Comments | qthewetsprocket: observation about torchwood

qthewetsprocket

observation about torchwood

Jul 12, 2009 10:36

i've been reading through my f'list's reactions to 'children of earth', as well as pondering over my own, and i noticed something odd:

the less emotional investment you had in torchwood and its characters, the more you seemed to enjoy 'children of earth'.

( thoughts, and a worry about what this bodes for the tenth doctor's final exit )

torchwood, doctor who, goddammit rusty

Comments 12

oncelikeshari July 12 2009, 17:50:44 UTC

I'm sometimes right but I've never been very right before!

*is pleased with self*

And yes, he'd better not desgtroy everything he can so the next series without him is crap because they're resolving all his havoc.

qthewetsprocket July 12 2009, 21:14:31 UTC

they're already going to have a hell of a time repairing the doctor/companion relationship, which will be work enough for an entire series in itself. based on moffat's previous work in new who, though, i'm hopeful that he'll give his female companions their own agency and agendas that do NOT revolve around the doctor being the entire center of their universe and the focus of their entire existence. and if anyone does fall in love with the doctor, it'll be someone who can match him for brains, wit, and intellect as well as just raw nerve.

...before they're horribly killed off in a dark fiery barrage of Plot, that is. ;)

mountland July 12 2009, 20:59:18 UTC

I loved the first three/four episodes for character development as they started to develope as individuals well also working well in a team and being productive (for the first time in ages/ever) however overall I feel that it was a big let down as now torchwood = gwen and even if she does continue being a well developed character instead of her old whinny/unstable self she can't continue the series alone so torchwood as we know it has gone. All it has done is proven that Jack won't stand the consequences of his actions which leads to people getting hurt and yet he continually fails to learn from this. The end just showed that Torchwood really is a joke of an organisation - they give up too easily and can't even protect their own children let alone save the world. They are horendously unorganised, rediculously emotional and never get anything done or act like the specalists ( ... )

jblum July 12 2009, 22:53:51 UTC

the less emotional investment you had in torchwood and its characters, the more you seemed to enjoy 'children of earth'.

I see what you're saying, and I think it's true in some areas, but only really at the far end of the bell curve. Because I know I've got a fair amount of emotional investment in "Torchwood" and company, and I'm married to someone who's way more involved than me, and we both thought it was staggeringly brilliant.

As for the idea about RTD and consequences? I think blaming RTD for that overlooks that Doctor Who doesn't deal well with consequences. Never has. Neither the show nor its main character. We're talking about a series which destroyed a big slice of the universe, including a companion's home planet, and never mentioned it again. The Doctor in particular has been a master of running out on consequences ever since Pat Troughton started skipping town before they sent him the bill in Power of the Daleks.

The show doesn't really run on the Buffy model, where things not only bite you on the ass fairly ( ... )

qthewetsprocket July 12 2009, 23:16:13 UTC

hrm. that's a fair point about doctor who...if it were just doctor who. as many people have pointed out, though, in 'children of earth', jack harkness was basically the doctor.2, and it felt a bit samey. it was especially jarring since jack's behavior in 'last of the time lords' seemed to indiacte that no, he really wasn't all about running away. so the doctor's the little boy who never stopped running; fair enough...let's have a different template for torchwood, please.

I see what you're saying, and I think it's true in some areas, but only really at the far end of the bell curve.actually, my f'list has been pretty uniform in its response (and i've only got my f'list to go by here; ymmv) - if they really liked the show before and were fond of jack and ianto, they didn't like 'children of earth' and hated what it did to those characters. but if they were only casual viewers, or hadn't seen it before at all, they thought it was at least okay. and those (including me) who knew the show's history but didn't really care anymore thought ( ... )

off_coloratura July 13 2009, 00:30:51 UTC

I thought it was gripping and effective, and quite possibly the best eipsode of Torchwood we've ever had, but I also found it horribly depressing and unsatisfying. So I felt both ways, really. What does that say about my relationship to it?

You people and your quaint little categories. :)

qthewetsprocket July 12 2009, 23:21:36 UTC

btw, i like your 'buffy model' analogy...i think that's one of the things i've seen other shows do extremely well (ie consequences), and so that's something i really wanted to see new who do better than the old series. rtd kind of did it in 'bad wolf' with what happened to the game station, but he's had several other chances to go in that direction and chose not to - the missing scene where they point out that the doctor's deposing of harriet jones left room for harold saxon to slip in is the biggest example in that regard.

it's actually one of the things i really hope moffat does when he takes over: ie, showing some of the doctor's actions come back to him, and more than that, actually having to deal with them. here's hoping.

kateorman July 13 2009, 00:34:53 UTC

I care deeply about Jack and Ianto and am staggered by the amount of grief I'm experiencing. I so disappointed to lose such an intriguing character and such an intriguing relationship. But I wanted to say that, despite this, I'm not unfulfilled or unsatisfied by the story. Rather, I'm awed by its courage and power. (I think one of the reasons I'm so upset is that I haven't seen anything like it since I was ten and Gan died.)

Nor do I think J/I shippers like me are the show's "core audience". For me and many others, that might have been the most interesting or important thing in the show, but our focus doesn't define the entire series, any more than, say, Jack/Gwen shippers, or people who're only in it for the monsters. The story has received acclaim from both fandom and the general public; if there's a S4, there'll be plenty of viewers for it.

It's hard to believe that Doctor Who would ever be so bleak - not with families watching at Christmas! Regardless of how the Tenth Doctor goes, though, I'm obviously going to be a complete

qthewetsprocket July 13 2009, 18:34:39 UTC

It's hard to believe that Doctor Who would ever be so bleak - not with families watching at Christmas!

i really hope not. :( actually, i'm not worried so much about the finale's potential bleakness - because, hello, canon main character death - as much as the pointlessness and nihilism we got in 'children of earth': ie, doing death/woe/destruction on an epic scale just for the sake of itself, rather than for the sake of the plot / continuing characters and storylines. the thing rtd has said about leaving moffat a 'clean slate' has me very, very worried...because he certainly left torchwood with a clean slate, and not at all in a good way imo.

my main hope at this point is the fact that torchwood was rtd's creation, something he can at least claim ownership rights over - and thus feel entitled to demolish it if that's the story he wanted to tell. doctor who isn't his toy to pull apart if he likes, at all (at least not so much, in the sense that it existed before he started writing it); so i'm hoping some small sense of propriety wins ( ... )

kateorman July 13 2009, 23:28:03 UTC

I'm kind of intrigued now - what is it you're worried he might do!

qthewetsprocket July 14 2009, 01:24:07 UTC

kill the tardis. kill donna. kill wilf. joss the master. make john simm's character the master's kid with rose. make the regeneration impossible without a contribution from rose, so that EVERY SINGLE INCARNATION of the doctor FOREVER AFTERWARDS will have some of rose tyler's dna in him. have the doctor tell sarah jane she wasn't as good as rose. not give us doctor-donna back, but make donna even more shallow than she was before she met the doctor, thereby proving that HAW HAW earth womens' branes can't handle a time lord's mind (even though handy seemed to do just fine with it).

the only thing i think he could do that would actually be cool would be constructive: i'm really hoping that timothy dalton's character isn't in a flashback; i hope he's an actual time lord, and that they're not dead, and that they only brainwashed the doctor into thinking they were all dead as a punishment, ie the ultimate form of exile. but yeah, given torchwood's finale, i'm fearing the mass destruction option instead.

anonymous July 27 2009, 00:19:51 UTC

You wrote: "i didn't mind the pointlessness and nihilism in 'children of earth' because i don't really care about torchwood or its characters."

It was interesting that there seemed to be a mixture of things that organically happened (like the "deciding who lives and who dies" meeting), and other things that happened only because RTD decreed it (so was Martha Jones really on her honeymoon all that time? Is it really government policy to kill, before asking people nicely not to say anything? Do you really need to blow up this alien-expert organization? I guess the bureaucrats could just be incredibly anti-Queen VictoriaMaybe I'm just a bit more positive than RTD, but shouldn't there have been some dialogue before the brain-frying bit? The kid was old enough to make a noble gesture, wasn't he? (if he refused, well, you could still go ahead with the execution ( ... )