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kribuI'm noticing I'm not very good with subjects. *points above* Meh.
Anyway, Torchwood. No spoilers, but I have to wonder why they didn't call the show Angel in Cardiff or something like that. Apart from because it doesn't have a vampire called Angel, and there's more sunlight, and people speak with a Welsh accent, but hm... RTD seems to be a Joss Whedon fan, yes. (And I know this comment is highly unoriginal, but I can hardly be faulted for arriving at the same thought independently when viewing the first episode that probably half the people who watched it arrived at as well, can I?)
I must say I preferred the first episode to the second, but as a whole, I rather like it. (It's a good thing I liked Angel, I suppose!) Definitely enjoyed both episodes (yes, even the second) more than the second series of the mother show... well, good new Doctor Who has still been better than this so far, but then, it has only been two episodes - I'm sure the best of Torchwood is yet to come. Plenty there to intrigue, and I like the characters (hm, not sure I like Owen, but for a creep, he's so far been interesting too.) Interesting to see how things are in the new Who universe though... I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that Rose was often more central to Who than the Doctor, and in the first two episodes, Gwen has absolutely been more important to Torchwood than Jack, although I certainly expected a Jack show. (I assume it will shift slightly, but it's pretty obvious Gwen and Jack will be the "main" characters and the others have a more supporting role.)
In other musings, whose bloody brilliant idea was it to give the tram lane over to cars as well? I spent one and a half hours on getting home from work today, and that's all in various forms of transport, that was (supposedly) moving. The tram's great from Kalev to Kosmos, and then from Kosmos the cars get to share the lane, and it took half an hour (yes, 30 minutes) from Kosmos to Viru... two stops. Bleh. It would have taken me less to walk that distance, except it was raining too hard and I still wanted to get a bit further. Maybe I should just take the bus from work straight to home, but then it's being stuck in traffic not just between Kosmos and Viru but between work and Kadriorg, and that thought is not that much more pleasant really.
Anyway, Torchwood. No spoilers, but I have to wonder why they didn't call the show Angel in Cardiff or something like that. Apart from because it doesn't have a vampire called Angel, and there's more sunlight, and people speak with a Welsh accent, but hm... RTD seems to be a Joss Whedon fan, yes. (And I know this comment is highly unoriginal, but I can hardly be faulted for arriving at the same thought independently when viewing the first episode that probably half the people who watched it arrived at as well, can I?)
I must say I preferred the first episode to the second, but as a whole, I rather like it. (It's a good thing I liked Angel, I suppose!) Definitely enjoyed both episodes (yes, even the second) more than the second series of the mother show... well, good new Doctor Who has still been better than this so far, but then, it has only been two episodes - I'm sure the best of Torchwood is yet to come. Plenty there to intrigue, and I like the characters (hm, not sure I like Owen, but for a creep, he's so far been interesting too.) Interesting to see how things are in the new Who universe though... I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that Rose was often more central to Who than the Doctor, and in the first two episodes, Gwen has absolutely been more important to Torchwood than Jack, although I certainly expected a Jack show. (I assume it will shift slightly, but it's pretty obvious Gwen and Jack will be the "main" characters and the others have a more supporting role.)
In other musings, whose bloody brilliant idea was it to give the tram lane over to cars as well? I spent one and a half hours on getting home from work today, and that's all in various forms of transport, that was (supposedly) moving. The tram's great from Kalev to Kosmos, and then from Kosmos the cars get to share the lane, and it took half an hour (yes, 30 minutes) from Kosmos to Viru... two stops. Bleh. It would have taken me less to walk that distance, except it was raining too hard and I still wanted to get a bit further. Maybe I should just take the bus from work straight to home, but then it's being stuck in traffic not just between Kosmos and Viru but between work and Kadriorg, and that thought is not that much more pleasant really.
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no subject
Date: 25 October 2006 09:35 (UTC).
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.
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Very mixed feelings about Torchwood here. I'm very glad I'm not a critic - if I was, I think I'd have to discard it as utter rubbish for now :D .. luckily, I'm no critic and can try to find good things about it. Though that for me is mostly trying to see things that might be okay with time.
The bad ..
* Firstly .. I feel a bit cheated, as RTD really shouldn't have to be this cheap. In his own words, from an interview ...
"I first had the idea for the series while I was working on Casanova three or four years ago, before Doctor Who was even mentioned," said Davies. "I'd been watching shows like Buffy and Angel, and I'd said to [Torchwood executive producer] Julie Gardner - 'why don't we make a series like that?'"
.. gee, nice US TV channel boss thinking there. "This stuff is great. I want one of those too!"
While I know that every piece of art back to the antique of course has its inspirations that come from here and there, and that nothing is truely original .. there is a difference between being inspired by something and trying to emulate something. I'm not sure I would say rip off, as RTD doesn't exactly make a secret of his admiration for Joss Whedon's work.
Trying to emulate *both* the feel of the show and plot lines - quite directly (doesn't help that I've seen the first half of season one of Angel three times --> know it by heart basically) - just feels cheap to me. None of the points is truely unique to Angel as a show, but the sheer mass of them .. eck, I'd rather watch respective Angel episodes for a fourth time.
* Jack - he just doesn't seem to work in this series. I'm not yet sure if it's that the writing hasn't suited him or that he just doesn't work as well with the cast as he did with Eccleston and Piper .. but he just doesn't fit in at all.
* "Adult themes" - no problem there in principle, but I think they've kind of mixed up "adult" with "things kids shouldn't know about" at times. The message that date rape is cool and fun wasn't a very adult way to deal with that topic IMHO. Just having "juicy" topics on the show doesn't automatically make it adult, it just makes it non-kid-friendly.
This especially bugged me in the second episode. It didn't help that the plot was quite directly picked off the second episode of Angel (yes, I know, other shows have done similar plots before Angel .. but having an alien parasite murdering people by sex in nightclubs as the centre of the second episode to show the edgyness of the series is a bit .. direct) - which unlike Torchwood actually managed to make its point through that episode, as they actually handled mature content in a mature way. So much of the episode to me just seemed like .. "loook! loooook here! edge!! edge!! We can do edgy stuff!!".
Some of it actually fit in the moment .. but when thinking about it afterwards, it did make me go .. "hey, wait a minute".
Like the whole "woa, two chicks kissing!" thingy. Okay .. adolescent as I am ;) .. it was the predictable reaction.
But hello? Professionals, guarding a killer that kills through sexual contact? Wouldn't one think that SOMEONE there over the age of 13 would .. like .. freak out a bit on side too?
I'm not sure about the security wanker :D .. it depends on what the narrative was meant to be. The way it seemed to me, he was *telling* them about this. Which just didn't make much sense to me. Though it's quite possible we were being treasured with this nice piece of information that the Torchwood crew wasn't treasured with :D
*cheap feel - I don't know what it is about the show, but something about it makes it all just feel awfully cheap. Like it was shot on the kind of film they make soap operas on or something. Really not sure. Definitely something that didn't bug me about the new (or old, for that matter) Doctor Who though.
*reply too long - bugger*
no subject
Date: 25 October 2006 09:48 (UTC)Hey, it's shot in high-definition video. It's, like, ultra-modern and cool and probably takes up two thirds of the budget. ;-)
Speaking of the budget, considering it's a relatively niche show made by/for BBC3, I doubt it has anything comparable even to new Who in money matters, let alone US shows. Which might account for the cheap feel (which I personally didn't feel, but I never do in those matters - heck, seasons 7-11 of old Who seemed lush and rich and very realistic to me).
I absolutely agree about Jack though. Yes, he's pretty to look at, but Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who was a LOT more than just being pretty to look at, even if he wasn't the deepest character ever.
It would be nice if he was given... oh, I dunno, how about something, anything at all, to actually do in this show. I actually rather like Gwen, so I don't mind that she gets to be main character (so far), but even the rest of the crew - heck, even Gwen's old police partner as well as Gwen's boyfriend, with what, five minutes of screentime each, or less - have come across a lot more *real* characters than Jack has so far.
no subject
Date: 25 October 2006 09:35 (UTC)* The rift. I was hoping that they would use it sort of as a vertex, a place where various aliens pass through and the such .. with a touch of Men in Black. In Cardiff.
.. instead, it seems quite obvious just what the rift will be for the show: The hellmouth. What with us only getting rubbish here. Blegh.
*post too long - bugger*
... the good:
* The characters seem likable enough - even the date rapist, not sure how I should feel about being told to "like" a date rapist ("like" in the Gene Hunt way. He's a prick - duh ;-) ). There should be potential to make SOMETHING of it all.
Plus, I think they cast prettier female cast members than they did with male cast members - nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh ;) :D .. my GOD Owen is butt-faced :D
* Though my respect for RTD has boundaries (well .. on this kind of show. I do think he does character drama quite well .. but he's an absolutely rubbish Sci-Fi writer IMHO) .. I do think he has a good taste in other writers. I'm hoping that some of the coming episodes will suffer less from the things that bugged me about the first two episodes. Especially as the writing staff seems quite big, there should be some variety there.
And the hopes:
* Oh please, please, please let Steven Moffat take over this show next year. I'm quite sure he'd make it absolutely awesome - it so seems like his kind of thing. A good cast, Jack as a main character - and we know how well he can handle Jack, very strong focus on adult themes AND Sci-Fi themes .. all things that he can handle SO much better than RTD can IMHO.
* Two of the upcoming episodes seem so identical to Buffyverse episodes that when replacing "Torchwood" with "Angel Investigations" or "The Scooby Gang" .. and "the rift" with "the hellmouth" .. they not only seem like episode summaries of existing episodes, they ARE summaries of existing episodes. I do hope that similar premises will not mean similar execution.
no subject
Date: 26 October 2006 10:50 (UTC)I liked the characters for the most part. I really like Gwen - I think she and Jack have an intersting rapport. I wasn't quite as convinced by Jack though, I must say. I liked him in Doctor Who, and he fit in really well with the Ninth Doctor and Rose, but it seems like he still needs to find his footing in his own show (or at least that's how it seems to me). I'm not sure how good he is when it comes to the more emotional stuff. I do like the fact that even the others at Torchwood have no idea where he's from etc - I like the scene where they all start pumping Gwen for info. As it stands now, Gwen is the newbie and yet she seems to know Jack more than the others.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that Rose was often more central to Who than the Doctor, and in the first two episodes, Gwen has absolutely been more important to Torchwood than Jack, although I certainly expected a Jack show.
That was my impression too. In a way the first episode was similar to "Rose" - the audience learns about Torchwood through her point of view, just as we meet the Doctor through Rose.
I'm curious how the various relationships of the ensemble are going to turn out.
Hmm - this ended up a bit more rambly and incoherrent than I expected. Need new brain ...
no subject
Date: 26 October 2006 11:44 (UTC)Yeah... that's the way I feel about it too.
It's standing at about the same level for me right now as Lost or BSG right now, i.e. certainly interesting and entertaining enough, and definitely enough to keep watching, but not making the kind of impression either of those shows did in their first season. (And neither of them made the kind of impression that Buffy or Doctor Who or B5 for example did for me, leading me to search out fandom, getting into spin-offs in other media, etc.)
The nice thing is that the characters (even Owen in his yucky creepy deeply disgusting way) all look interesting and promising enough, which is always a good thing for a show to build on - one can be sure that even if some particular single episode/story isn't all that great, having a good team of characters there is often just the thing that still makes it worthwhile to keep watching.
As for Jack, I really do hope that him being sort of left hanging around is just a beginning thing and the writers *will* figure out what to do with him in upcoming episodes. He was far too good a character in Who to be virtually ignored the way he was in the first two Torchwood episodes. I think John Barrowman's decent enough as an actor, certainly more than just a pretty face, even if he maybe isn't the greatest character actor ever, so I'd certainly blame the writers at this point for Jack coming off so... almost ineffectual and bland, instead of cool and mysterious, which, I assume, must have been the actual intent. (Also, based on those two episodes, I don't think Barrowman has the on-screen physical presence to carry the character when he's not given anything to work with, but then, not that many actors do, and that's more a physical thing than a skill, IMHO. It is something that writers/producers ought to realise though.)