Torchwood 4.07 Immortal Sins
*whistles Sergio Leone composed tune*
A flippant observation first: clearly, Jane E. demanded to get all the slash scenes when the writing assignments were given. And now for my only nitpick, because I always prefer starting with the complaints, and I have only one this time, but that one is a big one: the scene in which Jack was expositioning about the madness inducing alien parasite was incredibly clumsy and stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the episode, which was excellent. There was no logical Watsonian reason why Jack should in the face of this really dangerous creature decide to deliver a long monologue explaining what it is and just how it works, instead of just kill it, then explain to Angelo what it was. The reason for this behaviour is instead an obvious Doylist one: giving the parasite time to attack so it can deliver a larvae in Angelo's brain without Jack noticing. (Despite the fact he just exlained it.) Grrraargh! It doesn't help that John Barrowman really should not be given exposition delivery scenes. Otherwise, he's very good in this episode, which showcases a lot of Jack's different sides, but the fine art of delivering technobabble is something few actors can do without sounding artificial, and he's not one of them.
Now, on to the good stuff. While Esther and Rex only had minimum screen time in this episode, they made the most of it. Holy rescue effort, Batman! Well done, American kids. I really hope you make it out of the season alive because I like you a lot.
This was the big Jack character episode of the season, while being also a terrific Gwen character episode, and Eve Myles continues to slay me with her awesome, awesome performance, while Gwen slays me with being such an immensely real character, with her strengths and flaws so much intertwined. Somewhere between Jack almost conning her into untying him until she took everything she knew about him and decided what he was up to and their conversation about her willingness to sacrifice him for her child (and husband and mother) and his willingness to sacrifice her for his own survival I also realised that, who'd have thought it all the way back in season 1, by now I'm really invested in the Gwen & Jack relationship. I use the ampersand advisedly, because I don't mean in the sense that I want them to become lovers, au contraire. But they've grown into this ruthlessly honest friendship which I don't think either of them had with someone else, or rather, not without the added complication of family ties or romantic love. (I.e. I think Jack might have had it with Alice - remember how she in Day One of CoE realised exactly why he'd want to spend time with his grandson? - and I think Gwen ever since mid s2 is as honest as she can with Rhys, but he's also her husband and marriage also means compromise to spare each other's feelings now and then.) By now, Gwen has become Jack's equal, something I don't think any of the Torchwood members (that we met - who knows indeed about all of Jack's past), including Ianto, ever were (and Gwen herself wasn't until some point during CoE). (The Doctor isn't, either, because Jack still looks up to him.) "I'll strip the skin of your skull if it means I survive" is a far cry from heart-of-the-team idealisation of Gwen, but it's infinitely more real. As is him telling her about the most beautiful memory he has when she asks without intending to let this sway her for a minute.
I knew that this whole season would confront Jack with the question as to whether or not he wants to live if he has the actual choice to die a mortal death, and this time, the realisation he does happens not in a radiation chamber (as it did in Utopia on DW) but in a car when being kidnapped and tied up by his best friend. And note it's not dressed up prettily. Most shows would have given Jack some speech on the lines of "of course I'd die to save your child as I did kill my own grandson for the sake of mankind" , but not this one. And this is why Jack lasts through the centuries and millennia to come despite all the tragedies and horrors that happen. He wants to live. Gwen, who is as ruthlessly honest towards herself in this episode as she is to Jack, talking about just why she remained with Torchwood, gets that.
If the present day action presents Jack the survivor, the flashbacks present Jack at his most engaging and vulnerable. I take it there is some debate whether the fact he eventually produces his coat in the late 1920s was a continuity glitch or a hint, together with "700 years" , that flashback!Jack isn't actually Jack-taking-the-slow-path between "Parting of the Ways" and the start of Torchwood, but post-CoE Jack, which would give the line "men like you kill me" a whole different layer. Either way, Jack befriending and helping Angelo both he empathizes with a fellow conman and because he's attracted, and Jack's foreplay by words and physical closeness are callbacks to Jack-as-romantic-rogue as we originally met him. But of course you can't ever go back again, and his equating himself with the Doctor and Angelo with a Companion is a pointed reminder of that. (Given Angelo's zest for life, curiosity and emotional intensity, you can also see why Jack would find him appealing beyond a one night stand.) If Jack's encounter with Brad the barkeep was about sex as a way of reconnecting to life and celebrating survival, Jack/Angelo is written as a romance, using the Starz lack of censorship of m/m sex scenes for all that it's worth. And I appreciate how Jane E. builds it up and includes the aftermaths, making the point of the intimacy of sharing a bed after sex being as important as the intimacy of having sex.
Now, given that flashbacks of these lengths were bound to be not just about showing the TW audience at long last John Barrowman in a variety of romantic and sexual scenes with another man, it was obvious Angelo would either end up dead or as one of the main villains of the story. And I didn't think he'd die. I already talked about my problem with the big exposition scene with the alien parasite. But having Angelo originally turn against Jack out of a combination of freaking out about the whole immortality thing and his lingering hang-ups due to being a child of his time and place of origin, then develop this into a horrible snowball turning into an ghastly avalanche once other people start to become involved, that I could completely buy. And of course, given all the hints we already had, Jack's immortality was bound to be the origin of the Miracle in some way. You'd think after Jack's multiple deaths so far I wouldn't feel some more as a viewer, but no, this time around I flinched every time. No wonder Jack empathized with the space whale from Meat so much. :(
Jack turning down a repentant Angelo after the later got him out of being the whale from Meat his chains instead of being all forgiving felt more real than his instant forgiveness of Ianto's cyberwoman stunt. He does feel every death, and even if Angelo originally panicked and didn't think, this gruesome interlude was his fault. Given the scene with the three men in the slaughterhouse (presumably the origin of the triangle), my current guess is that they were the ones who established PhiCorps originally but Angelo rose through the ranks and is now a boss or the boss, and that he's still alive either due his infection by the parasite (unless I'm wrong and that scene didn't even have a Doylist reason for being clumsy) or via all those samples of Jack's blood and flesh, or everything combined.
Lastly: Unexpected!Nana Visitor was a joy to see. I hope she'll get more to do next episode. Also, I am amused that while the brain parasite might or might not be a cousin of the one who infected Owen's fiancee Katie, the sole alien villain mentioned so far (and not as the origin of the Miracle, as the one who send the parasite for a completely different purpose) is not a Torchwood one, and only secondarily a Doctor Who one... but a main villain of The Sarah Jane Adventures. You might even call the Trickster Sarah Jane's specific arch nemesis. Why does this amuse me? Because SJA is the spinoff-for-children.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/707960.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
A flippant observation first: clearly, Jane E. demanded to get all the slash scenes when the writing assignments were given. And now for my only nitpick, because I always prefer starting with the complaints, and I have only one this time, but that one is a big one: the scene in which Jack was expositioning about the madness inducing alien parasite was incredibly clumsy and stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the episode, which was excellent. There was no logical Watsonian reason why Jack should in the face of this really dangerous creature decide to deliver a long monologue explaining what it is and just how it works, instead of just kill it, then explain to Angelo what it was. The reason for this behaviour is instead an obvious Doylist one: giving the parasite time to attack so it can deliver a larvae in Angelo's brain without Jack noticing. (Despite the fact he just exlained it.) Grrraargh! It doesn't help that John Barrowman really should not be given exposition delivery scenes. Otherwise, he's very good in this episode, which showcases a lot of Jack's different sides, but the fine art of delivering technobabble is something few actors can do without sounding artificial, and he's not one of them.
Now, on to the good stuff. While Esther and Rex only had minimum screen time in this episode, they made the most of it. Holy rescue effort, Batman! Well done, American kids. I really hope you make it out of the season alive because I like you a lot.
This was the big Jack character episode of the season, while being also a terrific Gwen character episode, and Eve Myles continues to slay me with her awesome, awesome performance, while Gwen slays me with being such an immensely real character, with her strengths and flaws so much intertwined. Somewhere between Jack almost conning her into untying him until she took everything she knew about him and decided what he was up to and their conversation about her willingness to sacrifice him for her child (and husband and mother) and his willingness to sacrifice her for his own survival I also realised that, who'd have thought it all the way back in season 1, by now I'm really invested in the Gwen & Jack relationship. I use the ampersand advisedly, because I don't mean in the sense that I want them to become lovers, au contraire. But they've grown into this ruthlessly honest friendship which I don't think either of them had with someone else, or rather, not without the added complication of family ties or romantic love. (I.e. I think Jack might have had it with Alice - remember how she in Day One of CoE realised exactly why he'd want to spend time with his grandson? - and I think Gwen ever since mid s2 is as honest as she can with Rhys, but he's also her husband and marriage also means compromise to spare each other's feelings now and then.) By now, Gwen has become Jack's equal, something I don't think any of the Torchwood members (that we met - who knows indeed about all of Jack's past), including Ianto, ever were (and Gwen herself wasn't until some point during CoE). (The Doctor isn't, either, because Jack still looks up to him.) "I'll strip the skin of your skull if it means I survive" is a far cry from heart-of-the-team idealisation of Gwen, but it's infinitely more real. As is him telling her about the most beautiful memory he has when she asks without intending to let this sway her for a minute.
I knew that this whole season would confront Jack with the question as to whether or not he wants to live if he has the actual choice to die a mortal death, and this time, the realisation he does happens not in a radiation chamber (as it did in Utopia on DW) but in a car when being kidnapped and tied up by his best friend. And note it's not dressed up prettily. Most shows would have given Jack some speech on the lines of "of course I'd die to save your child as I did kill my own grandson for the sake of mankind" , but not this one. And this is why Jack lasts through the centuries and millennia to come despite all the tragedies and horrors that happen. He wants to live. Gwen, who is as ruthlessly honest towards herself in this episode as she is to Jack, talking about just why she remained with Torchwood, gets that.
If the present day action presents Jack the survivor, the flashbacks present Jack at his most engaging and vulnerable. I take it there is some debate whether the fact he eventually produces his coat in the late 1920s was a continuity glitch or a hint, together with "700 years" , that flashback!Jack isn't actually Jack-taking-the-slow-path between "Parting of the Ways" and the start of Torchwood, but post-CoE Jack, which would give the line "men like you kill me" a whole different layer. Either way, Jack befriending and helping Angelo both he empathizes with a fellow conman and because he's attracted, and Jack's foreplay by words and physical closeness are callbacks to Jack-as-romantic-rogue as we originally met him. But of course you can't ever go back again, and his equating himself with the Doctor and Angelo with a Companion is a pointed reminder of that. (Given Angelo's zest for life, curiosity and emotional intensity, you can also see why Jack would find him appealing beyond a one night stand.) If Jack's encounter with Brad the barkeep was about sex as a way of reconnecting to life and celebrating survival, Jack/Angelo is written as a romance, using the Starz lack of censorship of m/m sex scenes for all that it's worth. And I appreciate how Jane E. builds it up and includes the aftermaths, making the point of the intimacy of sharing a bed after sex being as important as the intimacy of having sex.
Now, given that flashbacks of these lengths were bound to be not just about showing the TW audience at long last John Barrowman in a variety of romantic and sexual scenes with another man, it was obvious Angelo would either end up dead or as one of the main villains of the story. And I didn't think he'd die. I already talked about my problem with the big exposition scene with the alien parasite. But having Angelo originally turn against Jack out of a combination of freaking out about the whole immortality thing and his lingering hang-ups due to being a child of his time and place of origin, then develop this into a horrible snowball turning into an ghastly avalanche once other people start to become involved, that I could completely buy. And of course, given all the hints we already had, Jack's immortality was bound to be the origin of the Miracle in some way. You'd think after Jack's multiple deaths so far I wouldn't feel some more as a viewer, but no, this time around I flinched every time. No wonder Jack empathized with the space whale from Meat so much. :(
Jack turning down a repentant Angelo after the later got him out of being the whale from Meat his chains instead of being all forgiving felt more real than his instant forgiveness of Ianto's cyberwoman stunt. He does feel every death, and even if Angelo originally panicked and didn't think, this gruesome interlude was his fault. Given the scene with the three men in the slaughterhouse (presumably the origin of the triangle), my current guess is that they were the ones who established PhiCorps originally but Angelo rose through the ranks and is now a boss or the boss, and that he's still alive either due his infection by the parasite (unless I'm wrong and that scene didn't even have a Doylist reason for being clumsy) or via all those samples of Jack's blood and flesh, or everything combined.
Lastly: Unexpected!Nana Visitor was a joy to see. I hope she'll get more to do next episode. Also, I am amused that while the brain parasite might or might not be a cousin of the one who infected Owen's fiancee Katie, the sole alien villain mentioned so far (and not as the origin of the Miracle, as the one who send the parasite for a completely different purpose) is not a Torchwood one, and only secondarily a Doctor Who one... but a main villain of The Sarah Jane Adventures. You might even call the Trickster Sarah Jane's specific arch nemesis. Why does this amuse me? Because SJA is the spinoff-for-children.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/707960.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.