aka Britgeekgrrl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fangrrl_squees) wrote2006-12-05 10:06 am
fangrrl_squees) wrote2006-12-05 10:06 am
Entry tags:
Torchwood 1x08, They Keep Killing... - Further Thoughts
I'm working off memory at the moment, so this might not be as in-depth as it could be.
Technical Bits
I'm quite happy with the look and feel of this episode. I thought the change in lighting direction for the Hub was refreshing and made the atmospherics of the lockdown a lot more effective. The slightly-yellow, definitely unflattering light, which had me thinking of documentaries on gloomy topics, was an excellent choice. Everyone looked a bit pale and washed out - not entirely unlike corpses. So, yeah, perhaps an obvious take on the photography, but a smart one, imho.
The effects were well-done. Susie's head looked gruesome but not so much as to get the Mary Whitehouse1 crowd up in arms. Ditto for the cosmetics on Indira as Suzie progressed from three-months dead to practically reborn. Lovely!
As mentioned elsewhere, I'm feeling more charitable towards Mr. Strong (makes him sound like he should be red and square and wear a natty little hat, doesn't it?) as the direction wasn't nearly so ham-fisted this time around. It rather makes me wonder what was going on in the production team's head during 1x04, but I suppose that is a mystery for the ages.
The Story and The Characters
I liked it. I liked the fact that, once again, it's been illustrated how Torchwood seems to attract intelligent, well-meaning people and fuck them up. Doesn't bode well for Gwen, does it folks?
I really liked how the team tried everything else they could think of before resurrecting Suzie, rather than running for the morgue drawer as soon as her name was mentioned. There's some things, even these guys quail at. Hooray! Limits are important.
Survival at any cost is a theme that's going to resonate with viewers. We like to think that we're all atruistic, nice people at heart but, when push comes to shove, an awful lot of us (and I cheerfully include myself in this group) would pull a Winston-with-the-rats routine. Do it to someone else, not me. Disagree as you might with Suzie's methods, you can't fault her motive.
I know there are some complaints about how implausible it is for Suzie to have had that sort of plan all laid out in the event of her untimely demise. Clearly, these critics don't play RPGs. Well, not the same ones I do. I've been playing V:tM for over a decade and, believe me, complicated If I croak plans are pretty much the norm in those circles. Granted, they're more aimed at making sure you take some enemies down with you, albeit posthumously, or ensuring that your allies get their fair share of your 'stuff' but the plans existed, and some of the ones I've seen (or prepared) have Suzie looking like a piker. So I had no problem whatsoever with that plot point. The character has a dangerous job which shows every sign of ending in a nasty, unanticipated death. Darn tootin', I'd try to avoid that fate as much as possible!
However, I'll agree with the notion that it might have been asking for a bit too much suspension of disbelief from the majority of the audience. After all, they didn't spend two years playing a character so paranoid as to make Iosef Stalin look like St. Francis...
Gwen continues to be the well-meaning chump. I've accepted her in this role and, hell, I guess someone has to fill that niche. However, I notice that she's getting increasingly alarmed at the long-term implications of involvement with the organization. Nice of the guys to explain that up-front, huh? I'm hoping that the nascent alarm will develop into something a bit more tangible and, more to the point, that she tries to act on that alarm. Not by blowing the whistle on the organization or anything - as that's a quick way to a lifetime prescription of retcon (the name of which still makes me laugh) - but by changing it from within, or having the mother of all temper tantrums or something. Just, y'know, do something, woman! *ahem* Pardon me, maybe I haven't quite accepted Gwen as the well-meaning chump, after all.
I'm starting to think that maybe Jack is still a bit of a romantic, despite, er, whatever the hell has happened to him - it's a policy I've always maintained with rpg!Jack so, naturally, I'd like to see it on the show. However, like the rest of the team, it seems that he's not immune to making dumb decisions for what will probably be revealed as bad reasons. You think that the Jack/Ianto thing is going to end well? I don't. And I want lots of angsty hate-you/want-you sex along the way, but that's just me being greedy. Anyways, as I say, I'm wondering if Jack is a mad, desperate romantic, and just so severely burned by past experience/afraid of being burned that he's keeping it behind the cheerful-hedonist mask in order to protect himself. (Totally loved the "I had a boyfriend who used to enter rooms like that..." line. So much for the staff debate about is he/isn't he?)
And, incidentally, did anyone else think that Jack's dialog during the early scene in which he explained how the glove was found forty years ago strongly suggested that he was on site for that retreival? Just how long has that lad been hanging around Cardiff, anyway? And how many staffers has he seen come and go through the Hub? *metametameta*
I've encountered an oft-articulated sentiment that the Cardiff TW team are, frankly, a pack of incompetents who shouldn't be trusted to run a hot-dog stand, let alone a soopersekrit organization but, y'know, I like 'em a bit on the daft side. I'm sure that's because I very much believe in the axiom that the first thing a character should do is get into trouble. Granted, it might be nice to see 'em occasionally get whomped by something out of left field and deal with it handily, rather than it being either a largely self-created issue, or out of left-field and handled poorly but, well, maybe I'm expecting too much. If you want conflict, someone's going to be flawed, somewhere, or else you're stuck with a big pile of Mary Sue fic - and no comments about Rose's characterization, you lot!
I definitely want to watch this eps again and see how it bears up to a second viewing, which is more than I can say for Cyberwoman - which I made myself watch twice, just to confirm that, yep, it was that bad - or Small Worlds which, honestly, bored me to tears. Further mutterings as events warrant.
Incidentally, if you haven't stopped by there,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
torchwood_three is an excellent aggregation community for many things Torchwoodish on LJ-land and beyond.
1 - is she even still alive?
Technical Bits
I'm quite happy with the look and feel of this episode. I thought the change in lighting direction for the Hub was refreshing and made the atmospherics of the lockdown a lot more effective. The slightly-yellow, definitely unflattering light, which had me thinking of documentaries on gloomy topics, was an excellent choice. Everyone looked a bit pale and washed out - not entirely unlike corpses. So, yeah, perhaps an obvious take on the photography, but a smart one, imho.
The effects were well-done. Susie's head looked gruesome but not so much as to get the Mary Whitehouse1 crowd up in arms. Ditto for the cosmetics on Indira as Suzie progressed from three-months dead to practically reborn. Lovely!
As mentioned elsewhere, I'm feeling more charitable towards Mr. Strong (makes him sound like he should be red and square and wear a natty little hat, doesn't it?) as the direction wasn't nearly so ham-fisted this time around. It rather makes me wonder what was going on in the production team's head during 1x04, but I suppose that is a mystery for the ages.
The Story and The Characters
I liked it. I liked the fact that, once again, it's been illustrated how Torchwood seems to attract intelligent, well-meaning people and fuck them up. Doesn't bode well for Gwen, does it folks?
I really liked how the team tried everything else they could think of before resurrecting Suzie, rather than running for the morgue drawer as soon as her name was mentioned. There's some things, even these guys quail at. Hooray! Limits are important.
Survival at any cost is a theme that's going to resonate with viewers. We like to think that we're all atruistic, nice people at heart but, when push comes to shove, an awful lot of us (and I cheerfully include myself in this group) would pull a Winston-with-the-rats routine. Do it to someone else, not me. Disagree as you might with Suzie's methods, you can't fault her motive.
I know there are some complaints about how implausible it is for Suzie to have had that sort of plan all laid out in the event of her untimely demise. Clearly, these critics don't play RPGs. Well, not the same ones I do. I've been playing V:tM for over a decade and, believe me, complicated If I croak plans are pretty much the norm in those circles. Granted, they're more aimed at making sure you take some enemies down with you, albeit posthumously, or ensuring that your allies get their fair share of your 'stuff' but the plans existed, and some of the ones I've seen (or prepared) have Suzie looking like a piker. So I had no problem whatsoever with that plot point. The character has a dangerous job which shows every sign of ending in a nasty, unanticipated death. Darn tootin', I'd try to avoid that fate as much as possible!
However, I'll agree with the notion that it might have been asking for a bit too much suspension of disbelief from the majority of the audience. After all, they didn't spend two years playing a character so paranoid as to make Iosef Stalin look like St. Francis...
Gwen continues to be the well-meaning chump. I've accepted her in this role and, hell, I guess someone has to fill that niche. However, I notice that she's getting increasingly alarmed at the long-term implications of involvement with the organization. Nice of the guys to explain that up-front, huh? I'm hoping that the nascent alarm will develop into something a bit more tangible and, more to the point, that she tries to act on that alarm. Not by blowing the whistle on the organization or anything - as that's a quick way to a lifetime prescription of retcon (the name of which still makes me laugh) - but by changing it from within, or having the mother of all temper tantrums or something. Just, y'know, do something, woman! *ahem* Pardon me, maybe I haven't quite accepted Gwen as the well-meaning chump, after all.
I'm starting to think that maybe Jack is still a bit of a romantic, despite, er, whatever the hell has happened to him - it's a policy I've always maintained with rpg!Jack so, naturally, I'd like to see it on the show. However, like the rest of the team, it seems that he's not immune to making dumb decisions for what will probably be revealed as bad reasons. You think that the Jack/Ianto thing is going to end well? I don't. And I want lots of angsty hate-you/want-you sex along the way, but that's just me being greedy. Anyways, as I say, I'm wondering if Jack is a mad, desperate romantic, and just so severely burned by past experience/afraid of being burned that he's keeping it behind the cheerful-hedonist mask in order to protect himself. (Totally loved the "I had a boyfriend who used to enter rooms like that..." line. So much for the staff debate about is he/isn't he?)
And, incidentally, did anyone else think that Jack's dialog during the early scene in which he explained how the glove was found forty years ago strongly suggested that he was on site for that retreival? Just how long has that lad been hanging around Cardiff, anyway? And how many staffers has he seen come and go through the Hub? *metametameta*
I've encountered an oft-articulated sentiment that the Cardiff TW team are, frankly, a pack of incompetents who shouldn't be trusted to run a hot-dog stand, let alone a soopersekrit organization but, y'know, I like 'em a bit on the daft side. I'm sure that's because I very much believe in the axiom that the first thing a character should do is get into trouble. Granted, it might be nice to see 'em occasionally get whomped by something out of left field and deal with it handily, rather than it being either a largely self-created issue, or out of left-field and handled poorly but, well, maybe I'm expecting too much. If you want conflict, someone's going to be flawed, somewhere, or else you're stuck with a big pile of Mary Sue fic - and no comments about Rose's characterization, you lot!
I definitely want to watch this eps again and see how it bears up to a second viewing, which is more than I can say for Cyberwoman - which I made myself watch twice, just to confirm that, yep, it was that bad - or Small Worlds which, honestly, bored me to tears. Further mutterings as events warrant.
Incidentally, if you haven't stopped by there,
torchwood_three is an excellent aggregation community for many things Torchwoodish on LJ-land and beyond.1 - is she even still alive?