(Untitled)

[solitary_summer]

I've been kind of sitting on the fence (or maybe more precisely hopping on & off the fence) about MD so far, but there wasn't a single thing about this episode I didn't love. (Except possibly bits of the music, if I'm being very nit-picky. There were some odd choices there.)

Comments

[tigercheetah]

This was definately the best episode of the series so far, putting Jsck where he should have been several episodes ago - at the forefront of the story

[solitary_summer]

Having said that, I hope what's happening to the world is a bit more complicated than just a jilted lover and a bunch of gangster types wanting Jack for their own purposes

I do think it'll be more complicated, but Angelo is clearly important, since the entire religious angle of the miracle seems to hang on him. I guess it'll depend on what he actually hopes to achieve with it... I wouldn't mind him being a central figure, but I really hope they don't completely butcher the characterisation in the process.

especially as neither RTD or JB have ever really understood why some Jack/Ianto fans were dissapointed with how their relationship developed over three seriesI'm taking everything RTD and JB say about TW with a grain of salt - they have to sell the show, they're not going to publicly criticise it. And we don't know what happened behind the scenes, especially back in S1 when the whole thing was completely new and experimental; everyone was afraid that moving TW to America would mean heterosexualising it, but perhaps Starz actually

[topaz_eyes]

Yep, this episode was worth the wait. *draws sparkly hearts around it* I wonder if this episode, or parts of it, should have been featured earlier in the series.

Re the music--the guitar cue played over the 1927 immigration lock-up scene was wildly reminiscent of "A Lot of Life Behind Us" from TEoT (the scene where Ten and Wilf talk on the Hesperus). TBH I thought it was the same piece. I thought it sounded out of place too (I was kinda expecting 1920s style jazz), but maybe it was intended?

The episode really does raise the question of Jack's timeline, though, because while Jack's last confession may or may not have been 700 years ago, it doesn't look like he pulled the number entirely out of thin air.Could "700 years" have been simply a joke, or part of a code word to alert the priest/bootlegger? But Angelo could have been pre-CoE; Jack had been a Time Agent, so he might have worked out "immortality = fixed point in time" by himself, then the Doctor confirmed it for the audience in "Utopia". Also, being from the 51st century

[solitary_summer]

Re. music: That didn't even bother me too much, mostly I guess because I tend not to notice scores and rarely remember them, but the music they played when Angelo and Jack ran away after killing the alien brain parasites struck me as a bit odd.

Re. timelines: Jane Espenson tweeted that it's supposed to be pre-CoE Jack, but from an alternative timeline, whatever that means. I don't know if they just messed up and are trying to cover that up, or if RTD really has something like that in mind for a while now, because I think I do remember reading an interview where he mentioned Jack having lived for... I don't remember what the exact number was, but definitely a lot longer than 130+ years. And while I'm never sure if the radio plays are supposed to be 100% canon, in Submission Jack also mentioned having lived for thousands of years, and that was pre-CoE

[elisi]

Jack's secrecy has always been an issue, and in S1 it lead to the entire team betraying him in EoD. Gwen's actions here are, among other things, the result of all the times she asked Jack a question about himself or his past and he brushed her off. I don't know if this is a remainder from Jack's conman days, but I don't think that in all this time he quite understood that he'll only get the trust he demands if he gives something of himself in return. People might fall in love with his air of mystery, be fascinated for a while, but they're not going to trust him for it.
I think the thing about Gwen is that she stumbled upon a secret by accident. She was a confidante during S1 because no one else knew about his immortality, but I'm not sure he was ever comfortable with this. Plus, Gwen is generally quite confrontational, which makes Jack clam up. Ianto, otoh, didn't just have secrets of his own (which put them on a much more equal footing), he also knew how to get Jack to talk - that is, most of the time just wait. Don't ask direct

[solitary_summer]

Basically Jack is a control freak. People who learn to work with this get a lot further.

But even Ianto's patience was wearing thin by CoE...

(Actually, that's part of what I liked about their relationship in CoE, that Ianto finally felt secure - or frustrated - enough to start to pushing Jack out of his comfort zone a bit.)

[elisi]

*nods*

And Jack trusted Ianto enough to actually answer. Plus, Ianto and Jack clearly shared a lot - such as Ianto's real family etc. And Ianto knew about Flatholm. The thing that oddly enough stands out for me is the first radio play - the one to do with the Hadron Collider, where Ianto asks why it's always Earth, and Jack tries to blow him off, and Ianto just says 'No. I want a real answer.' And he gets one.