SO, Torchwood, huh?
Well I, for one, am obscenely excited about these new Torchwood episodes. No, really. I've even got my vpn set up so that I can watch the iPlayer (hopefully before I go to work each day, but I'm not holding my breath), which is awesome, but I'm not entirely convinced that it'll be fast enough to cope with the streaming. Which will be awfully irritating. Also, my home internet has chosen TODAY out of EVERY OTHER DAY IN THE ENTIRE YEAR to crap out and stop working almost entirely, which is just incredibly brilliant. Y THANK YOU TELSTRA YOU BASTARDS.
Srsly, if I can't get hold of these episodes before they air on UKTV I think I'll cry. There's no way I'm getting through a day at work without reading all the spoilers that people have posted. Stupid timezones!
So, in anticipation of the new episode, which damn well better download, I have thoughts about the recent radio plays.
I tend to have a bit of trouble with radio plays. I mean, I've become kind of fond of the audio format over the last couple of years - at first it was a bit like learning to read again, like it was when I started reading comics, but I've grown to rather enjoy the few audiobooks that I've listened to.
Radio plays, on the other hand... not so much. I suspect it's the (necessary but clumsy) expositiony dialogue. I just find the constant "and look at that thing that we need to describe because you can't see it!" a little jarring, and it usually brings me straight out of the narrative.
Unfortunately, these plays weren't really an exception. I actually enjoyed them all (no, really), but I didn't really love any of them, as much as I wanted to. No, not even Dead Line.
So, like, I don't have much insightful stuff to say about them. They didn't inspire me at all, but I didn't hate them. I guess I just can't quite see them as being on the same level of canon as the episodes, even though they've got the cast doing the voices. But yes. There were vague opinions floating around in my brains, though, so I might as well write them down :)
Asylum, I thought, had some good ideas, but the plot was a bit cliched. And while I thought the girl was well acted, I kind of couldn't escape the feeling that the whole futuristic dialect was a bit... trying too hard to be clever? The characterisation bothered me, too. Jack had turned into a one dimensional version of himself a la Sleeper, while Andy was acting like Gwen 2.0 half the time, and a blithering idiot for the rest of the time. Also, lack of Ianto = fail. I mean, it was a nice(ish) story and all, but meh. Didn't do too much for me. Nice to hear the actors' voices again, though. And nice to have more Torchwood, regardless of, well, anything. Yay, Torchwood! :)
As for Golden Age, I was really looking forward to this one, having adored James Goss's Almost Perfect (unlike a lot of people, apparently). I quite enjoyed the Duchess as a sort of over-the-top, grotesque caricature of imperialism, and I kind of think that those sorts of characters were how I always would have pictured Torchwood India, if we'd heard of it before. I do think that her becoming unhinged (at least partially) because of Jack dumping her is a bit too much, though. I might have preferred her if she was a bit more of a Victorian Torchwood (ie, Emily or Alice) antagonist type, rather than one of Jack's exes. Not too sure about the plot of this one, either. I'm inclined to think it's pretty condescending, or something, to assume that thousands of missing people wouldn't be noticed just because it's in India and they, um, have lots of people who don't have any relatives or friends or something? But apart from that, there were some good moments and some cringeworthy moments, and I really did find myself laughing a bit too loudly at all the grunting and noises the cast were making at one stage toward the end. Seriously, it's that sort of thing that ruins radio plays for me. Maybe I'm just a visual person, or something. But I still enjoyed it, just not as much as I wanted to. *stomps* :)
Dead Line was probably the best out of the three, but I still didn't think it was particularly great. The plot was okay, if a bit stock SF, and while everyone was a bit more in character, the whole Ianto staying by Jack's bedside just didn't sit quite right with me, as much as it would have been very nice if it did (and that's not to say that i haven't listened to that bit a, um, couple of times just for, er, science and stuff). I guess I just like my stilted, passive aggressive, noncommunicative characters. I can sort of see Ianto opening up like that (well, not quite that much, but a bit, at least), if he thought Jack couldn't hear him, but I just didn't quite get the build up - like, Jack was unconscious for a few hours and suddenly Ianto was all weepy next to his bed, wondering if he'd ever come back. It's not like that's the worst that's happened to Jack, and he never reacted that way before. And I get that it's trying to foreshadow the new series, but still... just a bit much (though, that said, on a particularly tragically soppy level, also rather awesome... *is torn*). Jack's little bit at the end bothered me the first time I heard it, just because I thought it was OOC for him to be so open and stuff about his feelings, and I thought he would be more likely to respect Ianto's request to never speak of it again, but I'm starting to think that it's really kind of typical Jack - he really does believe these things when he says them, I think, and even though he probably knows on some level that they're not true, he really wants them to be true.
But yes. Actually, I think my main objection with these plays, as with most of the novels (at least the ones I don't like as much) is that they kind of tend to paste the TW characters into a stock action-SF situation, rather than letting the drama or the story come naturally out of the characters.
GAH INTERNET WORK DAMN YOU!!1!
Srsly, if I can't get hold of these episodes before they air on UKTV I think I'll cry. There's no way I'm getting through a day at work without reading all the spoilers that people have posted. Stupid timezones!
So, in anticipation of the new episode, which damn well better download, I have thoughts about the recent radio plays.
I tend to have a bit of trouble with radio plays. I mean, I've become kind of fond of the audio format over the last couple of years - at first it was a bit like learning to read again, like it was when I started reading comics, but I've grown to rather enjoy the few audiobooks that I've listened to.
Radio plays, on the other hand... not so much. I suspect it's the (necessary but clumsy) expositiony dialogue. I just find the constant "and look at that thing that we need to describe because you can't see it!" a little jarring, and it usually brings me straight out of the narrative.
Unfortunately, these plays weren't really an exception. I actually enjoyed them all (no, really), but I didn't really love any of them, as much as I wanted to. No, not even Dead Line.
So, like, I don't have much insightful stuff to say about them. They didn't inspire me at all, but I didn't hate them. I guess I just can't quite see them as being on the same level of canon as the episodes, even though they've got the cast doing the voices. But yes. There were vague opinions floating around in my brains, though, so I might as well write them down :)
Asylum, I thought, had some good ideas, but the plot was a bit cliched. And while I thought the girl was well acted, I kind of couldn't escape the feeling that the whole futuristic dialect was a bit... trying too hard to be clever? The characterisation bothered me, too. Jack had turned into a one dimensional version of himself a la Sleeper, while Andy was acting like Gwen 2.0 half the time, and a blithering idiot for the rest of the time. Also, lack of Ianto = fail. I mean, it was a nice(ish) story and all, but meh. Didn't do too much for me. Nice to hear the actors' voices again, though. And nice to have more Torchwood, regardless of, well, anything. Yay, Torchwood! :)
As for Golden Age, I was really looking forward to this one, having adored James Goss's Almost Perfect (unlike a lot of people, apparently). I quite enjoyed the Duchess as a sort of over-the-top, grotesque caricature of imperialism, and I kind of think that those sorts of characters were how I always would have pictured Torchwood India, if we'd heard of it before. I do think that her becoming unhinged (at least partially) because of Jack dumping her is a bit too much, though. I might have preferred her if she was a bit more of a Victorian Torchwood (ie, Emily or Alice) antagonist type, rather than one of Jack's exes. Not too sure about the plot of this one, either. I'm inclined to think it's pretty condescending, or something, to assume that thousands of missing people wouldn't be noticed just because it's in India and they, um, have lots of people who don't have any relatives or friends or something? But apart from that, there were some good moments and some cringeworthy moments, and I really did find myself laughing a bit too loudly at all the grunting and noises the cast were making at one stage toward the end. Seriously, it's that sort of thing that ruins radio plays for me. Maybe I'm just a visual person, or something. But I still enjoyed it, just not as much as I wanted to. *stomps* :)
Dead Line was probably the best out of the three, but I still didn't think it was particularly great. The plot was okay, if a bit stock SF, and while everyone was a bit more in character, the whole Ianto staying by Jack's bedside just didn't sit quite right with me, as much as it would have been very nice if it did (and that's not to say that i haven't listened to that bit a, um, couple of times just for, er, science and stuff). I guess I just like my stilted, passive aggressive, noncommunicative characters. I can sort of see Ianto opening up like that (well, not quite that much, but a bit, at least), if he thought Jack couldn't hear him, but I just didn't quite get the build up - like, Jack was unconscious for a few hours and suddenly Ianto was all weepy next to his bed, wondering if he'd ever come back. It's not like that's the worst that's happened to Jack, and he never reacted that way before. And I get that it's trying to foreshadow the new series, but still... just a bit much (though, that said, on a particularly tragically soppy level, also rather awesome... *is torn*). Jack's little bit at the end bothered me the first time I heard it, just because I thought it was OOC for him to be so open and stuff about his feelings, and I thought he would be more likely to respect Ianto's request to never speak of it again, but I'm starting to think that it's really kind of typical Jack - he really does believe these things when he says them, I think, and even though he probably knows on some level that they're not true, he really wants them to be true.
But yes. Actually, I think my main objection with these plays, as with most of the novels (at least the ones I don't like as much) is that they kind of tend to paste the TW characters into a stock action-SF situation, rather than letting the drama or the story come naturally out of the characters.
GAH INTERNET WORK DAMN YOU!!1!