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Art And Moving Pictures: Torchwood

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      CommentAuthorremotepush
    • CommentTimeMar 21st 2008
     (1140.21)
    if he screamed for 20 hours, when did he sleep?
    if he screamed for 20 hours, how come they ever found him when he wasn't screaming?

    i keep watching torchwood. but really is incredibly flawed. there is always something really annoying every episode.
    and even this far into the second series i still don't actually like most of the characters in anyway. but then they are such cardboard cut outs it doesn't really matter.
    •  
      CommentAuthorcurb
    • CommentTimeMar 21st 2008
     (1140.22)
    I often find myself annoyed with plot holes and inconsistensies in Torchwood, but I don't think I'm being particularly objective. I've forgiven Doctor Who for far worse, simply because it's far more my cup of tea.
  3.  (1140.23)
    Torchwood is almost entirely tripe. It's so bloody adolescent, trying so hard to be cool and sexy, and John Barrowman is the worlds most irritatingly smug individual. And yet I keep watching it. I must be a geek after all.

    I like the people-out-of-time episodes - the planeload of people from the 40s shopping at Tescos, the lad from the first world war in cold storage. And Tosh is lovely when she smiles. But on the whole, Primeval kicks Torchwood's arse.
    •  
      CommentAuthorremotepush
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2008
     (1140.24)
    god. its sad. primeval is dreadful. its so full of inconsistencies in terms of just continuity, its just pure nonsense, utter rubbish. and yet, i agree, i enjoy watching it more than i ever do torchwood.
    •  
      CommentAuthorrfrancis
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2008
     (1140.25)
    Finally saw Adrift. Fairly good concept that fell apart the longer it went, culminating in
    Jack not showing up promptly to Retcon the mother as a mercy. And yeah, screaming 20 hours a day?
    Trying too hard to horrify.

    On the other hand, I also saw Spider-Man 3 yesterday, so really, Torchwood came out looking pretty good.
  6.  (1140.26)
    Primeval Vs Torchwood?

    Ahhhh, the one thing Primeval has going for it is Ben Miller...!

    I can't help but love Torchwood. John Barrowman FTW!!!!!!!

    :/
  7.  (1140.27)
    Torchwood is horrific, but I can't look away. I had some friends of friends who flatted together and regularly forced themselves to listen to eight hour plus marathons of one horrible song (eg Nickelback) on repeat. Torchwood is like that, but I just can't look away.

    Torchwood: Not science fiction, nor scientifiction, nor fantastika. Possibly scientifornication? No, that'd be more terrifying and more entertaining..

    The whole Owen:
    dying arc was just plain terrible. I'm just waiting for someone to try bullet hole sex.


    The wedding one: Complete tripe, with Evil Dead madness.

    The film one: HOLY FUCK! Could Torchwood actually make LESS SENSE than season one? YES! Here's proof! AND LET'S RIP OFF THE SUBLIME "BLINK" AS WELL! WE'LL BE RICH! How did a
    supernatural fucking horrorstory sideshow get caught on tape? Did no one tell the writer that "caught on film" is an expression only? Okay, sure, you like playing with things coming out of photos, and it worked in that other series that made you a famous Brit scientifiction TV writer. Didn't work here. Took their "last breath away"? So how come, when you returned it to the kid, he didn't croak after one breath? (How awesome would that have been, by the way? "Just trust me!" Then the kid dies too. And, yes, Jack, smile: That kid's whole family just died. Now, this story could have been awesome. Perhaps if it turned out that the show had started out as a folk story, which telling made real (which, really, isn't that implausible in New Who canon, after the whole Peter Pan season finale), and just kept changing mediums. And if 30s Jack had came out of the screen to fight them too. And if Jack's answer wasn't "It's a long story" but "Yes. Torchwood." which would have fucked up all continuity and character more.


    Adrift: Oh, look, there's a plot hole. How can we fix it? I know, put a bigger one over to the side, so no one notices!
    1) Why doesn't Jack just tell his team that he's on it about the disappearances?
    2) Why did Ianto just give Gwen that magic PDA?
    3) If things go through the Rift both ways, and if it's "trying to put things back" or whatever, why don't their weevils keep disappearing? Actually, wait, how awesome would THAT be?

    Gwen: "Don't worry, we have that bizarre alien PDA gun laptop glove vibrator magic deus ex machina we found when it was last week's MacGuffin! It'll stop the alien from eating Cardiff!"
    Jack: "Good idea! Kiss me!" (and, if this was season one: "WE'RE ON A ROOF!")
    Ianto: "Um, Gwen, it's gone."
    Tosh: "Oh, yeah, there was another Rift spike in the Vault this morning..."
    Jack: "Never fear! I will be dashing and kill it!"
    Monster: "BLARGH EAT YOU"
    Gwen: "...Jack?"
    King Date Rape: "...will his not dying thing work when he's being digested by an alien?"
  8.  (1140.28)
    Resuming:
    4) Retcon. Not just what RFrancis said. Why don't they just retcon the Rift victims, and then reintegrate them into normal life. I mean, retcon seems to be able to make people remember weddings that didn't happen, right? It's might precise. Perhaps Jack controls it with telepathy. I don't know. But, if their experiences have fucked them, why not make them all go away? (Then, if necessary, if they're still broken, return them to a normal psychiatric hospital). And, hold on: The other family members want to know. They go to support groups. Why not retcon the whole lot, so they forget their family members have vanished? It's not much more ridiculous than the wedding...
    5) When Ace was mysteriously teleported into the far future, she became an awesome pyromaniac, then (in the books) a scary fucking soldier who cuts parasites out of herself (Seriously: If she had a chestburster in her, she'd have just cut it out herself, then pumped it full of nitroglycerin). When Jonah went through the Rift, he came back screaming. Torchwood is adult, people. Space isn't cool. It makes people scream.
    6) Oh: Jonah. Was in the fucking whale. We get it. This from the company that brought us Doctor Who versus the Devil, Torchwood versus the Devil and Doctor Who doing a Jesus Pose Being Flown Around by Angels. I haven't seen biblical references this subtle since Matrix 3!
    7) "Stared into the heart of a dark star." Come on. You can think of a better reason for a twenty hour scream than that. How about, oh, I don't know, he was pulled out of a burning planet, not by a rescue crew, but by the cyborg race that just set the planet on fire, and, he, they augment him. He goes to war for them, and is linked to a cyborg hive mind. Humans destroy the Hive Mind. He's traumatised by the death of all the other cyborgs that he's connected to, and screams incessantly (this also explains why he can scream for twenty hours, then talk normally: He has an augmented cyborg voicebox). The humans try to save him, by removing the metal bits, but, still, the computer brain - which, like a cyber voicebox, can't come out - controls for twenty hours each day, until it runs out of power (from all the screaming, of course) and has to charge for four hours, along his self to return. It's crap, I know: BUT IT'S BETTER THAN "STARED INTO THE HEART OF A DARK STAR"! How do I know? Because ANYTHING would be. Shit, just saying "He saw Maggie Thatcher porn" would explain more.

    Yes. Which, really, reminds me of an awesome thing I hoped they'd do with Torchwood: Make it so Jack has been running it as his own patented Time Lord trap all along. I mean, he was in the far future getting time-vortexed by Rose, then ended up here. We don't know how long ago he appeared back on Earth. Perhaps Jack has been around for a LONG time. Maybe he was a Roman legionnaire yelling THIRTEEN! and killing people. Or perhaps just appeared in the C19. And, now, maybe something inside him really hates the Doctor (AND ROSE!) for making him immortal, but has devised mental blocks to keep himself dumb, so as not to spoil the trap. And when Queen Werewolf set up the Institute, maybe he knew, and took over. Would be much better for them to slowly turn Jack into a season villain than just resurrect and wreck a classic Who enemy. But it wouldn't ever happen. I mean, that'd involve admitting a connection between crazy massive competent world-endangering, spaceship-shooting London Torchwood and the charming lovable incompetent Welsh Torchwood.
  9.  (1140.29)
    So, yes. Ranting.

    Way I see it, Torchwood has the genesis of two amazing shows within it:
    1) The Evil Dead or Brain Dead splatter insanity show.
    This would work by abandoning all sense. Have Torchwood pumping retcon into the whole city's water supply, so the whole populace is so whacked out on retcon that they don't realise they're surrounded by aliens and just vaguely remember this thing called Torchwood. Then fight and fuck and car chase chainsaw wielding aliens in the streets and drive big black SUVs into demons and just plain do whatever the fuck. It would be amazing. Crazy Splatter Parody Torchwood.
    2) The consistently transgressive, dark, behind-the-couch for adults show.
    Remember that bit in Iain Banks's novel The Wasp Factory? With the maggots and the brain? Remember that crawling revulsion? No? You didn't read it. Remember most of Crooked Little Vein? Yes. Take Torchwood and do that to it. You're already half way there. You've got Jack, who once:
    killed himself over and over for a sideshow performance (best part of that episode!)

    You've got Owen. Who's a zombie. You've got Tosh. Who's a necrophiliac-in-waiting. Gwen and Ianto we can deal with. Just kill Rhys. Horribly. You understand what I'm shooting for? Create a series that's constantly, skin-crawlingly amoral, horrific, terrible, monstrous, where the heroes are date raping zombies and necrophiliacs and have bullet hole sex and are still the good guys.
    •  
      CommentAuthorm1k3y
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2008
     (1140.30)
    @ David xvx Ludd - awesome, I'd so watch that show.
    •  
      CommentAuthorVespers
    • CommentTimeMar 23rd 2008
     (1140.31)
    Totally off topic, but David vxv Ludd, I did so read The Wasp Factory. One of the best books ever.

    And I'd so watch that show. Sounds b-e-a-utiful.
  12.  (1140.32)
    Now that's a proper rant. I like the sound of the dark version.
  13.  (1140.33)
    I want that Torchwood.

    Ha!
    •  
      CommentAuthorVaehling
    • CommentTimeMar 24th 2008
     (1140.34)
    Still like the show, though I can't explain why. Maybe it's the potential, the feeling that this could be great if they just went that little bit over the top that they didn't dare. Or the writers' strike eliminating the competition. One thing I know, though - I won't be able to watch it ever again without thinking of all the bullet hole sex I'm missing.

    Thanks for that.
  15.  (1140.35)
    Am 13 minutes into S02E12. So far, I have learned:
    1) In the late nineteenth century, Torchwood Cardiff was - in defiance of all sense - staffed by two English lesbian kung fu masters.
    2) In the late twentieth century, Torchwood Cardiff was - in defiance of all possible laws of nature - staffed by a team even more incompetent than the current posse.
    3) ...and Torchwood just got ambushed by an enemy that is even more incompetent, and manages to plant explosive devices that don't kill people standing 1m away, but still demolish the whole building.
  16.  (1140.36)
    Season Two is a vast improvement on the first which was like Buffy written by teenagers desperate to impress their mates. Quality is still very varied but there have been some darker, more mature episodes that work for me. Owen is finally a real 3-D character now he's dead and Gwen is starting to fill out as she discovers that its not always obvious what "doing the right thing is." I don't care about plotholes, its the emotional life of the show that's finally coming together.

    However, if you want weird and sexy and slightly distrubing and everything that Torchwood should be, check out LEXX. The central character is a snivelling coward, the heroine is a sex droid who never gets any sex and the hero is a dead guy (a very sexy dead guy it has to be said). And instead of saving the universe they end up blowing most of it to hell. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me feel a little sick at times but it was never dull.
    •  
      CommentAuthorMalsain
    • CommentTimeMar 28th 2008
     (1140.37)
    LEXX was awesome. Never caught the series though.
  18.  (1140.38)
    Yeah, Lexx was fun to watch piss drunk late at night in college. Sober, it's all but indecipherable.

    One difference between Lexx and Torchwood, Lexx is a comedy. When Torchwood tries to be dramatic it does so with the subtle wit of Maxim editors on a coke binge rewriting Don Delillio.
    • CommentAuthorDracko
    • CommentTimeMar 29th 2008
     (1140.39)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    I still can't believe people watch this. Or think the current <em>Doctor Who</em> is culturally significant British television.
  20.  (1140.40)
    I still can't believe people watch this. Or think the current Doctor Who is culturally significant British television.

    Any time ten million people in Britain all sit down to watch the same thing, it's culturally significant whether you like it or not. Cultural significance is not always the same is being any good. Personally, I think DOCTOR WHO is a kid's show, and I watch it with my daughter. If I didn't have a daughter, I doubt I'd be watching it. Not being a kid and all.

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