Thoughts on seeing a couple eps of Torchwood

[ivyfic]

I thought the Stargate: Atlantis team was incompetent but jesus christ. I can't think of five people I would want to be dealing with the fate of the world less than this bunch. Everyone looks gobsmacked all the time except for Jack, whose coping mechanism seems to be snogging.

Of course you know this will require further viewing. :)

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

::laughs::

Welcome to Torchwood. Where even the most incompetent brain-washed snoop can get a job with the worst-kept secret agency ever. No wonder Torchwood 1 went to the Cybermen in under a day...

And, yes, Jack's coping mechanism has always been snogging. The only person who was friendly with him in 1941 was getting schtupped by him :)

[justcomeinalone.livejournal.com]

Toldja. Every episode of Torchwood just feels like the first draft of what COULD BE a fun episode.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure I'd go that far. At this point, I kind of hate all the characters. Well, except for Jack. But then, it's impossible to hate someone with a charisma of 5.

I also kind of hate the comparison I've read that Owen is the British answer to Rodney McKay. Cause Rodney is snarky and sarcastic but cuddly and Owen is just...an utter asshole.

[justcomeinalone.livejournal.com]

He's also a rapist. That alien perfume he used in the first episode? Yeah, hypnotizing two people to have sex with you who normally wouldn't? Yeah, rape. Classy.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Watch CSI: Miami, if you can stomach it. Much the same thing. Torchwood is basically "The Captain Jack Show" and everyone else has to be incompetent so he can swoop in and save the day EVERY DAY.

What bugged me more about the show, though, was the heavy focus on sexual activity. Yes, I know Russell Davies wanted to do an adult show, esp. one that featured homosexuality as more the norm than the deviation, but the show shouldn't be ABOUT that! And it should be a natural part of the characters, not something he's shoving in our faces all the time. Jack's orientation was handled beautifully on Dr. Who because it was simply an aspect of him, not his totality, and it wasn't put on center stage with heavy spotlights and a strong dance beat.

See, now you got me started again. :)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, you will get no argument from me as to the crapocity. I find that Jack's sexuality doesn't really bother me, while everyone else's kind of does. I had a friend in college who was a self-described pan-sexual, but this was little more than an excuse of hers to dodge the moral repercussions of cheating on her various girl- and boyfriends by hiding behind a shield of politics and false open-mindedness. OMG you can't tell me I can't sleep with this person! I'm a pansexual! You're discriminating against my right to shag anything I want! Etc., etc. Needless to say, her girl- and boyfriends did not buy this crap.

Jack, on the other hand, being an alien and a time-traveler, relates to romantic relationships orthogonally to normal humans, so I don't get the same hypocritical ping from him. Life literally turns Jack on. He's like the Doctor in that way, though the Doctor's passion is not sexualized. I'm willing to believe that both Jack and the Doctor engage with humans in this hugely intense way, regardless of the length of time. For them, the concepts that normally go along with love—like fidelity and til death do us part—don't really have a meaning. Their interactions (apart from the whole sex thing) are almost childlike in their wonder. So when Jack is flirting with any given character, he is, in that moment, wholly devoted to that person, though the next moment he may be devoted to someone else. How that viewpoint interacts with the humans' expectations and jealousy could be a point of much drama, though from what I've seen we've only gotten that played out a little bit in Rose's jealousy about the Doctor.

Plus, there's the charisma equals five thing.

The human characters, on the other hand, don't have the excuse of an alien perspective and end up coming across as selfish sex-obsessed jerks. I mean, Owen in the first episode coerces two people into sex, and in the second episode, when Gwen is in actual danger, the rest of the team decides to ogle instead of helping. I was a little shocked that they put an entire sex scene in the first act of that episode and then showed it to us again with added voyeurism and wanking. Definitely trying too hard to be "adult", here.

And I'm not even going to get into how soppily melodramatic the damn show is. I'm not ashamed to admit I skipped to the season finale in hope of skipping the crappiest episodes, and the sheer amount of time they spend on hugely drawn out over-the-top emotional scenes (with the strings swelling, of course) is nauseating. I haven't seen anything with this much bad angst since the last time I went on fanfiction.net. If you cut down the emotional points of the final episode to what would actually be effective and tasteful, it would be a half an hour shorter.

Also, I have watched CSI: Miami and that's just damn bad acting.

[tirtzah.livejournal.com]

Your post is made of truth. Sigh. Oh Tochwood.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Please tell me the fandom makes it worth it.

[mclittlebitch.livejournal.com]

It's mostly angsty Jack/Ianto from what I've seen, but then I wander more in Doctor Who proper. I know dotfic's written a couple drabbles.

[tirtzah.livejournal.com]

I don't really know. Um... the second to last episode of the series is really good, if that helps.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

So I'd heard, so I skipped ahead a bit. And I have to say, if that's the high point...

I liked it but it still had problems. For one, Tosh looks completely frickin' incompetent. Way to blend in, miss member of a super secret organization! Maybe it's not that you're Japanese, it's that you have this look on your face that screams "I shouldn't be here and I don't know what I'm doing"! I mean, she sucks at being furtive, and she's always looking to Jack with "save me! save me!" eyes.

Now, I can't really complain about that damn hot kiss, but this just proves that the only way Captain Jack has to interact with people is sex. He empathizes with them and somehow this gets turned into lust. Now, I get that the guy has been living a lie and is really happy to meet a gay military man as handsome as Jack, but the whole implication of the finale of the episode was that kissing Jack made his life complete. Which when you stop to think about it is...whacked. Plus, Jack just outed him in front of his men, so chances are he wouldn't even be flying that mission tomorrow. Makes me long for that Dead Like Me episode where Mason tells his target he's going to die.

[tirtzah.livejournal.com]

I like to think that the people at the dance decided everything that happened including the mysterious light and disappearing people were a mass hallucination brought on by too much alcohol. And they never spoke of it again. Yeah.

Um, yeah well, that's Torchwood for you. It's kind of crap. Derivative crap. Which is too bad, because I love John Barrowman and I love Captain Jack, which is why I wish he would just go back to Doctor Who permanently. It depresses me. *pets her DW series one dvds fondly*