iainjclark | Torchwood - "Small Worlds"

Well, blow me if that wasn't a decent episode of Torchwood. Maybe miracles do happen.

Okay, so there were still some over-sold moments, the music was awful and John Barrowman *really* can't do the range of emotions required for the role, but overall this successfully focused on mood and storytelling over cliched character-conflict for its own sake. The CGI was a bit on the cartoonish side but the design of the creatures worked well, and for once they took some darker plot decisions without it feeling overly forced.

The preceding episodes tried much harder than this one, without being anything like as effective. In fact the whole episode only served to highlight the vast gulf that separates making vaguely mature genre television from whatever the hell Torchwood has been doing over the past several weeks. (Largely standing around shouting "Look at me, aren't I Gritty, Sexy and Dark?")

Sadly next week's episode comes to you from the writer of "Cyberwoman" so I don't expect this to become a trend.

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This episode was certainly a great improvement over the last four, but I still wouldn't go so far as to call it good. There were some decent ingredients (although lyth is right to say that there was essentially no story - the characters were there to witness events, not affect them), but the execution was embarrassingly bad. The acting was almost uniformly terrible (the kid who played Jasmine gives the little girl from "Fear Her" a run for her money in the Worst Child Actor category), the effects were laughable, and the direction was sloppy.

Also, it's nice to know that the Torchwood writers' definition of 'pansexual' is 'will shag anyone conventionally good looking so long as they're within an acceptable age bracket.' The real Jack Harkness would have picked up where he and Estelle left off.

I think there was the germ here of a genuinely great episode of... something else. (Janet reckons it was very X-Files, and Jack certainly got to spout a lot of Mulderbabble.) The times when it really worked were the times when I could glimpse that shining platonic ideal of an episode between the cracks in this one.

I didn't find the effects laughable - I thought they were quite evocative in the context of the story - but they definitely had a regrettably cartoonish quality. The episode needed something more photorealistic.

And yes, Jack is entirely open to flirting with anything that moves, as long as it's a good looking woman. In fact he's been even more sexually conventional on this show than he was on Doctor Who. I kept waiting for him to kiss Estelle on the lips - something that would even hint in that direction. But no.

I didn't find the effects laughable - I thought they were quite evocative in the context of the story - but they definitely had a regrettably cartoonish quality

I wasn't talking about the CGI fairies, actually - I agree that they were decent enough. What was laughable were the practical effects - the wind and rain and the petals pouring out of peoples' mouths. In none of these cases did I believe that the characters were in actual danger (Estelle in particular seemed to just lie down and die, not drown).

Estelle in particular seemed to just lie down and die, not drown

I blame the actress - potentially it was a great part but she just wasn't very good.

The actress may also be at fault, but she can't be held responsible for the fact that the effects didn't reflect the scene's premise. She was supposed to be drowning on dry land, and what she was being pelted with was barely a heavy shower.

The petals in the mouth thing I liked. I can't say the execution looked wrong to me.

Likewise the water was certainly not heavy enough to drown someone - even someone as frail as the old lady - but it was pretty heavy. It could easily have continued to worsen between our last glimpse of it and the team's arrival.

Oh, I disagree -- I liked her, and I thought she managed to put some life into her scenes with Jack. It was the production that let down that scene.

TBH the scenes with Jack were the only time the character came alive. The rest of the time I felt she was a bit wooden. A good actor can sell you a scene, regardless of the production values.

" (Janet reckons it was very X-Files,"

I was going to say exactly that. This episode was functionally and episode of the X Files. Jack was very Mulder, and Eve was very Scully...

"I kept waiting for him to kiss Estelle on the lips - something that would even hint in that direction. But no."

I agree with your points about his sexuality; but I can accept that he didn't do that, on the basis that it would have broken his version of his story. To Estelle, he was after all, Jack's son.

The real Jack Harkness would have picked up where he and Estelle left off.

I dunno; as

ajp suggests downthread, I got the impression that he would have loved to, but didn't because he knew he was immortal and she wasn't. (Which never actually holds up as a logical reason not to get involved, but is at least established by convention ...)

Or indeed upthread, given where the comment actually ended up.

Torchwood - "Small Worlds"

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