Torchwood Rewatch

[galadriel1010]

I'm staying with the parents over Easter and paying my way by cooking dinner, stripping paint and doing the ironing. Ironing = TV and yesterday, ironing = Everything Changes and Day One. I had honestly forgotten just how much and why I loved this show. I'd forgotten how knicker-droppingly awesome Jack is, how little Ianto is in it, how creepy I find Owen and, to be honest, how much Gwen annoys me. I honestly thought I'd invented it all, but sadly I found her as problematic this time as I always have.

This post contains spoilers for Torchwood S1.01 and S1.02, rage at Gwen, squee at Jack, a little bit of hero-worship of Tosh, a dash of revelation and a healthy dose of nostalgia. Does deal with Owen's sexual creeperness in these episodes.

And I'll leave Gwen until the end, so anyone who's bored of seeing what I think about her can skip it.


Cardiff, city of my heart! I love Cardiff almost as much as I love London and York, and Torchwood is so very very Cardiff. From a tourism perspective, I think that Cardiff has lost something very valuable and that the authorities there will be suitably disappointed by it. It was a great advert for the city, even if the lift doesn't work. (Most disappointing thing ever. It was possibly worse than not getting my Hogwarts letter). Cardiff in my memory is a bit down-at-heel and depressed. Next to the Bay, there's the wharf made poisonous with Blue-Green Algae. Next to the Capitol Building is a standard high street of chain stores and vacant premises. The Torchwood in my stories, even if I don't describe it well enough, is always a bit like that. Shops stand empty, litter gathers on the street corners, benches are missing their slats. Torchwood's Cardiff isn't like that. It's a vital, vibrant city from before the credit crunch, on the up-and-up with developments everywhere. It sparkles and shines the way nowhere in Britain seems to at the moment, with the possible exception of the centre of London. It's almost another world, really.

It's good to see the settings I know, though. Good to point and snigger about reused settings. Like the underpass that Gwen runs through in Everything Changes? Totally the one the Doctor, Jack and Martha go through in Sound of Drums. And I think I've been through it too.

And the Hub? Seriously. What a set. I really hope they recreate it for the new exhibition in 2012, or at least publish a map. I can't get the layout figured out in my head at all, and I can't draw well enough even to get a rough sketch. On the one hand, I don't want to have all my passages and store rooms and things jossed. On the other, they blew them up, so I think I'm happy to ignore anything I need to.

Jack. How so awesome? There's just so much brokenness and fragility in him, contrasting with the brutality and the isolation. And the knicker-dropping levels of awesome. He's searching for something, but I think that, until Suzie dies and shatters it, he thinks he's found it. The team don't seem to push him - they rub along, they bicker and fight, but it's all good-natured and settled. After Everything Changes he doesn't really get that back for a long time, if ever, and I'm quite sad that he loses that to Suzie's madness.

Also, I have real problems reconciling the woman who's surrendered so much to the glove in search of life eternal with the Suzie we saw in TKKS. The characterisation just doesn't fit for me, but that's hardly unusual for Torchwood.

Ianto was barely in these episodes, but he always manages to be adorkable. There is absolutely nothing dismissive about the way Jack introduces him, and he is justifiably proud of his role. It never changes, and he's damn good at what he does. And he was totally flirting back rather than accusing Jack of harrassment. That's a kid with his head screwed on and his feet under the table.

Owen's such a creeper in these two. Which is worse, using date-rape spray, or recording his colleague apparently sexually assaulting a prisoner? Either way, not as funny as they thought it would be.

Tosh is so damn cool, and absolutely gorgeous. She doesn't take any shit from anyone in these episodes, and it's glorious. Where did that confident Tosh go?

Which brings us to Gwen. She doesn't get a very good start on the show if we're supposed to sympathise and identify with her. Her first action is arriving late at a crime scene. Then she takes someone's coffee and ignores them (apparently her superior officer, at that) when they tell her that they have enough people and she's to leave. Then she doesn't know who Torchwood is, unlike everyone else in Cardiff. Then she goes to spy on Special Ops. Then she lies to her boyfriend for no apparent reason. Then she asks a favour of someone at work, ignoring the fact that her friend has other work that probably isn't a whim and that there are proper channels for acquiring information...

She's a brilliant character, but I'm not sure she's the one they think she is. Based on this evidence she's the maverick cop who stumbles over Torchwood but doesn't quite find out what it is until she loses her job for disobeying orders and disregarding the rules too often and then finds herself in Torchwood, pushing against Jack's slacker limits and getting more and more consumed in the job until her boyfriend's found out her lies and she turns into another Suzie. I would watch that show so much my DVDs wore out.

I just can't see her as the breath of fresh air she's apparently supposed to be (and I'm not sure Jack did either). This Gwen is perfect for Torchwood, but wouldn't last long.

Of course, she's completely different in the next episode. Driven, empathetic, bewildered by the mystery she's being shown, obsessive and a bit clueless. Obsessed by rules and regulations, focussed on the protocol, but unable to see what's important - I mean, you know what swimming badges she got when she was 6 but not where she currently works?

The characterisation drives me nuts, and I really wish they'd stuck with the first one, because the maverick cop is a much cooler character than the clumsy, wide-eyed innocent. And there's too many female wide-eyed innocents and not enough female maverick cops, imo.

I may do Torchwood fanfics with this characterisation of her. But I may get accused of Gwen bashing.

Comments

[lawsontl.livejournal.com]

OH WOW, I LOVE that idea of Gwen, and it would fit the flaws and positives of her character together so much better. Plus, it would make so much more sense of where she ended up.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

It would have made more sense, and I think it would have made her more tolerable, if not more likeable, because she would be consistently rough around the edges rather than having the selective empathy she ended up with. That sort of character would also have een a perfect choice for Torchwood, whereas the persistently curious and clueless Gwen was often more of a liability, even into the second season.

Character bible, why couldn't there have been one?

[milady-dragon.livejournal.com]

I'd totally read Gwen like that! The idea of her being a maverick cop fits so much better than the way they ended up writing her.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

It would explain everything. She'd be jaded with her lack of advancement, knowing that it's because she's bull-headed and that that's never going to change and she's never going to get any further, constrained by the rules of the force and believing that they could do more to help if the rules were more flexible. Then along comes Torchwood with its limitless capacity for justice, but its similarly limitless capacity for cruelty, and she would gradually lose herself to the dichotomy until she broke and started using Torchwood for a vigilante justice regime on the streets of Cardiff that Jack eventually stopped.

*Twitches*

No more plot bunnies...

[sariagray.livejournal.com]

I like your idea of Gwen a lot, as previously (briefly, admittedly) discussed.

I posit this for Owen, as I do like him admittedly a lot: This spray was mishandled (by the writers, I mean, not just Owen!) as I think it was intended to be more of a...Well, I guess what I'm getting at is that I would TOTALLY use a spray if I thought it made me more attractive/desirable. I think that would even have played off well. Better, at least. But it's difficult to show that, I suppose, in a short clip.

As for the videotaping...I was more bothered by the fact that no one intended to help Gwen before she was, you know, turned to dust. They didn't know that it wouldn't work for alien!Carys at the time, if I remember correctly. As far as they were concerned, she would've been dusted (in a non-vampire sort of way, of course).

As for Suzie, I agree. In Everything Changes, she is hardly the criminal mastermind, psychotic person that we see later. And you know, Indira Varma sells it well, because it was only upon later speculation that I went, "Huh!?" She was so broken, so at the end of her rope, so truly in love with what she was doing, that she was blinded by her devotion. It's a strange switch.

As for Jack. Well. I like him a lot, don't get me wrong, but I...never really...cared that much about him? I mean, I do to an extent. But I seemed to like everyone else a whole lot more. Despite the intricacy of it, I was far less interested in his past than I was of anyone else's. To me, he was an allegory, a symbol, and everyone else, the actual, real people. It's like...Jack is a literary device. Unto himself, granted. It's hard to explain, and I don't even feel that way about the Doctor, so...*shrug* You got me! Jack is Judgement, Forgiveness, Anarchy, Regulation, annnnd...I'm trying to figure out a justification for what I'm trying to say. It's just personal preference, though.

But yes - I totally support you writing that characterization of Gwen. Absolutely. And I don't think it would be bashing in the slightest. This is coming from someone who truly does like Gwen, so...you have my seal of approval? :)

And on that note - I will stop monopolizing your time and your comment space. ;)

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

I think the spray would have seemed less creepy if he hadn't so obviously used it to obtain consent. It would have been less clear what it was if he'd put it on before he went out, but a comment about his aftershave and a line about it being 'out of this world' would have covered it.

The scene with the video really, really annoys me, because what they can see is either Gwen being sexually assaulted by the alien that kills people through sex, or Gwen sexually assaulting the prisoner. There is no way that scene looked right even to Gwen and Carys, and yet he records it.

Suzie must be a really fabulous actress, but even that doesn't quite cover it. I wonder if we were supposed to believe that it was the glove controlling her, and taking control when she was brought back?

That's interesting about Jack. I like there being a lot of mystery about him, but part of that is that I like how much of a blank page he is. And I sort of fell in love with him in that early teen period where falling in love with unattainable people is almost compulsary, and falling in love with fictional people is sort of fortunate.

And yay for approval! I may get around to writing it one day...

You can monopolise any part of me you like, dear ;)

[lone-star-woman.livejournal.com]

I kind of love your version of Gwen as long as she doesn't get too worked up about stuff. I find Gwen unbearable to watch when she goes to 11 on the intensity meter. (*runs and hides from accusations of bashing*)

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Oh God, I hear you. There are times I want to lock her in a dark room to talk to herself. She gets so blinkered and flaily.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I'd only seen odd episodes of Torchwood before Children of Earth, and then it was repeated on a random cable channel my then housemate subscribed to. I was shocked at the difference between the Gwen I really liked in CoE - confident, comfortable in her position, happy with Rhys - and the Gwen for most of the series - manipulative, selfish, careless of others feelings, dismissive of Rhys... I hated the supposed sexual tension between her and Jack. It made it feel that she was only sticking with Rhys out of habit, and Jack was settling for Ianto. If Gwen had been the woman she was in CoE, or the woman in your description above, I'd have loved her from the start, but she wasn't. I kept watching and waiting for the Gwen I knew to appear...

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Gwen had so many different personalities she was more of a council than a person. I like some of them, like the maverick and the team enabler, but some of them are really not very nice even if they're supposed to be. Jack was probably right to hire her after the first episode, but he should have fired her after the second.

[kelticbanshee]

Can I just say, amen to that? :)

[eldarwannabe.livejournal.com]

She's a brilliant character, but I'm not sure she's the one they think she is

THIS IS THE LINE I MEANT. THE ONE THAT IS SHEER GENIUS.

I love browsing through meta to get new ideas on characters, so I love your thoughts. BUT THAT LINE. So, so, true.

[rakei.livejournal.com]

So Old entry, which I just stumbled upon while looking for the beginning of your Timelord!Ianto story, amazing stry by the way adored all the characters you're a great writer.
So this entry grabbed my attention cause I just started rewatching Torchwood and the other thing that struck me was how creepy Owen is for one.
But the other thing is Gwen, I don't understand why she is there... why is she on the team at all? I just don't see what she adds to the team really, she doesn't have any unique speciality which makes her different from the others, who are obviously on the team for those specific reasons. Gwen from what we see of the first ep, doesn't even know about Torchwood which can only mean one of two things, either she is a complete probie on the police force or she is unobservant, both of those make her unsuitabe for an organisation such as Torchwood. Another thing that struck me is why isn't Gwen retconned after all her mishaps and her insubordination? the team has an overwhelming amount of autonomy for an organisation that could be compared to a military/security or police organisation, so orders when they do come are of the must be obeyed kind to my mind, and yet she carelessly does things her own way... it makes her highly off putting
I like the maverick characterisation, I think I would make for a better Gwen, I could totally see her spiralling out of control ending up in a cage with a Weevil like Owen, because for someone so normal and human she doesn't actually deal well with a double life, cheating on her boyfriend is not exactly endearing, but becomes less so since we're supposed to somehow identify with her and they keep trying to intermittently make her likeable character. To make clear I'm not bashing Gwen in anyway, I'm simply expressing my feelings of confusion as to why she made the team, because sometimes I even like her.
Sorry for going on, I'm just going to go read some more of your stories, Thank you