Television

[iainjclark]

My wife's verdict on tonight's Torchwood: "What a load of tosh!" My wife's verdict on this weeks Veronica Mars: "When's the next episode?". She is, as always, most wise.

I don't know where to start with this week's Torchwood, a delicate blend of the ludicrous, the tasteless, the overwrought, and the morally confused. The design of the part-converted woman seemed unlikely to say the least, resembling nothing so much as anime-inspired cyber-lingerie. As my wife notes, quite why it was quicker to convert an entire body instead of surgically plonking the brain into a pre-built housing as they'd done every time previously is anyone's guess. Also, surely all the Cybermen, part-converted or otherwise, would have been sucked through the dimensional rift - unless Ianto had a very good grip on her garter. (Or, conversely, none of the newly-converted Cybermen from our dimension should have been sucked through at all since they hadn't passed through the rift in the first place. You can't have it both ways.) Ianto this week went from non-entity to actiuvely unlikeable in about thirty seconds, which must be some kind of record. I can't help but wonder if the best way to introduce him as a significant character is to have him be weak-willed, sobbing, morally dubious and insubordinate, then show no remorse about it. The Bride of Frankenstein finale was bathetic to say the least, and he didn't even dignify himself by helping to resolve the problem.

Then there's all the little things that rankle. How exactly do you sneak a huge bit of machinery and a cyberwoman into a high security installation in central Cardiff? How much more insubordinate are the entirely screwed-up staff of Torchwood going to be allowed to be? What in god's name was the kiss between Owen and Gwen supposed to be about? How many more serious crimes will the team be allowed to commit? Will any of them ever become likeable? Where does Ianto get off covering up a murder then calling his boss a monster? Does swearing make your TV show seem less adolescent? If enough people tell us that Captain Jack is gritty and tortured will that make it true? Is it really safe to let that Pterodactyl fly around over their heads? What if someone spills the sauce? How many more pizza delivery people will learn of the existence of a top secret installation?

Tune in next week when none of these questions will be answered. Or asked.

Meanwhile Veronica Mars is having a superlative season so far. Five hugely enjoyable, pithy episodes to date, all with interesting, surprising storylines, likeable recurring characters and a steady running thread in the background. It's not as good as Season 1 in concept because you can't really beat the noirish darkness of the Lily Kane murder, but for sheer consistency and sense of direction it's superior to Season 2 (so far at least).

Comments

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

The tragic thing is, it was still the best episode Torchwood has had so far. It's a car crash of a show. I'm not really one of the people who've ever thought RTD was a genius, but if he seriously thinks Torchwood is decent TV then he's categorically lost it. For self-conciously 'brave' television, it's amazingly gutless.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I did think it was (sadly) the best episode they'd done, but on reflection I preferred last week's wildly uneven effort. Next week's is written by the creator of Sapphire and Steel so the eternal optimist in me rises once more to the surface for a final gulp of air.

[fba.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is an awful show - but it is very flawed in execution. There are some nice ideas (I much prefer actually converted cybermen rather than the brain in a robot idea that RTD came up with to santise the concept) and I *really* like that much of the Torchwood crew are deeply dislikeable but somehow the transfer from page to screen ends up a little clunky.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I like the fact that they're unlikeable, yes - to a point. But the fact that so many of them are insufferably selfish, compounded by the fact that they appear to have no real moral compass, means that it's hard to engage with the show. I could cope with the fact each of them idiotically flouts the rules on a weekly basis, with dire consequences, if there was even a semblance of discipline there in the first place. If they were basically good people with flaws, not bad people who occasionally have virtues.

As Janet says, at this point it feels as if the world needs protecting from Torchwood, not aliens.

[fba.livejournal.com]

Torchwood is not a nice organisation - this has been well established (TCI, AoG/D) - I don't think anyone should be surprised that their staff are rather lacking in a sense of right and wrong. I suspect what will happen is that Jack's experiment with Gwen (i.e. bringing a real world angle to the unreality of Torchwood) will ultimately fail. The only reason that Jack is still on Earth and latched onto Torchwood is to find The Doctor... First sign of the TARDIS and Jack will be off...

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

The saddest thing about this week's Torchwood is that I think there might have once been the bones of a good idea here. I think the original concept might have been to stretch the Sally the Cyberwoman scene from "The Age of Steel" into a full episode, this time with someone determined to save the converted human rather than euthanizing her as the Doctor did.

Clearly, doing away with the chrome bikini would only have solved some of the episode's problems (and there would still be the question of how the Cyberwoman had avoided getting sucked into the rift), but at least the premise wouldn't have been so completely laughable.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

There were actually a few good things this week - like trying to return to the original concept of the Cybermen as whole body conversions - but really it failed on so many levels that all I can salvage is the sheer gung-ho insanity of Pterodactyl versus Cyberman.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

We've given up on Torchwood completely. DH declared that "I won't be watching any more of that" after seeing the third episode. I didn't get that far.
Janet is as rightheaded as ever about VM.

This is my third in at posting this. If it doesn't work this time, I'm going to cry.

[fba.livejournal.com]

I have no desire to watch VM as every trailer I see makes me want to slap her for being irritatingly smug.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

It took me a while to warm to her in Season 1, but now I'm completely on-board with the Veronica-love. She's not smug, she's snarky. It's entirely different. :-)

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

The great thing about Veronica is that she's a much more flawed, human character than, frex, Buffy (or indeed any of the Scoobies). She fucks up frequently, she makes mistakes, jumps to conclusions, is distrustful and suspicious and all that stuff. And as Iain says, what looks like smugness is often snarkiness. It's her failings that make her bearable - there's no way I'd be able to watch the show if she was just shiny smug blonde girl.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Yes, the fact that she's a long way from perfect helps, as does the fact that the world generally craps on her from a great height. Much of her snark is really just a prickly cocoon of self-reliance that she's developed as a defence.

I'm enjoying this season because it feels as if the show has come into focus. The dialogue is sharp in that way that early Buffy was sharply written, and the individual episodes are distinctive in themselves while forming part of a greater whole. It feels crisp.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Janet: "I'm rightheaded!" :-)

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Well duh :-p

And just how many variations on that icon do you have?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Lots!

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

*checks your userpics*

Blimey, you're not kidding, are you?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I, er, may have a userpic problem. *sniff*

I decided that my TV icons were getting a bit all over the place and didn't really look like they belonged to me, so a bit of standardisation was in order. Plus the addition of a healthy portion of our cat jumping off the telly. Then it all got out of hand...

[parma-violets.livejournal.com]

I hold the record among my friends for not even making it to the end of episode one of Torchwood - though I have the third one on tape, and there's a part of me that wants to see this new Tits Out Cyberwomen Go Predictably Wild one, just to see how it can be so bad that even people on my flist who considered the opening episode a TV masterpiece can hate it.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you wrote that; now I don't have to.

As I already said elsewhere, I think this week's Torchwood was the most comprehensively inept piece of television I've seen since, ooh, "Provider". Previous episodes at least had a vague degree of coherence; this was apparently made by monkeys. Blind and deaf monkeys. With no thumbs.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Blind and deaf monkeys. With no thumbs.

Okay that's just wrong. I mean, what's going to happen to the disabled monkeys when the show gets cancelled?