Torchwood Rewatch
Apr. 11th, 2011 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010I'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.
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.
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Date: 2011-04-12 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-12 08:53 am (UTC)