Torchwood meets Middlemarch
Hello everyone! It's a long time since I've posted, but I've been checking LJ occasionally, and enjoying your updates. I keep meaning to post when I have more time and energy and something interesting to say. But the moment has come when I cannot resist posting about... a Victorian literary reference in last night's Torchwood.
No spoilers here--except that several characters are still alive, and that Jack has some surprising literary tastes. But I'll put this under a cut, just in case...
So, in Episode 4, when Jack is trying to explain why he thinks Oswald Danes is the key to the mystery, he turns to a somewhat surprising comparison: George Eliot's Middlemarch, an ultra-realistic Victorian novel where not much happens for 800 pages, other than dysfunctional relationships and local politics in a small British town. (No aliens, car chases, or even horse-and-carriage chases.) Jack paraphrases Eliot's famous metaphor of the scratched mirror: when you hold the mirror to the light, all the random scratches seem to converge on a central point. I have Things to say about this!
1) It's fun to see one of my favorite Victorian novels getting a shout-out on TV. And not just the usual decorous BBC costume drama TV, but adult-rated sci fi action adventure!
HOWEVER...
2) Way to misinterpret literature, Captain Harkness. The point of the metaphor is that ANYONE can become the center of the pattern, depending on how you hold the mirror. It's supposed to be about challenging the idea that any story has a single inevitable hero or villain. But, then again, Torchwood: Miracle Day is a supernatural (oops, I'm sorry, scientific) mystery story, not a social realist novel like Middlemarch. So of course everything MUST actually converge on someone (or a conspiracy of someones). I'm just getting cross-genre whiplash.
3) Also, as a Torchwood fan, I'm kind of disappointed that they handled this literary reference in such a straight-faced, humorless way. I miss the days when the show wore its erudition more lightly! Remember when Jack used to tell tall tales about sleeping with Proust and Isherwood? I totally think Jack's dialogue should have been more like, "As George Eliot said to me, when we were shagging in front of that old scratched mirror..." All the more fun for Jack's omnisexuality, since George was a lady with a dude's name.
4) Now that the show is mentioning awesome Victorian ladies, can we please have Emily and Alice back, please? Vastra and Jenny from Doctor Who would also be more than acceptable.
(Overall, I am not liking Miracle Day as much as I hoped, but I always love seeing Jack, Gwen, and Rhys. Especially Gwen in a black dress! And Torchwood Gleeclub is still my favorite LJ comm, whether or not I am feeling unmitigated glee about the show.)
No spoilers here--except that several characters are still alive, and that Jack has some surprising literary tastes. But I'll put this under a cut, just in case...
So, in Episode 4, when Jack is trying to explain why he thinks Oswald Danes is the key to the mystery, he turns to a somewhat surprising comparison: George Eliot's Middlemarch, an ultra-realistic Victorian novel where not much happens for 800 pages, other than dysfunctional relationships and local politics in a small British town. (No aliens, car chases, or even horse-and-carriage chases.) Jack paraphrases Eliot's famous metaphor of the scratched mirror: when you hold the mirror to the light, all the random scratches seem to converge on a central point. I have Things to say about this!
1) It's fun to see one of my favorite Victorian novels getting a shout-out on TV. And not just the usual decorous BBC costume drama TV, but adult-rated sci fi action adventure!
HOWEVER...
2) Way to misinterpret literature, Captain Harkness. The point of the metaphor is that ANYONE can become the center of the pattern, depending on how you hold the mirror. It's supposed to be about challenging the idea that any story has a single inevitable hero or villain. But, then again, Torchwood: Miracle Day is a supernatural (oops, I'm sorry, scientific) mystery story, not a social realist novel like Middlemarch. So of course everything MUST actually converge on someone (or a conspiracy of someones). I'm just getting cross-genre whiplash.
3) Also, as a Torchwood fan, I'm kind of disappointed that they handled this literary reference in such a straight-faced, humorless way. I miss the days when the show wore its erudition more lightly! Remember when Jack used to tell tall tales about sleeping with Proust and Isherwood? I totally think Jack's dialogue should have been more like, "As George Eliot said to me, when we were shagging in front of that old scratched mirror..." All the more fun for Jack's omnisexuality, since George was a lady with a dude's name.
4) Now that the show is mentioning awesome Victorian ladies, can we please have Emily and Alice back, please? Vastra and Jenny from Doctor Who would also be more than acceptable.
(Overall, I am not liking Miracle Day as much as I hoped, but I always love seeing Jack, Gwen, and Rhys. Especially Gwen in a black dress! And Torchwood Gleeclub is still my favorite LJ comm, whether or not I am feeling unmitigated glee about the show.)