Ambiguous reactins to Torchwood S2 so far
Jan. 31st, 2008 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherHmm ...
I've now seen the first three episodes of S2 -- and I have to say my reaction is a bit mixed.
I didn't get into Torchwood until the end of the first series repeats, so obviously I'm a little late to the party -- but it still seems to be missing a certain something compared to DW and SJA. I think that thing may be sufficient quantities of heart. For me TW suffers from the 'Voyager Effect' -- I'm not finding it easy to care overmuch about most of the characters.
Partly this is due to Jack -- as an article put it the other day: "Captain Jack is a shitty boss. He's sassy and fun as the Doctor's sidekick, but when he's in charge he becomes an uptight middle manager." OK, that's a bit unfair, but it's uncomfortably close to the mark -- Jack-as-lead isn't nearly as likeable as Jack-as-companion.
Partly it's that the first episode was so much fun that the next two have been a bit of a letdown. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was crack, but good crack -- a racy plot that didn't take itself too seriously, lots of snappy lines, and the team in much more relaxed mode. Sleeper had a reasonable if routine plot, albeit one that gave the impression of being there largely to provide hooks for later shows. (The aliens weren't especially interesting -- disguised Earth invaders are ten-a-penny in the Whoniverse, after all -- but here's hoping that they don't turn out to be the TW equivalent of the neck-burrowing aliens in S1 of ST:TNG, who subsequently vanished down the script memory hole.) To the Last Man had many good ingredients, but I'm not sure they were well blended together, although it's not easy to do that in a 45min show. I think in both cases my niggle was that the most interesting thing about the storyline was the situation of the episode guest character, and it was hard to fully get a handle on that because the POV focus wasn't on them so much as the TW team
The romances especially are unsatisfying, in a very common way -- they seem to appear from nowhere without enough in-universe time for them to credibly develop. Here, Tosh and Tommy (not sure whether I like the name associations here or find them corny) have known each other a grand total of four days (awake). Like Owen's dalliance with the pilot from the 1950s, frankly that doesn't seem enough time for emotions to be engaged on more than a basic level. Of course it's a very frequent trope in TV shows (not to mention books and films) where the writers want to work in a single-story romance for a character, but repetition doesn't make it any more convincing -- as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thelana said elsewhere in a different context, it's pretty much a badfic trope made canon. If it gets play later on as a kind of experience Owen and Tosh share which is used to draw them together and develop their relationship in the way that's been hinted at, I'll be much more inclined to give it a pass as necessary setup.
But to finish on a more positive note, some of the aforementioned good ingredients in To the Last Man: Jack talking about having been through the First World War, which I was waiting for. Some further development of Jack/Ianto, which seems to be developing some chemistry now it's moved from left field to occasional centre stage. A worthy, if perhaps slightly heavy-handed, set of themes of heroism The time-locked sealed orders. And last but by no means least, a glimpse of the original Torchwood in action!
I've now seen the first three episodes of S2 -- and I have to say my reaction is a bit mixed.
I didn't get into Torchwood until the end of the first series repeats, so obviously I'm a little late to the party -- but it still seems to be missing a certain something compared to DW and SJA. I think that thing may be sufficient quantities of heart. For me TW suffers from the 'Voyager Effect' -- I'm not finding it easy to care overmuch about most of the characters.
Partly this is due to Jack -- as an article put it the other day: "Captain Jack is a shitty boss. He's sassy and fun as the Doctor's sidekick, but when he's in charge he becomes an uptight middle manager." OK, that's a bit unfair, but it's uncomfortably close to the mark -- Jack-as-lead isn't nearly as likeable as Jack-as-companion.
Partly it's that the first episode was so much fun that the next two have been a bit of a letdown. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was crack, but good crack -- a racy plot that didn't take itself too seriously, lots of snappy lines, and the team in much more relaxed mode. Sleeper had a reasonable if routine plot, albeit one that gave the impression of being there largely to provide hooks for later shows. (The aliens weren't especially interesting -- disguised Earth invaders are ten-a-penny in the Whoniverse, after all -- but here's hoping that they don't turn out to be the TW equivalent of the neck-burrowing aliens in S1 of ST:TNG, who subsequently vanished down the script memory hole.) To the Last Man had many good ingredients, but I'm not sure they were well blended together, although it's not easy to do that in a 45min show. I think in both cases my niggle was that the most interesting thing about the storyline was the situation of the episode guest character, and it was hard to fully get a handle on that because the POV focus wasn't on them so much as the TW team
The romances especially are unsatisfying, in a very common way -- they seem to appear from nowhere without enough in-universe time for them to credibly develop. Here, Tosh and Tommy (not sure whether I like the name associations here or find them corny) have known each other a grand total of four days (awake). Like Owen's dalliance with the pilot from the 1950s, frankly that doesn't seem enough time for emotions to be engaged on more than a basic level. Of course it's a very frequent trope in TV shows (not to mention books and films) where the writers want to work in a single-story romance for a character, but repetition doesn't make it any more convincing -- as
thelana said elsewhere in a different context, it's pretty much a badfic trope made canon. If it gets play later on as a kind of experience Owen and Tosh share which is used to draw them together and develop their relationship in the way that's been hinted at, I'll be much more inclined to give it a pass as necessary setup.But to finish on a more positive note, some of the aforementioned good ingredients in To the Last Man: Jack talking about having been through the First World War, which I was waiting for. Some further development of Jack/Ianto, which seems to be developing some chemistry now it's moved from left field to occasional centre stage. A worthy, if perhaps slightly heavy-handed, set of themes of heroism The time-locked sealed orders. And last but by no means least, a glimpse of the original Torchwood in action!
