![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fangrrl_squeesAs usual, spoilers lurk below
I've slept on it, and I'm still a bit dissatisfied with the story for Small World. Not the acting, not (so much) the effects, not the fact that, once again, the show was clearly underwritten by the Cardiff chamber of commerce.
I'm just not a fairy-tale type of person, I guess. It doesn't help that nothing was explained adequately. The bad guys can do pretty much anything anywhen, huh? Lovely. Let's hope they don't get megalomaniac aspirations, huh? Why did they have to have a human "Chosen One", being (apparently) non-human themselves? Why did they take the dislike to Estelle? Was it just a violent dislike of flash photography, or what? What happened to previous children who were the Chosen One and why did it take these little blighters so many thousands of years to get one to cross over and fulfill whatever need it was that existed?
I can understand the entertainment value of leaving a few things unexplained/to the viewers' imagination, but Small Worlds struck me as just plain sloppy. Acceptable and well-paced eye candy, yes, but sloppily presented. Oh well.
At least the "Can Jack tolerate booze?" question was answered. It wasn't keeping me awake at night, but the tail-chasing (aka, meta gone wild) was starting to get a bit much inside my head.
On a much more irreverent note, I take it I'm not the only slash-happy fangrrl out there who inferred what is probably far too much from that look Ianto gave Jack when the latter rested a hand on the former's shoulder in an early scene? Yeah, I thought so.
I'm sure I'll have something much more interesting to say when I've seen the eps again and I'm not sneaking onto the net at work.
***
I've noticed a few LJ-folks mentioning how that Torchwood isn't quite living up to what it says on the tin, so to speak. A secret organization (with branded vehicles) supposedly out to protect humanity from big bad alien tech, the 21st century is when it all changes, etc, etc. However... all we've seen at this point is the locking-up of a couple of dodgy things, a home-grown threat (Lisa), one extra-terrestrial threat (Day One), and an artifact that is, granted, alien but embroils the team in local crimes, committed in the past by regular ol' humans. So, er, how is this readying Earth for the future?
I agree with those fans who've said that this could be/should have been addressed by not pimping the show as an edgy SF/X-Files-ish thing, but as an urban gothic horror thing with SF overtones. Yeah, yeah, broadcasting is getting too specialized. But really... Torchwood (the Cardiff office, at least) seems to be more of a cleanup crew than the protectors o'humanity. Based on the actions of the Cardiff office, I have a hard time believing that Torchwood could have produced anything like the TCI raygun. I know, I know, the London office was larger by a couple orders of magnitude but if Cardiff is basing their MO on the cues they're getting from London, you gotta wonder what London's telling them. There's also the possibility that these offices are largely autonomous and the show's being run the way Jack thinks it should be, but that kicks off another round of tail-chasing about Jack's motives.
I totally want to see Torchwood and UNIT run into each other, btw. The pissing contest would be epic. There's a fic idea lurking in that, somewhere...
I've slept on it, and I'm still a bit dissatisfied with the story for Small World. Not the acting, not (so much) the effects, not the fact that, once again, the show was clearly underwritten by the Cardiff chamber of commerce.
I'm just not a fairy-tale type of person, I guess. It doesn't help that nothing was explained adequately. The bad guys can do pretty much anything anywhen, huh? Lovely. Let's hope they don't get megalomaniac aspirations, huh? Why did they have to have a human "Chosen One", being (apparently) non-human themselves? Why did they take the dislike to Estelle? Was it just a violent dislike of flash photography, or what? What happened to previous children who were the Chosen One and why did it take these little blighters so many thousands of years to get one to cross over and fulfill whatever need it was that existed?
I can understand the entertainment value of leaving a few things unexplained/to the viewers' imagination, but Small Worlds struck me as just plain sloppy. Acceptable and well-paced eye candy, yes, but sloppily presented. Oh well.
At least the "Can Jack tolerate booze?" question was answered. It wasn't keeping me awake at night, but the tail-chasing (aka, meta gone wild) was starting to get a bit much inside my head.
On a much more irreverent note, I take it I'm not the only slash-happy fangrrl out there who inferred what is probably far too much from that look Ianto gave Jack when the latter rested a hand on the former's shoulder in an early scene? Yeah, I thought so.
I'm sure I'll have something much more interesting to say when I've seen the eps again and I'm not sneaking onto the net at work.
***
I've noticed a few LJ-folks mentioning how that Torchwood isn't quite living up to what it says on the tin, so to speak. A secret organization (with branded vehicles) supposedly out to protect humanity from big bad alien tech, the 21st century is when it all changes, etc, etc. However... all we've seen at this point is the locking-up of a couple of dodgy things, a home-grown threat (Lisa), one extra-terrestrial threat (Day One), and an artifact that is, granted, alien but embroils the team in local crimes, committed in the past by regular ol' humans. So, er, how is this readying Earth for the future?
I agree with those fans who've said that this could be/should have been addressed by not pimping the show as an edgy SF/X-Files-ish thing, but as an urban gothic horror thing with SF overtones. Yeah, yeah, broadcasting is getting too specialized. But really... Torchwood (the Cardiff office, at least) seems to be more of a cleanup crew than the protectors o'humanity. Based on the actions of the Cardiff office, I have a hard time believing that Torchwood could have produced anything like the TCI raygun. I know, I know, the London office was larger by a couple orders of magnitude but if Cardiff is basing their MO on the cues they're getting from London, you gotta wonder what London's telling them. There's also the possibility that these offices are largely autonomous and the show's being run the way Jack thinks it should be, but that kicks off another round of tail-chasing about Jack's motives.
I totally want to see Torchwood and UNIT run into each other, btw. The pissing contest would be epic. There's a fic idea lurking in that, somewhere...
