Torchwood: Season One final verdict
Jan. 24th, 2007 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseHeroes is back on air, an in celebration of watching the first new episode (A breather after the frantic highs of the end of last year, but in a way that involves bringing prople together and setting up something else)... I'm going to burble about Torchwood.
I decided during the holidays I'm a bad person. Heroes is actually quality drama, not bumpless, but certainly doing its best to pay off the things it promises. Torchwood is a wildly indecisive show with a schizophrenic tone. The New Doctor Who is more consistent in tone, but... well, that leaves a lot of room before we get to actually consistant. It seems unaware of its own biggest moral issues, it cheers on a god complex. I don't mind a supremely powerful hero being pumped full of hubris at his own supremely powerfulness, I don';t even mind it when he's the person we're supposed to be cheering. But the show seems to lack awareness that this is the character's *flaw*, even, if we go Greek, his fatal flaw.
So you can guess which shows I kept having stronger cravings for over the Christmas break. Doctor Who and Torchwood. Thus, I'm a bad person.
As I said, both are inconsistent (Doctor Who reaches for a serious low in the episode called Love and Monsters.) But Torchwood is inconsistent within episodes. There are few I can point to and say are without serious aggravating flaws. And few I can say definitively have no merits at all.
SO:
Everything changes
Introduces the set-up in Cardiff, the idea of Torchwood, drags Gwen Cooper, too curious for her own good and too doe-eyed to be any kind of a police officer, really, straight into the middle of an alien-device-driven crime spree.
Pluses: Captain Jack's technobabble in this episode actually makes the winning touch. And Gwen's effort to beat the amnesia drug and follow half-remembered leads give her the illusion of being a promising protagonist. Also, most of the implications of what the other Torchwood members do on their time off (Except Owen). The way one of those builds into something... much darker even than it first seems. The gunshot near the end.
Negatives: Well, first, I never set my expectations high on a pilot episode. Usually, they're still finding their feet. That being said, at no point in the entirety of Torchwood do I really believe Gwen would have made it as a cop, never mind a paranormal investigator. It starts here. She's curious and willing to investigate, even when and where most people won't or don't. But her methodolody is shaky, at best. She comes across as Nancy Drew without the spunk. IN this episode, we get a lot of jack being "special", "different", not just the leader.
Then there's Owen and his pheromones. I've seen people equate it with roofies and rape. Um. I wouldn't go that far. If the spray worked on the other person, yes. But it works on himself. The other person is going to bed on false pretenses, but they're left their own faculties and make the choice themselves. It's equivalent to lying to your would-be partner; which makes it still Not Okay, morally icky, and all, but not exactly roofie level illegal sludge. It's funny for a moment, then you realise Owen is scum - and what i like least about it is again, the writers seem unaware that this will read much worse than they think. The same way Hollywood romances all seems to be based on lies - and those are the good ones we're supposed to like and want to get together.
Rough grade: 3 out of 5, mostly on potential. My scale is pretty generous, note, and mostly comparing Torchwood episodes to its other episodes and to the New Doctor Who.
Day One
The alien possession sex-as-murder episode.
Positives: The way Gwen tries to be a moral compass in this episode, to remind the others these are human beings they're dealing with. This would have been a good role for her to fulfill in the rest of the series.
Negatives: Virtually everything else. The scripts at this point seem to include a few good lines surrounded by hackneyed stuff. Only Jack (John Barrowman) seems to full ease delivering the lines, though.
Rough grade: 2 out of five.
Ghost Machine
An alien device gives Torchwood members -a nd at least one other person - hints of the future and the past. Not just as visions; as empathic projections.
Positives: Good premise, good atmosphere. Giving Owen the historic rape-murder was a very good idea. He almost seems sympathetic in this one.
Negatives: Cruddy dialogue, predictable ending, as it turns into a time travel trope as old as anything.
Rough Grade: 3 out of five.
Cyberwoman
One of the Torchwood members has a secret girlfriend.
Positives: Good use of an until now underused character. For the first half of the episode. The dialogue all around is getting less shoddy, or else people are getting better at playing up to it. The moment Ianto sees the pizza delivery girl and realises what and who she really is.
Negatives: The way the second half devolves into angst and gunfire – and a hint of badly thought out sex. Except for a moment with the revived version of the pizza girl.
Rough grade: 2 ½ out of five.
Small Worlds
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden. They aren't nice. This is the last episode where Gwen has any claim at all to being the moral compass of the group.
Positives: Estelle - except for her very stupid death. The way Jack doesn't flinch at what he has to do, even with the rest of the team opposing him. The rose petals and the deths of the soldiers.
Negatives: Turning the fairies into ugly BEMS. The very stupid ways their murders devolve from rose-petal strewn weirdness into flat horror movie cliche.
Rough grade: 2 ½ to 3 out of five. I can’t entirely decide, in part because I know so well what I would have done. Most of the other weaker ones I wouldn’t have written that premise.
Countrycide
Investigating strange deaths in the country. What else?
Positives: Gwen's initial reactions to discovering what the villain is. The villain's final word ont he subject. And, has been said in another forum, many things are significantly improved by Captain Jack Harkness slamming through the door with a shotgun and kneecapping everyone.
Negatives: EVERYTHING ELSE. Angst and violence and badly thought out sex. Plot? What’s that? Do we need one of those if we have angst, violence, and badly thought out sex? From the title to the closing stupidity Gwen does. The fairies were less horror movie cliches than this.
Rough Grade: Right after I watched it, I might have given it a 2 1/2. Thinking about it, it’s slid to a 2.
***For one thing, the glaring hole in the background has come clear. Why can nobody else in a place assailed by cybermen only a few months before seems to ever hear or bear to hear about any aliens or weirdness? Why is the whole city in denial? Why pretend nothing is happening? Did they miss the climax of Buffy Season three -- even even the end of season two where Buffy has to finally tell mom what's going on, and how that worked itself out for almost three full seasons more? Why can Gwen *not* talk to her boyfriend about even the mundane details of the stuff she faces? Why is it assumed he can't be a reliable source of support?***
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Toshiko gets her character of the week moment when she's gifted a pendant by her new girlfriend -- which lets her see thoughts.
Positives: Toshiko turns out to be an interesting character, somewhere behind the technobabble they usually hidee her behind. Gwen regains half a brain at least while talking to Toshiko; and the taunting of Owen for getting the gender of a cadaver wrong is just cute. This particular weird alien is alright.
Negatives: Jack as Deus ex Machina. Angst replacing emotion or plot, though Naoko Mori does her best to make some real feeling. Why is it that everything that involves reading peoples' thoughts has to be grey and angst? Why do they think nobody ever has a happy thought? Why do people listening in on others' thoughts never hear the song they have stuck in their head or the happy sexy planning what to do with her husband when he gets home, or chess strategies? Does everyone here really think everyone else walks around in a gloom or a grey, thinking about lies and betrayal? The only ones that got that right were Wings of Desire and City of Angels. Also, this time Jack tips over the edge from making hard decisions to judgemental and vicious. I suspect he does the right thing, but the way it's played is mean.
Rough grade: 3 ½ out of five.
They Keep Killing Suzie.
Direct sequel to the very first episode. I actually like this one, almost without reservations.
Positives: Suzie's long range planning. The various ways she takes logical things - the need for an outlet for example - and takes them past the level of sanity. The ribbing by the regular police. Ianto and Jack’s very odd flirtation.
Negatives: Gwen’s swooning, even as explained by the plot, is badly acted. The way that Suzie tells Gwen, a few times, that Gwen is a superior replacement of her in every way, which I read as the writers trying desperately to convince the audience so.
Rough grade: 3 ½ out of five, beats Greeks Bearing Gifts on a tiebreaker, though.
Random Shoes
Torchwood as seen from the outside by a wannabe – who is, at this point, also dead and trying to figure out why he’s hanging around as a ghost. Considering Love and Monsters tried to do the same thing with Doctor Who – show it from the outside – I was really wary. It turned out okay.
Positives: Eugene actually turns out to have an amusing obsessed geek voice, in spite of his unfortunate fixation on Gwen. The way the ghost and real worlds bleed together on occasion. The number of things shown that weren’t aliens, magic, or special, just life – and the fact that it manages to throw back in just enough of the stuff that was special to be the first episode not to end with bitterness, angst, or loss. Also, the almost complete lack of overdoing sex, violence, or angst to replace plot and character and emotion.
Negatives: Gwen’s sudden twue wuv angsting at the end, which doesn’t fit with how she actually felt about Eugene, even being haunted by his death, until that moment. I also thought we should have seen Eugene show up at the edge of things in at least one or two prior episodes, since he says he was doing just that.
Rough grade: 4 out of five.
Out of Time
Three people depart September 18, 1953, in a small plane, and end up landing in the 21st century.
Positives: Diane. The shopping trip. The tea bags (Someone acted horrified that they used tea bags in Wales at all, but really, someone must. Besides, the whole by-play with them was a lot of fun). Emma does alright. Even John’s adaptation, or lack thereof, is realistic. Owen gets an emotional kick he deserves. Also the only episode to date where the sex was actually the least bit erotic.
Negatives: Um. This is one of the few episodes where I like everyone, even the usually unlikeable characters -- Gwen and Owen get redeemable plots. Of all people, it’s Jack who almost gets underused. Owen’s story works best if you forget the ways he’s been an ass to this date.
Rough grade 4 ½ out of 5.
Combat
Fight Club rip-off with aliens. Owen quickly devolves right into jerk-dom.
Positives: Owen scaring the weevil right at the very end.
Negatives: Most of the rest. But especially Gwen’s treatment of Rhys. Sheesh. Neither respect nor love there; that was positively abusive.
Rough grade: 1 1/2 out of five. Or less.
Captain Jack Harkness
Jack and Tosh end up back in the 1940s, at a dance in the midst of World War II and the Cardiff Blitz. Captain Jack Harkness meets Captain Jack Harkness.
Positives: Almost everything with Jack and Tosh, from Tosh being resourceful in leaving behind equations to Jack’s chemistry with Jack. Whoooo. Also, it manages to be beautiful and sad and emotional in how it does things, not angsty. No serious violence, and surprisingly little sex considering. Lots of actual character, though.
Negatives: Owen in the present day acts like a total jerk. Not that Ianto’s much better. But they get very little screen time, and both are at least given believable motives.
Rough Grade: 5 out of 5. This is what the series wants to be.
End of Days
A let down after Captain Jack Harkness.
The rift is opening, weird things from the past and future are getting through. Roman legions, instances of plague, you name it. And the Torchwood members are being tempted to open it wider, with things they can’t refuse.
Positives: The various temptations. The various ways the Torchwood members react, believing or disbelieving, but thinking, or not, as suits them. The dapper elderly villain.
Negatives: Again, Gwen’s treatment of Rhys is more abusive than protective. I can only conclude she really is an idiot. Owen. The whole biblicalness of the apocalypse.
And I’m torn on the very closing, between the “YES! We hoped that was coming” and the “You left without one word after all *that*, you moron,” which was not in Jack’s character.
Rough grade: 2 out of 5. Maybe 2 ½.
Final verdict: Tosh was good, Ianto had some potential. Jack was really good, though better when they de-emphasized his "specialness". Gwen started with a good idea they themselves undermined, by taking away any right she had to be a moral compass or a connection to ordinary life -- not made much better by the actress’s dependence on her big eyes to get her through most emotional scenes. Owen was a jerk all along. So guess which two they spent the most time on?
And they should make up their mind about whether they want sex and violence or plot and character. I vote for the latter two. They did their best when they focused on these.
Also note:
Cath Tregenna wrote Out of Time and Captain Jack Harkness.
Chris Chiball, Co-producer and listed as head writer, wrote Day One, Cyberwoman, Countrycide, and End of Days, 4 of the 5 lowest scores I gave.
I vote more from her and less from him. Let him produce. Let her be head writer.
I decided during the holidays I'm a bad person. Heroes is actually quality drama, not bumpless, but certainly doing its best to pay off the things it promises. Torchwood is a wildly indecisive show with a schizophrenic tone. The New Doctor Who is more consistent in tone, but... well, that leaves a lot of room before we get to actually consistant. It seems unaware of its own biggest moral issues, it cheers on a god complex. I don't mind a supremely powerful hero being pumped full of hubris at his own supremely powerfulness, I don';t even mind it when he's the person we're supposed to be cheering. But the show seems to lack awareness that this is the character's *flaw*, even, if we go Greek, his fatal flaw.
So you can guess which shows I kept having stronger cravings for over the Christmas break. Doctor Who and Torchwood. Thus, I'm a bad person.
As I said, both are inconsistent (Doctor Who reaches for a serious low in the episode called Love and Monsters.) But Torchwood is inconsistent within episodes. There are few I can point to and say are without serious aggravating flaws. And few I can say definitively have no merits at all.
SO:
Everything changes
Introduces the set-up in Cardiff, the idea of Torchwood, drags Gwen Cooper, too curious for her own good and too doe-eyed to be any kind of a police officer, really, straight into the middle of an alien-device-driven crime spree.
Pluses: Captain Jack's technobabble in this episode actually makes the winning touch. And Gwen's effort to beat the amnesia drug and follow half-remembered leads give her the illusion of being a promising protagonist. Also, most of the implications of what the other Torchwood members do on their time off (Except Owen). The way one of those builds into something... much darker even than it first seems. The gunshot near the end.
Negatives: Well, first, I never set my expectations high on a pilot episode. Usually, they're still finding their feet. That being said, at no point in the entirety of Torchwood do I really believe Gwen would have made it as a cop, never mind a paranormal investigator. It starts here. She's curious and willing to investigate, even when and where most people won't or don't. But her methodolody is shaky, at best. She comes across as Nancy Drew without the spunk. IN this episode, we get a lot of jack being "special", "different", not just the leader.
Then there's Owen and his pheromones. I've seen people equate it with roofies and rape. Um. I wouldn't go that far. If the spray worked on the other person, yes. But it works on himself. The other person is going to bed on false pretenses, but they're left their own faculties and make the choice themselves. It's equivalent to lying to your would-be partner; which makes it still Not Okay, morally icky, and all, but not exactly roofie level illegal sludge. It's funny for a moment, then you realise Owen is scum - and what i like least about it is again, the writers seem unaware that this will read much worse than they think. The same way Hollywood romances all seems to be based on lies - and those are the good ones we're supposed to like and want to get together.
Rough grade: 3 out of 5, mostly on potential. My scale is pretty generous, note, and mostly comparing Torchwood episodes to its other episodes and to the New Doctor Who.
Day One
The alien possession sex-as-murder episode.
Positives: The way Gwen tries to be a moral compass in this episode, to remind the others these are human beings they're dealing with. This would have been a good role for her to fulfill in the rest of the series.
Negatives: Virtually everything else. The scripts at this point seem to include a few good lines surrounded by hackneyed stuff. Only Jack (John Barrowman) seems to full ease delivering the lines, though.
Rough grade: 2 out of five.
Ghost Machine
An alien device gives Torchwood members -a nd at least one other person - hints of the future and the past. Not just as visions; as empathic projections.
Positives: Good premise, good atmosphere. Giving Owen the historic rape-murder was a very good idea. He almost seems sympathetic in this one.
Negatives: Cruddy dialogue, predictable ending, as it turns into a time travel trope as old as anything.
Rough Grade: 3 out of five.
Cyberwoman
One of the Torchwood members has a secret girlfriend.
Positives: Good use of an until now underused character. For the first half of the episode. The dialogue all around is getting less shoddy, or else people are getting better at playing up to it. The moment Ianto sees the pizza delivery girl and realises what and who she really is.
Negatives: The way the second half devolves into angst and gunfire – and a hint of badly thought out sex. Except for a moment with the revived version of the pizza girl.
Rough grade: 2 ½ out of five.
Small Worlds
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden. They aren't nice. This is the last episode where Gwen has any claim at all to being the moral compass of the group.
Positives: Estelle - except for her very stupid death. The way Jack doesn't flinch at what he has to do, even with the rest of the team opposing him. The rose petals and the deths of the soldiers.
Negatives: Turning the fairies into ugly BEMS. The very stupid ways their murders devolve from rose-petal strewn weirdness into flat horror movie cliche.
Rough grade: 2 ½ to 3 out of five. I can’t entirely decide, in part because I know so well what I would have done. Most of the other weaker ones I wouldn’t have written that premise.
Countrycide
Investigating strange deaths in the country. What else?
Positives: Gwen's initial reactions to discovering what the villain is. The villain's final word ont he subject. And, has been said in another forum, many things are significantly improved by Captain Jack Harkness slamming through the door with a shotgun and kneecapping everyone.
Negatives: EVERYTHING ELSE. Angst and violence and badly thought out sex. Plot? What’s that? Do we need one of those if we have angst, violence, and badly thought out sex? From the title to the closing stupidity Gwen does. The fairies were less horror movie cliches than this.
Rough Grade: Right after I watched it, I might have given it a 2 1/2. Thinking about it, it’s slid to a 2.
***For one thing, the glaring hole in the background has come clear. Why can nobody else in a place assailed by cybermen only a few months before seems to ever hear or bear to hear about any aliens or weirdness? Why is the whole city in denial? Why pretend nothing is happening? Did they miss the climax of Buffy Season three -- even even the end of season two where Buffy has to finally tell mom what's going on, and how that worked itself out for almost three full seasons more? Why can Gwen *not* talk to her boyfriend about even the mundane details of the stuff she faces? Why is it assumed he can't be a reliable source of support?***
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Toshiko gets her character of the week moment when she's gifted a pendant by her new girlfriend -- which lets her see thoughts.
Positives: Toshiko turns out to be an interesting character, somewhere behind the technobabble they usually hidee her behind. Gwen regains half a brain at least while talking to Toshiko; and the taunting of Owen for getting the gender of a cadaver wrong is just cute. This particular weird alien is alright.
Negatives: Jack as Deus ex Machina. Angst replacing emotion or plot, though Naoko Mori does her best to make some real feeling. Why is it that everything that involves reading peoples' thoughts has to be grey and angst? Why do they think nobody ever has a happy thought? Why do people listening in on others' thoughts never hear the song they have stuck in their head or the happy sexy planning what to do with her husband when he gets home, or chess strategies? Does everyone here really think everyone else walks around in a gloom or a grey, thinking about lies and betrayal? The only ones that got that right were Wings of Desire and City of Angels. Also, this time Jack tips over the edge from making hard decisions to judgemental and vicious. I suspect he does the right thing, but the way it's played is mean.
Rough grade: 3 ½ out of five.
They Keep Killing Suzie.
Direct sequel to the very first episode. I actually like this one, almost without reservations.
Positives: Suzie's long range planning. The various ways she takes logical things - the need for an outlet for example - and takes them past the level of sanity. The ribbing by the regular police. Ianto and Jack’s very odd flirtation.
Negatives: Gwen’s swooning, even as explained by the plot, is badly acted. The way that Suzie tells Gwen, a few times, that Gwen is a superior replacement of her in every way, which I read as the writers trying desperately to convince the audience so.
Rough grade: 3 ½ out of five, beats Greeks Bearing Gifts on a tiebreaker, though.
Random Shoes
Torchwood as seen from the outside by a wannabe – who is, at this point, also dead and trying to figure out why he’s hanging around as a ghost. Considering Love and Monsters tried to do the same thing with Doctor Who – show it from the outside – I was really wary. It turned out okay.
Positives: Eugene actually turns out to have an amusing obsessed geek voice, in spite of his unfortunate fixation on Gwen. The way the ghost and real worlds bleed together on occasion. The number of things shown that weren’t aliens, magic, or special, just life – and the fact that it manages to throw back in just enough of the stuff that was special to be the first episode not to end with bitterness, angst, or loss. Also, the almost complete lack of overdoing sex, violence, or angst to replace plot and character and emotion.
Negatives: Gwen’s sudden twue wuv angsting at the end, which doesn’t fit with how she actually felt about Eugene, even being haunted by his death, until that moment. I also thought we should have seen Eugene show up at the edge of things in at least one or two prior episodes, since he says he was doing just that.
Rough grade: 4 out of five.
Out of Time
Three people depart September 18, 1953, in a small plane, and end up landing in the 21st century.
Positives: Diane. The shopping trip. The tea bags (Someone acted horrified that they used tea bags in Wales at all, but really, someone must. Besides, the whole by-play with them was a lot of fun). Emma does alright. Even John’s adaptation, or lack thereof, is realistic. Owen gets an emotional kick he deserves. Also the only episode to date where the sex was actually the least bit erotic.
Negatives: Um. This is one of the few episodes where I like everyone, even the usually unlikeable characters -- Gwen and Owen get redeemable plots. Of all people, it’s Jack who almost gets underused. Owen’s story works best if you forget the ways he’s been an ass to this date.
Rough grade 4 ½ out of 5.
Combat
Fight Club rip-off with aliens. Owen quickly devolves right into jerk-dom.
Positives: Owen scaring the weevil right at the very end.
Negatives: Most of the rest. But especially Gwen’s treatment of Rhys. Sheesh. Neither respect nor love there; that was positively abusive.
Rough grade: 1 1/2 out of five. Or less.
Captain Jack Harkness
Jack and Tosh end up back in the 1940s, at a dance in the midst of World War II and the Cardiff Blitz. Captain Jack Harkness meets Captain Jack Harkness.
Positives: Almost everything with Jack and Tosh, from Tosh being resourceful in leaving behind equations to Jack’s chemistry with Jack. Whoooo. Also, it manages to be beautiful and sad and emotional in how it does things, not angsty. No serious violence, and surprisingly little sex considering. Lots of actual character, though.
Negatives: Owen in the present day acts like a total jerk. Not that Ianto’s much better. But they get very little screen time, and both are at least given believable motives.
Rough Grade: 5 out of 5. This is what the series wants to be.
End of Days
A let down after Captain Jack Harkness.
The rift is opening, weird things from the past and future are getting through. Roman legions, instances of plague, you name it. And the Torchwood members are being tempted to open it wider, with things they can’t refuse.
Positives: The various temptations. The various ways the Torchwood members react, believing or disbelieving, but thinking, or not, as suits them. The dapper elderly villain.
Negatives: Again, Gwen’s treatment of Rhys is more abusive than protective. I can only conclude she really is an idiot. Owen. The whole biblicalness of the apocalypse.
And I’m torn on the very closing, between the “YES! We hoped that was coming” and the “You left without one word after all *that*, you moron,” which was not in Jack’s character.
Rough grade: 2 out of 5. Maybe 2 ½.
Final verdict: Tosh was good, Ianto had some potential. Jack was really good, though better when they de-emphasized his "specialness". Gwen started with a good idea they themselves undermined, by taking away any right she had to be a moral compass or a connection to ordinary life -- not made much better by the actress’s dependence on her big eyes to get her through most emotional scenes. Owen was a jerk all along. So guess which two they spent the most time on?
And they should make up their mind about whether they want sex and violence or plot and character. I vote for the latter two. They did their best when they focused on these.
Also note:
Cath Tregenna wrote Out of Time and Captain Jack Harkness.
Chris Chiball, Co-producer and listed as head writer, wrote Day One, Cyberwoman, Countrycide, and End of Days, 4 of the 5 lowest scores I gave.
I vote more from her and less from him. Let him produce. Let her be head writer.
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Date: 2012-11-27 09:13 pm (UTC)