Torchweek #2:
T3: < lj user="neadods"> < a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/856017.html">LINK TEXT [Spoilers, CoE 1 and 2]
Before getting into Episode 2, I want to address a comment I keep seeing about Episode 1 - the Christian woman who committed suicide when she found out aliens were real.
A lot of people don't seem to understand this, and yet it's clear as crystal to me, and quite realistic. First of all, let me say that I don't feel that it's Christian bashing (because RTD didn't say every Christian did, or anything of the like) or that it was RTD pushing his atheist philosophy. How can he be, when an almost identical scene about aliens disproving the Bible was used in Alien Nation over a decade ago?
There is a fundamentalist Christian movement, mostly American but it has its missionaries, which believes that the Bible is inerrant and literal. The argument, usually used when cherry-picking verses against gay marriage or abortion or feminism or teaching evolution or doing the same for the supremacy of the rapture or the abusive patriarchal control over wives and children or that particular branch of Christianity over all others, is that if any part of the Bible is not absolutely literally true (by their translation of literal, a whole 'nother post), then the whole Bible is wrong and God is a lie.
Because it is this particular subbranch of Christianity that has produced Operation Rescue, Jack Chick, any number of challenges to evolution (Google "Dover PA"), and the Left Behind series, it's a subbranch with a lot of clout and adherents.
So if someone who is THAT vested in THAT version of Christianity discovers that aliens are real, something not mentioned in the Bible, and isn't able to handwave them away as angels or demons, yes, I can see that someone's faith shattering to the point that they commit suicide.
Hell, the first couple of chapters of Left Behind have several stories of people committing suicide because they realized that they weren't among the elect. It's practically endorsed as The Thing To Do.
As for Ep 2:
On the SQUEE, side:
- The plot thickens. The plot exists! (Let's face it, plot is an occasional extra in Torchwood.) The tension and pacing are building perfectly (I'm probably going to have a cardiac on Thursday night waiting to find out what happens!) It makes such twisted and deliciously suspenseful sense for Gwen to be running straight to the one person who has set all the carnage in motion.
- Gwen continues to kick ass. Both she and Ianto were dazed, confused, hysterical. He ran. She beat the crap out of her persecutors, disarmed them, and shot back. And *then* she doesn't fall for the fakeout, she gets information *and* she gets to Rhys first. You GO, girl!
- Rhys gets a little booty booting himself. "Gimme the bag! You want your trigger finger free, don't ya?" He's well out of his depth and still he's focusing on the important things. "Don't you question my knowledge of the haulage industry!"
- Ianto is providing everything for every fan, isn't he? We're getting equal amounts of cuddle the emo woobie and quiet uber-efficiency.
- Ianto's nephew set new standards in cool. "Shh. We're probably bugged." I don't like kids much, but for that one, I'll make an exception. Even Ianto's brother-in-law gets a noble moment and leads that brilliant blend of attacking back and diversion.
- Lois steps up to the plate! She's been plucky but also in the background; now she steps into the action. She's got a point - "I didn't take this job to commit treason on my second day," but she's doing it for all the right reasons. To REALLY defend her country and her planet. That takes a lot of bravery, spine, and brass equipment to know what's going wrong and step in to fix it, and she does it with a certain amount of suavity and a great deal of thoroughness. A damned pity that Gwen's job offer doubtless doomed her to die.
- "We want a pony. We want a pony." BWAhahahahaa, didn't take long for some kids to start using that for their advantage, did it?
- Jack's reassembly and resurrection was gross as all get-out... but it was the cool kind of gross, if that makes the slightest bit of sense. I do love a good horror movie. (I wonder how many times the Master blew him up? He was awfully sure he'd survive *anything.*) Although I did snicker a bit that either something was taking its sweet time growing back or the Gov't has some really impressive censors on the monitors. (ETA, top posting from comments elsewhere: It would have been rather interesting if not all the bits they picked up originally came from Jack. Or if they'd picked up a random body from the vaults instead of Jack.)
- UNIT *aren't* the jackbooted bad guys! HUZZAH!
- And once again, the last 10 minutes take me utterly by surprise. I'm almost sorry I'm watching alone so I couldn't join the general cheer when Ianto saves them all. And Gwen. YOU GO GIRL! (Although... with the general LOLz of Torchwood, I'm half sorry that they didn't at any point use Jack as a battering ram. Wouldn't that have been hilarious?) However, literally breaking him out by dropping him down a quarry was good. And butt-naked Barrowman always brightens my day, regardless of how they must have taped him up to, er, keep anything from dangling into shot. From the way he was walking, it must have been a bit painful.
- "A throne room. Maybe a slaughterhouse.... They're coming for Britain. Why is that Mr. Frobisher?" Cliffhangers like this ALL WEEK LONG? I'm gonna die. Hands up everyone who thinks creepy engineer is one of them, acting as advance scout.
On the "Aw, hell" side:
- PC Andy as thick as a plank. Everyone else, including the comedy players, got a dramatic and smart moment. I was really hoping he would as well. But no, he leads them right to Gwen, babbling all the way, and then is never seen again. Even Jack's brittle daughter looks like she's going to kick ass next week, but PC Andy's still in the comedy leagues. Damnit.
- The LOLtastically bad OPSEC is really getting too far - that woman has ordered *hit squads* but still not changed her damn password? Hasn't tried logging in and discovered that she can't because she's logged into a different terminal? There's suspending my disbelief, and then there's hanging it by the neck until dead. Although I will give a quarter point for them at least telling the new employee not to walk into the secretest of secrets. A pity I'm deducting 15 points for leading her there in the first place.
- That is the most inefficiently loaded truck I've ever seen in my life. Untrained college kids do better than that stuffing their parent's cars at the beginning of term.
And the "Huh?" side:
- Why does Gwen say "70 miles an hour"? Aren't y'all on kilometers?
- What does Rhys say to Gwen when they drive up in the hearse? I've rewatched it a couple of times and all I can get is "Hello, *I* shouldn't be here? Jack mumblemumbleradishgromit."
Before getting into Episode 2, I want to address a comment I keep seeing about Episode 1 - the Christian woman who committed suicide when she found out aliens were real.
A lot of people don't seem to understand this, and yet it's clear as crystal to me, and quite realistic. First of all, let me say that I don't feel that it's Christian bashing (because RTD didn't say every Christian did, or anything of the like) or that it was RTD pushing his atheist philosophy. How can he be, when an almost identical scene about aliens disproving the Bible was used in Alien Nation over a decade ago?
There is a fundamentalist Christian movement, mostly American but it has its missionaries, which believes that the Bible is inerrant and literal. The argument, usually used when cherry-picking verses against gay marriage or abortion or feminism or teaching evolution or doing the same for the supremacy of the rapture or the abusive patriarchal control over wives and children or that particular branch of Christianity over all others, is that if any part of the Bible is not absolutely literally true (by their translation of literal, a whole 'nother post), then the whole Bible is wrong and God is a lie.
Because it is this particular subbranch of Christianity that has produced Operation Rescue, Jack Chick, any number of challenges to evolution (Google "Dover PA"), and the Left Behind series, it's a subbranch with a lot of clout and adherents.
So if someone who is THAT vested in THAT version of Christianity discovers that aliens are real, something not mentioned in the Bible, and isn't able to handwave them away as angels or demons, yes, I can see that someone's faith shattering to the point that they commit suicide.
Hell, the first couple of chapters of Left Behind have several stories of people committing suicide because they realized that they weren't among the elect. It's practically endorsed as The Thing To Do.
As for Ep 2:
On the SQUEE, side:
- The plot thickens. The plot exists! (Let's face it, plot is an occasional extra in Torchwood.) The tension and pacing are building perfectly (I'm probably going to have a cardiac on Thursday night waiting to find out what happens!) It makes such twisted and deliciously suspenseful sense for Gwen to be running straight to the one person who has set all the carnage in motion.
- Gwen continues to kick ass. Both she and Ianto were dazed, confused, hysterical. He ran. She beat the crap out of her persecutors, disarmed them, and shot back. And *then* she doesn't fall for the fakeout, she gets information *and* she gets to Rhys first. You GO, girl!
- Rhys gets a little booty booting himself. "Gimme the bag! You want your trigger finger free, don't ya?" He's well out of his depth and still he's focusing on the important things. "Don't you question my knowledge of the haulage industry!"
- Ianto is providing everything for every fan, isn't he? We're getting equal amounts of cuddle the emo woobie and quiet uber-efficiency.
- Ianto's nephew set new standards in cool. "Shh. We're probably bugged." I don't like kids much, but for that one, I'll make an exception. Even Ianto's brother-in-law gets a noble moment and leads that brilliant blend of attacking back and diversion.
- Lois steps up to the plate! She's been plucky but also in the background; now she steps into the action. She's got a point - "I didn't take this job to commit treason on my second day," but she's doing it for all the right reasons. To REALLY defend her country and her planet. That takes a lot of bravery, spine, and brass equipment to know what's going wrong and step in to fix it, and she does it with a certain amount of suavity and a great deal of thoroughness. A damned pity that Gwen's job offer doubtless doomed her to die.
- "We want a pony. We want a pony." BWAhahahahaa, didn't take long for some kids to start using that for their advantage, did it?
- Jack's reassembly and resurrection was gross as all get-out... but it was the cool kind of gross, if that makes the slightest bit of sense. I do love a good horror movie. (I wonder how many times the Master blew him up? He was awfully sure he'd survive *anything.*) Although I did snicker a bit that either something was taking its sweet time growing back or the Gov't has some really impressive censors on the monitors. (ETA, top posting from comments elsewhere: It would have been rather interesting if not all the bits they picked up originally came from Jack. Or if they'd picked up a random body from the vaults instead of Jack.)
- UNIT *aren't* the jackbooted bad guys! HUZZAH!
- And once again, the last 10 minutes take me utterly by surprise. I'm almost sorry I'm watching alone so I couldn't join the general cheer when Ianto saves them all. And Gwen. YOU GO GIRL! (Although... with the general LOLz of Torchwood, I'm half sorry that they didn't at any point use Jack as a battering ram. Wouldn't that have been hilarious?) However, literally breaking him out by dropping him down a quarry was good. And butt-naked Barrowman always brightens my day, regardless of how they must have taped him up to, er, keep anything from dangling into shot. From the way he was walking, it must have been a bit painful.
- "A throne room. Maybe a slaughterhouse.... They're coming for Britain. Why is that Mr. Frobisher?" Cliffhangers like this ALL WEEK LONG? I'm gonna die. Hands up everyone who thinks creepy engineer is one of them, acting as advance scout.
On the "Aw, hell" side:
- PC Andy as thick as a plank. Everyone else, including the comedy players, got a dramatic and smart moment. I was really hoping he would as well. But no, he leads them right to Gwen, babbling all the way, and then is never seen again. Even Jack's brittle daughter looks like she's going to kick ass next week, but PC Andy's still in the comedy leagues. Damnit.
- The LOLtastically bad OPSEC is really getting too far - that woman has ordered *hit squads* but still not changed her damn password? Hasn't tried logging in and discovered that she can't because she's logged into a different terminal? There's suspending my disbelief, and then there's hanging it by the neck until dead. Although I will give a quarter point for them at least telling the new employee not to walk into the secretest of secrets. A pity I'm deducting 15 points for leading her there in the first place.
- That is the most inefficiently loaded truck I've ever seen in my life. Untrained college kids do better than that stuffing their parent's cars at the beginning of term.
And the "Huh?" side:
- Why does Gwen say "70 miles an hour"? Aren't y'all on kilometers?
- What does Rhys say to Gwen when they drive up in the hearse? I've rewatched it a couple of times and all I can get is "Hello, *I* shouldn't be here? Jack mumblemumbleradishgromit."