Meta: Jack/Ianto and Lurve, that old chestnut.

[fide_et_spe]

Notes: There may be bits of this that aren't 100% serious, I hope they are obvious. As to canon, I am counting all the television episodes, and the radio plays, not the books and other media. (I think the books get a little confusing and I know some people don't count them, so I won't) I also am well aware that the plays were written after CoE, but

Comments

[lefaym]

Well fine, but one thing that strikes me about GDL, he isn't disingenuous, he gives thoughtful answers and this is how he interpreted his work. Good for him. Also I think there is a lot of support for this from the pre CoE interviews. Whether we think the writing and direction showed it or not, clearly someone thought this was a love story. Euros Lynne said this, and as the director, this is the vision that would be worked on with the actors.The thing that gets me is that they did have a good team of writers and an extremely good director. So I can't just buy that they fucked up unintentionally here. I think if they'd wanted to write a love story, then that's what they would have done -- and the fact that it didn't come across in the writing and direction indicates to me that they didn't want it there, in spite of what they said in interviews

[fide_et_spe]

Oh I'm not that cynical about him. He is pretty straight talking and says what he thinks. I think it is the way he has interpreted it. I also think there is good supporting stuff to indicate this is the party line to an extent. I just genuinely believe they think it's there. I'm not convinced as to the talent of the writers, it seems to me that when RTD wasn't writing it there was a lot more fu n to be had.

Also whilst I have a different view on the relationship, I agree with Tencrush when she says that you have to understand, this is how RTD views love. It's a pattern all his characters follow.

[lefaym]

Yeah, RTD does have some fucked up views about love, and about someone always being the "needy" partner, but I still don't think that explains it. I mean, the obvious point of comparison is the Doctor and Rose, and with them, I really never doubted for a second that the Doctor loved Rose, in spite of the fact that he was clearly afraid of getting close to her. I never doubted that he cared for her happiness. So we know that RTD is capable of writing that sort of love story effectivly, movingly, even if his views on love itself are screwed up.

it seems to me that when RTD wasn't writing it there was a lot more fun to be had.

Well, I think that Everything Changes was a great script, but the problem is that RTD didn't write for Torchwood again until TSE/JE, and even that wasn't much. And unlike the scripts for Doctor Who, he didn't carefully edit everything to ensure that it was all in line with his vision for the characters. My feeling is that RTD simply had his own idea about where the characters were going, and this didn't

[fide_et_spe]

Well as I said, I really never liked Everything Changes, it was only the Ianto/Jack minute literally that kept me watching.

I don't doubt that Jack loves Ianto though, but I do think RTD wants to play out that Doctor /Rose thing over and over. Its pretty fucked when you think about it.

[madder_rose]

I want to see Rose die on-screen just so that he will have to stop playing that damn thing out over and over. "Will he get her, won't he have her, will he lose her, will he find her..." ARRGH! Enough already!! Kill her and be done with it! It'd give them plenty more emo-material if nothing else.

[fide_et_spe]

Hah, it will never happen, Rose, Gwen, RTD teflon. Still I doubt Moffat will use her, we shall see, depends on the ratings.

[madder_rose]

Moffat can kill her! Hey, I like the character but we've flogged that horse vigorously. Find him another girl to cry about!

re: Rose

[hohaiyee]

NOOOOOOO! I love Rose. I hate Gwen most of the time, but I absolutely love Rose. Probably because of excellent acting more than writing, but god, Billie Piper is awesome. Totally check her out back during her year 2000 pop music career. It's good music...like, I can grove to Brittany Spears, but the problem with that is that her songs and presentations were often hollow acting of a seductive virgin sex kitten For Men. Piper's songs are FUN. Like, Because We Want To, it just sounds so HAPPY

Re: Rose

[fide_et_spe]

I like Billie P and have a soft spot for Rose. I definitely think she had much more chemistry with Eccles than with DT. I think they have flogged her storyline though, and I doubt Moffat will bother. If the ratings drop though, well all kinds of people will come back.

[caledonius72]

RTD had a story he wanted to tell, and shoehorned TW into it so he could get a greenlight. He then just chopped off all the bits in TW that didn't fit.

AND another thing, why the hell was it taking so long to find additional team members? I can't imagine that the three of them managed it all, unless the rift cut them some slack. They were pretty damn busy when it was the five of them.

[lefaym]

RTD had a story he wanted to tell, and shoehorned TW into it so he could get a greenlight. He then just chopped off all the bits in TW that didn't fit.

I don't think that CoE fit into the Whoniverse continuity very well at all, but I think thematiclaly, it fit very well in some ways, especially when you look at it in relation to The Christmas Invasion -- CoE is essentially the same story as that, except that the politicians don't co-operate with Torchwood, and saying "no" doesn't work. I think that RTD wanted to tell the flip-side of that story, in much the same way that Midnight is the flipside of Voyage of the Damned. The thing is, I don't think that excuses the poor characterisation of the J/I relationship at all -- I think it would have been quite possible for RTD to tell that story without chopping off those bits of Torchwood -- and it would have been a better story if he hadn't.

AND another thing, why the hell was it taking so long to find additional team members? I can't imagine that the three of them managed it all, unless

[caledonius72]

Hmmm. Perhaps some dialogue/scenes had to be cut to fit the timeslot, especially when it would have to be edited shorter for the overseas markets for ad breaks. And that may have made it seem disjointed or uneven.

I think we'll have to wait until the new Torchwood archives book in October to see about timelines. I forgot that fiction isn't the same as realtime - LOL

[fide_et_spe]

Well we know Rhys got involved, that's in the radio plays. I think there must be a reasonable gap, at least six months, in CoE Rupesh says he has been infiltrating for that long. So they must have needed a doctor for at least that long.

As for CoE well that is another meta, I think RTD had that story really even before Who. Given that it's so clearly the Quatermass story re told, he must have wanted to do that. I know he has admitted it was a story he had, but I don't know how long for officially as it were.

[lefaym]

I agree, I think that RTD had the story before Who, but I think that The Christmas Invasion was his first attempt to tell it -- basically, it's "What does the government do when a significant part of their population is under the control of aliens who are demanding that the world hand over X number of people to make them go away?" I think that's the story he wanted to tell, and he decided that the whole moral dilemma from Quartermass suited that perfectly -- particularly since it is consistent with other moral dilemmas seen in RTD's Whoniverse (the Doctor killing the Time Lords to save the universe from the Daleks, destroying Pompeii to save the world from the Pyrovile, etc).

I think that RTD's attempt to tell this story in Torchwood falls down due to poor characterisation and the fact that Ianto was killed unnecessarily, but I don't think the story itself was inappropriate for the Whoniverse.

[fide_et_spe]

Yes, or he is just being derivative. Hard to say when of course the John Mills Quatermass featured the chanting children being harvested by the aliens, and he had to sacrifice his granddaughter. I think he lifts things, but you are being more generous than me, and I'm the one who'll burn in Hell for being mean.

I think when it was told with the Doctor, he was much more central to the story, it wasn't like the Who people were just thrown in to a pre existing story.

[lefaym]

Oh, I'm not denying that RTD is being derivative -- so many of RTD's big stories are derivatives of others. I just don't have a problem with that -- there are no new stories, etc. I think there have been times when RTD has lifted a story from somewhere else and done it very well -- for instance, The Sound of Drums is basically the same as the episode Meet John Doe from Lois and Clark -- but RTD does it so much better! With CoE though, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do actually like what RTD was trying to do, and I don't think the Whoniverse was a bad place for him to do it in -- I just think that he was guilty of unnecessarily characterising Jack and Ianto very poorly-- and that detracted from everything he was trying to achieve.