Torchwood - Sleeper

[ivyfic]

Yes, Torchwood gets the special SGA icon cause clearly there's no Geneva Convention in the Hub, either. Holy crap, show. Let's take a not even thinly veiled story about terrorists and sleeper cells and suicide bombers and show it no respect whatsoever. Who thought this was a good idea?

The Torchwood team once again showed that particular combination of poor planning and questionable ethics that seems to be their status quo. Unexplainable only slightly weird attack? Let's grab a woman off the street and interrogate her (hey, it turned Ianto on). When that doesn't work, we'll just show her around our super-secret organization. Wait--she's gathering intel? How does she know so much about Torchwood??? Could it possibly be the guided tour? And now we'll torture her with a device that killed the last test subject. Cause Captain Jack apparently subscribes to the Greg House school of diagnosis--that is, inflict as much pain as possible until things start making sense.

But what really bothered me was Gwen. Holy crap, Gwen. You do not lie to people in situations like this. You don't promise a happy ending you can't deliver. It's not compassionate, it's cruel. What Gwen is doing is making herself feel better, not making Beth feel better.
Beth: I'm not human!
Gwen: Yes you are!
Jack: Um, no.
Beth: Wait--I can have babies?
Gwen: Uh...sure! If you really want it, I'm sure you can.
Jack: Um, no.
Hope is one of the cruelest weapons in the torture arsenal, and whether Gwen is doing it intentionally or out of a deluded optimism, she's the one who changes it from an (arguably) painful but necessary investigation against an enemy to torture. Sorry. And I hate having the show pretend like she's the ethical one. Ugh. Somebody needs to loan the writers a copy of Death and the Maiden.

And Ianto's role now, apparently, is to stand around in a suit and say snappy one-liners. Cause he sure didn't do anything else this episode. He seems to be back under the sexual thrall of Jack, though--how else do you explain him running after Jack the moment Jack's clothes were marginally mussed?

ETA: And did I mention how pointlessly gratuitous this show is? Showing a guy getting repeatedly stabbed? Baby rolling into traffic? No need. X-Files managed to freak me out twice is much with half as much on-screen. It seems like the only reason for most of that is to be "edgy" and "adult" which is a piss poor reason.

In conclusion, if you don't distract me with boy kissing, I'm forced to examine the actual plotholes. So, Torchwood? Bring back the boy kissing.

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Heh, see, I liked this ep *better* than Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang! This one actually had a plot, instead of just being about character sex. Though yes, Ianto has now developed a personality, and apparently his new personality is "snarky asshole."

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I'd rather they just have wacky fun for an episode than try to tackle a serious topic and do it this badly. But that's just me, and we know what I'm watching for.

Yes, apparently all Ianto needed was the love of a good man. I'm slightly disturbed by how turned on the interrogation seems to make him, though. Perhaps all his brains dribbled out...okay, I'll stop now.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly disturbed by how turned on the interrogation seems to make him

Yeah, that was . . . unfortunate. It was a really creepy, uncomfortable interrogation and then it's supposed to be foreplay?

I'm not sure I think Gwen is supposed to be ethical though. I think she's supposed to be blinded and made selfish by her bleeding heart. I'm actually impressed that she's the most "human" one and she so often fucks it up or gets it wrong. Maybe I'm imputing smarter ideas to the show than are really there, but I don't think she's supposed to be the most perfect or the most ethical, just the most ruled by her emotions.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I think she's supposed to be blinded and made selfish by her bleeding heart.
I'd buy this more if the other characters pointed that out to her, which they don't. It's left to the viewer to interpret. I think I wouldn't have been bothered by this storyline if:
-overidentification was her initial problem, but, at the end, she realized that she's not this woman's ally and she can't fix everything. As I said in my other post, she can go from this point to deciding that Beth has to die or to deciding that she won't kill an innocent woman, even if it risks the species. I would have respected either choice, but she never made a choice at all.
-Jack reprimanded her for becoming too emotionally involved. (I know, here I am expecting leadership skills of Jack.) This happens all the time on cop and medical dramas where too much compassion is often identified as a flaw that needs to be addressed.
-Jack had thanked her for so effectively tag-teaming Beth in the interrogation. I'm fine with Jack letting Gwen act like this if it's acknowledged that he's letting it go because Gwen is accidentally being the perfect good cop in his good cop/bad cop routine. I just need Gwen to realize that what she's doing is detrimental.

Instead, the conclusion was Jack essentially telling Gwen to buck up cause he knows this was tough on her, which is so not satisfying to me. I still feel like the show treats her as the moral compass: she was introduced as the outsider who brought a much-needed fresh perspective to this warped little group, and that position was reaffirmed by having her be the leader in Jack's absence. She's gotten them into trouble with her bleeding heart before, I just need someone to acknowledge that fact. That's all.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I'm all for wacky fun--my problem with Torchwood is that they've always equated wacky fun with "hey look, it's an adult show! Watch how much we can focus on sex!" That's not wacky fun, it's the BBC equivalent to a Skinemax series.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Would you be happier with hot lesbian action?

I guess what I'm saying is I like it best when it's campy, which last week certainly was. It's a bad show, I'm not arguing that. I like a lot of bad shows. But given how fundamentally flawed it is, I hate it when they try to take themselves seriously cause that's no fun at all. And Torchwood has a history of gratuitous emo porn. The writers have as little restraint as those on fanfiction.net.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

No, the type of sex doesn't bother me, it's the fact that the show claims to be about aliens and a team of experts stopping them and is actually about a bunch of sex-crazed incompetents instead. As you said, if they were simply campy all the time that would be fine. But there's enough darkness and enough occasional serious story there to suggest it should be a serious show, in which case the oversexed element doesn't work.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

lol! finally seen it :-P i nearly fell off my seat when gwen said something to the effect of "biology doesn't make us human; it's how we feel inside" OH MY HOLY CRAP - even jack had the sense to look at her like wtf are you talking about? (agreed on the hope thing and gwen - can't we just get rid of her? and of course rhys, who ALWAYS calls at the wrong time) and yes, that whole baby rolling into traffic? so contrived - i've been where she was walking in cardiff, and that's a pedestrian area - the carriage had to be guided to go into traffic; plus, there were hardly any cars on the road, and the carriage was rolling so slowly and obviously that anyone who was driving by would have seen it in time to stop. and yes, the torture - i suppose that's what they mean when it's an adult show? lots of blood and torture - bring back marsters....

Finally got around to watching this...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how much I turn off my sensors about..well, anything aside from pure suck when watching this show. I got what "Sleeper" was doing, but I wasn't disturbed by it. I was moved by Beth's plight as she seemed genuinely heroic in her quest not to hurt anyone. She broke out of Torchwood, realized in a short second that something was wrong, and went to go remove herself from the picture. She kept making the hard choice, and it made Gwen seem pathetic, so I don't feel anyone needed to say anything extra. Hell, Owen said it--they couldn't take the chance Beth would lose control and hurt Gwen for real, so they shot her. No apologies, no lecture, just "That's protocol, baby, and you fucking well know it."

I admit, I was distracted by how funny Ianto had gotten for much of this. He's always been the dry-humor guy in the background, he's just being given more a chance to bring it to the fore now that he's officially the main character's boyfriend.

Re: Finally got around to watching this...

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Beth was very good--I did like that she got her situation. (I'd compare this to the season two Supernatural episode Heart, which I know you've seen but I'm not sure you remember. In that case, the woman in the same situation didn't seem to really get it and her saying she did seemed like an easy out.)

I was discussing this show today with mithras03 and we decided that all this show really needs to fix (read excuse) most of its problems is to have a regular on the show who looks at the Torchwood people and says, "Are you nuts? What the hell are you doing?" And I think James Marsters was born for that role.

Re: Finally got around to watching this...

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

ah, but see, james marsters (i.e. captain john) wouldn't have cared about the torture thing...he would have been all for the exploding heads...although he is good for the "you really don't know jack about...jack...do you?"