Reacty reactions to Torchwood 2x04 - "Meat"

[snorkackcatcher]

In summary: an average episode with some interesting developments.


Let's deal with the shipping stuff first, then, because the writers do seem to be giving good fanservice with this, don't they?

We have Rhys stepping up a bit from being Barry Backstory and Gwen getting all emo over him for a change, so perhaps what we have here is an arc in which she discovers how much she really does care for him. Mind you, their rows about her secretiveness had a unpromising edge to them, patronising on Gwen's part, bitter on Rhys's (and btw, what exactly was the point in going all cinema verité with wobbly cameras there?), but at least they seemed to have resolved that by episode's end. After all, "I catch aliens" isn't necessarily the most convincing explanation, even in a Cardiff where people seem to be used to Torchwood barging in (cf the police officer at the crash scene here, or the old lady's "Bloody Torchwood" in 2x01). And it was good that they neither killed him off nor pressed the reset button with a memory wipe -- it took a lot longer for Rhys than with Alan finding out what his daughter was up to in SJA, but then I suppose it's easier to conceal your covert activities when you have a whole secret underground base packed with useful alien gear rather than an attic across the road.

On the other hand, Jack/Gwen fans got several little bits of subtext to play with too -- Rhys worrying about Jack's good looks, her "so you do care!" comment, and there certainly seemed to be a bit of the old UST there the couple of times Jack practically had her pinned against the wall, eh? There was also a nice little moment after Rhys got shot where Owen is the one helping him and kinds sorts exchanging awkward glances with Gwen.

Ans as for Owen and his relationship with Tosh ... well, the scriptwriters are obviously going somewhere with this, although it seemed to be the opposite way to the previous episode. Because here it was Tosh making all the running, with heavy hints and sandwich-making and IIRC I think she even had the purple dress on again (she must consider this her pulling gear). In other words, she did everything but jump on him crying "Take me, you mad passionate fool!". Owen's rather cruel obtuseness in the face of all this pretty much has to have been deliberate -- mind you, perhaps he simply didn't fancy being merely the one on the rebound after Tosh lost her deep-frozen boyfriend last week. He certainly did the leaping-to-the-rescue thing when she was menaced by the giant alien manatee thing, and since the trailers for next week seemed to have a sort of Duane Dibley!Owen showing interest, maybe we'll get an explanation then.

Jack/Ianto? Not much except a little across-the-room glance between them after Tosh makes her remark about it being best to date people in the same situation and Owen replies that there's isn't anyone like that except the Torchwood team ... Priceless.

Right, on to the plot then.

OK, first and foremost, answer me this. If you happened to find a huge alien creature somewhere in the vicinity of Cardiff and wished to exploit it to make money -- would converting it into steaks be a strategy that occurred to you as sensible? No? Me neither. In short, the basis for the episode seemed rather silly -- you got the impression that someone came up with the idea of 'alien meat' and didn't work out the details well enough. (It did give them an opportunity for a double -- well, single -- entendre though. "Have you ever had alien meat?" "Yes." "What was it like?" "He seemed to enjoy it." Ta-dah! You could see it coming ... I bet that's one of the scenes cut from the pre-watershed version.) The villains in fact seem pretty thick throughout. After all, they believe Rhys's patently false story and sign him up as a driver instead of adding him to the next delivery a la Sweeney Todd.

Not that the team were much better. When they went in alone armed only with stun-guns you just knew they were going to cock up the showdown somehow, didn't you? You'd think that after a century of Torchwood picking up alien gizmos, they'd have found some kind of wide-area stun weapon for dealing with situations like this. And how exactly did they conclude the alien was sentient merely because it opened its eye when they talked to it? The creature was a solid special effect, I thought.

As for Jack ... sadly, still annoying as a Torchwood boss, barking out orders at the team and Rhys, in an arbitrary fashion. With any luck that "you do care!" stuff is the preliminary to having him relax a bit more on-duty and lead more effectively. Then again ... I hate to say it, but John Barrowman's performance when showing Jack agonising in an emo way about the alien and Gwen refusing to feed Rhys the amnesia pill (guilty conscience, Gwen?) was seriously dodgy and over the top -- he was Registering Pain in a way that would have fitted right in to the silent era.

So basically -- average plot, character development with interesting potential, and despite the above, a reasonable if not brilliant episode.

Comments

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I might have been stretching things slightly (seeing as I'm very fond of the ship), but I thought there was a bit of a Jack/Ianto moment when one of the meat guys was threatening to shoot Ianto and Jack immediately jumped into view. But as I said, that might have just been me. ;)

And yes, he was OTT. I blame it on musical theatre training, which occasionally Does Not Translate Well to television. And a really strange emotional shift that made little sense in context. While I'm all for Jack calming down and not being in a constant state of Red Alert, that really wasn't a good way to do it. I actually rather like his encouragement of Gwen and Rhys, but he was literally shooting up and down the emotional register in this episode and it was incredibly confusing.

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes -- I don't mind characters being emotional, as long as there's some consistency about it ... Mind you, from looking at other comments I did miss the parallel between the creature being chained up and tortured and Jack's recent experiences on the Valiant, so maybe in that context some of the excessive emoness is understandable.

One other Jack/Ianto moment noticed on the rerun was that little pat from Ianto as he stalks out to his office at the end after his confrontation with Gwen. :)

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I did miss the parallel between the creature being chained up and tortured and Jack's recent experiences on the Valiant, so maybe in that context some of the excessive emoness is understandable.

I had forgotten that too until I saw it mentioned, and a very good point there. Especially since I got the impression Jack was being tortured while being chained up and forced to regenerate. Very Promethean, that. Poor guy.

[lazy-neutrino.livejournal.com]

Owen's rather cruel obtuseness in the face of all this pretty much has to have been deliberate -- mind you, perhaps he simply didn't fancy being merely the one on the rebound after Tosh lost her deep-frozen boyfriend last week.

I thought it had to be deliberate, too. I wondered if last week's episode had reminded him of his missing girlie pilot from the first series, so he was a bit more unkind to Tosh than was needed. But always good to see the sharp sassy Tosh reduced to desperate-for-a-man, of course. Or, you know, not.

Owen's getting a little more depth this series - not just obnoxious. And I'm pleased to see Ianto getting more lines and screen time. It's possible that he even has an existence which is not just as a foil for Jack!

As for the plot - I thought the first rule of writing was Don't Preach To Your Audience? Maybe TV writers are so good they get to start with the second rule.

[snorkackcatcher]

You know, sometimes I'm reluctant to give writers of episodic stuff like this enough credit for their attempts at continuity and keeping character development going, given that they have a lot less space to work with in a script than in a short story. (I just checked the script for 'Smith and Jones', and it was only about 13K words including all the stage directions. And unlike a shippy story, most of that had to be actual plot.)

So I'm fairly sure that we were meant to assume that Owen was drawing parallels with his pilot lover last week, and that Tosh is totally on the rebound this week. It was a bit cringeworthy, yes, in that it was so blatant, but won't be too bad if it doesn't continue in the same vein throughout the series.

[gaycrow.livejournal.com]

Here via torchwood_three. I'm new to the fandom, and I'm finding all sorts of interesting journals.

OK, first and foremost, answer me this. If you happened to find a huge alien creature somewhere in the vicinity of Cardiff and wished to exploit it to make money -- would converting it into steaks be a strategy that occurred to you as sensible?

That was exactly what I asked my daughter after we'd both watched this episode. You're the first person I've seen mention it, though. I think everyone else has been carried away by the shipping stuff. ;-)

I enjoyed reading your thoughts here. Are you planning to write reviews for all the episodes? If so, I'll keep an eye out for them.

[snorkackcatcher]

I just found a post by nostalgia_lj which said the same sort of thing, but no, mostly it doesn't seem to have bothered people. I got the impression from watching TW Declassified last night that the scriptwriters first idea was basically "let's have a huge alien space whale!" and only afterwards did RTD come up with "giant doner kebab" as a way to use it, which would go a long way to explaining the loose ends.

I'll probably find myself writing reviews for most episodes of TW (and DW and SJA), as the scope for speculation etc with HP canon is obviously far less now. :)