 / 05.03.08

I remember thinking somewhere in the middle of season 1 that maybe Torchwood did away with the "need" for slash fiction and fanfic because of it pretty much doesn't bother with subtext very much.

But, now I understand that fanfic is there to give us a Torchwood that doesn't revolve around Owen bloody Harper!

I worry, Haus, that the arm-slicing tactic would only have exacerbated the situation of this episode: "AND MY ARM'S FALLEN OFF!" And it would continue, the whining, while the pieces were quartered and quartered and the voice got smaller and more buzz-like. Forever.

07:26 / 06.03.08

Does the air get deadness on it inside his body?

Two options present themselves.

1) The writer's drawing on memories of Angel (from that Buffy show) not being able to give CPR and assumes that what counts for Buffyverse vampires must also count for recently zombified sexpests.

or

2) It's another Owen "mercy kill".

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:38 / 06.03.08

"He wasn't happy, Tosh... it's been a long time since Ever Decreasing Circles. Penelope Wilton got to be Prime Minister. What did he ever get?

WHAT DID HE EVER GET? THE CHIEF CARETAKER OF PARADISE TOWERS, TOSH, THAT'S WHAT! THE LIFT WAS BROKEN, TOSH! BROKEN, AND THERE WAS NO WAY TO FIX IT!"

Whisky Priestess

08:30 / 06.03.08

I watched this last night, drunk, and now I have completely forgotten what happened at the end. Either I need to stop drinking midweek or the ending sucked so badly that my brain spontaneously erased all memory of it.

09:04 / 06.03.08

I yearn for the day Paradise Towers comes out on dvd. Them cleaners shit me up proper.

Whiskey, nothing particularly ground-breaking happened. Owen absorbed the energy of the device (or didn't, it gets confusing) and saves the poor suicide girl and they watch the device (apparently a reply to the Voyager probe) send out pretty pink energy.

Without spoilering, the trailer for next week made me die a little inside.

21:01 / 06.03.08

Without spoilering, the trailer for next week made me die a little inside.

In a good way? Or in a bad way?

That wasn't a bad episode though. If only they (not just the actors, everyone involved) spent less time running around shouting, trying to fit too much in ... oh well, it's not to be, I suppose.

07:53 / 07.03.08

There's a good way?

00:58 / 13.03.08

Continuing its fine tradition of ripping off Buffy, Angel or both, tonight had Gwen pregnant overnight with an alien baby. And a shapeshifter (with a shift too many, IMHO - from foxy lady to Jack to ... Christ ... Nerys Hughes?) This also ripped off Species, a bit, with the whole seductive (literally) man-eating sexy alien thing.

I wishwishwish that when Jack "cut in" to Rhys and Gwen's romantic wedding dance, he'd started dancing with Rhys instead of Gwen, OR that as Jack gyrated and whispered sweet nothings into Gwen's ear, we'd had a cut to Ianto glowering, halfway down a bottle of whisky, and starting to eye up the waiters.

Does anyone else get annoyed by the fact that Retcon doesn't live up to its name - i.e. that instead of Retconned people filling in the blanks of what happened to them last night with plausible imaginings which make some sort of sense, they just have ... a blank?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:05 / 13.03.08

I was fairly impressed that Barrowman and David-Lloyd managed to deliver some of their lines with enough flirt power to almost distract me from the use of "As you know..." to open expository "character building" dialogue.

Ah, Ianto. Forever glowering while Gwen and Jack fire each other looks.

12:40 / 13.03.08

Isn't it odd that Gwen and Owen went on to have their wedding despite one of their friends being savagely murdered just before the wedding? Bit callous, that was. But then again Torchwood likes to slip everyone (ie the viewers and the wedding guests) a retcon pill when they're not watching. Then they slip you another one just in case.

Whisky Priestess

16:49 / 13.03.08

Gwen and Owen went on to have their wedding

This is either a ma-hu-sive Freudian slip or a spoiler from a parallel universe. I don't really mind which.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

21:44 / 13.03.08

Well, given how Gwen was acting this episode I'm not surprised that they went ahead with the wedding. She was firm, really, that the wedding go ahead even if the world was coming to an end. I mean, she didn't even care that monsters might emerge from her womb and kill her entire family, so what's a little dead body between wedding guests?

That said, I think this is one of the few episodes where Gwen has been written as being halfway competent as an Torchwood agent, and it seems almost plausible that she was indeed a police constable before making the change.

22:16 / 13.03.08

Gwen and Rhys. I meant Gwen and Rhys.

Whisky Priestess

09:52 / 14.03.08

Keep telling yourself that.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:28 / 19.03.08

Wow. I've just watched last week's Torchwood and it was impressively awful, farce that wasn't funny, action that wasn't exciting and terror that was less scary than Songs of Praise. If you have to use such big twists of logic to tell a story then that means your story is wrong. Gwen deciding that heavily or pregnant or not she's going to walk down the aisle, then only after seeing everyone and telling them she's pregnant that it might not be a good idea to pretend she's pregnant, especially as she's already agreed with Jack and Owen to have it magically aborted after the wedding. Trying to justify it with her little speech to Jack in the middle strained credibility, it's not like she's terminal ill and wants to marry Todd Carthy before she dies.

Phil Ford just started with the idea of a nine months pregnant woman in a wedding dress and worked back and forward from that didn't he?

I'd also be tempted to write a uncurious motherfuckers for Gwen's bridesmaids.
"Gwen didn't look nine months pregnant last night while we were plying her with champagne and a crap stripper in one of Cardiff's shittiest nightclubs did she?"
"I'm sorry, I have such a short attention span I've forgotten that start of that sentence."
"Never mind, it is Torchwood. Shall we go gay for a while to break the tedium of our provincial lives?"

But still, it's good to know that Torchwood have perfected Retcon, so unlike last year, where it drives people crazy, they can dose loads of people with a special version that makes them forget that Gwen looked pregnant, was attacked by a shape-shifting monster who killed one of their friends and splattered goo all over Rhys's coat, but not that Gwen and Rhys got married and the bride looked beautiful.

Also, considering the fuss of a few weeks ago over using that scalpel thingy on Martha it would suggest that maybe Rhys should be drafted into the team for any occasion when it needs to be used as he picked it up in no time.

14:27 / 19.03.08

Also, considering the fuss of a few weeks ago over using that scalpel thingy on Martha it would suggest that maybe Rhys should be drafted into the team for any occasion when it needs to be used as he picked it up in no time.

Ahh, but it was Owen who was using it as I recall. He and competence had a sordid one night stand, but he was drunk, and he never called.

I missed the wedding episode. So is Owen still a zombie or what?

14:30 / 19.03.08

Phil Ford just started with the idea of a nine months pregnant woman in a wedding dress and worked back and forward from that didn't he?

Well, Russell T Davies and Chris Chibnall did. They came up with the idea of pregnant Gwen in a wedding dress and gave it to Phil Ford to run with it. And run with it he did. I felt quite negative towards the episode at first, but after watching it a second time, it grew enormously on me. Jack was characterised fantastically throughout, with a few really great lines and the action was completely stupid but excellent. It was basically Countrycide done properly, with the team an isolated locale using only their wits to survive. This time, however, it was packed with jokes that were actually funny and no forest-related sex talk. More episodes like this please! Phil Ford for Head-writer '09.

14:32 / 19.03.08

Owen is a still a zombie, yes. But what that amounts to from here on out, seems to be the villain of the week smelling his face and consequently ignoring him.

Whisky Priestess

14:33 / 19.03.08

"SMELL MY FACE, ALIEN! I AM BROKEN AND NOT AT ALL TASTY"

15:28 / 19.03.08

I want that on a t-shirt.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:50 / 19.03.08

Fucking hell, a good episode! And yes, as Llama predicted, another enemy that Owen is impervious to. But that was Torchwood done right, none of the team had to be more stupid than lobotomized chimps and they didn't bother too much with explanation, just that weird shit was happening and had to be stopped. The thing with Jack seemed unnecessary and didn't really go anywhere, but then there's a lot of chucking stuff in episodes about Jack's past and leaving it for someone in some future story to make sense of it all.

Best line of the night?

Jack: "Ianto, with me. I need his local knowledge."
Gwen: "Is that what they're calling it now?"

20:51 / 19.03.08

(I wrote this after BBC3's showing of the episode last week, so here it is. Think the episode's over now.)

So, PJ Hammond's "From Out of the Rain"- a sequence of semi-interesting ideas pinched from his own Sapphire and Steel episodes that never coalesce into a coherent or remotely worthwhile narrative. This was supposed to be a Ianto-centric episode, right? Except he didn't really have much character development or anything interesting to say. Gone are the quips from the rest of season 2 and we're back with the vague, poorly sketched Ianto of season 1.

Moreover, it was just scene after scene of info-dumping that eventually culminated in a really nasty scene with Jack having a "sweet" moment with the only child to survive the Night Walker's "spell".

"Hey kid, you're alive. But, er..your sister's dead and so are your parents."

Worst episode this season, I think.

21:14 / 19.03.08

Worse than MEAT?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:51 / 19.03.08

Which is really unfortunate, because a lot of the ideas were potentially really interesting in a Harlan Ellison sort of fashion, but they never really accomplished anything. They couldn't, for example, decide whether or not to give the bad guys any depth.

Whisky Priestess

23:22 / 19.03.08

I actually quite enjoyed this one but it didn't have an awful lot to do with Torchwood-as-we-know it. It seemed to have strayed in from Tales of the Unexpected or something.

On the other hand I quite liked the fact that they didn't save everyone - or indeed most of the victims - but I too was a lttle icked out by the Captain Jack and child pieta. I wanted the browbeaten Film Projector Boy to retain at least one of his parents, horrible though they were to him. Poor Film Projector Orphan Boy.

This ep wasn't really about any of the Torchwood team (well, perhaps Jack, but only peripherally) - it was more about the writer and director being in love with shows like Twin Peaks, Carnevale, Blackpool and Funland - which is fun but likesay, not exactly classic Torchwood.

I agree that it's a shame Ianto is only sarky and funny when being written by people who like the character/are able to remember this is now part of his schtick. Overall, an episode extremely low on laughs but highish on spook factor. You can't please all of the people, etc.

Am I the only person who wanted to see the money shot of 1920s Safari Suit Jack blowing his own head off? Surely not ... however, this is totally seeded as something to which we will return (hence the film found at the boot sale and the eerie music at the end), so I live in hope.

Whisky Priestess

23:24 / 19.03.08

Also, nota bene, the survivor child looked quite a lot like Grey to my eyes.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:50 / 20.03.08

Actually, you know what I hated? All the speeches that Jack gives throughout this whenever he's talking about being in the travelling carnival. They sound like he's reading from a textbook, and Barrowman even develops this weird expression like he knows he's reading from a textbook, and he can't be bothered to sell it.

I did like the Mermaid Girl; this was a lesser case of wanting the bad guys to win, more like I would have actually enjoyed the show being almost exclusively from their perspective, though that would fuck with the Torchwood structure.

Poor Ianto. It must be difficult, when anything remotely resembling the spotlight hits you and Jack Bloody Harkness jumps right in front of you and hogs it all. That never happens to Gwen. I keep expecting Tom Stoppard to pen an episode where Tosh and Ianto do things while everyone else saves the day, every entrance an exit sort of thing. Only people would whine and moan that the episode really just ripped off Buffy and "The Zeppo." Ianto and Tosh would quietly have all the last vestiges of their personalities drain away.

The Carnivale point, WP, is totally spot on, even if they had no idea what they were doing.

But, between this episode and the fairies one from Series 1, we know one fun fact about Torchwood: they spend most of their time going to poorly-attended "educational" presentations that end in crackpot adventures.

08:28 / 20.03.08

Crackpot adventures where everybody dies.

08:34 / 20.03.08

Also, nota bene, the survivor child looked quite a lot like Grey to my eyes.

Nice spot, but I seriously doubt PJ Hammond could muster enough interest in other people's scripts to incorporate such a neat idea into his own. The only person approaching how they've been characterised for the rest of season 2 was Gwen, but that's just because her personality is so wispy and nebulous that she jumps from being the "heart of the team," to a mildly snarky irritant from one week to the next.

15:50 / 22.03.08

So, there were two episodes of Torchwood this week. Did anybody else catch "Adrift" on Friday? I thought it was curiously understated for a Chris Chibnall episode. I'm not sure how it makes me feel about Jack. He hides these people, ostensibly people with severe mental illnesses from the rest of the world, stuffs them in a hideously grimy, Silent Hill-esque hospital and never lets their loved ones seem them. It was a very unusual mixed message. I can deal with complex characters, whose motivations are unclear, but in a show where in the past we've been invited to view these people as heroes, this hospital set-up makes Jack seem very cold and with a distinct lack of compassion. I know that by having Ianto secretly help Gwen it's an admission that what Jack is doing isn't necessarily right, but to allow the hospital to continue covering up these people's illnesses after the episode wraps is bizarre.

I liked the Rhys scenes. He's fast becoming my favourite character and is clearly one of the better actors on the show, but other than those scenes it was a very unpleasant episode. Beautifully directed though and it had lots of nice location work.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

17:12 / 22.03.08

I quite liked Adrift, which surprised me. It had a competent Gwen who was passionate about helping people without being irritating about it. There were some bits of rift continuity that seemed off (I was under the impression that we knew people could go through the rift prior to this, particularly Diane?), and on the whole it seemed very un-Chibnall, considering his usual method of characterization is to just stab me in the eye with a pencil for an hour straight.

Ianto was good in this and Toshiko got to do stuff. Torchwood is very much built on secrets regardless of whether or not it's worth keeping something a secret, which occasionally makes Jack act like a twit, but at least it wasn't out of character.

I'm looking forward to next week's explorations of backstory.

19:05 / 22.03.08

The whole 'do me a favour and never tell anyone else about this' schtick from Josh's (was it?) mum didn't sit well for me. I didn't really show much of a deed of care for what might benefit her son. Particularly as the situation was pretty analogous to mental or physical disability.
It was all a bit bloody hokey and unpleasant, frankly.
I hate Barrowman more and more with each episode.

00:55 / 23.03.08

Will second the feeling of unpleasantness running through the episode. Jack is a major-league wanker pretending to know what he does because he has been to the end of the world. Well, he has learnt fuckall and setting up this "special" facility because he cares proves that he has learnt nothing at all. Ignorance is bliss and all that. And the special facility reminded me of City Zero (can't remember if that's the correct name) from Planetary where Randall Dowling was conducting his experiments in the 50s. Maybe it was just me but it reinforced (for me, at least) the unpleasantness of the set-up.

The only scene I was comfortable watching was Rhys telling off Gwen about "bloody Torchwood" and their self-importance but in retrospect the scene made the really unpleasant resolution of the episode seem even ickier.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:48 / 23.03.08

But Torchwood is a bit shit, they're all self-obsessed and ineffective. I can't even figure out if I really think they're positive figures or just villains with good lighting. On some level I think you have to view them with a bit of ickiness attached-- they regularly kill aliens and fuck with people's memories.

Actually, the Planetary parallel is a good one, given that Torchwood do operate a bit like the Four; they steal and catalogue alien technology and biology, refusing to release it to the public. They wilfully keep the public ignorant for their own good. They're selfish and narcissistic. Whatever Torchwood may have stood for earlier in history, Jack's bunch are essentially decadent bastards who are too incapable of dealing with themselves to successfully bring about a better world.

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