Procrastinating Gala Bitches about Torchwood part 2

[galadriel1010]

Gwen
It couldn't really start with anyone else, could it? Poor lass. It's no secret that I don't like Gwen, but I try to like her, I really do. It just doesn't work. I think Gwen is so disliked for three reasons:

Audience surrogate
Gwen was our introduction to Torchwood. She's the one we met and identified with, because she was like us and having her eyes opened to a whole new world. Unfortunately, the pushy, slightly clumsy and clueless companion is not who we want to be. Really, did anyone want to be the girl on the TARDIS asking "what does that mean, Doctor?" every episode? Of course not. They wanted to be the Brigadier, or Jamie, or Jack. Recent female companions in Doctor Who have managed to buck the trend and be both the information dump receptacle, and bring something of their own as well. Gwen and, I think, Rose never really managed this. They have nothing to offer other than their enthusiasm and curiosity. And for the character we identify with to be that one... sorry dears, but I alwys wanted to be Jack, Mickey or Ianto, who'd been around and knew what they were doing. And didn't need to be rescued all the time.

On top of this, she is a very good character and a very fleshed out character, but we judge her as we would judge ourselves. If you can identify with her and say 'that could be me', then you're going to look on her more harshly if she does something that you don't want to consider doing yourself. It starts badly, to be honest. Jack's just come back to life and seen his friend shoot herself in the head because she's a mass murderer who got found out, and the first thing Gwen says is "I remember". That's nice, dear. Here, I'll help you forget again. And the lying to Rhys and nosiness that started in the very first episode. Couldn't investigating Torchwood have waited until she wasn't concussed and didn't have to lie to him about where she was going?

So the show set us up with this character who we were supposed to identify with who is shown to be fairly lacking in empathy, a liar who seems to have done it before, nosy and meddlesome, and not particularly good at it. I'll start shopping around for a better character to identify with, thanks.

Main character
She's the main character. The show was supposed to be all about her, but the BBC wouldn't let RTD do it until he proposed this new idea with John Barrowman in it. Gwen remained the main character, but shared the limelight with Jack. And, well, Jack's just prettier. And we already identified with him and, by and large, were at least a little bit in love with him. She took screentime away from Jack, who we were watching for.
And then Ianto came along, and he's prettier than her as well, and he and Jack make such a very lovely picture. And Gwen kept stealing time when they could be kissing. Literally, in Adrift. Yeah, I know Torchwood wasn't about boys kissing but... Meh

Purpose, or lack thereof
She has no specialist skills. She put together the profile on Carys in Day One, which could have been a crowning moment, but it was Tosh who eventually got the information they needed to catch her and Owen who knew what it meant. What is Gwen's purpose there? Extra field agent (who had to be taught to wield a gun and couldn't do any of the research), conscience (who seemed to be only casually acquainted with her own), researcher (who isn't as good at it as either the archivist or the technician)... or is she just there to challenge the others and poke her nose in where it's not welcome? Yeah, they needed someone to do that, but it's a pretty shitty job description, and could have done with a more sensitive touch most of the time.

Tl;dr: We identified with her in the wrong way and couldn't see the point of her.

Jack
If you're not at least a little bit in love with Jack, I think you've misplaced your heart. For starters, that smile could turn the butchest lesbian (but would be more successful if he didn't know it) is a work of art on a par with the Aston Martin DB9 (I'm not the only one who'd marry that car, right?), and then he's so tortured and hurting and vulnerable and still a hero. He's everyone's Prince Charming.
But he's seen as promiscuous and slutty, which is a reather horrible case of slut shaming, as he's spread his sexual exploits out over more than a century anyway, and the only character he's slept with in recent years is Ianto. (If he'd slept with anyone else we'd know about it; Torchwood was not subtle about that. There would have been a hideous blow-up in the Hub). But interviews tell us that he sleeps around, and who are we to argue with them?
Usually first in line, actually.
Jack has allowed a lot more people to be sex positive, but there's still a layer of prudish slut shaming which seems to deny him emotions and connections.

But he's still our leader, and we will still follow him anywhere. We admire him for making the hard decisions and keeping us safe. He's also the last surviving WW1 veteran by now, and the sacrifices he's made to keep us safe are worthy of our respect.
(Yes, I know he didn't actually fight in the war. But he doesn't actually protect us from aliens either)

Ianto
He looks good in a suit. He's also adorably protectable, but will never actually need our protection, very damaged and stil going. He survived things no one should have to, and he gets up and goes on again.
He's also a fantastic role model for bisexual youth, taps into our love of the secret service image that creates our love for James Bond, and gets the guy we all want.
Of course we identify with him, he gets to shag Jack Harkness.
And the only mistake he makes is trying to save the woman he loves whilst everyone around him ignores that he exists, not long after he survived the Battle of Canary Wharf. It's sort of hard not to hate Jack for letting him down.
Even in End of Days, when Lisa appears to him to get him to open the Rift, she doesn't tell him that he'll get her back. She tells him that people will die if he doesn't do it - no promise of her return, just an instruction to keep people safe.
Did I mention that he's pretty?

Tosh
Poor Tosh. It's sort of hard to identify with her. She's quiet and closed off, intelligent beyond most of our capacities for understanding (unless you believe the Torchwood Archives' estimate of her IQ, in which case she wouldn't get into MENSA. As flattering as that statistic was for me, there is no way I'm brighter than Tosh. I am a glowworm to her lava lamp. Or something).
Very good at her job, totally ignored. And pining over Owen, which makes you wonder if she has any sense at all.
But it's hard to identify with computers, and she never got to be much more than an extension of Mainframe.

Owen
Rapist, bully, arrogant arse. At least we can't say that he went from bad to worse, because he couldn't get much worse. Out of all the team, owen is the one I really, really wouldn't want to work with, because I'd just be waiting for him to turn on me. Possibly this is why people like him more than Gwen, because they recognise the bully in him and don't want to get on his bad side.

So there is Galadriel's theories on attatchement to the Torchwood characters. Agree, disagree, seen something I missed? I was trying to work out why so many people dislike Gwen, sort of looking for validity in my dislike, and ended up looking at all of them.

Comments

[beesandbrews.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I have with Gwen is she's a victim of Tell not Show. The writers kept saying Gwen, she's awesome. But they rarely showed me examples of her awesomeness. As a cop she lost control of the situation and subsequetly is knocked out in a bar fight. She didn't maintain a perimeter as instructed, she went off her beat stranding her partner, but evidently could serve coffee with the best of them. Her ambition is to work the desk, not be a detective. This isn't someone that comes off as having a burning desire to bust crime or serve the community. Police work is just something to do to collect a check.

As a domestic partner she's depicted as someone who lies casually without reason just because she can, and despite loud protestations of love and butterflies, is clearly less invested in her relationship than Rhys. It's made pretty clear that if Jack were to crook his finger then Gwen would drop Rhys like an empty sack of crisps, yet this is held up as the example of domestic normality the others are supposed to aspire to. Um...

As a member of Torchwood she bucks authority, can't seem to grasp the larger picture that her actions have consequences that impact other people - everyone from Carys to her parents when she turns into Bridezilla, nearly gets herself killed on a semi-regular basis because she doesn't understand that what they do and who they work with are dangerous - John Hart, Suzie.

Despite the fact she has little background for anything she does her skills appear out of nowhere. Which isn't to say that Torchwood didn't train her or she isn't bright enough to learn, but watching Gwen suddenly have the ability to input the protocols to use the rift manipulator when she's never shown a casual interest just jars.

Compare that to Owen your second least liked character. Owen is out of the box an ass. He's rude, crude, possibly dangerous, amoral and not a nice guy. He's also a damn good doctor and evidently has secondary interests in botany and other areas of science. Over the progression of the series we find that Owen is a damaged individual who has put up a lot of walls to protect himself. He's not nearly the ass we thought he was. He may have gone off the rails for a time, but he slowly pulls himself back until by the time of his presumed actual death, he's redeemed.

And that is why Owen is more popular than Gwen. His character goes through an arc of dicernable growth and change. Whereas, Gwen still seems very much the same person by the end of the second series as she was in the first. She's still putting herself first, she's still lying, she still doesn't get that her actions have consequences that hurt other people.

Tosh got a raw deal. I don't disagree with what you say about Ianto. I think that Jack is more talk then show.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

I agree completely on Gwen. She never quite matched up to what we were told about her, so she never met our expectations. There are huge gaps in the story where they could have shown her learning, but she just keeps making mistakes and never seems to learn from them.
If she hadn't learnt not to push Jack by Adrift, she wasn't going to learn from that.

Owen definitely does grow and develop as a character, but I still can't see him as much more than a bully until he dies. It's the ultimate comeuppance, really. He dies and has his revelations, and then he has to live with them.

Jack is definitely more talk than action personally. Maybe he once was all he makes himself out to be, but it's a smokescreen to stop people getting close to him now, and who can blame him?