Torchwood MD 1-5
Sep. 11th, 2013 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthOkay, so I’m finally getting around to watching Torchwood: Miracle Day (I know, I’m only a couple years late) but I think I need to say something about it.
(BTW, if y’all aren’t watching sfdebries he’s now reviewing MD which was what prompted this. He’s also just really funny and thoughtful with his reviews all around.)
**Spoilers through Ep 5
In a lot of ways I’m quite liking this. Well...not liking exactly; certainly enjoying woud be the wrong word, but I’m definitely engaged in it. It’s bleak as shit and awful on an epic scale.
But first problem, most of the new characters are kind of...not very good. Rex is beyond annoying; I want to like Esther but keep not being able to; and Vera...well Vera was okay but outside of saying ‘it’s Torchwood, someone has to be having lots of sex,’ I could not figure out why she kept putting up with Rex and now she’s dead anyway. Oswald of course is awful, but he’s supposed to be so its biggest flaw is that I don’t really get how he fits in things yet, maybe that will become clear though.
Second problem, this just doesn’t work for me in the context of the Doctor Who universe. You expect me to believe that Dr. Martha Jones, UNIT agent and/or freelance alien hunter isn’t all over this? Where IS UNIT in all this? Why isn’t Sarah Jane (and yes I went and checked the dates, this was before that show ended) investigating the crap out of this? I’ll give you that the Noble clan is likely keeping their heads down, but *maybe* fanwank that Martha wouldn’t have speed-dialed the Doctor on day 1 because his goodbye tour indicated the her that he wasn’t going to take them anymore but even that’s a stretch after Eleven showed up stuff on the SJA. What happened to the network Harriet Jones had set up to keep the companions in contact when the world was in trouble? And is there anything in s6 of DW to indicate this happened in the same universe?
Yes CoE begged some of the same questions, but that took place over five days (barring the epilog), this has been going on for at least a couple weeks already and I find this to be a lot farther reaching that CoE. CoE was the kind of alien invasion story the DW-verse has told repeatedly, just one where Ten was off being emo and didn’t step in to stop things from going to hell. This...yes there’s still half the season to go but it’s about changing the world not just threatening it at this point.
Another side of the problem of why it feels like it doesn’t fit into DW verse is that aside from a couple mentions early on it feels like none of those other stories have happened. People aren’t jumping on the idea of alien involvement in what’s happened when they really should be at this point. There should be people terrified by this somehow weakening us as the first stage of a bigger plan because people in the DW universe have been through crazy shit before. Why aren’t there people speculating that this is somehow connected to the ghosts a few years earlier?
For all its problems fitting into the DW verse, it also doesn’t work as a stand alone story. Jack and Gwen are only really interesting because we already know them and care about them. MD hasn’t done a lot to make them pop without their backstory. To be fair, Jack is pretty boring so far even with the backstory. So far I don’t really see a reason to have made Jack mortal, they haven’t really done anything with it outside of using it to pad out ep 2, and without knowing what’s actually happening here it’s hard to see it as anything but a random plot thread. And I say that as someone who has never liked Jack being fully immortal. Anyway, if you were coming to this as an American who hadn’t watched the show before I can see the situation being interesting but the characters just don’t offer a lot. Gwen comes the closest, and so Gwen takes the final step from being my least favorite character in season 1 to my favorite in season 4, congrats Gwen.
Problem three, it’s just kind of hard to watch. It’s like they good the horrible implications of some of the CoE stuff and blew it up way bigger. That got hard to watch too, but feel like th writing was done more carefully in s3. It’s pretty viscerally Do Not Want to a lot of what’s going on, and at this point it’s hard to see it coming around to any sort of end where it’s...okay again. Again, in CoE most of the horrible things didn’t actually happen; the end was bad and tragic but they prevented way worse endings to the situation. Maybe the politicians who went along with it got their comeuppance, and even though they probably didn’t, in the end they were only guilty of attempting awful things in secret backroom meeting; here they’ve done them and people know they’re doing them and yet somehow the world is going to just go back to thinking this never happened in the end (assuming I guess, but since DW and the SJA continued after this it would seem the world went on)?
I’ll probably have to write up another review when I’m finished and know what the rest of the story does with the idea. The problems so far are pretty big, but not quite enough to make me dislike it. I’m not sure I really needed to watch it, but I guess I’ve always meant to at some point so it might as well be now. I do suspect that afterward I’m going to have to watch something ultra light-hearted and cute though.
(BTW, if y’all aren’t watching sfdebries he’s now reviewing MD which was what prompted this. He’s also just really funny and thoughtful with his reviews all around.)
**Spoilers through Ep 5
In a lot of ways I’m quite liking this. Well...not liking exactly; certainly enjoying woud be the wrong word, but I’m definitely engaged in it. It’s bleak as shit and awful on an epic scale.
But first problem, most of the new characters are kind of...not very good. Rex is beyond annoying; I want to like Esther but keep not being able to; and Vera...well Vera was okay but outside of saying ‘it’s Torchwood, someone has to be having lots of sex,’ I could not figure out why she kept putting up with Rex and now she’s dead anyway. Oswald of course is awful, but he’s supposed to be so its biggest flaw is that I don’t really get how he fits in things yet, maybe that will become clear though.
Second problem, this just doesn’t work for me in the context of the Doctor Who universe. You expect me to believe that Dr. Martha Jones, UNIT agent and/or freelance alien hunter isn’t all over this? Where IS UNIT in all this? Why isn’t Sarah Jane (and yes I went and checked the dates, this was before that show ended) investigating the crap out of this? I’ll give you that the Noble clan is likely keeping their heads down, but *maybe* fanwank that Martha wouldn’t have speed-dialed the Doctor on day 1 because his goodbye tour indicated the her that he wasn’t going to take them anymore but even that’s a stretch after Eleven showed up stuff on the SJA. What happened to the network Harriet Jones had set up to keep the companions in contact when the world was in trouble? And is there anything in s6 of DW to indicate this happened in the same universe?
Yes CoE begged some of the same questions, but that took place over five days (barring the epilog), this has been going on for at least a couple weeks already and I find this to be a lot farther reaching that CoE. CoE was the kind of alien invasion story the DW-verse has told repeatedly, just one where Ten was off being emo and didn’t step in to stop things from going to hell. This...yes there’s still half the season to go but it’s about changing the world not just threatening it at this point.
Another side of the problem of why it feels like it doesn’t fit into DW verse is that aside from a couple mentions early on it feels like none of those other stories have happened. People aren’t jumping on the idea of alien involvement in what’s happened when they really should be at this point. There should be people terrified by this somehow weakening us as the first stage of a bigger plan because people in the DW universe have been through crazy shit before. Why aren’t there people speculating that this is somehow connected to the ghosts a few years earlier?
For all its problems fitting into the DW verse, it also doesn’t work as a stand alone story. Jack and Gwen are only really interesting because we already know them and care about them. MD hasn’t done a lot to make them pop without their backstory. To be fair, Jack is pretty boring so far even with the backstory. So far I don’t really see a reason to have made Jack mortal, they haven’t really done anything with it outside of using it to pad out ep 2, and without knowing what’s actually happening here it’s hard to see it as anything but a random plot thread. And I say that as someone who has never liked Jack being fully immortal. Anyway, if you were coming to this as an American who hadn’t watched the show before I can see the situation being interesting but the characters just don’t offer a lot. Gwen comes the closest, and so Gwen takes the final step from being my least favorite character in season 1 to my favorite in season 4, congrats Gwen.
Problem three, it’s just kind of hard to watch. It’s like they good the horrible implications of some of the CoE stuff and blew it up way bigger. That got hard to watch too, but feel like th writing was done more carefully in s3. It’s pretty viscerally Do Not Want to a lot of what’s going on, and at this point it’s hard to see it coming around to any sort of end where it’s...okay again. Again, in CoE most of the horrible things didn’t actually happen; the end was bad and tragic but they prevented way worse endings to the situation. Maybe the politicians who went along with it got their comeuppance, and even though they probably didn’t, in the end they were only guilty of attempting awful things in secret backroom meeting; here they’ve done them and people know they’re doing them and yet somehow the world is going to just go back to thinking this never happened in the end (assuming I guess, but since DW and the SJA continued after this it would seem the world went on)?
I’ll probably have to write up another review when I’m finished and know what the rest of the story does with the idea. The problems so far are pretty big, but not quite enough to make me dislike it. I’m not sure I really needed to watch it, but I guess I’ve always meant to at some point so it might as well be now. I do suspect that afterward I’m going to have to watch something ultra light-hearted and cute though.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 04:11 am (UTC)It's a damn shame it got so ridiculous. I remember feeling SUCH squee afer the first ep, and then just ever increasing disappointment.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 11:04 pm (UTC)Ridiculous is a good word for it though. If it hadn't gotten quite so overblown it could have been pretty fantastic, but it kind of drowned in it's own ridiculousness after a while.