stephen moffat > chris chibnall > russel t davies
BLASPHEMY.
So... Moffat replacing RTD as head writer will be a good thing, IMO. Voyage of the Damned thoroughly failed to impress and I feel a bit sacreligious (but unrepentant) when I say that I'm dreading RTD's episodes in series 4 just a bit. All this B.S. about retconning the Time War and Rose and even Donna & Martha's personal choices to leave the TARDIS -- both of which I thought showed a particular character strength that I want to see remain intact. Anyway. (I enjoyed RTD's season 3 episodes, but this IS the man who brought us the Slitheen and, at the risk of getting myself stabbed in the night by my diehard shipper friend, a million screaming Rose/Ten fangirls.) Moffat is genius. I'm just crossing my fingers that he does as good a job on the "mythology" episodes (e.g. season openers/finales) as he does on the standalone Hugo-winning eps.
And I really don't mind Chris Chibnall's writing. I notice a lot of people in the TW comms complaining about "Monkeyfists Chibnall," but TBH I think his sins are more forgiveable than some of RTD's. (TW has a certain inherent level of newborn ridiculousness to it anyway, and doesn't have to live up to the same sort of venerated cheese that Doctor Who is under pressure to outdo every week.) Then again, I think I'm one of about five people in the world who actually loved "Cyberwoman" and "Countrycide." The only really shit thing Chibnall ever pulled out of his ass (pun only partially intended) was the sex gas monster episode. (But really, when you look at nearly every sci-fi show's history, absolutely all of them had some equivalent of the sex gas monster early on in their run. It's like a first-season requirement. So are cannibals and/or magic mushrooms.) So Moffat > Chibnall, but Chibnall is still > RTD. (Plus Chibnall does not monopolize so much script time. RTD does, like, half of every season plus the Christmas specials. Chibnall only does 4 eps per season.)
Anyway. Another plus for Chibnall is that his writing is steadily improving (as opposed to RTD's increasingly worse showings at Christmas). This season of Torchwood had started a downswing of disappointment for me about halfway through, but it's picked back up all of a sudden, particularly with Chibnall's episodes. I already thought "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" was pure gold, but after the double-hit of "Adrift" and "Fragments," I'm beginning to think KKBB wasn't just a lucky one-off.
"Adrift" did something I've been wanting to do since the very first episode, which is bitchslap Gwen a couple of times right between the front teeth. I've always had a bone to pick with her character, and this episode addressed it right at the core. It says: "Your self-aggrandising magnanimity and holier-than-thou attitude are not appreciated by the common folk, who find you tiresome, selfish and hypocritical." But, you know, as long as the writers prove that they are self-aware of Gwen's flaws, then that automatically makes me have less of a problem with it. It's just when every other character on the show is saying how great and wonderful and big-hearted and doe-eyed she is that I want to punch someone. Because she's not any of those things. She's probably more self-centered than any other character on the show, and now that I know more about Owen's history I can even say she's worse than he is.
I do think Jack sees a bit of himself in her, sure. But Jack also hates a lot of who he is (and nearly all of who he used to be), so I think that his fascination with Gwen is not at all because she's his "moral center" or some sort of "fresh eyes" into humanity. He sees the potential for corruption in Gwen and kind of wants to make her into a project, to prove that he can mature a person without breaking them. (He's raising his children, really. "Hey kids, miss me?") So that he can prove to himself that he can change, too.
And I can get behind that. That's cool. I can get behind Gwen's hero-worship fascination with Jack, and even her sexual confusion regarding him, as long as Jack is cool-headed in his rejection of her sexually. I mean, I can see where Gwen's problem is -- hero-worship is usually kept in a careful balance by the fact that most gunslinger-archetype heroes work to make themselves sexually unavailable to the "pure" female characters. They're not interested. They live off of the fight, off of dealing in justice and denying themselves pleasure, especially emotional pleasure. If they have sex, it's with someone peripheral and not emotionally involving. Jack falls somewhere between gunslinger and swashbuckler, the Commedia del'Arte Capitan figure, whose sole appetite is sexual. The Capitan character is always impotent at fighting and not very good at getting the ladies.
So here's Jack, the gunslinger-leader who certainly isn't impotent in a fight, which is the metaphorical cue to everyone else that he's not impotent anywhere else either. But he's open and, we can only presume, available sexually. So he's the danger & real-deal of the gunslinger combined with the sexual appetite of the swashbuckler, and Gwen's hero-worship, directed towards what she sees as the gunslinger type, is thrown off-balance by Jack's refusal to categorize easily. Jack = cool, real AND available, BUT also with a sense of discrimination. That's the key: the Commedia Capitan wants sex wherever he can get it. Jack's anecdotes seem to indicate the same attitude. But the trick is, he doesn't. He discriminates. He is pansexual, which means he has the potential to be chemically attracted to anything that moves, but he also makes choices. And he chooses Gwen's whole, plentiful, stable and loving life with Rhys over some tempestuous and ill-thought affair with a taken woman whom he recognizes is far too immature to deal with the person he really is underneath.
So there's my take on Jack/Gwen, which was completely tangential to what I meant to talk about, which was the new episodes.
Okay. "Fragments." WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN. Every single backstory was heartwrenching one way or another. Things that were addressed that pleased me inordinately because I've been wondering about them forever:
-- Seeing Jack being not-so-blase about dying. We never got to see those first few deaths, which must have freaked him the hell out. And even though he must have figured out the catch by the time of this flashback, he's still not at all comfortable with the process. Compare his reaction to the bottle in his gut to the way he stood up calmly after Suzie shot him. Compare the way he jerked back and agreed to anything the TW women wanted after only a single threat of imprisonment and repeated killings, to the way he refused to break for an entire year on the Valiant.
-- Confirmation of the fanon-assumed fact that Jack's been working for Torchwood since very soon after his wrist strap crapped out on him and got him stuck in time -- i.e. he's been working for TW for the entire century, not sometime after serving in the wars or whatever.
-- A detail that just makes SO MUCH about the show click into place: Jack was basically chained up by TW until the turn of the millenium. Jack was an "uncontracted agent," blackmailed into working FOR Torchwood for decades. And it makes so, so much more sense that he has NOT been the team leader for all this time. Torchwood Three has not been HIS operation. Because this explains... so, so much. The fact that Jack is a really shitty leader a lot of the time. The fact that Jack has this air about him of truly believing that this particular team is different, this team deserves the "everything changes" speech. The fact that he is disproportionately torn up about it when one of the team members is killed or hurt, considering he's had a whole century to get used to (or at least hardened to) the simple fact that Torchwood members tend to die young and messily. It's because THIS team is HIS team, starting from scratch, each recruited personally.
-- The disparate situations under which each of the team were recruited, and each person's intense personal trauma, goes a long way to explaining why the team never gelled very well in season 1. The distrust and bitterness and individual self-involvement make a lot more sense.
-- I won't pick so much fun at the "21st century is when everything changes" speech now that I know the story behind it. I wonder what horror Alex saw in the future that that pendant showed him. I wonder if it was the Year That Never Was, because that would just be the most awful irony.
-- Sideburns and mantled cape FOR THE WIN.
-- Tosh: Supersekrit genius govt. agent Tosh, also FOR THE WIN. And it's just awful that that was the last time she saw her mother, even if her Mom is still alive and fine and memory-wiped. That's a terrible place to leave things unfinished between mother and daughter. But Tosh's contentedness with being surrounded by technology that can finally provide a challenge to her clearly-above-genius-IQ mind is quite sweet.
-- Ianto: WHERE DO I START. This one was played more for the laughs, but it managed to be tense and a little bit heartwrenching anyway. Great way to show Ianto's anguish without overusing the emo-tear faucet. (On/off, on/off. One of the flaws of "Cyberwoman.") His almost-crying face in the last couple of seconds was dead-on perfect because it only took those couple of seconds to imply a vast range of emotional turmoil. In that moment we get: PTSD victim holding on by a thread, adrenalin crash from all the running around with Myfanwy, relief that his scheme worked, the sudden emptiness that comes with reaching the end of a complex and dangerous plan and realizing that that task was merely a lull before moving onto something REALLY complex and dangerous, worry about Lisa, guilt/terror his own blatant and barefaced lying, a bit of shock that he's really, honestly going to have to go through with his own plan to manipulate Jack sexually now that the ball's rolling (so to speak) -- realizing that he isn't ready for that, that can't yet comprehend divorcing himself from his own body like that.
-- Speaking of sexual manipulation! Sweet zombie Jesus! All of a sudden there are about a million more layers to all those lingering looks in season 1. And my favorite: That second in Cyberwoman where Jack calls Ianto's name and Ianto has this split-second look of fear and closes his eyes to steel himself -- it's not JUST because of hiding Lisa, it's because he has to turn his flirt-meter back on and it probably feels disgusting every time he has to do it.
-- Re: the fact that he had to beg his way in: His self-disgust is more justified. The way he let Jack and the rest of walk all over him is more justified (tread softly and raise no objections, as he only keeps his job at Jack's whim). His slightly-more-degrading-than-is-strictly-necessary job description makes more sense. Jack's seemingly disproportionate reaction to Ianto's betrayal is much, much more justified, knowing that Ianto had played him from nanosecond one. (In fact, that's a very Captain John kind of thing to do, isn't it? I can see Jack having flashbacks to his own time as a con man and being horrified at himself for finally finding out what it feels like to be on the other end of a rotten deal.) All of these things had bothered me about Ianto in season 1.
-- The fact that he never seemed to hold an open grudge against Myfanwy even after she attacked Lisa makes more sense! And there's a wonderful irony that he brought both Lisa and Myfanwy to Torchwood at the same time. And I'm guessing it really is canon now that taking care of Myfanwy is Ianto's job, since he was the one who brought the stray in in the first place.
-- Ultimately... his dissociation from the rest of the team just makes so much more sense. I mean, his backstory was probably the most intense "ah-HAH!" moment I had all season.
-- Owen... killed me. Alzheimer's is a thing in my family. We don't joke about it. "The Notebook" is the most offensive piece of tripe I've ever had the misfortune of seeing, because Alzheimer's is not romantic. Ever. I respected Torchwood already for treating Alzheimer's correctly in "Out of Time," and about halfway through the trying-to-make-tea scene in Fragments, I saw what was coming and it just sort of sent the bottom out from under my entire perception of Owen. Because yeah, losing someone to memory loss can really screw you up. I can't even nitpick it. And even though I figured it was going to turn out to be alien, not Alzheimer's, the "I can't remember your name" line just suckerpunched a huge cluster of issue-buttons for me.
-- A thing about Ianto and Owen: Clothes. I'm a big fan of aesthetic symmetry, and it was so great that Owen used to wear suits all the time, and stopped after losing Katie. Ianto, as far as I could tell, was experimenting with outfits to seduce Jack, and since the suit was what he was wearing when he got the job, he was probably afraid of ever changing from it lest he upset some careful balance. And after Lisa, when his job was guaranteed, he kept wearing them because they were easy to hide behind. And this season, he's been growing into them... adding his own personality back into the starch, growing into a whole new person instead of reverting to the casual clothes of Before Shit Happened. Whereas Owen... can't stand suits. Probably can't stand the sight of suits, actually, and particularly the sight of Ianto in a suit. And Owen would resent the fact that Ianto even got the chance to try to save Lisa, when Owen never even had a chance to blink before Katie was gone forever... And all of a sudden, the Owen/Ianto animosity just got infinitely more justified, complex and interesting. The leadup to Ianto shooting Owen in "Captain Jack Harkness" doesn't seem so rushed, nor their backstabbing relationship simply shoehorned-in for cheap drama.
And I think I've run out of bullet points... for now. Also my typing fingers are getting tired. Suffice to say that I absolutely ADORED "Fragments" and will probably be watching it another forty-odd times over the next couple of weeks, while I endure the extra-long wait for the finale. Which looks SO GOOD!!! Or at least exciting! I can't wait to find out what happens! Eeee! ^_^
Done for now! Off to homework instead. Alas, spring break is almost over.
-rave
So... Moffat replacing RTD as head writer will be a good thing, IMO. Voyage of the Damned thoroughly failed to impress and I feel a bit sacreligious (but unrepentant) when I say that I'm dreading RTD's episodes in series 4 just a bit. All this B.S. about retconning the Time War and Rose and even Donna & Martha's personal choices to leave the TARDIS -- both of which I thought showed a particular character strength that I want to see remain intact. Anyway. (I enjoyed RTD's season 3 episodes, but this IS the man who brought us the Slitheen and, at the risk of getting myself stabbed in the night by my diehard shipper friend, a million screaming Rose/Ten fangirls.) Moffat is genius. I'm just crossing my fingers that he does as good a job on the "mythology" episodes (e.g. season openers/finales) as he does on the standalone Hugo-winning eps.
And I really don't mind Chris Chibnall's writing. I notice a lot of people in the TW comms complaining about "Monkeyfists Chibnall," but TBH I think his sins are more forgiveable than some of RTD's. (TW has a certain inherent level of newborn ridiculousness to it anyway, and doesn't have to live up to the same sort of venerated cheese that Doctor Who is under pressure to outdo every week.) Then again, I think I'm one of about five people in the world who actually loved "Cyberwoman" and "Countrycide." The only really shit thing Chibnall ever pulled out of his ass (pun only partially intended) was the sex gas monster episode. (But really, when you look at nearly every sci-fi show's history, absolutely all of them had some equivalent of the sex gas monster early on in their run. It's like a first-season requirement. So are cannibals and/or magic mushrooms.) So Moffat > Chibnall, but Chibnall is still > RTD. (Plus Chibnall does not monopolize so much script time. RTD does, like, half of every season plus the Christmas specials. Chibnall only does 4 eps per season.)
Anyway. Another plus for Chibnall is that his writing is steadily improving (as opposed to RTD's increasingly worse showings at Christmas). This season of Torchwood had started a downswing of disappointment for me about halfway through, but it's picked back up all of a sudden, particularly with Chibnall's episodes. I already thought "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" was pure gold, but after the double-hit of "Adrift" and "Fragments," I'm beginning to think KKBB wasn't just a lucky one-off.
"Adrift" did something I've been wanting to do since the very first episode, which is bitchslap Gwen a couple of times right between the front teeth. I've always had a bone to pick with her character, and this episode addressed it right at the core. It says: "Your self-aggrandising magnanimity and holier-than-thou attitude are not appreciated by the common folk, who find you tiresome, selfish and hypocritical." But, you know, as long as the writers prove that they are self-aware of Gwen's flaws, then that automatically makes me have less of a problem with it. It's just when every other character on the show is saying how great and wonderful and big-hearted and doe-eyed she is that I want to punch someone. Because she's not any of those things. She's probably more self-centered than any other character on the show, and now that I know more about Owen's history I can even say she's worse than he is.
I do think Jack sees a bit of himself in her, sure. But Jack also hates a lot of who he is (and nearly all of who he used to be), so I think that his fascination with Gwen is not at all because she's his "moral center" or some sort of "fresh eyes" into humanity. He sees the potential for corruption in Gwen and kind of wants to make her into a project, to prove that he can mature a person without breaking them. (He's raising his children, really. "Hey kids, miss me?") So that he can prove to himself that he can change, too.
And I can get behind that. That's cool. I can get behind Gwen's hero-worship fascination with Jack, and even her sexual confusion regarding him, as long as Jack is cool-headed in his rejection of her sexually. I mean, I can see where Gwen's problem is -- hero-worship is usually kept in a careful balance by the fact that most gunslinger-archetype heroes work to make themselves sexually unavailable to the "pure" female characters. They're not interested. They live off of the fight, off of dealing in justice and denying themselves pleasure, especially emotional pleasure. If they have sex, it's with someone peripheral and not emotionally involving. Jack falls somewhere between gunslinger and swashbuckler, the Commedia del'Arte Capitan figure, whose sole appetite is sexual. The Capitan character is always impotent at fighting and not very good at getting the ladies.
So here's Jack, the gunslinger-leader who certainly isn't impotent in a fight, which is the metaphorical cue to everyone else that he's not impotent anywhere else either. But he's open and, we can only presume, available sexually. So he's the danger & real-deal of the gunslinger combined with the sexual appetite of the swashbuckler, and Gwen's hero-worship, directed towards what she sees as the gunslinger type, is thrown off-balance by Jack's refusal to categorize easily. Jack = cool, real AND available, BUT also with a sense of discrimination. That's the key: the Commedia Capitan wants sex wherever he can get it. Jack's anecdotes seem to indicate the same attitude. But the trick is, he doesn't. He discriminates. He is pansexual, which means he has the potential to be chemically attracted to anything that moves, but he also makes choices. And he chooses Gwen's whole, plentiful, stable and loving life with Rhys over some tempestuous and ill-thought affair with a taken woman whom he recognizes is far too immature to deal with the person he really is underneath.
So there's my take on Jack/Gwen, which was completely tangential to what I meant to talk about, which was the new episodes.
Okay. "Fragments." WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN. Every single backstory was heartwrenching one way or another. Things that were addressed that pleased me inordinately because I've been wondering about them forever:
-- Seeing Jack being not-so-blase about dying. We never got to see those first few deaths, which must have freaked him the hell out. And even though he must have figured out the catch by the time of this flashback, he's still not at all comfortable with the process. Compare his reaction to the bottle in his gut to the way he stood up calmly after Suzie shot him. Compare the way he jerked back and agreed to anything the TW women wanted after only a single threat of imprisonment and repeated killings, to the way he refused to break for an entire year on the Valiant.
-- Confirmation of the fanon-assumed fact that Jack's been working for Torchwood since very soon after his wrist strap crapped out on him and got him stuck in time -- i.e. he's been working for TW for the entire century, not sometime after serving in the wars or whatever.
-- A detail that just makes SO MUCH about the show click into place: Jack was basically chained up by TW until the turn of the millenium. Jack was an "uncontracted agent," blackmailed into working FOR Torchwood for decades. And it makes so, so much more sense that he has NOT been the team leader for all this time. Torchwood Three has not been HIS operation. Because this explains... so, so much. The fact that Jack is a really shitty leader a lot of the time. The fact that Jack has this air about him of truly believing that this particular team is different, this team deserves the "everything changes" speech. The fact that he is disproportionately torn up about it when one of the team members is killed or hurt, considering he's had a whole century to get used to (or at least hardened to) the simple fact that Torchwood members tend to die young and messily. It's because THIS team is HIS team, starting from scratch, each recruited personally.
-- The disparate situations under which each of the team were recruited, and each person's intense personal trauma, goes a long way to explaining why the team never gelled very well in season 1. The distrust and bitterness and individual self-involvement make a lot more sense.
-- I won't pick so much fun at the "21st century is when everything changes" speech now that I know the story behind it. I wonder what horror Alex saw in the future that that pendant showed him. I wonder if it was the Year That Never Was, because that would just be the most awful irony.
-- Sideburns and mantled cape FOR THE WIN.
-- Tosh: Supersekrit genius govt. agent Tosh, also FOR THE WIN. And it's just awful that that was the last time she saw her mother, even if her Mom is still alive and fine and memory-wiped. That's a terrible place to leave things unfinished between mother and daughter. But Tosh's contentedness with being surrounded by technology that can finally provide a challenge to her clearly-above-genius-IQ mind is quite sweet.
-- Ianto: WHERE DO I START. This one was played more for the laughs, but it managed to be tense and a little bit heartwrenching anyway. Great way to show Ianto's anguish without overusing the emo-tear faucet. (On/off, on/off. One of the flaws of "Cyberwoman.") His almost-crying face in the last couple of seconds was dead-on perfect because it only took those couple of seconds to imply a vast range of emotional turmoil. In that moment we get: PTSD victim holding on by a thread, adrenalin crash from all the running around with Myfanwy, relief that his scheme worked, the sudden emptiness that comes with reaching the end of a complex and dangerous plan and realizing that that task was merely a lull before moving onto something REALLY complex and dangerous, worry about Lisa, guilt/terror his own blatant and barefaced lying, a bit of shock that he's really, honestly going to have to go through with his own plan to manipulate Jack sexually now that the ball's rolling (so to speak) -- realizing that he isn't ready for that, that can't yet comprehend divorcing himself from his own body like that.
-- Speaking of sexual manipulation! Sweet zombie Jesus! All of a sudden there are about a million more layers to all those lingering looks in season 1. And my favorite: That second in Cyberwoman where Jack calls Ianto's name and Ianto has this split-second look of fear and closes his eyes to steel himself -- it's not JUST because of hiding Lisa, it's because he has to turn his flirt-meter back on and it probably feels disgusting every time he has to do it.
-- Re: the fact that he had to beg his way in: His self-disgust is more justified. The way he let Jack and the rest of walk all over him is more justified (tread softly and raise no objections, as he only keeps his job at Jack's whim). His slightly-more-degrading-than-is-strictly-necessary job description makes more sense. Jack's seemingly disproportionate reaction to Ianto's betrayal is much, much more justified, knowing that Ianto had played him from nanosecond one. (In fact, that's a very Captain John kind of thing to do, isn't it? I can see Jack having flashbacks to his own time as a con man and being horrified at himself for finally finding out what it feels like to be on the other end of a rotten deal.) All of these things had bothered me about Ianto in season 1.
-- The fact that he never seemed to hold an open grudge against Myfanwy even after she attacked Lisa makes more sense! And there's a wonderful irony that he brought both Lisa and Myfanwy to Torchwood at the same time. And I'm guessing it really is canon now that taking care of Myfanwy is Ianto's job, since he was the one who brought the stray in in the first place.
-- Ultimately... his dissociation from the rest of the team just makes so much more sense. I mean, his backstory was probably the most intense "ah-HAH!" moment I had all season.
-- Owen... killed me. Alzheimer's is a thing in my family. We don't joke about it. "The Notebook" is the most offensive piece of tripe I've ever had the misfortune of seeing, because Alzheimer's is not romantic. Ever. I respected Torchwood already for treating Alzheimer's correctly in "Out of Time," and about halfway through the trying-to-make-tea scene in Fragments, I saw what was coming and it just sort of sent the bottom out from under my entire perception of Owen. Because yeah, losing someone to memory loss can really screw you up. I can't even nitpick it. And even though I figured it was going to turn out to be alien, not Alzheimer's, the "I can't remember your name" line just suckerpunched a huge cluster of issue-buttons for me.
-- A thing about Ianto and Owen: Clothes. I'm a big fan of aesthetic symmetry, and it was so great that Owen used to wear suits all the time, and stopped after losing Katie. Ianto, as far as I could tell, was experimenting with outfits to seduce Jack, and since the suit was what he was wearing when he got the job, he was probably afraid of ever changing from it lest he upset some careful balance. And after Lisa, when his job was guaranteed, he kept wearing them because they were easy to hide behind. And this season, he's been growing into them... adding his own personality back into the starch, growing into a whole new person instead of reverting to the casual clothes of Before Shit Happened. Whereas Owen... can't stand suits. Probably can't stand the sight of suits, actually, and particularly the sight of Ianto in a suit. And Owen would resent the fact that Ianto even got the chance to try to save Lisa, when Owen never even had a chance to blink before Katie was gone forever... And all of a sudden, the Owen/Ianto animosity just got infinitely more justified, complex and interesting. The leadup to Ianto shooting Owen in "Captain Jack Harkness" doesn't seem so rushed, nor their backstabbing relationship simply shoehorned-in for cheap drama.
And I think I've run out of bullet points... for now. Also my typing fingers are getting tired. Suffice to say that I absolutely ADORED "Fragments" and will probably be watching it another forty-odd times over the next couple of weeks, while I endure the extra-long wait for the finale. Which looks SO GOOD!!! Or at least exciting! I can't wait to find out what happens! Eeee! ^_^
Done for now! Off to homework instead. Alas, spring break is almost over.
-rave