Torchwood happens

(what happened there?)

He makes my skin crawl, though. He's like some hybrid of Mark Harmon and Tom Cruise, with extra smarm. When cutey pie fringe face kissed him I wanted to hurl.

And all that proudly standing around and not really doing anything much, while Cardiff swirls about below the helicopter shots, by day and by night. I suppose it could get better.

When Queen Victoria founded the Torchwood Institute to investigate and fight supernatural threats, she banished the Doctor and Rose from her Empire and said at the end of that episode (Tooth & Claw) that should the Doctor ever return, he should "beware".

In the episode (daleks vs cybermen) with Tracey-Ann Obermann as the woman who ran Torchwood, the Doctor was told he was Torchwood's prisoner.

Since Captain Jack is now running Torchwood, does that mean he is in some way an enemy of the Doctor? And if so, was he always his enemy, even when they were travelling together?

Maybe alien involvement sends you bonkers.

that episode was a bit iffy but not as bad as the worst Doctor Who episodes from last series and i'm still enjoying it.

we don't yet know what the Torchwood attitude to the doctor is, beyond keeping his severed hand. perhaps the wiping out of torchwood 1 staff by cybermen/daleks resets its vision. we don't know.

i'm still wondering (as we did back mid season 2) wot the attitude of torchwood was to UNIT (before getting wiped out in Aliums of London) - why did "blue box" typed into a computer alert UNIT but not Torchwood, etc

How about that 'erotic' firing range scene, eh? Really bizarre.

(Was the Cyberwoman played by the same girl as the tree lady in The End of the World?)

Also, barbecue sauce as weapon of DEATH. Hmmmm.

I'm starting to really fancy Gwen.

I didn't like the sentiment that there are terrible terrible things out there, but we can't do anything about it and have to give in to them.

I also thought that when the fairies turned nasty, they were like flying gollums (but I quite liked that bit).

B-B-B-B-But...!!!

Also : it seems to be less and less about Jack these days.

In a way it was about jack; he saved the day because he shot first, everyone else behaved in an ordinary human manner. Surely the next step in dehumanising Gwen is for her to shoot someone.

And yeah, I waited patiently for auldILX to come back online just so I could say that Torchwood is crap.

Would've preferred it if Jack had just disappeared from the slab (the Doctor could've used a transmat thingy). Also somebody else should've stayed dead ffs.

But then how would we have known it was The Doctor?

think yes and no. can't shake the feeling that too many of the writers are writing for RTD rather than the audience, if you know what i mean. this may not be anyone's fault. but it's a bad sign when even i'm sitting thinking of things they could do to avoid the obvious because surely they're not going to just do the obvious thing...and then sure enough the obvious happens and NOTHING ELSE.

Jack suddenly referring to 'the right kind of Doctor' actually seemed a bit clunky. What exactly was the Doctor doing that kept him away from the Rift-related pandemonoium prior to Jack's death anyway? 'More important' London business no doubt...

And assuming there is a next series, after all the being shot/going down with the plane metaphor stuff, does this make Owen the main character now? Bad idea.

What, is he going to walk all over the world until he's thrown shade on everyone? How long is that going to take, really? And what use is a deadly shadow against an airstrike, or after dark?

I've just torrented and watched the entirety of this season with the gf. She loved it unresevedly (predictably, she's a Harkness fangirl and loves boysex/girlsex/aliensex stuff), I thought the series was fun and pretty good for the most part, though I could have done without the HI DERE FIGHT CLUB RIPOFF episode.

I thought the finale amazing until the last 5 minutes. Tension amongst the team + backstabbing + Jack is dead WAIT JACK IS ALIVE all good stuff, but the "Godzilla-size Doom level boss" was absolute CRAP. Angry that they squandered such a damn good episode on such a poorly thought out baddie.

Clearly I'm like 6 months behind here. Now the gf and I have nothing to torrent until xmas! Any recommendations for some American Who/Torch fans?

New Series of torchwood is coming relatively soon. In the meantime torrent old whos

Torrent Primeval if you want something that's almost explicitly ripping off nu-who.

Life on Mars seems a popular choice for the nu-Who fan.

thanks all.

download both seasons of hex, which is more of a buffy clone but also quite unique in its own way.

don't forget to grab the pilot episode of the sarah jane smith adventures if you haven't already!

at first i was meh abt this show and stopped watching after the first 3 episodes. but since jack reappeared on dr who and since dr who season is over and since a friend of mine convinced me to give the rest of torchwood a chance, well, twist my rubber tv-lovin' arm...

and so i dled and watched eps 4-7 over the last couples days and am pretty hooked! it got better! and scary! and kinda hot even! but yeah, less fun than dr who - e.g., was a bit miffed at jack seeming far less fun than he is in dr who but that's understandable and since he's the head character in this show, then the whole less-fun/positive-abt-the-universe thing makes sense i guess. anyway, i haven't watched further yet so maybe will change mind again abt it all.

i just finished watching it all, i mean, i had to
i watched 4 episodes today. torchwood blitz week
i feel v weird now
but i like this show a lot and like that they understand my need for sci-fi tv series to include existential dramedy + hot kissing

Though I kinda wish Gwen wasn't so gap-toothed.

again

Torchwood creator Russell T Davies has revealed that the show's second season will contain more laughs, but without losing the darker elements.

"Sometimes the stresses of getting the show made showed on screen last series," Davies exclusively told Digital Spy. Consequently, the showrunner injected "more sense of humour" into the upcoming episodes.

"Humour expands the palette of the whole thing," he explained. "When you've got more light, you can do more shade. As a result, some of our darker episodes are darker than ever this year... I particularly recommend Chris Chibnall's episode 11 this year."

Davies then revealed a few tantalising hints about the content of that particular story: "It's Gwen. Alone. Searching for missing children in Cardiff. That's all I'm saying. It's a beautiful piece of work."

when does this start again?

Wednesday 9pm BBC Two.

i'll have to tape Echo Beach

sweeeet
xpost

just got season 1 in the mail.

is it good? should i watch it?

do i have to be a big dr who dude to enjoy it?

There are a couple of good episodes and quite a few really bad ones. The first ep's not particularly good as I recall, but it did intriuge me enough to watch the rest. I don't think it's something I could watch more than one of in a sitting, though.

The links to Who are fairly tenuous, it's a very different programme in terms of tone.

first and second eps are both bad, i think.

^^^and the rest too

the episodes i liked were the dark x-filesy ones, but the terrible f/x really kind of got in the way of me engaging more fully.

ghost machine
small worlds (/except terrible cg)
countrycide
random shoes

were my faves

i don't think this is, like, a great show -- but it is kinda fun

What was the one about the woman being brought back to life? That was the best one.

they keep killing suzie

Yeah, it's kind of like the CSI Miami of scifi shows.

xxp

it totally is. except without bunches of color-saturated helicopter shots of cardiff. which it should have, especially if they're going for laughs. ALL THE WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS IN WALES

an airplane just popped through a time portal from 1952!! where does it land? Cardiff!

haha - torchwood totally got me enamoured with cardiff though!

remy kinda otm yeah - first couple eps turned me off and then i tried again a few months later and got totally into it, esp the middle, like 8 episodes (though there are one or two in there that are not so good.) i think my favourite was the one that was more like 'wicker man' - where they go to the small country town and ooheeeooo spooky weird.

i don't know, it's pretty fun overall and even pretty hot in parts, but i'm looking forward to this increase in comedy they're talking about. for a while there i wanted to jack to be more like the doctor just b/c i love the doctor (who doesn't) but then i gave up feeling that way - glad that jack didn't remain the most central character though - that was a smart move.

all i ask of season two is to stay rainy and dark, be funny in a less smirky way and a more actually funny way, and more hot clandestine tension-relieving sex after a hard day of alien fighting

slocki, i don't think you have to be a huge doctor who dude to get into this, nope (but there are some in-jokes, most of which i do not get but have been told are in-jokes. ok i get a few of them.)

It must be said, though, that being a big Dr Who dude is preferable to being a big Torchwood dude, because Dr Who is a hell of a lot better.

i didn't even know there were torchwood dudes!
but i guess if there are like stargate dudes there are torchwood dudes

i also like how we're using dudes instead of nerds but i'm gonna go back to using nerds

I wouldn't know anything about this show or the latest incarnations of the doctor if it wasn't for the fact that no other network is airing anything worth watching during halftime and commercial breaks on Sundays in my country. by the time Spike TV starts their late Sunday marathon of CSI re-runs, though, it's usually bye bye BBC.

god I watch way too much television lately

I was just a bit worried that there are people out there who have have seen Torchwood but have never seen Dr Who.

Tombot: THERE'S A GOD DAMN RIFT IN CARDIFF

they didn't even use the 'rift' excuse to explain why the Doctor hangs out in London so much.

The Doctor just likes London. It is the best city in the universe, after all.

i think my favourite was the one that was more like 'wicker man' - where they go to the small country town and ooheeeooo spooky weird.

OTM

That one was genuinely spooky.

I saw a promo where James Marsters is dressed like Adam Ant and makes out and fights with Jack. Promising!

Of course I'd probably like anything where people dress like Adam Ant though.

Do any of the girls/gay guys here find Jack to be a hottie? I think he's slightly creepy and weird-looking, but I don't go for men.

he is very charismatic, otherwise he is too much like 80s tom cruise.

but that is the best tom cruise

jack is too ken-doll for me to find truly hot

jack is weird-looking, and the cadence of his speech is bizarre and off-putting. ianto is equally strange in appearance, and owen seems to swerve between super-ugly schoolboy and kinda handsome. tosh is pretty gorgeous, but she's got no screen presence to speak of, and i <3 gwen, but i am convinced she is supposed to be zooey deschanel

he is also non-aging! creeepy

Tosh = my new girlfriend

Jack is like Tom Cruise meets Troy McClure.

Haha, OTM.

Or Zap Branigan, maybe.

if he was more like Zapp Brannigan the show would be awesome
Tosh could be his Kif

'The rift has opened again, Tosh! Hand me my maaaaaan-size rift gun!'

'ugh'

Ouch, looks like they have been downgraded from film to video.

That was OK, I suppose. The direction was very annoying at the start, then seemedto settle down once the story got going.

Ouch, looks like they have been downgraded from film to video.

looked the same as before to me!

I might have been mistaken, that chase sequence at the beginning was shockingly shot and lit, the colour balance and aperture were all out of whack.

Do any of the girls/gay guys here find Jack to be a hottie?

GF has a big Harkness photo on her desktop. Total fangirl.

I was kind of hoping they would send fishface into the rift to replace her with Martha.

> Ouch, looks like they have been downgraded from film to video.

HD though, aparently. am sure the 2%* of the people in the uk who can get HD appreciate torchwood as being one of the offerings

it went downhill after 'Bloody Torchwood' comment from passer-by.

(* made up number)

^ More about international sales though, innit?

Wonder how those international sales are going? Compared to American SF shows, Torchwood really is a bit crap. It doesn't have the charm, quirkyness and history of Who to fall back on either.

It's not on HD for the international market, it's on HD because the BBC mandated all serial drama should be shot for HD (on film or video) a couple of years back, they've just decided to edit and show it in HD, presumably to give the yoof something on HD.

this was all shot on film tho. and it was fairly enjoyable tat hurrah.

can be HD or SD at the telecine stage. All new purchases at the beed have to be HD capable, and have been for a few years. So they have a load of HD telecine machines basically used for Attenborough and Bleak House and not much else. Torchwood is cheaper to do in HD as it is almost all in the dark so sets, costumes etc. don't have to be as HD good as if it were brightly lit.

Wonder how those international sales are going?

Apparently Torchwood is the highest rated program of all time on BBC America, which seems astonishing. I mean, really? Torchwood?

Don't know what the dvd sales are like, though.

Wonder how those international sales are going? Compared to American SF shows, Torchwood really is a bit crap. It doesn't have the charm, quirkyness and history of Who to fall back on either.

-- chap, Thursday, 17 January 2008 22:35 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Australia gave it the boot after about five weeks, despite a reasonably strong promotional campaign.

'i was hoping for a little power struggle resolved by some naked wrestling'
oh torchwood
the first 10 min or so are awesome and ridiculous!

SPIKE! Lordy, I'm in fangirl heaven..

Right. So.

Spike turns up and drops some guy off a building, and Torchwood is called out to investigate the body. TORCHWOOD. Because obviously some dead guy on the street = ALIENS.

And then Gwen/Gwyn gets paralysed and locked in one of eight million shipping crates (by some KISSING poison to which Spike is immune, presumably), and MacGyver Tosh uses a combination of GSM technology and some alien shit to TRIANGULATE Gwen's/Gwyn's position based on WHERE SHE WAS WHEN SHE ANSWERED HER PHONE. So of course they find her, diagnose her as paralysed and immediately produce an anti-paralysis kit they just happened to take with them.

And then, right at the end, Spike has a bomb dug into him which according to MacGyver Tosh cannot be removed at all by anyone anywhere ever, and then that guy whose name I can't remember suddenly magically produces some tube full of the DNA of THE WHOLE OF TORCHWOOD and chucks it in this guy and the bomb which cannot be removed at all by anyone anywhere ever is removed. And then there's some mystery temporal displacement thing which saves everyone's life and therefore EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.

Someone please convince me eposide two is better than this Chr1s Ch1bn4ll-penned masterpiece.

and apparently 'gray' is still alive

When you summarize Torchwood like that it really does seem like shit. But when you're watching it, it's entertaining. It just leaves a bad aftertaste if you think about it too much afterwards.

It left a bad aftertaste while we were watching it. The whole thing was terrible.

This Chr1s Ch1bn4ll feller wrote that horrible Cyberwoman episode last year too. He needs to completely stop and just raise horses or something.

Tosh uses a combination of GSM technology and some alien shit to TRIANGULATE Gwen's/Gwyn's position based on WHERE SHE WAS WHEN SHE ANSWERED HER PHONE

this was awesome

Spike turns up and drops some guy off a building, and Torchwood is called out to investigate the body. TORCHWOOD. Because obviously some dead guy on the street = ALIENS.

Not to get all Capt. Save-a-Chibnall here but they monitor Rift activity, right? So a murder at approximately the same time and location as Rift activity might = suspicious.

Anyway I read somewhere that Chibnall is going to be helming a new London-based Law and Order show, so that's kind of a mixed bag depending on your point of view (less/no Torchwood involvement next season, running a show presumably based on reality and sensible procedure, etc).

Someone please convince me eposide two is better than this Chr1s Ch1bn4ll-penned masterpiece.

Personally I thought the first episode was fairly camp and fun. Episode 2 in contrast was like Torchwood-meets-24, with all the baggage that association carries. I thought the main guest actress did a terrific job, though.

Not to get all Capt. Save-a-Chibnall here but they monitor Rift activity, right? So a murder at approximately the same time and location as Rift activity might = suspicious.

Ah, still a mite tenuous but fair enough.

Anyway I read somewhere that Chibnall is going to be helming a new London-based Law and Order show, so that's kind of a mixed bag depending on your point of view (less/no Torchwood involvement next season, running a show presumably based on reality and sensible procedure, etc).

Let's hope.

I'm sure he'll be fine as he gains experience (and perhaps works to slightly roomier timelines).

Last night was the first new one I've seen and it was pretty damn good. None of the ridiculous fake science or deus ex machina mentioned upthread (well, none that you could get really bothered about anyway). No ridiculous running around, no plaguing the unfortunate denizens of Cardiff with yet another alien menace. Just a tight little emotional number, played straight and very effectively. Nice bit of temporal knot-tying at the end. Oh, and one gay snog.

Ep 1 = 5/10
Ep 2 = 5.5/10
Ep 3 = 6/10

If this trend continues we're looking at the best programme ever by episode 11.

Last night's was predictable and ultimately unsatisfying, I thought. Tommy was quite good, though.

Not too bad tonight. Best one yet this series in that it didn't seem to be trying too hard.

I am not motivated to keep up with this. Is it any better?

Last week's was ok. It's calmed down since the first couple and is more watchable for it. Tosh fell in love with a plot device again.

oh god. Did she mesh a banana with some ALIEN TECHNOLOGY and save the universe again?

lol

'He's getting away!'

'But wait!! I can use the pattern of his footprints to determine the top half of his chimeric form!'

'How will you do that, Tosh?'

*ZWOMFP*

'A chimeric form footprint analyser! Just what I need'

Bless Martha, can't act, totally unconvincing as a genius, but still very sweet and likable somehow (maybe those who don't fancy women would disagree, I dunno). This season continues to plough the 'watchable guff' furrow.

Didn't expect the end at all. The behind the scenes thing afterwards seems to confirm it won't be reversed, unless it was part of some bigger bluff.

I'm actually starting to quite like this. This series doesn't wear itself out insisting that you sympathise with moaning characters, Jack gets to act like a bastard, and the batshit plotting is becoming quite amusing. You have to accept that it is a cartoon, and go with it.

Watched next week's on BBC3 and the initial resolution of the shock development contains a throwaway joke that made me laugh very hard indeed.

3's new look is, um, interesting.

Watched a download of the new one from BBC3, and what's with that hideous bright pink watermark?

That's part of the new look.

I know.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/

"From Out of the Rain" has gotta be the worst episode filler of the series yet, even worse than that one about the evil fairies from S1. It looks especially bad coming off the last several good ones.

Probably the only black mark in this very solid season, I gotta say, though.

I liked the one about the evil fairies. ;_;

yah, that one was really good except for the shoddy cgi

The guy who wrote the evil-fairy episode also wrote this episode! They're actually kind of similar, in that the weirdness isn't explicitly due to "aliens," it's some weird mystical kerjigger that no one has an explanation for. I thought they handled it better in the fairy one -- at least they had Jack saying "I have no idea what these things are." Here they just were like, "Magical carnies emerging from film? Of course!"

I could've watched that top-hatted guy vamp around for hours, though. He scared the shit out of me. This has been a great season for guest stars, nearly every episode has a very strong guest actor/cast.

I've lost interest in Torchwood without noticing and have totally forgotten it's been on the last two weeks.

The Adam episode was my favourite, probably of both series, great conceit and a pretty good resolution. Some of the Owen's a zombie stuff has been good too, in all this series has been an improvement on the last.

Owen's a zombie now? That does sound good.

It has not been made clear, he has either been resurrected or is a zombie.

In any case he appears to have become an Emo about it.

Zombie. He's slowly decaying and can't eat/sleep/get drunk/have sex, hence the Emo.

If the Cranberries wrote a song about you, you'd be emo.

*Spoilers for last two episodes aired on the BBC*

Just watched "Adrift" and "Fragments". Holy shit! Both really fantastic episodes. "Adrift" setting a new level of darkness and despair for the show (and much more meaningful than say, "Countrycide") and "Fragments" was as fun to this show as "Out of Gas" was to Firefly -- who was still expecting a real flashback episode at this point? So great!

Goddamn, I can't wait for the finale. I never thought this show would reach the level of the last Who season in quality.

Man... so who saw that coming? I definitely didn't.

Great season.

pj hammond wrote fairies and the 'out of the rain'. and 'out of the rain' was a straight adaption of an old story of his.it was 'dear peter, we here at torchwood all remember your story about the guy who came out of photographs that you did in every show you've written for, how about pulling it out again one more time'

i thought it was great.

yeah this was pretty good - glad they didn't try and do something big this time (stupid demon thing).

i'd watch more Victorian Torchwood too.

oh i thought the finale was just ok. bit messy. way better than s1 finale

I take back everything I said on the Dr Who 3 thread. Really loved that finale. Want more Spike.

I ain't gonna lie - I cried, hard.

I srsly think there should be a Victorian-era Torchwood with those lesbian ladies who like to beat up and kill Jack.

i also really liked it! and the season in general. i cried just a little bit...
there are still a few things that def bug me about the show, but hey, i guess there are more things that keep me intrigued

also dudes, jack was buried for like almost 2000 years!! i feel like a lot of the most horrifying things they bring up in the scripts aren't really exploited for their true horror. i want to be more freaked out, i guess, like beyond sort of unsettled, which is my general reaction to the episodes. hm, i don't know, it's a weird show that way.

anyway, it'll be coming back, right? after the dr who season, i guess?

I heard if Torchwood comes back there will be no Capt. Jack in it, which seems weird.

I thought that 2000-years burial was a bit glossed over, too, but I guess they didn't have time to really get into it. What IS the deal with the sadistic lesbians in old Torchwood?

I haven't heard anything about Torchwood's next series, but we should probably wait to see how Who S4 ends, considering how many people are showing up in it. Also, supposedly Davies is going to be doing other projects during the break between Who seasons, and I'd bet that TW gets delayed too...

I really couldn't be bothered with a series that is ALL ABOUT GWEN. Afraid I've never found her particularly sympathetic, and the fact that you're obviously meant to love her was a big problem for much of series one. Series two seemed a bit more ensemble based, and better for it. Two - maybe three - less characters doesn't bode well for series three.

I'm guessing they'd recruit more people to replace Tosh and Owen - losing your science bod AND your medical dude must leave a hell of a dent in your resources. Gwen and Ianto don't really have any specialised knowledge of any sort, so there's a couple of vacancies right there. Martha would be the obvious choice for Owen's replacement, but that obv depends on the end of this series of Who. Could they get Mickey back to be the boffin one? If Rose can come back from a parallel universe, maybe he can too.

(also I liked use of Rhys to make Gwen less annoyingly Rose-like this series, and agree totally about the group dynamics being one of the things that made this series better)

Replacements would be essential. I can definitely imagine RTD continuing to use Torchwood to spin off spare characters in the way the Angel series worked for Buffy.

Bit concerned about what Tricksey says about Jack: Captain Jack brings a swashbuckling energy to the show which is notably absent from the other characters. If Barrowman were to leave, that's going to be a problem. (Unless Spike is going to step in as a regular.)

Absolutely, the extra focus on Ianto and Tosh improved this season's quality. I think they felt the need (like with Rose) to use Gwen as the audience stand-in character who is totally blown away with all the crazy stuff going on, and they kind of shifted that amusingly to Rhys. Letting him in opened up a lot more story/character possibilities with Gwen (though I DO like her, that whole affair angle last year was atrocious) and cemented her role as "the one with the most heart" or whatever.

I have this feeling they (the people behind the show) hated Mickey, and just finally cut him some slack in Who S2 for the unnecessary and ridiculous shitting-on he kept getting the first year. Though I'll definitely be happy if he shows up again!

I'm pretty sure Marsters said at some point he was signed up for the next season of TW, but I don't know for how many eps or if he'll be a regular. There's no way the team's getting pared down to three when/if the show returns, they'll bring in replacements, because of course somebody's gotta die.

I also don't care much for Gwen, but she was more tolerable in S2 because she finally stopped dicking Rhys (whom I LOVE) around.

The weirdest turn-around in my feelings for a character have got to be my feelings for Owen, though. I absolutely hated him in S1, but I grew to sort of love him in S2. I think it started in the episode "Adam," when he showed up in glasses and a cardigan and was all geeky-awkward.

I've got absolutely no proof that Barrowman is or will be leaving Torchwood; it's just that when I was in London a week or so ago, the friend that I was staying with said she had read/heard/seen that somewhere.

^yeah (to mostly everything on this thread re: S2).

Except I don't much care for Rhys, he doesn't engage with me at all. He's a bit of a distraction from the action.

But, god yeah, instead of Casualty 1907, we should have an episode, or series, of Torchwood 1907. A steampunk-y Victorian/Edwardian version would be a hoot.

Definitely! As they've gone to the trouble of establishing three characters from that period, I think there's a real chance of it happening.

And we saw those WWI Torchwood folk as well... the could have been members in the Edwardian era, or the Edwardians could still be about a few years later for the Great War. Either way they've shown us 5 olde Torchwood members, not counting Captain Jack.

There's me eating my words then. Episodes 3-13 all spectacularly good, apart from that shitty circus one.

'Er indoors cried at the end! I had to virtually force her (and myself) to give this year a go.

"instead of Casualty 1907, we should have"

CROSSOVER POTENTIAL

I didn't watch S2 because the first season was so bad, now I'm wondering if I should have gave it a chance after all.

You should have gave it a chance after all.

I didn't watch S2 because the first season was so bad, now I'm wondering if I should have gave it a chance after all.

right first time

I finally got around to watching this via iplayer last night. I cried too. It was the look on Ianto's face as he deleted their system profiles and Tosh was probably my favourite anyway.

I really hope they don't go down the Martha and Mickey route - I think because I know them as Who characters they don't seem to be dark enough or deep enough for Torchwood (even though the whole Martha-walks-the-world thing was very very dark and the actor playing Mickey did a nicely psycho turn in Cape Wrath or whatever it was called.)

Another vote for Edwardian Torchwood though, that would rule.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(great show, but still...)

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

How are we for spoilers on this thread? Because I saw something about next year's season IN THE NEWS and it's really just about how they're going about it but I don't want to bollocks the fun for anybody.

oh look here's the link and it's not all that spoilery anyway.

I quite like the idea. Still haven't caught up with the second half of S2 though.

please do

I think it's old, old news. Other people probably don't.

I knew that, and I don't really go for spoilery stuff. That's not really spoilery at all, tbh.

S2 was fine enough on its own terms, but I sorta missed the misanthropy of S1. It's part of what I liked about the show.

i never thought i'd miss this show but i kinda do. :/ anyone know when it's coming back?

I miss Barrowman's smarmy Troy McClure-ness.

It's back in March. I am anticipating already.

ooh, look!

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid10274559001?bctid=10323742001

http://www.tonnerdoll.com/torchwood.htm

Who would pay $170 for Gwen Cooper?

Children Of Earth 21:00 everynight this week on bbc1 (and again at 23:something on BBC3)

"An ordinary day becomes a world of terror as every single child in the world stops. A message is sent to all the governments of Earth: 'We are coming'. But as a trap closes around Captain Jack, sins of the past are returning, as long-forgotten events from 1965 threaten to reveal an awful truth."

given that this is normally something they tuck away on bbc3, is this a good idea?

They've been putting it back for so long (see my above post about it being back in March), they'd have been as well putting it back on BBC2 where it probably belongs. Trailer looks awesome though.

yay this is being broadcast July 20th here

Only caught the first half of S2. Are Jack, Gwen and Ianto the only survivors?

yeah, sadly; they set things up so Martha could join Torchwood but the Freema got the L&O job

Think it was maybe going to be Martha and Mickey, what with the medical person and the boffin being offed at once.

chap, you really should catch the second half of season 2. Emo zombie Owen is excellent, and you genuinely will sniffle a wee bit when Tosh kicks it.

Yeah was going to mention Mickey too but second-guessed my memory of the end of the season.

god i'm still sad abt Tosh. her character didn't get a break at all.

^^^^^^^^^^^ yes

I almost vowed to never watch Torchwood again after that, since she was far and away my favorite character.

She was pretty much the only sympathetic character on the show, yes.

I mostly just watch it now for the laughs. Gwen's cluelessness and Barrowman's hammy acting always seem to cheer.

If they kill Rhys there will be almost no point to watching the show!

Aw, Rhys is great. I believe he might be getting an extended family in this new series though, which doesn't bode well.

(Americans beware, I will probably be posting spoilers after 10pm British time)

Mickey and Martha in Torchwood would've sucked. it's hard to believe it was ever a serious proposal.

You're talking about Russell T. Davies here.

Yeah, so SUCK was the baseline for expectations.

Dude is a good writer despite his ideas, not because of them!

This is a guy who thought an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor meets Harry Potter and JK Rowling was a fantastic idea.

(although I'm not gonna lie, a post-Doctor Martha would make perfect sense as a member of Torchwood and it would have made me more likely to forgive Tosh getting killed)

OH NOES ATHEIST AGENDAR

"Aliens prove science has won so I have to stop believing in God so I should kill myself."

OH NOES MURKIN SALES AGENDAR

Who in Britain knows what spinach dip is, much less buys it in from Asda or the like?

It is still impossible to care about any of the characters, and my extension almost everything that happens in Torchwood. Jack is so much better as an occasional supporting character in Who than as a lead.

But he doesn't melodramatically howl "GRAY!!!!" on Doctor Who.

Capaldi needs to be doing more swearing. I thought this was meant to be an adult show?

I only really care about Gwen in the context of Rhys. Owen was always a dick but he got interesting when he was zombified. Tosh was always great. Jack is a caricature, even when the writers try to add dimension to him. Ianto is basically a piece of decoration that Jack likes to hump.

Baldly written out like that, I should really hate this show... but I don't.

OK, now THAT bit was good.

It's like pizza.

Actually Gwen as a character can be fascinating but one of the strengths of the show was that even though Gwen is the gateway character into the world, you could take the point of view of Tosh or Owen and structure an entire story around them, allowing Gwen some breathing room and keeping me from getting sick of her.

(I shudder to think of what a Ianto story would be like; HOTT TEA-BREWING ACTION! NON-STOP OGLING! oh yeah and an alien)

That was OK apart from RUSTY AGENDARS (aldo, the car had THREE DEADLOCKS!). Seen worse.

Was the dude at the harbour Max Boyce?

(what bit was good at 21:50?)

Cliffhanger (which I thought was good) MORE THAN SLIGHTLY undone by the 'next time' clip, there.

Good bit was SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Jack getting shotted by bloke who seemed to be lined up as Owen replacement.

Yeah, that was good, and proper unexpected. Next time clips should be banned from telly forever.

I have forgotten, did we know Captain Jack had a daughter?

People getting shot is only a good sudden twist if they aren't going to get straight back up again. Ditto having them blown up.

Enjoyed that quite a bit, as did my brother and his girlfriend, Torchwood virgins both. Bro's GF has never even seen Who before.

Take your point Matt, but it was pretty untelegraphed.

It wasn't OMG JACK IS DEAD it was OMG NICE DOCTOR BLOCK IS AN ARSEHOLE.

Clever plotting with the body scanner thing.

Haha, online speculation suggesting repeated attempts to kill Jack leave him as a head in a jar, which is how he becomes the Face of Boe...

Actually, I wouldn't put that beyond Rusty.

It wasn't OMG JACK IS DEAD it was OMG NICE DOCTOR BLOCK IS AN ARSEHOLE.

^ this

With all the "get me a kid" thing, isn't Sarah-Jane surrounded by them? Get her! Also, Jackie Tyler has a kid now. No point mentioning Martha being off her holidays without remembering the rest of the Whoniverse.

Was bit disappointed that the temp in the Home Office wasn't Donna, who is presumably back now temping post mind-wipe.

That Face of Boe thing makes (some sort of) sense. Are the spinoffs being handed over along with the main Doctor Who show, or does he get to "kill off" Jack and sort out the Face of Boe thing?

Big speculation is that at the Comicon Rusty will announce Torchwood is not being renewed and there's a movie in the works, which will be the last involvement he has. The Moff is already talking about not carrying anything over from the Rusty era (except maybe things he wrote himself) so Rusty may want to draw a line under all his storylines.

Missed the first 10 minutes or so, but caught it up this morning and:

HAHAHA LOOK AT ME I CAN APPROPRIATE PHRASES FROM POPULAR SHOWS LOOK I HAVE GAPPY SAYING THE WORDS THAT WELSH WOMAN OFF THAT WELSH COMEDY SHOW SAYS. EVen Gappy can barely keep a straight face.

OOH LOOK DYS etc Jack uses the same device as the woman who cuts him up (or transpose for 2152 comment last night)

Temp sequence all RONG - nobody gets in any Civil Service building that quickly on first day, new passes etc, you never start work work until the afternoon at the earliest; actually, luv, that was a British Army uniform (although, in her defence, what a Col so young is doing with a Staff Uniform that disappeared in 1995 when he wouldn't have had enough time - or foreign deployments in staff jobs - to build up a stockpile so he could still wear it {which is what may or may not happen in reality} so we could say she's right instead and that Rusty fucked up) and HOLD ON WAIT A MINNIT twenty to 9 in the morning is 0840 BST and not GMT, which you would have thought a military man would have recognised.

hey that was quite exciting.

also lol ianto's family

Enjoyed that, some nice twists, will continue to watch. Think they're trying for a Nigel Kneale feel here. (I know, I know, but at least they're trying.)

Ianto's family were the best thing about this. The comic timing of "hello gay boy, I hear you take it up the arse", straight after the sensitive sister routine, was perfect.

Sensitive sister: "have you gone bender?"

Ianto's sister = Tim's idiot girlfriend off Not Going Out. I read somewhere she was going to be in it and had thought she was going to be Rhys' family, hence what I was gibbering on about him having a family introduced upthread (having totally forgotten he actually has a family already from the whole wedding thing last series).

twenty to 9 in the morning is 0840 BST and not GMT

Do we know what time of year it actually is?

Do we know she didn't get her induction the day before and that this was her first actual day of doing actual work? Wouldn't unusual busy-ness of day would warrant an upping of duties beyond coffee-making under the circumstances?

I'm more entertained by death warrants being circulated via emails headed WARRANT TO KILL in big capital letters. And passwords (1) not having to involve a combination of upper and lower case and numbers and other symbols (I have to do this and I work in a way less OMG SECURITY public sector org than the Home Office) and (2) being written down on a post-it note and stuck to a computer, lol security.

Do we know what time of year it actually is?

Do we know she didn't get her induction the day before and that this was her first actual day of doing actual work? Wouldn't unusual busy-ness of day would warrant an upping of duties beyond coffee-making under the circumstances?

I'm more entertained by death warrants being circulated via emails headed WARRANT TO KILL in big capital letters. And passwords (1) not having to involve a combination of upper and lower case and numbers and other symbols (I have to do this and I work in a way less OMG SECURITY public sector org than the Home Office) and (2) being written down on a post-it note and stuck to a computer, lol security.

Torchwood is supposed to be "today". OK, it's a hangover from the alleged March broadcast but would have been easy to fix.

Could have been, but she said it was her first day. And it wasn't that busy when she was making coffee.

Rusty has obviously read Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, which features those very same DON'T BE SO FUCKING STUPID plot points.

I haven't read any Dan Brown, so I'm safe from that, at least.

Back in an hour :-)

Ianto has just picked up a newspaper which says Wednesday ___ September 2009, so definitely in BST.

OK, doing that to Jack is NASTY.

Overall, what Terrence Dicks would have called a loop episode - only a couple of things of note happen but at the end the plot is pretty much where it was where it started.

Please can we have a series without John Barrowman's arse making a special guest appearance?

Not until Rusty is gone. Or you're watching the BBC rip-off of Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old.

Rusty agendar points that I have started picking up on due to reading these threads and reading in secret subpoints that probably aren't even there:

Overbearing parent agenda (dad rather than mum this time) "he always pushed me too hard" DO YOU SEE? (OK, that was definitely there)

"we need to go to London where they make all the decisions" - BBC WALES IS NOT MY BITCH ANY MORE DO YOU SEE (see also the whole OMG I AM ON THE SEVERN BRIDGE LEAVING WALES WISH ME LUCK thing yesterday)

er, there was something else, but I've forgotten now.

Oh aye, the dude at the end said something totally in the style of David Tennant's doctor just before he took his glasses off in the style of David Tennant's doctor.

Also, filming in a quarry without it having to double as an alien landscape. Another nod?

I did like the Council Kids causing a distraction by attacking Secret Blokes as LOLPEEDOES.

I enjoyed this one, the first one felt like it was trying to cram too much in, this one had a bit of breathing space.

Encasing Jack in concrete = well done evil geniuses. I've no idea how Ianto worked out exactly where they were and what to do though.

yeah i was thinking that ianto's sister owns one hell of a laptop.

Jack in concrete was almost as fucked up as him being buried alive for 2000 years but not quite.

WAU Jack's mates from the train brings a whole new level (but hints towards CLOSURE).

JUST SHOOT HER!

This is seriously actually good.

Last twenty minutes were riveting, the 456 are some scary shit. I hope not to be gravely disappointed by the Big Reveal (actually I hope there isn't a Big Reveal, but that isn't going to happen).

456 looked like a gormley installation crossed with lovecraft. and yes, scary.

Maybe they're the Slitheen in disguise.

This really is better by a LONG way than any other Torchwood yet.

how is that possible, it doesn't have Tosh in it

(ps don't answer that, 12 days until they show it here)

This really is better by a LONG way than any other Torchwood yet

Yes, I'm really digging this. (Have not watched part 3 yet)

i'm really glad it's back and that it came as a total surprise to me and on a night when i really really wanted to watch something but had no idea what to watch. whoo!

http://i28.tinypic.com/2eggxdy.jpg

Ah, NBC suits explains some (now obviously incorrect) spoilers elsewhere.

"Then what else exactly are the school league tables for?"

GUILTYLOLZ

Squid-like creature, psychic death throes.. IN THE YEAR WATCHMEN MADE THE BIG SCREEN.

as over blown and at times silly as torchwood can be this was a pretty good episode

Oh yeah, I'm still enjoying it.

Great stuff. I like the idea that the THE CABINET MEETING WHERE NO-ONE MUST EVER KNOW WHAT WAS SAID has entered the culture to this extent.

well done torchwood just burst in and threaten the omnipotent aliens.

alien has kid in it = 11 kids taken = there are only 11 aliens?

Couldn't they also just take the kids?

Wow, tonight was great too. It's looking more and more like this is going to be the last ever series, isn't it?

Tonight's was really exciting! I'll be surprised if it all ends up making sense though.

^^^RTD rule = really awesome narrative buildup and then it all crashes down in a horribly overblown way in the last ten minutes.

these last two episodes rocked tho. as boring as ianto was... ;_;

god i want to see this

In due time, my son.

My daughter has been t0rr3nting these, and last night left her ready to kill RTD with her bare hands.

Typical technobabble resolution, but that was some impressively cold business with Jack and his grandson.

Will there be a CAPTAIN JACK: SPACE ADVENTURER series in the near future?

Complex and interesting political paranoia, particularly the way the US military commander casually takes over the UK govt. when the elected leadership seems to be going off-message.

Couldn't help but feel a teensy bit sorry for the PM. I mean, what would you do? Didn't seem like he had a huge amount of options, and those two ladies who darked him out at the end were obviously complicit.

Jeezo, just had a three episode marathon. Frobisher family, Jack's grandson and Ianto, that's some harsh shit right there.

That woman who wasn't Spears at the end who was all "yeah, I'm in charge now, you sneaky bastard" was major bitch, I mean, she was mrs league tables and wasn't she niggling for positive spin earlier before turning on the PM when he suggested some.

Was really pretty good though. I liked most of the last series of Torchwood, but this format let them run with an idea in a lot more depth, which worked a lot better than I thought it would.

goddamn it that was fucking dark. fuck you jack, haven't you learnt anything after all that time with the Doctor?

anyway, this was pretty much the end of it right? I guess that's not too surprising, Torchwood was always RTD's pet project - there's no real reason for it to continue without his involvement. booo just as it started to get really good.

Okay I was wrong, that was absolutely brilliant. Traumatising as fuck, but fantastic. The virus in Thames House scenes, the bit with the mothers screaming as their children were being led onto buses crying. Fucking hell.

And Frobisher and his girls ultimately died for no reason. Dark dark dark.

Presumably the ending leaves the door open for Jack to appear the RTD's Dr Who swansong as well?

British Prime Ministers don't last long in Who world, do they?

The woman playing Jack's daughter was rubbish though. She seemed to have the exact same expression on her face that made it look like she was smiling no matter how bad things became.

i felt like this was the end of Jack - there's no way his character can go back to being funsexytimes Captain Jack now. I mean, they've always hinted that he's done some horrible things in his past but this has really underscored how far he's willing to go. it would take a miracle writer and an actor far more talented than Barrowman to be able to square what happened here with his usual lovable pansexual action hero side.

btw kudos to RTD for resisting the reset button - minor quibbles aside, i really think this was the best finale he's ever done.

my main gripe is that the final 20 minute resolution could have been built up to step-by-step through the previous 3 hours (that otherwise had 'torchwood' doing mostly F-all) making it seem more like a crushingly inevitable tragedy/cold-equation, rather than feeling quite so ad-hoc.

That would have detracted from the 'no hope in sight' bleakness that made the last couple of hours so amazing though.

Last twenty minutes were riveting, the 456 are some scary shit. I hope not to be gravely disappointed by the Big Reveal (actually I hope there isn't a Big Reveal, but that isn't going to happen).

dug that we never really found out what the 456 was other than the fact that it's/they're GETTING HIGH ON KIDS, which is on a whole new level of fucked up-ness.

-That would have detracted from the 'no hope in sight' bleakness

that's where clever writing would come in... I see your point lol

Best Torchwood by quite a distance. I really hope they let this be the end. I liked the way the usual RTD pull-a-technobbabble-solution-out-of-nowhere resolution was given real emotional heft by Jack's killing of his grandson.

The woman playing Jack's daughter was rubbish though. She seemed to have the exact same expression on her face that made it look like she was smiling no matter how bad things became.

I know what you mean, but this didn't bother me--I know a couple of people who have the expression of half-smiling disbelief she had when going through horrible things.

Yeah, she was dreadful.

If the 456 just wanted the kids for drugs, couldn't someone with a braincell have gone "hang on, they won't kill the entire world because then they'll have no drugs at all, come on, let's call their bluff"?

it would take a miracle writer and an actor far more talented than Barrowman to be able to square what happened here with his usual lovable pansexual action hero side.

Aye, and factoring in that this will have to be done in Doctor Who, watched by a fair few folk that don't watch Torchwood, it's going to be tough. Much as I can't stand all-round all-singing all-dancing never-off-the-fucking-telly entertainer John Barrowman, actor John Barrowman when he's playing Captain Jack is pretty good though. I reckon he could pull it off if it was written well enough for him, but I'm not sure where or when he gets to do it. If he gets to.

this was mostly great for such a risky premise (yet another worldwide threat before/after Daleks, Toclafane etc. but more the explanation for why the Doctor wants nothing to do with it was always going to be weak). 2 ridiculously petty bits i hated - "Spain, Bosnia, TOKYO..." and the typical RTD over-use/close-ups of TV news presenters (esp. that really annoying American one) ugh

The "explanation" was more Gwen being really angry and disgusted rather than any actual reason why the Doctor didn't turn up. The Doctor tends to stumble upon/get dragged into really bad shit happening rather than going out of his way to turn up and save the world.

(Assuming that anyone not wanting to be spoiled is avoiding the thread like I did this week.) Really enjoyed this too, very surprisingly dark turn after the first two episodes! And the very premise of Torchwood from episode one is that everybody's compromised and everybody dies badly in this organization. I think I still prefer season 2, since this felt a bit padded (stretching this one story to five episodes) and rushed towards the end. It's a shame that this is probably the end of it.

Some questions though - what were they (the writers) exactly trying to do with the whole middle management thing? Were we supposed to sympathize with that guy and his secretary? I had this feeling when they started showing his family, but I kept waiting for their comeuppance but then by the final episode it seemed like the show was somewhat siding with them all along, sort of going with just following orders. But... how can that be? It's also weird that it seems that none of the people who decided to go ahead with the plan would actually be held accountable. Blackmailing the PM to get Abiba out of jail is ok even though their plot doesn't get exposed? The second-to-the-PM woman ("board scores" lol) seemed too cheery since she was part of it. Did I miss something as a dumb American?

and the typical RTD over-use/close-ups of TV news presenters (esp. that really annoying American one) ugh

News presenters are intended to show DRAMATIC GLOBAL SCALE OF CRISIS without expensive shots of shit going down in the US/France/India.

Prime Ministers being ousted and replaced by equally opportunistic scumbags has been something of a continuing theme in nu-Who and by extension Torchwood. Also, Britishes be disillusioned with their political system.

I think it was easy to sympathise with Frobisher because a) everyone likes Peter Capaldi and b) it was obvious he was going to get shafted all along. Killing your wife and family and then yourself because your children have been sold out to the aliens by politicans looking to put a positive spin on their actions and then save their own skin = how is that not comeuppance?

a slight problem was that the thing he was being forced to do - have his kids claimed by teh aliens - didn't make much sense. the PR was selwyn-gummer-like 'look my kids are having the inoculation too'. but the inoculation story was all fake. the injection would be fake. why follow through with the 'and you must send your kids off to the aliens'.

I guess he really wanted it to look like a government employee lost his kids, but he was too cheap to spring for witness-relocation. Considering that up til then Frobisher had been the world's politest fall guy, I was disappointed he didn't leap across the desk and break the PM's neck.

I'm still a little disappointed in Ianto's death, even though I can recognize its function in the narrative and Jack's character arc. It was just so lame! They come up with this daring plan to gain access to the alien's chamber, all so they can go in and...shout at it? Surely you don't need to assign 66% of your persecuted special-ops team to alien-shouting.

I thought the whole mini-series was brilliant, right up until the end. Jack can't die, therefore he is immortal + he sacrifices his only-begotten (grand)son to save the rest of the world. God complex much, RTD?

this is a v strong argument for the 5-episode format. Torchwood always felt like nu-Who campy world with lots of sex and violence thrown in. I'm glad they finally realized there was real potential in sitting with one story and really allowing it to breathe (that amazing cabinet meeting would never have happened in the standalone format). If nu-Who has to be ADD running-around episodic, then so be it (kind of wish this year of specials was one arc tho). But kudos for finally coming through on that "Doctor Who for adults" angle they were crowing about when it first started. Adults = serious drama, not sex and violence imo.

Last sentence OTM (also the bit about the specials, though I think the next special is leading up to a two-parter over Christmas, probably in the way that Utopia led up to The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords).

Saddened to see Ianto go, but I think this is Torchwood (as a series, if not as an entity) over now - Gwen's off on maternity leave and the others are all dead, except Jack who can wander through space and time being all emo and that.

News presenters are intended to show DRAMATIC GLOBAL SCALE OF CRISIS without expensive shots of shit going down in the US/France/India.

Should have photoshopped pointing kids in front of the Taj Mahal like what they do to symbolise global terror in nu-Who.

Jack can't die, therefore he is immortal + he sacrifices his only-begotten (grand)son to save the rest of the world. God complex much, RTD?

For an athiest, RTD has a lot of creepy psuedo-christian themes running through his stories.

Well, he did write The Second Coming which was pretty explicit about it!

how is that not comeuppance?

Even though Frobisher was set to be the fall guy all along, he was still quite complicit in the conspiracy and murders, I really had no sympathy at all for him or his family at the end. Plot-wise the story worked for me, but I don't think I bought in to what they were selling emotionally.

I don't think the show was taking the anti-PM stance, just having a go at the cutthroat bastards at the top. I don't think anyone was meant to empathise with the league table peddling deputy PM woman (I pointed out already that she was just as bad), or any of the rest of them, really. Think Frobisher was set up well in terms of narrative to be the everyman journeyman politician inadvertently thrust into the role of fall guy and, despite implication that he'd had affairs (though I thought that was just his PA's jealousy of Lois leading to her making up stuff to try to put Lois off, tbh, rather than an actual fact), I thought it was impossible *not* to feel sorry for him. He was complicit because they were placed in what they thought was an impossible situation, but come on, he was being forced into having his kids killed for political gain. How can you *not* feel for the poor guy?

"probably in the way that Utopia led up to The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords"

possibly EXACTLY that way yougetme?

That'd better not be a SPOILER, matey.

i genuinely have no clue

Prime Ministers being ousted and replaced by equally opportunistic scumbags has been something of a continuing theme in nu-Who and by extension Torchwood.

^^^yep.

i don't think it really matters whether we're supposed to sympathize with them or not - the conclusion no matter how you frame it is bleak as hell. A man and his family either died for nothing or got exactly what he deserved, while others take credit for preventing a dire situation that they themselves arguably caused or worsened. the only people we're really supposed to sympathize with are the Torchwood team who remain, as Lois called them, the unsung heroes.

btw the biggest asshole was that scientist who gleefully announced "The kid's gonna fry". and all he got was a shot in the leg.

Haha, i kept thinking why is that dude so evil?! I imagined he would be some kind of sleeper agent for the aliens, but nah, he was merely a total creep.

I don't think anyone was meant to empathise with the league table peddling deputy PM woman (I pointed out already that she was just as bad), or any of the rest of them, really.

Yes, exactly. I think it's just meant to be another example of bastardry--she's as bad as the PM, but she's smarter, too, and quick-thinking enough to use their shared complicity to do him in and put herself on top.

Was it her who said "nobody just gets to be prime minister" when Lois asked if the PM had stepped on anyone to get to the top?

Way back in the first episode

"Complex and interesting political paranoia, particularly the way the US military commander casually takes over the UK govt."

I thought this was just stupid. This was great telly, but it was so dark I think it was straining the limits of Who-world. I don't think you can really have a world with real-consequences sacrifice of your children and fathers slaughtering their families be the same world as has the Harriet Jones conception of politics in it. It's adult telly with adult themes, but still shot through this John Craven filter, and that's as uncomfortable as actually watching it with children would be.

Okay they just showed the first episode last night and WAU AWESOME

Not the end, apparently...

Question: Why did you think Jack/Barrowman would make a good leader/authority figure and is it just because you think he's got a nice arse?

I thank them for watching the show and I recommend they go watch Supernatural, because those boys are beautiful. And don’t tell me they’re brothers. Not in my mind.

O_o

lol is it really a surprise that RTD is a supernatural fan? that show is practically televised slash.

what makes me lol about this fairly low rent show is that it's all OH HAI WE ARE BASED IN CARDIFF DUE TO SCRIPT REASONS NOT DUE TO BBC ATTEMPTING TO BE NOT LONDON-CENTRIC HONEST. OH LOOK A SCI FI SHOW IS SET IN CARDIFF.

such bullshit, seriously in a year or two east enders will be set in salford as "north-east enders", people mocking pc is ludicrous but there needs to be a new tern for licence fee paronoia c

my friend used to get pissed with me calling stuff i generally thought was a bit corny or try-hard "gay". then, after having to sit through an episode of torchwood, he understood all too well.

you live and learn.

well, it's okay in the case of Torchwood since, well, the show DOES have a lot of gay stuff. calling things gay that have nothing to do with happiness or homosexuality is just lazy, man

BBC ATTEMPTING TO BE NOT LONDON-CENTRIC HONEST. OH LOOK A SCI FI SHOW IS SET IN CARDIFF.

Calm down. It's because it was created by a Welsh writer and producers at BBC Wales. Why does the Cardiff setting upset people so much? I really don't think there would be any such reaction if Torchwood was based in, say, Liverpool or Manchester.

im not welsh btw

sorry I was drunk, but yeah I work for the bbc and this stuff rankles. it's not specific to cardiff for me personally, more that the show is very ostentatious about its setting as is the promo, eg "the cardiff based team" in all the blurbs, and I can see bbc loving that. it doesn't feel like a part of the story that matters much. I mean most shows don't even specify a city setting do they?

Cardiff is where the RIFT is. It makes perfect sense.

most shows don't even specify a city setting do they?

Uh, what? I can't think of a programme not set in a specific city.

THE CITY OF TOWNSVILLE

come on boys! we're in the motherfucking space-police or some shit! woooo!

This fucking show. Wow.

I wonder if Jack is ever going to tell the Doctor about this.

3.19pm: The subject of Ianto comes up. Much boos. JB: "Remember it's the excitement.. we always said in the beginning, people die young in Torchwood. It's very sad but life has to go on. He was hot."

Oh Barrowman.

i felt like this was the end of Jack - there's no way his character can go back to being funsexytimes Captain Jack now.

oh but he can - this is his tragedy. ianto knows it, which makes their parting even sadder than it was before - jack really will go back to being his swashbuckling self (whether or not it is televised)

Haha yeah considering the Doctor obliterated his own race out of all time and space and still manages to have a good laugh I don't think the Jack thing is that much of a stretch.

ianto's sister was so awesome, i want to hang out w/her. the actress who plays her was so natural it was like she'd been zapped in from some other planet of slightly better acting

also Woman With No Name was possibly the most rubbish ultraefficient deadly assassin ever - she was always showing up late and even turned GOOD in the end pah

ianto's sister was so awesome, i want to hang out w/her. the actress who plays her was so natural it was like she'd been zapped in from some other planet of slightly better acting

Ha, Tracer, you've evidently never seen her in Not Going Out, where she manages to stand next to Tim Vine and Lee Mack and still look like she's been zapped in from some other planet of slightly worse comic delivery. She was awes in Torchwood though, yes.

Woman With No Name was supposed to be an amoral state servant rather than good or bad per se, surely? She was strangely hot as well I thought.

By Woman With No Name, do you mean her that was Resident Evil/Dead Set woman? Is she contractually obliged to just be hott around strange happenings?

Cor, have just checked this, and she used to go out with Charlie Brooker.

i wonder if he said "go away" at the end of their first date

definitely hot - but kind of weirdly so, partially because she had almost nothing to do or even say after the third episode

i have to say, the reason for the children was brilliant and horrible - truly the stuff of nightmares

there was a lot left unspoken in this - like the burning question, "why do you want the children?" you wonder what difference the answer would have made. i suppose if the 456 said "we are using them to create a breed of superdrugs that will render all disease on planet earth obsolete" then the politicians could imagine having a moral out, like "please, give us SOMETHING to help us feel better about ourselves!" in a way i wish it had been some noble reason. i guess that's the difference between pulp and high concept s.f. though and rtd is firmly in the former camp bless him.

Don't follow: can't high concept stuff be dark and horrible?

"what about our monkeys, will you take our monkeys? come on, the DNA similarities guarantee the same high"

stet i meant that both pulp and high-concept s.f. are both often about impossible choices but that pulp usually has a real villain to root against whereas HCSF makes the moral dimension an impossible choice as well. the choice confronting frobisher would have been even more insidious if the aliens had incredibly virtuous plans for these children - and i would have liked to see THAT play out, i must say. however we would have lost the great dirty thrill of hating these kiddie snorting maniacs so much

maybe their translators were broken and, instead of shooting up the children for fun, they were actually mood stabilizers, like alien Paxil or something

(it took several days of reflection before I realized that the blood explosion at the end was the child and not some rupture from the alien; ew)

oh fuck

gotcha, yeah that makes sense.

didn't get why the alien would randomly start going mental. Was it withdrawal?

I was half expecting the aliens were actually doing a moral test on humans--like, if they're willing to give into these demands/threats, they're not 'good' enough to join the interstellar pan-galactic utopia of many alien races or something. Kind of glad I was wrong, though.

haha, like that South Park episode from earlier this year?

http://www.avclub.com/articles/torchwood-coming-to-starz-next-year,41907/

hooray! ...for 2011

http://www.deadline.com/2011/04/the-u-s-torchwood-series-bigger-budget-bigger-stunts-more-sex/

aw yeah

The budgets are bigger, the stunts are more dangerous and the sexual chemistry is more explosive, he said, pointing to the opening scene in Season 4, which involves a helicopter.

amazing sentence. Please tell me Captain Jack fucks a helicopter.

He gets his chopper out.

The ads for this new one are everywhere.

this, damages, louie and futurama: basic cable rules, huh?

Critics have screeners, but I haven't read any reviews/responses. Is this one, heavily-serialized story?

supposedly, yes

The single review that I've read said the US gets its own special edit that's got way too much character/concept introduction and is therefore a bit dull for anyone who's seen previous episodes.

if it's made by Starz instead of the Beeb we might get the non-training-wheels version

this... was kind of dope

spent a good amount of time lolling at Mekhi being Mekhi

Yeah, good fun. Especially the Hard Boiled baby+guns bit. Is nobody else watching? I've seen very little mention of it anywhere tbh.

And what's the format this time round? I guess it's weekly rather than being nightly again. How many eps though?

just saw a commercial today

really want to see this

Wiki says 10 episodes. Surely that's going to be a bit of a stretch?

reese is still annoying as fuck

i don't know if i'll watch this until the whole thing is done, given torchwood's history of not being able to stick the landing. but i know jane espenson from buffy wrote on this season, which is usually a good sign.

sister posted this gif on tumblr to tempt me, gotta admit i find it pretty adorable:

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo2j8croWI1qke39ro1_500.gif

lots of great moments here for sure though--loved how they'd just goose the torchwood theme beeps a little bit, loved gwen putting ear muffs on baby, "who the hell are you people?"

bill pullman will always be the president of the usa for me, so seeing him as paedo rapist was weird

could see putting up w/this for 10 eps easy

hahaha yesssssssssss as i watched that i was like 'i know this is already a .gif' xp

this was basically terrible, but with a basic level of competence and polish that the Welsh S1 only imagined that it had

Pullman was interesting tho I don't think I can hack three eps to see where it goes, let alone ten

starts this thursday in the uk (9pm, opposite The Killing)

this was greeeeeat

you gotta roll your rrr's more like Gwen: gRRRRReeeet

grrrrrreeeeeeeeeeee-uht

wait that's geordie, carry on

I love how she say Rhys too: HHRRRRRRIIIS

I haven't seen this yet but I have missed gappy Gwen. Looking forward to it!

i liked it! i hope it gets more creepy and more silly, which are my favourite aspects of OG Torchwood (also my favourite aspects of Twin Peaks, X-Files, Lost, etc etc, so...)
gif of gwen with gun+baby is awesome! best bit of the ep imo

I'd forgotten how much I liked Gwen Cooper; she really is a fantastic character

how much you wanna bet Jack gets her baby killed, tho

I was thinking Rhys practically has an expiration date stamped on his forehead

basically I'm just looking forward to more Mekhi being Mekhi

i loved the scene where he, like, speed-hobbled out of his recovery room on crutches. it reminded me so much of children's hospital

I was thinking Rhys practically has an expiration date stamped on his forehead

― remy bean, Monday, July 11, 2011 1:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i've been thinking this from the first episode, though.

It annoyed me like crazy. Exposition-wood more like it. >:( Hope it'll smooth out with the next few eps.

Love seeing Gwen again. #girlcrush

sometime soon you will understand the pure joy of watching Mekhi Pfeifer hobble down a hallway Mekhi-ing all over the place

otmekhi

not enough silly sexytimez

sometime soon you will understand the pure joy of watching Mekhi Pfeifer hobble down a hallway Mekhi-ing all over the place

This was the only part I really enjoyed!

If they start ramping up the silly sexytimez I'm going to be annoyed, that's always been my least favorite part of Torchwood (except of course when Tosh did it)

I am over Jack, his shtick is becoming pretty tired. Gwen was awesome though.

tbh I think I was over Jack partway through season 1; I was always more about Gwen, Owen and Tosh and then season 2 happened ;_;

Jack did become interesting again at the end of Children of Earth, though; he's way better as a grim bastard than as a leering creepo.

I feel like they rely too much on the leering creepo angle for the lulz.

he's best as a broody, short-tempered, mercenary outsider type. the more the show delves into his tortured inner character, the less interesting he becomes. i like grumpy old man jack, not perpetual 15-year-old jack

his best scene in this first episode was when he was in the coroner's office with the burned body asking "what happens if you remove the head?"

more of that Jack, plz

You'd think since Rusty is King Of All Wales he'd remember the toll on the Severn Bridge was on the English side before you got on the bridge and not the Welsh side after you've crossed it.

in the Whoniverse, it's the other way around

omg, I just realized; this is Torchwood

are Jack and Mekhi gonna bone

oh jeez

omg, I just realized; this is Torchwood

300 would have been a much different movie with this as the tagline.

different...or BETTER

I dunno if I'm going to make it through this thing if this is how it's going to be. It's so damn explainy! And I don't care about 50 minor new characters. Its just so goddamn tiresome

Watching this show for the first time, watching the series 1 finale and came in here to say REESE NOOOOOO!

Also, why does everybody cry so much in this show? Also Owen is a jerk and I hate him.

Okay bye.

Owen became much more likeable once he died

^ spoiler!

I like Rhys. He's like the Rory Williams of Torchwood (ymmv on whether this is a good thing).

Okay if you didn't enjoy the plane ransacking and the showdown in the airport, you don't watch this show for the same reasons I do

also I love the female doctor

I miss the unshiny wonky shonkyness of British Torchwood; this is too slick and pretty. If it was new I would definitely think it was great, but this is like someone you've known for years getting their nose done.

really? i don't find it any slicker than full-british torchwood! maybe more wide shots and slightly better make-up and lighting, but it's not as slick as a lot of american tv anyway. or maybe just has a mid-2000s slickness...

He's like the Rory Williams of Torchwood (ymmv on whether this is a good thing).

The difference is Rhys is genuinely likeable.

^ spoiler! well, yes, but it happened 2 or 3 years ago!

Lyn, the broken-necked CIA agent, was really weird looking.

haha i know - the way her hair and make-up were done, i was ready for her to turn out to be a robot

http://www.endofshow.com/wp-content/uploads/dichenlookingrightatsomethingace.png

She was great in Aztec Rex

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/aztec.jpg
http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/7691/28l7thi.jpg

(Pretty sure they used a playstation2 for the CG in that movie)

Is there anyone still watching this? It's pretty dire, yet I feel obligated to see it through to the end now just to get an explanation for Miracle Day.

haven't seen it since the first ep

not worth doing?

Have to admit that this season is the first Torchwood I've seen even tho I have seen every Who on and off since Tom Baker, go figure.

My wife and I had major lols over the "we need to make EDTA on the plane" ep.

yeah it's a bit shit. way too many new characters you don't really give a crap for, and the evil pharmacy corporation bent on conquering the world thing has been done way better on just about a million other shows.

not feeling the US drama-style character development either (Esther has a paranoid, delusional sister, Rex has a deadbeat dad) - what I loved about og Torchwood was how it revelled in its misanthropy. Jack and Gwen aside, you didn't learn anything about any of the depressive, abrasive, characters' backstories until deep into season 2, which made them more compelling somehow.

also think this show worked better in the monster-of-the-week format with an overall arc, rather than as a straight up long-form serial.

I had almost the exact same opinion as Nicole over the weekend after watching Ep 3. It's just morbid curiosity at this point, I really can't get into it at all and it's not any good ultimately.

Yeah, just feels like a show with a lot more time on its hands than it needs. Like, the scene with bill pullman in the hospital lasted FOREVER, with him slowly delivering his meandering aimless monologue, when we'd all got the point 15 seconds in. And it's surprising, because for all his faults rusty is usually at leas a pretty good (and brutal) script editor. Maybe he's not getting final say on these or something? Or maybe he just didn't want to admit that what it needed was a four-episode long edit.

lol I am the only person on ILX genuinely enjoying this

No! I'm loving it so far. My only concern is with them stretching the one concept across 13 episodes, but if they continue to pull out a new and fascinating angle on the main premise every week it'll keep me hooked.

10 eps, not 13--I'm really enjoying it too, but it does need to be a bit shorter, I think.

I resent the hell out of it but for some reason am still watching

Personally I'm fascinated by this phenomenon whereby a TV show/film franchise/band/etc retains its name but changes significantly and the old audience can't carry on with it.

That's what I'm enjoying most about Torchwood now. Davies, Gardner and Tranter have taken this concept and (mainly out of necessity) thrust it into a whole new package. The very fact of it being so thoroughly different is sustaining my interest more than anything. If I want old Torchwood I'll watch old Torchwood.

Yeah, I'd agree wth that. Coupled with the extent to which Who has changed since Moffat took over. It's just really strange at this point to think of these shows as being in the same universe: the idea that Matt Smith might pop up in one of these episodes seems ridiculous.

Yeah, was thinking that myself. Are we meant to think that Eleven/Amy/Rory are away trying to sort this out a different way elsewhere, or have we totally split off from the Whoniverse now?

I'm quite enjoying it but not particularly as a series of Torchwood, just as a TV series in itself, if that makes sense?

i still haven't seen children of earth--i should seek that out, right?

Yes.

Are we meant to think that Eleven/Amy/Rory are away trying to sort this out a different way elsewhere, or have we totally split off from the Whoniverse now?

Well didn't the tardis tell the doctor that she always takes him where he's needed? So the fact he hasn't turned up to fix this just implies he's not needed, ie Torchwood will fix it ok themselves. Bit of a suspense killer, arguably. But yeah, I guess you could just set it up so the current tardis team are all just offworld for the duration, so they wouldn't ever need to know or worry about it.

All sorts of things I'm finding niggly. It feels both very sketchy and also clunky. Sketchy because although I don't mind odd incidents of being able to unfasten prisoner's restraints while walking through an airport, I do mind them constantly happening. Clunky because, well the pacing feels all wrong, sudden bursts of inutile energy, followed by inexplicable and morose fallow sections. Also, character opens door, jaw drops open, camera reveals warehouse full of stuff being stored in a warehouse.

But the thing that is really driving me nuts, more than anything, is the incidental music. I was watching an episode last night, and I suddenly realised some really annoying, nothingy 'tense' music had been wibbling on for ages. One thing that does continue in the modern Dr Who tradition at least.

Obviously I'm going to keep watching.

Murray fucking Gold.

The music round of University Challenge last night was all about Murray Gold :(

Yeah, that made me feel sick, and then I felt EVEN WORSE when I got 3 out of 4 right.

But the thing that is really driving me nuts, more than anything, is the incidental music. I was watching an episode last night, and I suddenly realised some really annoying, nothingy 'tense' music had been wibbling on for ages. One thing that does continue in the modern Dr Who tradition at least.

The music in the last episode was the most aggravating element of the show. I was surprised, because I don't think Murray Gold has been as annoying in seasons 5 & 6 of Doctor Who as he was here. The worst part was the medical beepy noises in the music whenever Rex was on screen, which I guess was supposed to be some musical cue to let us know he is badly injured? Weak.

this last one was ... bad

What? I loves this last one!

Although there was some plot thing that made me roll my eyes but holy hell I loved the moment when Rex stopped banging on the door and raised the camera.

ugh. this is fucking awful.

this was entertaining actually, which isn't really a good thing when its trying to be all dark holocaust imagery

guilty lols when hot doctor got shot.

Yeah, this wasn't as bad as some of the eps have been, still a lot of water treading though. Thing is, I actually quite like the team at this stage. If they all made it through the end of this series and ended up going back to an old fashioned monster-of-the-week format next year, that'd be pretty great.

You're still digging this, DJP? I just expect more from Jane Espenson. The first 45 minutes of this ep were limp and baggy, and Jack's lines came across to me really flat and affectless. The whole 'team building' schtick struck me as laughably bad, soap opera bad, and the standing around on the boardwalk in Venice Beach was kind of pointless. Also Rex pretending that he was a CODE ONE-er needing an ambulance and Jack claiming 'my silly boyfriend' or whatever was .... like high school production of Pippin level acting. The last 10 minutes ALMOST made up for the rest of the episode, but the rapture stuff was laid on so rich that I just...

Like, there was no structure or drama to the 1-3 acts.

I am strugglin b/c I really want to like this, but I keep wandering away from the TV to get granola bars and gummy bears and stuff, and that is not a good sign.

It's pretty dreadful. Run around, clutch chest, stare into space, cry, run around, sketchy police, hospital, government procedural, 'The President/Vatican/Government is silent on the issue'! - don't be absurd. welsh/american/english... jokes or whatever they are. Cheap studio/expensive location makes it look cheap but egregiously pointlessly expensive. 80s TV screen in car with a revolving wireframe triangle! phones phones phones, 'I'm bouncing the signal off the blah blah'. International news TV anchors. Often awful script, where it just sounds like each character is downloading info straight from writer's mind. As a consequence meaningless role playing nonsense version of character definition: 'Rex - you're the best tactician here'. Plus radio dialogue - hilarious bit where they get out of the car in California and Rex goes 'After driving 6,400 miles with you I never want to see your faces again' or something, and they all get out of car as if having being told 'Act as if you're getting out of the car after a long drive'.

Eye in crushed car brilliant though.

Will keep watching.

I don't think I've ever seen a real-life rally speech that didn't lay it on with a trowel so that didn't bother me, plus I really liked that Gaines totally went "okay Jack, I will say exactly what you want me to say but I will bend it to my own purposes". I think they are setting Jillian up for a massive fall in that she is connected to all of the dubious shit but doesn't seem clued into the main nefarious plot, so I am interested in seeing how that all plays out. Watching how totally unprepared and unsuited Vera was to infiltration work was great, particularly seeing where her escalating outrage and forgetting of her mission objectives landed her.

I thought that Gwen's botched rescue attempt worked insofar as she wasn't really thinking anything through; she just wanted to get her dad out of there, and the look on her face when she realized that not only had she made his condition worse, but she had consigned him to the Category 1 fate was great. The whole "terrible acting" thing with Rex and Jack when they were doing Rex's insertion was just funny to me, given that it was building on an antagonistic relationship between the two of them over Jack's sexuality mentioned in a previous episode AND it was characters acting for other characters. The actress playing Esther is doing an amazing job of being an insecure mess and it's totally within both Gwen's and Jack's character profiles to take her aside and encourage her, so nothing about the Venice Beach stroll bothered me.

I think the issue is w/ a lot of slack in the episodes: what's there isn't bad, but there's (to me) too much of nothing happening, and maybe the RTD-writes-American-English thing is striking my ear as kind of tinny, b/c I'm impatient w/ the lack of forward momentum and fixating on language stuff. The Gwen rescue was kind of neat, and Daines' speech was good, but the (will he read Jack's speech? will he read Gilly's speech?) tension of the 4th act could have been very effectively introduced at the very beginning of the episode, and suspended for dramatic purposes through the other stories, popping its head up every so often as an oh... look... OD is gonna do some crazy shit... hope/fear . It would've been an easy fix – in post, even – just reordering the scenes for narrative clarity, and enhancing the tautness of what I kind of thought was a slack narrative. Nevertheless, I'll be back next week w/ bells on.

I'm really beginning to get to the stage I don't think I can watch this any more. That was dreadful.

too much of nothing happening

It's getting to me too! Direly in need of a few swift swipes of the editor's pen.

what now though? Living ash? What can that do?

I feel like I'm watching a completely different show from the rest of you

either that or I like Mekhi Pfiffer a lot more than I thought I did

even if I can't spell his name

Mega Fluffer

He is ... not my favorite part of the show.

I feel like I'm watching a completely different show from the rest of you

I'm still enjoying it. The show in search of a concept finally has a concept and everyone hates it.

lol

Okay that was a pretty bad episode.

http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2011/08/torchwood-the-middle-man.html

Tom and Lorenzo have been knocking it out of the park in their Torchwood reviews.

I disagree with most of that.

Mekhi torture sequence was great

Gwen ending strained a lot of credibility but I excuse it because of how much of a bad-ass she was before that

Poor mostly ineffectual Esther

(will admit though that the point re: Torchwood ppl not having a lick of sense EXCEPT for Esther is a good one)

Fuck it, I am pulling the emergency brake. I am done, can't take it no more...

Well hold on, let's not forget that the original series was a hot mess except for half of season 2 and Children of Earth.

I do think the show has regressed somewhat but it's still better than it was in season 1. Also I love Lauren Ambrose.

(which btw, LA is 4 months older than Eve Myles! never would have guessed that)

I'm willing to accept that I might not have been paying attention but why did Gwen blow up that building?

xp dan 100% otm

I still haven't seen the entirety of that stupid alien fight club episode

You're lucky.

Dan's point is a good one, really. Series 1 was mostly awful.

I've got a dreadful feeling at the end of this is going to be Rusty's beaming face saying "that's what the Tea Party said healthcare would be like under Obama and by making a fictional story about it I have satirised it and shown how stupid it is DO YOU SEE?"

this miniseries is officially ridiculous imo. why is it dragging out like this? six fucking episodes already and what? when will it end?? i feel like never :/

it's like the show has adopted its own premise and despite all mortal wounds can never die

MIRACLE DAY — A Three-Part Story In Ten Parts

this is my favorite episode so far, except for the everybody crying in the car part

watching this now. they've been sitting in their boring room with their boring computers talking to each other explaining what's going on for an age. 'your turn to talk now - we'll all explain in turn to the viewer'.

bad things happen to them when they go outside

ah, you're right. they should have stayed in.

didn't mind this episode ultimately. the dramatic moments seemed to move things along rather than the mildly informative hysteria of previous episodes.

programmes on my tv need to stop doing that thing where people stand stock still at the end of a long corridor so as to lure other people in somewhere. If the actual scampering between the long static vistas were shown it would rightly appear absurd.

sigh

I miss the good old days of Torchwood way back when it was all about a really interesting event called "miracle day"

This was kind of dumb. Lots of diversion into nothing for a payoff that you could see coming in the first five minutes. (Respect for the torture sequence though, that was horrifying)

Searching: The Truth.

This week on Torchwood: We will sit around talking, and then we will run around shouting.

Seemed to be a lot about wrestling with a forming housing administrator who got nervous and shot someone. Also going back and forth with someone's dad.

It never goes anywhere and at the end of each episode you end up exactly where you started, it seems.

This week on Torchwood: We will sit around talking, and then we will run around shouting.

halol

Haha! I thought E7 was actually a pretty great hour of telly...but Dan's chosen this week to finally stop enjoying it?

It was a short story. They spent five (of 10) weeks building up ~the central premise~, then there was that episode of nothing happening and now a short story. A short story. I could have sworn Bill Pullman was in a pivotal role at some point.

haha! a short story about LOVE!

i liked this ep more than the past three or four or five eps

was that nana visitor at the end there? Kira Nerys from DS9? not listed on imdb but i'm pretty sure it was.

yep

This series has felt like a set of fan fic stories compiled together.

Don't really know why i'm still watching

Thanks koogs/autumn almanac, other half was racking his brain trying to think who it was and imdb wasn't coming up with the goods.

This is all getting way too meandering and ploddy now, but I'm determined to stick with it until the end.

This episode would have made sense and actually would have been pretty great/engaging in a season of self-contained stories with an overarching plot thread in the background that ramped up to the finale. In a serialized story over ten episodes, it was waaaaaaaaaaay too long of a diversion and not tied directly enough to the main plot as it was presented.

I am certain a bunch of the pieces introduced will be important, like the three guys who tried to buy Jack and whatever bombshell Angelo is going to drop on Jack before he manages to die, but infodumping all of that on us in the middle of a completely different story was stupid and no amount of admittedly awesome Jack torture was going to make up for that.

The annoying thing is that there could have been a stronger tie-in to the modern day story buy showing descendents of that original trio, or employees of theirs, working in threes and doing that three-way handshake, or having them find Angelo's name much earlier and dropping in some flashback scenes in earlier episodes to set up Angelo as Someone We Might Want To Know More About before doing an episode about him. As it stands, he got dropped on us out of left-field with little to no context and was pumped up as such a Big Fucking Deal that the episode ending was slightly less climactic than if the whole thing had ended with Gwen waking up on the plane back from Wales going "oh it was all a bad dream, I wonder if they have any peanuts?"

The episode in and of itself was competent; it just didn't belong in this story arc.

In a serialized story over ten episodes, it was waaaaaaaaaaay too long of a diversion and not tied directly enough to the main plot as it was presented.

I guess in a serialized story over ten episodes which is BORING and SLOW, having a diversion (especially an overlong one) just seemed like a good thing, to me.

I liked the scenes where Jack and Gwen planned to fuck each other over in the car. Feels like it's a setup to Gwen leaving at the end of this run, maybe?

all of the Jack/Gwen stuff was great because it felt relevant without being forced (by virtue of being directly tied to the events of the previous episode)

Sexy Time With Angelo was dumb because there was no launching pad for the story and no attempt to make it relevant to the overarching story until the last 5 seconds of the episode. It basically felt like "we were bummed that we never showed you Ianto's ass so here's a stand-in; oh btw here's an alien or some shit, who cares"

also introducing the plot elements into the previous episodes would have helped make them less BORING and SLOW

I liked that Jack was all "Oh hai Angelo" after letting him rot in prison for a year. He shouldn't have been surprised to be stabbed.

the two constants of Jack Harkness are:

1. Jack is a ferocious slut.
2. Jack is an incredible dick.

The show is always more interesting to me when it focuses on the latter, so it wasn't really surprising that I started engaging with the episode after Jack let his boy toy rot in jail for a year so that he could scare the shit out of him and then dump him.

what happens to people who drown post Miracle Day? Have the possibilities of dumping everyone in the oceans been fully explored?

btw can I just say that, based on the episodes so far and the promos for this week, I feel like they could have called this "Torchwood: Sticking Pointy Things Into Mekhi's Chest"

Didn't mind this too much.

All the stuff at the beginning reminds of 'In 1981, no one died. In 1982 someone died' from The Day Today, which is a little unfortunate.

Apart from everything being really badly done, and the light for the older sections looking horrid, I quite liked the idea of what a community would do to someone who couldn't die, and that by extension being relevant to what society would do to people en masse who couldn't die. Sanguinary sadism as social sickness. Heavy Christ/anti-christ tones made it feel quite kitsch, but again, that felt right. Terrible and penny dreadful melodramatic, but more interestingly terrible than previous episodes I thought.

All the stuff at the beginning reminds of 'In 1981, no one died. In 1982 someone died' from The Day Today, which is a little unfortunate.

lol me too.

Series reminded me of this book, but I'm sure the general idea is old as the hills:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-at-Intervals-Jose-Saramago/dp/1846550203

Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

or having them find Angelo's name much earlier and dropping in some flashback scenes in earlier episodes to set up Angelo as Someone We Might Want To Know More About before doing an episode about him. As it stands, he got dropped on us out of left-field with little to no context and was pumped up as such a Big Fucking Deal

So utterly otm. In the old days of on-the-fly production this would have been a mid-season "oh fuck we forgot to write an ending, quick, let's invent a NEW BLOKE and make him the criminal mastermind" but I can't think how it's justifiable in 2011.

Better. At least it's about miracle day. Still loads of fluff though.