Torchwood #2.3
Feb. 4th, 2008 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI did see Torchwood last week. What I want to know is how something with so many interesting ideas can be so boring?
Stupid I can understand. It's very easy for a moment's inattention to produce an unsupportable plot. But I was actually considering turning off half-way through, which with so many good things, is such a shame.
Of course, it suffers from all the typical flaws of that sort of show:
* There are more world crises than exciting episodes, so several episodes have supposed threat out of proportion to how the characters and viewers actually react to it. If fun, somewhat introspective episodes could have crises appropriate to the level of involvement they'd actually display, it would work more consistently. (Although I suppose someone only seeing one might be a BIT more excited knowing the end of the world is averted. Or maybe you can't tell which episodes will be tragic.)
* No-one pays the slightest attention to the physics of the situation. Someone spouts random technobabble, not to justify a situation (eg. to justify the existence of monster X, but monster X's strengths and weaknesses can be reasoned about), but to justify a complete strategy (we will project a ghost of Tosh into the past because... [babble])
* For instance, the number of potential solutions seems... vast. Their knowledge of history is based on military records, right? So if they gave Tommy a teleport-to-a-cryogenic-storage-unit-before-you're-shot macguffin, everything would still be consistent and they can thaw out copy #2 at the end of the episode.
* Or, if freezing someone is too dicey, and they're worried he hasn't pulled the trigger they can send JACK back to activate the device. HIM they can freeze safely. They've probably got whole vaults of time-looping Jack, waiting to be successively thawed out at the right points. Their only problem is what happens when Ianto finds one.
* And, since they were able to tell he hadn't pulled the trigger YET just after he went into the past, obviously there must be a *constant* time difference -- jumps from T1918+10 to T2008+10, etc. So if Gwen's was the first jump, why had the nurse who saw her have been seeing them before? And if the builders jumped before that, why were they still blithely knocking things down?
* They should be able to place the other end of the jump within a decade or so, knowing Tosh's approximate age. Why not unfreeze Tommy permanently, give him a life for with Tosh for at least a couple of years? If they're still waiting, they can always freeze him again, he only ages a few months over centuries being unfrozen once a year.
However, those are all the sorts of stupid things I often like shows despite. But I just wasn't interested. I liked seeing the relationships develop as much as they did.
Gems from Captain Obvious Owen: "Look at that. That exists." And also, helpfully giving advice to Tosh that dysfunctional fleeting relationships with pretty boys are a bad idea.. He can talk, when's he ever been functional? It would be nice if it felt that they were bonding and he was growing as a character. But as I said about the first ep, it just feels like they're randomly acting out of character because it sounds good.
I love the characters. And like to see Ianto and Jack: Ianto can take charge fine when he really does know best. But snooze, snooze, it seemed so pointless.
The next week's trailer looked good -- exciting and funny. My conclusion is that fifteen seconds, or maybe a few minutes, is the natural length of a Torchwood episode. It's great -- you can get all of the premise, some nice quips, a bit of snogging, and don't feel like it's all chronologically disconnected inconsistent hash because a full ep feels like that anyway :) Go Torchwood vignettes! :)
Stupid I can understand. It's very easy for a moment's inattention to produce an unsupportable plot. But I was actually considering turning off half-way through, which with so many good things, is such a shame.
Of course, it suffers from all the typical flaws of that sort of show:
* There are more world crises than exciting episodes, so several episodes have supposed threat out of proportion to how the characters and viewers actually react to it. If fun, somewhat introspective episodes could have crises appropriate to the level of involvement they'd actually display, it would work more consistently. (Although I suppose someone only seeing one might be a BIT more excited knowing the end of the world is averted. Or maybe you can't tell which episodes will be tragic.)
* No-one pays the slightest attention to the physics of the situation. Someone spouts random technobabble, not to justify a situation (eg. to justify the existence of monster X, but monster X's strengths and weaknesses can be reasoned about), but to justify a complete strategy (we will project a ghost of Tosh into the past because... [babble])
* For instance, the number of potential solutions seems... vast. Their knowledge of history is based on military records, right? So if they gave Tommy a teleport-to-a-cryogenic-storage-unit-before-you're-shot macguffin, everything would still be consistent and they can thaw out copy #2 at the end of the episode.
* Or, if freezing someone is too dicey, and they're worried he hasn't pulled the trigger they can send JACK back to activate the device. HIM they can freeze safely. They've probably got whole vaults of time-looping Jack, waiting to be successively thawed out at the right points. Their only problem is what happens when Ianto finds one.
* And, since they were able to tell he hadn't pulled the trigger YET just after he went into the past, obviously there must be a *constant* time difference -- jumps from T1918+10 to T2008+10, etc. So if Gwen's was the first jump, why had the nurse who saw her have been seeing them before? And if the builders jumped before that, why were they still blithely knocking things down?
* They should be able to place the other end of the jump within a decade or so, knowing Tosh's approximate age. Why not unfreeze Tommy permanently, give him a life for with Tosh for at least a couple of years? If they're still waiting, they can always freeze him again, he only ages a few months over centuries being unfrozen once a year.
However, those are all the sorts of stupid things I often like shows despite. But I just wasn't interested. I liked seeing the relationships develop as much as they did.
Gems from Captain Obvious Owen: "Look at that. That exists." And also, helpfully giving advice to Tosh that dysfunctional fleeting relationships with pretty boys are a bad idea.. He can talk, when's he ever been functional? It would be nice if it felt that they were bonding and he was growing as a character. But as I said about the first ep, it just feels like they're randomly acting out of character because it sounds good.
I love the characters. And like to see Ianto and Jack: Ianto can take charge fine when he really does know best. But snooze, snooze, it seemed so pointless.
The next week's trailer looked good -- exciting and funny. My conclusion is that fifteen seconds, or maybe a few minutes, is the natural length of a Torchwood episode. It's great -- you can get all of the premise, some nice quips, a bit of snogging, and don't feel like it's all chronologically disconnected inconsistent hash because a full ep feels like that anyway :) Go Torchwood vignettes! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 03:38 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly. What a good description, I think that's a big part of it, that they're *supposed* to be scared, but duh, you know it's not going to happen, so you're not exactly tense about it. Whereas a small fuck-up *might*, but would be survivable, and maybe even interesting, so you're on the same page.
Of course, in this case, they really did send Tommy off to die, and the only resolution was validating his courage. So that *could* have worked well, if we'd been routing for him to survive, but he didn't. Alas, the deus-ex-machina ruined that for me -- it didn't feel like a noble sacrifice, it felt like a stupidly insufficient study of the nature of time. (I mean, duh, of course he'll forget to pull the trigger. He loses his memory. Why not put it on a timer in the first place?)
Or come to think of it, why do Torchwood freeze the original Tommy? Why not freeze the other Tommy? Then one's no worse off and one gets an eternity with Tosh, I mean, that's probably the closest to heaven you'll get in that universe ;)