Analysing Torchwood - Part Seven

[clarrisani]

Well, this one took me a little while because firstly I had to work out how to approach it because Jack, Gwen, and Ianto are all over the place in this episode, and Rhys barely appears, but I managed it. I'm sure from now on after "Countrycide" things will be a little easier... until I get to "The Keep Killing Suzie".

Analysing Torchwood Part Seven

Comments

[ceindreadh]

Interestingly, despite his earlier outburst to Tosh, Ianto seems to be incredibly calm at this point in time. He is clearly of the defensive and now winded which makes him vulnerable, but he no longer seems to be panicking, instead studying the situation for a point where they can escape only to be pulled up short by the gun when he does attempt it.
I think that Ianto being stuck on his own with only an unconscious Tosh and his own thoughts for company was bound to end up on the verge of panic. But once there's a situation where he can focus on externals, he finds it a lot easier to subdue his panic.

Where Tosh had looked to the less experienced Ianto to follow his lead, here we have Gwen looking to the more senior Owen who orders her without speaking that no, she should not shoot. Owen does not seem to want Gwen to have the blood on her hands, and Gwen lowers her weapon, forcing herself to calm down, shooting Owen a look of sheer helplessness
My take on it was that Owen was trying to stop Gwen from handing over her gun rather than not wanting her to shoot. Because in the end, Gwen basically just put all their lives in the hands of the cannibals, whereas if she'd taken the shot, Owen was the one at risk.

There is clear anger in Gwen's voice as she says "and I can't share them with anyone". Gwen wants to have someone to talk to about her job, but she can't do so with Rhys because of the nature of her job.
This was one of the scenes that solidified my dislike for Gwen. Her attempts to justify her cheating by blaming Torchwood, when if she'd stayed on as a police officer there would have been plenty of things she'd have seen in a job that she wouldn't have been able to tell Rhys about for fear of compromising investigations etc. (I also felt that if Gwen had really just wanted somebody to talk to that might understand then there was always Tosh. But going to Owen, after the encounter against the tree, there was only one way that was going to end)

[haldane]

I'm with you, and add personal experience: 'Not being able to talk about it' is hardly confined to Torchwood or the armed forces. My last three long-term jobs have been in software (open access to 10,000 employee personnel databases, including home info and annual assessment reports), a major bank (money. 'Nuff said), and nine years in medical research at our city's biggest hospital (me, in the icon).

Okay, so it's nothing that: "nobody else would believe" but you can be sure that I was under signed confidentialty agreements, where a simple remark on the bus home could cost me my job *and* distress a lot of people. Image: you're going home on a bus, after waiting ten hours outside surgery to see if your wife's going to live or not, and this person on the seat behind you starts up "We had the most *obese* woman in today; she was just gross!". So your mouth stays shut.

Oh, and years in a cardiac surgery theatre can leave more than a few disurbing images in your head. But that's how it is; you deal or you leave.

*g* I once spent a very peaceful afternoon visiting my sister. I was in medical research, my husband worked in a major bank, my sister was a teacher in a school for mentally disabled adults and my bro-in-law is a church minister. We spend a lot of time calmly observing how well the grass was growing that summer.