CoE Torchwood Meta

[qthelights]

Partly this is for my own record and needs, but I figured I'd share also. The following is CoE meta.

It is, so far, meta on the negatives of CoE.

My overall message is this: CoE brought up things that need to be talked about. This isn't anti-fandom, it is pro-future fandoms. There are things we are entitled to get from our television shows

Comments

[amand_r]

Wow. That's kind of how I feel.

[qthelights]

Yeah, from what i'm seeing, it's how a LOT of people feel. And I can understand why.

[amand_r]

I wish I had thinky thoughts to add. I kind of feel bad that I don't. I have been letting everyone else do my talking for me.

[qthelights]

Well, i mean most of my thinky thoughts are RANT RANT RANT ;) It's why the point of this post was to link to people who do have thinky thoughts :)

[irradiatedsoup]

Television can be dark, it can be hurtful, it can be horror-filled. It is television. And i'd be fine with that, if that's what I signed up for. If that's what I spent two seasons enduring. But it wasn't. Those two seasons had hope, they had humanity and they fought back. They had fun and humour and crack.They were about people. To me this is the equivalent of turning on Sesame Street and finding out that the muppets are all knifing each other.

It wasn't what it said on the box.

How do you explain Exit Wounds and Owen's entire arc is s2, then?

Torchwood has always been epically fucked up and Jack has always made ethically dodgy decisions and Rusty and co have always liked to hurt people etc etc. The only difference between then and now is this season just concentrated and condensed all that stuff into five episodes. And you know, dared to hurt the characters most fans gave a shit about.

[qthelights]

Yes but Owen's death arc had a point, it explored his issues with death, and the teams issues. It allowed, ironically, for him to grow as a person. As to Exit Wounds, I accepted that (just) because it served to show that after something happens that is so horrendous, the pieces get picked up. Jack and Gwen and Ianto vow to go on, to rebuild. And to a certain extent, I can buy the deaths as a point about Torchwood. The point of CoE however was therefore pointless, we Know torchwood die young. When you show that over and over and over again and eliminate all your characters? The point is useless.

I don't think this season was anything like the previous two seasons, it was a political action/drama. That isn't what we got in either of the two previous seasons. The two previous seasons were about the characters, this one, was about a story with our characters pasted in - and barely at that. It meant that Tosh and Owen's deaths meant *nothing*.

[irradiatedsoup]

I disagree.

I think you're upset, which I understand, but I think you're overreacting. Aside from the political angle, I don't see how the episodes were all that different. People have admitted they loved the first three episodes where there was boys making out, explosions, Jack naked, people in forklifts and potato trucks, and their quirky, retconned-in families. And then it got dark, like it always has (First season finale: Rhys is killed and Jack is shot in the head by a member of his team for the second time) and everyone is acting surprised and horrified?

Come on. Tosh's situation was no different than Ianto's. You can argue Owen's unrelenting character abuse had a point, but then I could argue the same about Jack's reaming this season. It was intense and upsetting, absolutely, but not remotely a new thing for Torchwood. The fluffier, fanservice-y version of Torchwood everyone imagines has to be fanon or something because the show is messed. up.

As to Exit Wounds, I accepted that (just) because it served to show that after

[qthelights]

I don't really think I am.. this isn't all about Ianto dying, at all. It's about the overall message of the series. Have you read the links I posted here? They're much better written than I can put it, but the points remain valid

[fide_et_spe]

Misswinterhill directed me here as she wanted to send you a comment that I had made on her journal.

Anyhow I agree totally with you. It kind of surprises me that anyone thinks that ending anything other than lazy. It was like The Last of the Time Lord's. character death is lazy, it's the cheapest ending and gave us no dramatic development at all. not to mention the sudden emergence of homophobia, absent previously in TW.

As for the Sophie's Choice, well yawn a bit really. It's all been done before and may have worked with some narrative logic. As if it was going to work. Seriously it's as bad as people chanting the Dr's name and him turning from dobby into Jesus. Those 456 could just destroy one country or something now to get their way, the shouty children will just piss them off. It was reversing the polarity and made no sense at all.

[qthelights]

Yeah, it is lazy, and worse, I think it invalidates everything that came before it you know? It makes all those deaths that were in the service of the greater good - Tosh and Owen for example - for nothing.

The homophobia really really really boggles me. I just cannot understand where the fuck that came from. Or why.

[cupiscent]

...does CoE in this instance stand for something other than Church of England? *G*

(Sorry, just had to bring my bit of non-fandom levity. Mwah.)

[qthelights]

Well, given that when you go to the cemetery they have the CoE section, I think Children of Earth could totally fit in there. What with all the killing that went on there.

[missdeanna]

I agree with you on this.

To a good extent, the ending was what I would expect for Torchwood. Except, it was so bleak.

It's still hard for me to separate my emotions as a fan from what happened, but I feel that I would be a little bit more satisfied with what happened if it weren't so bleak. I always expected Ianto to die at some point, but I always saw him doing so heroically, saving lives in the process. I always expected that Jack might leave again at some point, but I really thought that he would be a hero before it came to that, and I didn't feel he was one, here. It's like they all failed.

And while I don't think that the writers have a responsibility to provide fanservice, I think they did provide fanservice: fake fanservice that gave us false hope.

[qthelights]

yes. false hope in order to make their emotional trauma more traumatic. And that is so not on.

I think I could get on board for the Ianto stuff and a lot of the other stuff *if* they had said to us, this is the last series. stuff goes down.

that ain't what they said.. and we don't even *know* if it's the last series. we have not been given the appropriate frames of reference we need in order to process what we just watched.

[missdeanna]

Or, you know, if they'd avoided saying things that were very optimistic in nature. Weren't we told that there would be Jack/Ianto development and that Ianto/Janto fans would like it? I can see why a lot of people had false hopes based on things like that.