Torchwood: Children of Earth
Seeing as I doubt the majority of my flist knows this fandom [or that I adore(d?) it], and also because, well, spoilers for anyone who might be wanting to watch this [why?], this all goes under a cut.
I ought to admit straight up that I adore Ianto. To me, he's the most interesting character in Torchwood. Before Cyberwoman, he was invisible to the team, at least partly by design; if they weren't interested in him, they were less likely to discover he was hiding a Cyberman in the basement. And after Cyberwoman, he was still invisible, but this time largely because - well, how do you get over the death of your girlfriend, someone you've gone to such lengths for? How do you deal with the fact that your boss was the one who killed her? How do you fit back within a team when you nearly caused their deaths?
But between Seasons 1 and 2, something happens to Ianto. After Jack leaves, Ianto needs to step up a little more. Ianto's always been what everyone needs: coffee-maker, archivist, purveyor of general information that always comes in handy, the extra set of eyes, the all-round handyman. He does the dirty work, the clean-up; he's the extremely underappreciated janitor. Maybe the Lisa incident made the others realise that they don't really know anything about him, but in the wake of their near-deaths I don't think anyone particularly wanted to get closer to Ianto [other than Jack, but let's not get into that now]. It's the time between Season 1 and 2 when Ianto has to step up to do fieldwork as well, and that's probably when he becomes a little closer to the team. In Season 2, Ianto's a little more confident and suddenly his personality's really shining through. The dry humour, the witty one-liners, the absolutely deadpan delivery of the most hilarious lines:
Jack: Have faith! With a dashing hero like me on the case, how can we fail?
Ianto: He is dashing, you have to give him that.
Owen: And what if they can't stop it?
Tosh: They'll stop it.
Owen:Yeah, but if they can't?
Ianto: Then it's... all over.
Owen: [after a pause] Let's all have sex.
Ianto: [deadpan] And I thought the end of the world couldn't get any worse.
Ianto: I have searched for the phrase "I shall walk the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds," but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers.
Jack: What is it with you? Ever since Owen died, all you've done is agree with him!
Ianto: I was brought up not to speak ill of the dead. Even if they do still do most of their talking for themselves.
Ianto starts to come into his own, and his relationship with Jack also starts taking off in Season 2. My personal belief is that in Season 1 anything between them [stopwatch, anyone?] was solely physical. Ianto would have started falling for real near the end of Season 1, but it would’ve taken Jack’s departure for him to admit it to himself. And I think Jack needed the events of the Year That Never Was in order to realise that he needed Ianto too. So yeah, Season 2 is when they start tentatively feeling their way around a relationship which is based on mutual trust, understanding and love, not just shagging. [Although the shagging is undoubtedly excellent, considering the fact that it’s, well, Jack.]
So, hopes for Season 3? A further development of that relationship. Plus the usual crazy alien hijinks, of course. More Myfanwy, because how can you not love her? Alien tech and the Hub, more of Rhys, less of Gwack. We were told to expect the Janto relationship to progress, so there were some very happy fans out there.
What did we get in Children of Earth? Let's recap, shall we?
Day 1: The SUV is stolen. Gwen is pregnant. The Hub blows up.
Day 2: Jack-torture. Jack is rescued, the team is reunited. This is a Good Thing.
Day 3: Angst. Woe. Rhys is a cockblocker. "Bloody beans."
Day 4: Ianto dies.
Day 5: They never really knew Ianto. The government is evil. Jack kills his grandson. The 456 are stopped but the world is in chaos and anarchy seems imminent. Jack runs away. End.
What are my problems with this miniseries? Where do I even begin?
Day 1 destroys everything about Torchwood. In one day, everything’s gone: vehicle, base, technology. Moving into Day 2, we find Ianto, Gwen and Rhys going on the run. Jack starts regenerating from being blown apart [ow] and is promptly encased in cement when the government realises even a bomb won’t kill him permanently. Gwen and Rhys attempt to break Jack out and find a cement block instead; Ianto comes to the rescue with a forklift [!] and the team reunites, extremely pissed-off and ready to figure out what the hell is happening. Day 3 they convince Lois to record the meeting between the government and the 456, and things start making sense. We start getting answers, even as the problems keep mounting [Alice and Steven being kidnapped etc].
No problems. I honestly have no problems with this. I am sad at Myfanwy’s apparent death [I cling to my illusions that a pterodactyl has been spotted near Barry terrorising the sheep]. But destroying a support system in order to focus on the characters and to demonstrate the ultimate triumph of human resilience - the idea that whatever happens, we go on - is such a common trope in literature, it really is. From the moment the SUV was stolen and the bomb was implanted in Jack’s stomach, I was expecting the episode to end like this. Which it did. Goodbye Hub, goodbye alien tech, goodbye all the nifty little gadgets that made life so much easier when dealing with aliens. Without all the things that Torchwood had grown to rely on, how were they going to deal with the 456? It’s good, it’s plausible, it works.
And then came Day 4. Which, honestly, started well enough. We find out that in 1965 Jack was a bit of a heartless bastard, but then we always knew that he wasn’t always that nice of a guy. Or even that much of a nice guy during Torchwood. Hello? Season 1? Jasmine? Have we all forgotten that already? Ianto thankfully acknowledges the fact that Jack did what he felt he had to, and that even now the knowledge of what he did do is still tearing at him. And Ianto also pushes, wants Jack to talk to him. I have to say my heart was wrenching a little all those times in Day 1 when Ianto was all “Are we a couple?” and Jack’s all “Does it matter?” and “I hate the word ‘couple.’” at him. This is Ianto now, wanting to know where he stands, wanting to know what it is Jack feels about him, wanting the answers to all the questions Rhiannon had. This is relationship development, and I was happy about that!
Jack tries to run, Ianto calls him on it, Jack runs anyway. But okay. I wasn’t expecting Jack to suddenly spill his guts, and besides, there’s time for that, right? Still the rest of the episode and one more day to go. Plus, “fourth season’s ready to go,” depending on the response to the third. Wonderful.
Jack finally starts getting it together, and he and Ianto head off to the Thames Building to face the government. And the aliens. I’m not sure which one is supposed to be the villain here. Both, probably, and I have to admit, I kind of like it. Rhys gets sent off with the laptop recordings, and Gwen and Clem wait for Agent Johnson to show up, so that they can expose what the government is doing.
I start having problems here. Thus far I can follow the tropes that they’re using, and I can understand why they’d want all the action sequences and stuff - television, unfortunately. And BBC One now, so I suppose they feel like they have to deliver more action that Torchwood Seasons 1 and 2 had. Pity, because Torchwood was never really about the action, for me… it was about how the characters reacted to what was happening around them. But I could mostly rationalise the events thus far. And besides, who doesn’t like a big boom?
But. Why is Rhys the one sent off with the recordings? Wouldn’t Ianto be a more logical choice? Why did Ianto have to be with Jack at the Thames Building? Isn’t it an obviously dangerous position to be in, and isn’t it therefore safer to send only the man-who-can’t-stay-dead in? Ianto’s probably the most technologically-able of the team [since, you know, no Tosh], so why on earth would you pick Rhys over him?
And then the 456 release the virus into the building. And Ianto dies. And it’s a very touching scene and all, and my heart breaks every time I watch it [I suspect I might be a bit of a masochist], but after I stopped wibbling at what Jack and Ianto say to each other, I started wondering… well, why?
“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” - Anton Chekhov
“Kill your darlings.” - Ernest Hemingway
In other words, don’t include anything that’s unnecessary. Don’t put things into your story for pure sensationalism’s sake. Everything that’s in your story has to advance the plot in some way. Jack being a jackass [no pun intended] back in 1965? Advances the story, advances the character development. I don’t like what he did, but it served a purpose. In the same vein, the deaths at the end of Season 2 served a purpose as well.
What exactly is the purpose of Ianto’s death? To rip away one more thing that Jack loves? There’s no real need for that. Jack, the person that he is now, that Jack? He’d be in agony given the state of the world and the demands of the 456. He’s having a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that what he did in 1965 - sacrificing those children - was essentially for nothing. There’s enough trauma there without having to kill Ianto off as well.
And other than breaking Jack’s heart, was there any other point to Ianto’s death? Let me think… NO. Plenty of other people died to prove the 456’s point that no one was safe. Ianto shouldn’t even have been in the building - he should’ve been doing what was given to Rhys to do. And the only reason Rhys was given that task was to free Ianto up to walk to his death. I couldn’t help but feel like this is what the entire series revolved around: the idea of killing Ianto more than the idea of screwing the entire world over. This is an event that served no purpose for the plot, character or dramatic development. More Jack angst. Woe. It’s useless. I think I’m repeating myself, but I’m really stuck on how utterly pointless the death was. If you were set on killing Ianto, surely you could do it in such a manner that at the very least advances the plot? He’s a main character; that means his actions [and death] have to do with the story in some way. He died a redshirt death, which is absolutely ridiculous. To reiterate: He is a main character. He is not an afterthought. He is not a means to an end. Give him some credit.
And then Day 5. The aliens are essentially druggies [!], the government is kidnapping children to give to the aliens, Jack more or less gives up, and then Agent Johnson breaks him out of custody. And what does Jack do? He uses Steven - his own grandson - to transmit the frequency that he’s figured out will kill the 456. Steven dies, and with him any hope for reconciliation between Jack and Alice. Steven’s death is another pointless one. Like Ianto’s, its only purpose is in hurting Jack, and severing all ties he has with Earth. Which, no, isn’t a good enough reason.
The end result? People think that Jack Harkness is a complete bastard. Which he isn’t. This isn’t the man that Ianto [and I] fell in love with. This isn’t the leader of Torchwood. When I said earlier that it’s a common literary device to destroy a support system in order to focus on the characters… well, this isn’t what I meant. The point of the trope is to show personal growth. What Jack demonstrates in the “Six Months Later” epilogue [which is a total cop-out] is personal regression. That would be all right if it was, say, episode 2 of a 13-parter, and there was opportunity for Jack to come back from his personal tragedies. But this? No. You don’t end on that note. You don’t end with Jack giving up and running away into space, presumably to eventually become the Face of Boe. Break his heart, fine, fuck with his mind, torture him, god knows the Torchwood writers love doing that. But this wasn't any of that; this wasn't even good literary angst. This was sensationalism, nothing more.
And a question here - what, exactly, is the point of fucking with Ianto's backstory? Was that really necessary? Seems like a darling that should've been killed.
There are so many things wrong about Days 4 and 5, I can’t even begin to order them here. My biggest problem is that it’s just bad writing. It’s a fuck-you to the fans, it’s the writers [well, someone in particular I shan’t name here] wanting to demonstrate that they’re oh-so-cutting-edge, so unafraid of killing a major character. Newsflash, people. You did that in Season 2. Twice. I have tried, and I cannot find any reason for Ianto’s death other than “I bet people would really react strongly to this! Then we’ll get lots of people watching to find out if it’s true!”
And whatever happened to the Rift? What happened to the Weevils and random aliens and time-travellers popping through? What happened to the actual Torchwood universe, which, hello, revolves around the Rift? Did someone hit a pause on any Rift activity so they can tackle the 456 threat without interference? They abandon Cardiff; all the action takes place away from the Rift, which, um, still anchored in Cardiff, is anyone still paying attention here? What about Flat Holm? Does closing your eyes and pretending it’s not happening make it all go away? Because if it does, that’s what I’m going to be doing with Children of Earth. This wasn’t Torchwood, and if I pretend hard enough, maybe this train-wreck of a miniseries will go away.
ETA: I want to write happy!fic now, so here's a request to any fellow Torchwood fans - give me prompts, requests, scenes, ideas, mobiles, landlines, tin cans with bits of string - oops, sorry, wrong list. Even a word or feeling, something, anything. Can't promise I'll write around all of them, but I'll sure as hell try to come up with something to salve my bruised heart.
ETA(2): 2nd March 2010 - It's been quite a while since CoE, but time hasn't made me any more fond of it. In fact, I think I have to retract some of what I've said in this little essay. The more I think about it, the more problems I have with Days 1-3. In theory, the removal of the support infrastructure makes sense. But how they did it doesn't quite gel.
The SUV is trackable.
Bridget is awfully trusting of first-day!temp!Lois.
When Jack regenerates, his wounds heal and his body resets and gets rid of foreign matter [otherwise, I want to know how it deals with bullets], including, presumably, the bomb.
Your body does not have large, convenient cavities in it for you to hide a bomb of that size. It would be visible and certainly felt.
In KKBB, a bomb [no apparent alien oddities other than the DNA tracker] being tossed through the Rift caused time to revert a day, but in CoE, a bomb with a radius of a mile ripping through the Rift monitor and the Rift itself has no apparent impact on the city.
Secret agent snipers suck.
You blow up a person and place, you won't be able to find all the little pieces of Jack amongst all that rubble.
There would be bits of other people, not just Jack there. Torchwood has a morgue. And a few alien pets.
Concrete doesn't harden that quickly.
A solid concrete block that size weighs a lot. The forklift would not be able to manage it.
A mysteriously strong forklift lifting a solid concrete block that size moves very slowly. You could catch up to it at a saunter.
Conveniently-placed tankers do not, repeat, do not blow up when shot with a gun. Ask Mythbusters.
I know the signs say not to walk on the grass, but really, in some situations, it's all right, secret agent people. Go around the fire. Oh wait, that would require brains. And a script that makes sense.
Everyone is awfully trusting of first-day!temp!Lois. By this I mean everyone in the government, not Torchwood, which is pretty much screwed at this stage anyway.
Etcetera. These were what jumped out at me. For a full list, I'd suggest looking here. I giggled quite a bit while reading.
I also no longer buy Ianto's nervousness about his and Jack's couple-dom. Rewatching Season 2's made me think that he was a lot more confident about it then. Why the regression? I can understand it if he's nervous about being public with the relationship - he's a private person. I can understand him calling Jack on his bullshit. I don't understand him turning into some simpering, whining idiot.
Blah. Kind of a long edit, I know. CoE just makes less and less sense the more I think about it.
I ought to admit straight up that I adore Ianto. To me, he's the most interesting character in Torchwood. Before Cyberwoman, he was invisible to the team, at least partly by design; if they weren't interested in him, they were less likely to discover he was hiding a Cyberman in the basement. And after Cyberwoman, he was still invisible, but this time largely because - well, how do you get over the death of your girlfriend, someone you've gone to such lengths for? How do you deal with the fact that your boss was the one who killed her? How do you fit back within a team when you nearly caused their deaths?
But between Seasons 1 and 2, something happens to Ianto. After Jack leaves, Ianto needs to step up a little more. Ianto's always been what everyone needs: coffee-maker, archivist, purveyor of general information that always comes in handy, the extra set of eyes, the all-round handyman. He does the dirty work, the clean-up; he's the extremely underappreciated janitor. Maybe the Lisa incident made the others realise that they don't really know anything about him, but in the wake of their near-deaths I don't think anyone particularly wanted to get closer to Ianto [other than Jack, but let's not get into that now]. It's the time between Season 1 and 2 when Ianto has to step up to do fieldwork as well, and that's probably when he becomes a little closer to the team. In Season 2, Ianto's a little more confident and suddenly his personality's really shining through. The dry humour, the witty one-liners, the absolutely deadpan delivery of the most hilarious lines:
Jack: Have faith! With a dashing hero like me on the case, how can we fail?
Ianto: He is dashing, you have to give him that.
Owen: And what if they can't stop it?
Tosh: They'll stop it.
Owen:Yeah, but if they can't?
Ianto: Then it's... all over.
Owen: [after a pause] Let's all have sex.
Ianto: [deadpan] And I thought the end of the world couldn't get any worse.
Ianto: I have searched for the phrase "I shall walk the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds," but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers.
Jack: What is it with you? Ever since Owen died, all you've done is agree with him!
Ianto: I was brought up not to speak ill of the dead. Even if they do still do most of their talking for themselves.
Ianto starts to come into his own, and his relationship with Jack also starts taking off in Season 2. My personal belief is that in Season 1 anything between them [stopwatch, anyone?] was solely physical. Ianto would have started falling for real near the end of Season 1, but it would’ve taken Jack’s departure for him to admit it to himself. And I think Jack needed the events of the Year That Never Was in order to realise that he needed Ianto too. So yeah, Season 2 is when they start tentatively feeling their way around a relationship which is based on mutual trust, understanding and love, not just shagging. [Although the shagging is undoubtedly excellent, considering the fact that it’s, well, Jack.]
So, hopes for Season 3? A further development of that relationship. Plus the usual crazy alien hijinks, of course. More Myfanwy, because how can you not love her? Alien tech and the Hub, more of Rhys, less of Gwack. We were told to expect the Janto relationship to progress, so there were some very happy fans out there.
What did we get in Children of Earth? Let's recap, shall we?
Day 1: The SUV is stolen. Gwen is pregnant. The Hub blows up.
Day 2: Jack-torture. Jack is rescued, the team is reunited. This is a Good Thing.
Day 3: Angst. Woe. Rhys is a cockblocker. "Bloody beans."
Day 4: Ianto dies.
Day 5: They never really knew Ianto. The government is evil. Jack kills his grandson. The 456 are stopped but the world is in chaos and anarchy seems imminent. Jack runs away. End.
What are my problems with this miniseries? Where do I even begin?
Day 1 destroys everything about Torchwood. In one day, everything’s gone: vehicle, base, technology. Moving into Day 2, we find Ianto, Gwen and Rhys going on the run. Jack starts regenerating from being blown apart [ow] and is promptly encased in cement when the government realises even a bomb won’t kill him permanently. Gwen and Rhys attempt to break Jack out and find a cement block instead; Ianto comes to the rescue with a forklift [!] and the team reunites, extremely pissed-off and ready to figure out what the hell is happening. Day 3 they convince Lois to record the meeting between the government and the 456, and things start making sense. We start getting answers, even as the problems keep mounting [Alice and Steven being kidnapped etc].
No problems. I honestly have no problems with this. I am sad at Myfanwy’s apparent death [I cling to my illusions that a pterodactyl has been spotted near Barry terrorising the sheep]. But destroying a support system in order to focus on the characters and to demonstrate the ultimate triumph of human resilience - the idea that whatever happens, we go on - is such a common trope in literature, it really is. From the moment the SUV was stolen and the bomb was implanted in Jack’s stomach, I was expecting the episode to end like this. Which it did. Goodbye Hub, goodbye alien tech, goodbye all the nifty little gadgets that made life so much easier when dealing with aliens. Without all the things that Torchwood had grown to rely on, how were they going to deal with the 456? It’s good, it’s plausible, it works.
And then came Day 4. Which, honestly, started well enough. We find out that in 1965 Jack was a bit of a heartless bastard, but then we always knew that he wasn’t always that nice of a guy. Or even that much of a nice guy during Torchwood. Hello? Season 1? Jasmine? Have we all forgotten that already? Ianto thankfully acknowledges the fact that Jack did what he felt he had to, and that even now the knowledge of what he did do is still tearing at him. And Ianto also pushes, wants Jack to talk to him. I have to say my heart was wrenching a little all those times in Day 1 when Ianto was all “Are we a couple?” and Jack’s all “Does it matter?” and “I hate the word ‘couple.’” at him. This is Ianto now, wanting to know where he stands, wanting to know what it is Jack feels about him, wanting the answers to all the questions Rhiannon had. This is relationship development, and I was happy about that!
Jack tries to run, Ianto calls him on it, Jack runs anyway. But okay. I wasn’t expecting Jack to suddenly spill his guts, and besides, there’s time for that, right? Still the rest of the episode and one more day to go. Plus, “fourth season’s ready to go,” depending on the response to the third. Wonderful.
Jack finally starts getting it together, and he and Ianto head off to the Thames Building to face the government. And the aliens. I’m not sure which one is supposed to be the villain here. Both, probably, and I have to admit, I kind of like it. Rhys gets sent off with the laptop recordings, and Gwen and Clem wait for Agent Johnson to show up, so that they can expose what the government is doing.
I start having problems here. Thus far I can follow the tropes that they’re using, and I can understand why they’d want all the action sequences and stuff - television, unfortunately. And BBC One now, so I suppose they feel like they have to deliver more action that Torchwood Seasons 1 and 2 had. Pity, because Torchwood was never really about the action, for me… it was about how the characters reacted to what was happening around them. But I could mostly rationalise the events thus far. And besides, who doesn’t like a big boom?
But. Why is Rhys the one sent off with the recordings? Wouldn’t Ianto be a more logical choice? Why did Ianto have to be with Jack at the Thames Building? Isn’t it an obviously dangerous position to be in, and isn’t it therefore safer to send only the man-who-can’t-stay-dead in? Ianto’s probably the most technologically-able of the team [since, you know, no Tosh], so why on earth would you pick Rhys over him?
And then the 456 release the virus into the building. And Ianto dies. And it’s a very touching scene and all, and my heart breaks every time I watch it [I suspect I might be a bit of a masochist], but after I stopped wibbling at what Jack and Ianto say to each other, I started wondering… well, why?
“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” - Anton Chekhov
“Kill your darlings.” - Ernest Hemingway
In other words, don’t include anything that’s unnecessary. Don’t put things into your story for pure sensationalism’s sake. Everything that’s in your story has to advance the plot in some way. Jack being a jackass [no pun intended] back in 1965? Advances the story, advances the character development. I don’t like what he did, but it served a purpose. In the same vein, the deaths at the end of Season 2 served a purpose as well.
What exactly is the purpose of Ianto’s death? To rip away one more thing that Jack loves? There’s no real need for that. Jack, the person that he is now, that Jack? He’d be in agony given the state of the world and the demands of the 456. He’s having a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that what he did in 1965 - sacrificing those children - was essentially for nothing. There’s enough trauma there without having to kill Ianto off as well.
And other than breaking Jack’s heart, was there any other point to Ianto’s death? Let me think… NO. Plenty of other people died to prove the 456’s point that no one was safe. Ianto shouldn’t even have been in the building - he should’ve been doing what was given to Rhys to do. And the only reason Rhys was given that task was to free Ianto up to walk to his death. I couldn’t help but feel like this is what the entire series revolved around: the idea of killing Ianto more than the idea of screwing the entire world over. This is an event that served no purpose for the plot, character or dramatic development. More Jack angst. Woe. It’s useless. I think I’m repeating myself, but I’m really stuck on how utterly pointless the death was. If you were set on killing Ianto, surely you could do it in such a manner that at the very least advances the plot? He’s a main character; that means his actions [and death] have to do with the story in some way. He died a redshirt death, which is absolutely ridiculous. To reiterate: He is a main character. He is not an afterthought. He is not a means to an end. Give him some credit.
And then Day 5. The aliens are essentially druggies [!], the government is kidnapping children to give to the aliens, Jack more or less gives up, and then Agent Johnson breaks him out of custody. And what does Jack do? He uses Steven - his own grandson - to transmit the frequency that he’s figured out will kill the 456. Steven dies, and with him any hope for reconciliation between Jack and Alice. Steven’s death is another pointless one. Like Ianto’s, its only purpose is in hurting Jack, and severing all ties he has with Earth. Which, no, isn’t a good enough reason.
The end result? People think that Jack Harkness is a complete bastard. Which he isn’t. This isn’t the man that Ianto [and I] fell in love with. This isn’t the leader of Torchwood. When I said earlier that it’s a common literary device to destroy a support system in order to focus on the characters… well, this isn’t what I meant. The point of the trope is to show personal growth. What Jack demonstrates in the “Six Months Later” epilogue [which is a total cop-out] is personal regression. That would be all right if it was, say, episode 2 of a 13-parter, and there was opportunity for Jack to come back from his personal tragedies. But this? No. You don’t end on that note. You don’t end with Jack giving up and running away into space, presumably to eventually become the Face of Boe. Break his heart, fine, fuck with his mind, torture him, god knows the Torchwood writers love doing that. But this wasn't any of that; this wasn't even good literary angst. This was sensationalism, nothing more.
And a question here - what, exactly, is the point of fucking with Ianto's backstory? Was that really necessary? Seems like a darling that should've been killed.
There are so many things wrong about Days 4 and 5, I can’t even begin to order them here. My biggest problem is that it’s just bad writing. It’s a fuck-you to the fans, it’s the writers [well, someone in particular I shan’t name here] wanting to demonstrate that they’re oh-so-cutting-edge, so unafraid of killing a major character. Newsflash, people. You did that in Season 2. Twice. I have tried, and I cannot find any reason for Ianto’s death other than “I bet people would really react strongly to this! Then we’ll get lots of people watching to find out if it’s true!”
And whatever happened to the Rift? What happened to the Weevils and random aliens and time-travellers popping through? What happened to the actual Torchwood universe, which, hello, revolves around the Rift? Did someone hit a pause on any Rift activity so they can tackle the 456 threat without interference? They abandon Cardiff; all the action takes place away from the Rift, which, um, still anchored in Cardiff, is anyone still paying attention here? What about Flat Holm? Does closing your eyes and pretending it’s not happening make it all go away? Because if it does, that’s what I’m going to be doing with Children of Earth. This wasn’t Torchwood, and if I pretend hard enough, maybe this train-wreck of a miniseries will go away.
ETA: I want to write happy!fic now, so here's a request to any fellow Torchwood fans - give me prompts, requests, scenes, ideas, mobiles, landlines, tin cans with bits of string - oops, sorry, wrong list. Even a word or feeling, something, anything. Can't promise I'll write around all of them, but I'll sure as hell try to come up with something to salve my bruised heart.
ETA(2): 2nd March 2010 - It's been quite a while since CoE, but time hasn't made me any more fond of it. In fact, I think I have to retract some of what I've said in this little essay. The more I think about it, the more problems I have with Days 1-3. In theory, the removal of the support infrastructure makes sense. But how they did it doesn't quite gel.
The SUV is trackable.
Bridget is awfully trusting of first-day!temp!Lois.
When Jack regenerates, his wounds heal and his body resets and gets rid of foreign matter [otherwise, I want to know how it deals with bullets], including, presumably, the bomb.
Your body does not have large, convenient cavities in it for you to hide a bomb of that size. It would be visible and certainly felt.
In KKBB, a bomb [no apparent alien oddities other than the DNA tracker] being tossed through the Rift caused time to revert a day, but in CoE, a bomb with a radius of a mile ripping through the Rift monitor and the Rift itself has no apparent impact on the city.
Secret agent snipers suck.
You blow up a person and place, you won't be able to find all the little pieces of Jack amongst all that rubble.
There would be bits of other people, not just Jack there. Torchwood has a morgue. And a few alien pets.
Concrete doesn't harden that quickly.
A solid concrete block that size weighs a lot. The forklift would not be able to manage it.
A mysteriously strong forklift lifting a solid concrete block that size moves very slowly. You could catch up to it at a saunter.
Conveniently-placed tankers do not, repeat, do not blow up when shot with a gun. Ask Mythbusters.
I know the signs say not to walk on the grass, but really, in some situations, it's all right, secret agent people. Go around the fire. Oh wait, that would require brains. And a script that makes sense.
Everyone is awfully trusting of first-day!temp!Lois. By this I mean everyone in the government, not Torchwood, which is pretty much screwed at this stage anyway.
Etcetera. These were what jumped out at me. For a full list, I'd suggest looking here. I giggled quite a bit while reading.
I also no longer buy Ianto's nervousness about his and Jack's couple-dom. Rewatching Season 2's made me think that he was a lot more confident about it then. Why the regression? I can understand it if he's nervous about being public with the relationship - he's a private person. I can understand him calling Jack on his bullshit. I don't understand him turning into some simpering, whining idiot.
Blah. Kind of a long edit, I know. CoE just makes less and less sense the more I think about it.