Torchwood 4.05 The Categories of Life
To say anything above cut would be spoilery in this case, so, without further ado:
It's another Jane Espenson episode, and at the start I figured she got this one because of her gift for banter, but no: it's the Jane E. who wrote the Dawn and First Evil As Joyce's Ghost section in "Conversations with the Dead" and wrote BSG's The Plan (where whole planetary populations get torched) who wrote this one. I'm still pondering whether or not the central plot point feels earned, so bear with me while I talk about other stuff.
We're five for five with the Bechdel test passing episodes and the crucial female characters. When Vera Juarez joined the team in the teaser out of indignation of the way patients were now treated (or not) by the system, I squeed in happiness, so you can imagine how I felt near the end of the episode. Yet that, as opposed to the central plot point itself, I have no doubts about, and I say this despite the fact she was my favourite of the American characters. In retrospect the story had to personalize the burnings with one character the audience was familiar with and cared about, which meant either Vera or Gwen's dad, and no offense to Gwen's dad, but he only got one previous scene (unless you count the wedding episode in season 2, in which he didn't get more than two lines or so, either), and there was no build up to bond with him, whereas the series pulled all the stops to make Vera Juarez awesome and endearing. (Well, there's a third alternative: they could have killed off Rex and left Vera, come to think of it. But he hasn't endeared himself to the audience to the same degree, though he is growing on me.) So: it gut wrenchingly worked. Oh, Vera Juarez. And you were bonding with Esther and Jack, too. Your actress owned this episode, from the teaser onwards, being brave, funny, pissed off, furious and then going through that horrible death which is one of my personal nightmares ever since I did my first research on witch burnings, never mind the holocaust.
Going back to the start a bit, it was good to see Wales again. Gwen with her mother and daughter reminded me again that RTD shows from Queer as Folk onward are so very good at these parent-child interactions with their tensions and their strength. It was a scene where when Mrs. Cooper said "that's your latest mission" I had a "yep, Gwen got her steel from her mother" moment. On the other side of the ocean, Esther getting a pep talk from Jack and later teasing him together with Vera (sob!) was great, as was seeing her grow in field confidence (she did her part of the infiltration perfectly). It also shows in her interaction with Rex, and she's going to need that after the latest horror.
I continue to get a kick out of Jilly; this episode, btw, got the point of her having no time for Osward personally (see her telling him why he didn't get a wardrobe) while loving the success of her promotional skills across better than the verbalization of it in the last one. And her taking a photo fo Jack was smart. (Not that her employers wouldn't have recognized him from the description anyway, but she couldn't know that.) Competence is ever so attractive in a fictional character, for an evil cause or not.
Speaking of Jack, he finds out the hard way that he projected his own issues into Oswald when assuming Oswald wants to die. Oswald wants to kill again, which is not the same thing at all, and he definitely does not want to get back to anonymity and being despised, so the fact he didn't help Jack did not surprise me. (*insert repeat chorus about Bill Pullman's awesome acting skills in this role, though.*) Otoh I wouldn't exclude the possibility that now he's tasted public adoration (and a few unpleasant reminders not everyone loves him yet and some keep remembering what he did) he will eventually turn against Phi Corps, not out of sudden repentance or a wish to help but because mass adoration leads all too often to megalomania and he could reach the point where he thinks he doesn't need Phi Corps anymore, in which case the fact he went off script with his speech but did them the favour of including their key word would be foreshadowing.
And now for the big one, the revelation that the category 1 patients are getting burned. I do expect an answer to the "how does Phi Corps profit from this?" will be forthcoming because the episode itself asks it (albeit about possible experiments, not about the not yet discovered burning plans), and it better be a good one, because if you evoke this particular imagery - camps and people getting cremated alive - you need to do it justice. (Obviously it can't be a question of ideology in this case.) It's not that I don't believe humans would do this. I live in the city where Dachau is next door. But for something like this to happen on a global scale - with all the different countries, systems, ideologies - there has to be a believable motivation pushing everyone, and while the previous episodes have established the healthcare systems breaking down left, right and center (and evoked the plague ships - come to think of it, the plague and how plague victims were treated is another historical parallel) - I'm not quite there emotionally yet as I was in CoE during the COBRA meeting, where the horror of it was that I felt "yes, this would happen, most politicians would do just this". I almost believe it, if that makes sense. But not completely. I suppose for me it depends on the follow-up: a) Phi Corps' motivation, b) being shown how many people are involved in the practical execution, and some individual responses (not everyone is a sexist creep who wants to cover up murder), and c) how the public in different countries (with this show this would mean Britain and the US) will respond once this is revealed.
Since I mentioned the creep: ever since episode two brought up that now nobody dies murder gets reclassified and we heard about the ramifications in war zones - some wars stop, some intensify now with immortal soldiers - there would be a shift in ethics, a literal getting-away-with-murder, but I did not expect it to be so drastically demonstrated, and on my favourite new character, too. Oh, VERA.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/703267.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
It's another Jane Espenson episode, and at the start I figured she got this one because of her gift for banter, but no: it's the Jane E. who wrote the Dawn and First Evil As Joyce's Ghost section in "Conversations with the Dead" and wrote BSG's The Plan (where whole planetary populations get torched) who wrote this one. I'm still pondering whether or not the central plot point feels earned, so bear with me while I talk about other stuff.
We're five for five with the Bechdel test passing episodes and the crucial female characters. When Vera Juarez joined the team in the teaser out of indignation of the way patients were now treated (or not) by the system, I squeed in happiness, so you can imagine how I felt near the end of the episode. Yet that, as opposed to the central plot point itself, I have no doubts about, and I say this despite the fact she was my favourite of the American characters. In retrospect the story had to personalize the burnings with one character the audience was familiar with and cared about, which meant either Vera or Gwen's dad, and no offense to Gwen's dad, but he only got one previous scene (unless you count the wedding episode in season 2, in which he didn't get more than two lines or so, either), and there was no build up to bond with him, whereas the series pulled all the stops to make Vera Juarez awesome and endearing. (Well, there's a third alternative: they could have killed off Rex and left Vera, come to think of it. But he hasn't endeared himself to the audience to the same degree, though he is growing on me.) So: it gut wrenchingly worked. Oh, Vera Juarez. And you were bonding with Esther and Jack, too. Your actress owned this episode, from the teaser onwards, being brave, funny, pissed off, furious and then going through that horrible death which is one of my personal nightmares ever since I did my first research on witch burnings, never mind the holocaust.
Going back to the start a bit, it was good to see Wales again. Gwen with her mother and daughter reminded me again that RTD shows from Queer as Folk onward are so very good at these parent-child interactions with their tensions and their strength. It was a scene where when Mrs. Cooper said "that's your latest mission" I had a "yep, Gwen got her steel from her mother" moment. On the other side of the ocean, Esther getting a pep talk from Jack and later teasing him together with Vera (sob!) was great, as was seeing her grow in field confidence (she did her part of the infiltration perfectly). It also shows in her interaction with Rex, and she's going to need that after the latest horror.
I continue to get a kick out of Jilly; this episode, btw, got the point of her having no time for Osward personally (see her telling him why he didn't get a wardrobe) while loving the success of her promotional skills across better than the verbalization of it in the last one. And her taking a photo fo Jack was smart. (Not that her employers wouldn't have recognized him from the description anyway, but she couldn't know that.) Competence is ever so attractive in a fictional character, for an evil cause or not.
Speaking of Jack, he finds out the hard way that he projected his own issues into Oswald when assuming Oswald wants to die. Oswald wants to kill again, which is not the same thing at all, and he definitely does not want to get back to anonymity and being despised, so the fact he didn't help Jack did not surprise me. (*insert repeat chorus about Bill Pullman's awesome acting skills in this role, though.*) Otoh I wouldn't exclude the possibility that now he's tasted public adoration (and a few unpleasant reminders not everyone loves him yet and some keep remembering what he did) he will eventually turn against Phi Corps, not out of sudden repentance or a wish to help but because mass adoration leads all too often to megalomania and he could reach the point where he thinks he doesn't need Phi Corps anymore, in which case the fact he went off script with his speech but did them the favour of including their key word would be foreshadowing.
And now for the big one, the revelation that the category 1 patients are getting burned. I do expect an answer to the "how does Phi Corps profit from this?" will be forthcoming because the episode itself asks it (albeit about possible experiments, not about the not yet discovered burning plans), and it better be a good one, because if you evoke this particular imagery - camps and people getting cremated alive - you need to do it justice. (Obviously it can't be a question of ideology in this case.) It's not that I don't believe humans would do this. I live in the city where Dachau is next door. But for something like this to happen on a global scale - with all the different countries, systems, ideologies - there has to be a believable motivation pushing everyone, and while the previous episodes have established the healthcare systems breaking down left, right and center (and evoked the plague ships - come to think of it, the plague and how plague victims were treated is another historical parallel) - I'm not quite there emotionally yet as I was in CoE during the COBRA meeting, where the horror of it was that I felt "yes, this would happen, most politicians would do just this". I almost believe it, if that makes sense. But not completely. I suppose for me it depends on the follow-up: a) Phi Corps' motivation, b) being shown how many people are involved in the practical execution, and some individual responses (not everyone is a sexist creep who wants to cover up murder), and c) how the public in different countries (with this show this would mean Britain and the US) will respond once this is revealed.
Since I mentioned the creep: ever since episode two brought up that now nobody dies murder gets reclassified and we heard about the ramifications in war zones - some wars stop, some intensify now with immortal soldiers - there would be a shift in ethics, a literal getting-away-with-murder, but I did not expect it to be so drastically demonstrated, and on my favourite new character, too. Oh, VERA.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/703267.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.