another fix: TW 1-07 greeks bearing gifts
Jul. 3rd, 2007 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThree words wind me up about this episode: Evil, insane, dead.
There's also the issue where the writing doesn't actually lead to the ending and it's all a bit crap because of that.
But I think I can keep almost all of it and it still not be crap by the end.
There's assorted oddness introduced by the fact that the final cut obviously rearranged scenes compared to the script they filmed from, as can be observed by the frequent and illogical changes of clothes. But I ignore that. If they'd had things in that order from the start the clothes would match and it would all be peachy.
So: How to fix Evil, Insane, Dead, and rather disconnected.
Give Mary a Motive.
This seems like it should be obvious, but apparently "she's wicked and evil and steals hearts" seemed adequate to enough people it got on our TV screens. Sad, really.
Mary needs a motive for getting involved with Torchwood in the first place. The fact they have the transporter is inadequate - she was there when they were digging it up, she knew all along where it was, and apparently she has superspeed and superstrength and telepathy. If she couldn't nip in to the tent, pull it out, and run, then what are superpowers good for? So if Torchwood have it, it's because she wants them to.
What does she need from Torchwood?
That is also the question raised when she first won't go to the base and later uses Tosh to get in. I mean, either her plan was 'stay away from Torchwood' or 'get in to Torchwood'. Having it switch in the middle wasn't very smart.
So still, What does she need from Torchwood?
Specifically, why Tosh? Because she's the tech girl? But she isn't actually dealing with the transporter. Also all the others have access to it. So we're left with an answer to "Why Tosh?" that makes the story about Tosh being a lonely repressed lesbian, and I'd rather it weren't.
Say she's got the ship but doesn't know the star to steer it by. They landed on this planet by accident, and she doesn't know where to go next to get home. There's data in the machine but she needs to crunch some serious numbers and human computers haven't been up to it yet.
Torchwood have the best computers in the world, and Toshiko programs them.
Motive the first sorted.
(also, if the math requires all the computing power, small niggle can be ironed over as well: why ask Jack out loud who Philoctetes is when she could ask the internet? Well the internet is godawful slow because the computer is busybusy, she gets frustrated, Jack asks what's up, she says Philoctetes, he happens to know. That makes more sense than asking in the expectation he'd know. But that's a niggle.)
Motive the second: Why does she kill people, and how exactly does the episode lead up to that?
What has Tosh done in this episode? Worn the pendant to spy on people, found a man about to do murder, hit him over the head with a golf club.
Note: Did not arrest him.
Torchwood may or may not have the power to arrest people, but they act as if they do. However hitting over the head with a golf club without warning or reading rights or whatever is not by any stretch of the definition a valid arrest. So she saw a crime and took what seemed to her necessary action in response.
What if Mary is doing the same?
That removes 'insane' from the checklist. And possibly 'evil' too.
Especially if... she wasn't the prisoner, she was the police. Or, used to be police until the regime changed. Or police transporting prisoner and got cut off when the regime changed and didn't want police to come home. Several possibilities. But what I mean is, if she's a prisoner and she's killing people, she's a bit nuts. If she's the police, albeit police from another world... oooh, interesting moral ambiguities.
She has the pendant. She could look in their minds and see what they've done. But human authorities will never arrest on that evidence - which was exactly Owen's problem in 1-03. So here's someone with the tool and the motivation and a lot longer to play with. She's been taking it upon herself to get rid of them. Stop them. Kill them.
There's a slight problem with that if she's answering murder with murder every year and it's all in Cardiff. Either spread the geography or the types of crime. I think. I mean, there aren't that many murders, right?
... one hopes.
The thing is, this way around, she's not insane, she's not evil, and she's doing a job very much like what Tosh did and what Owen wanted to do and what Torchwood *could* do if they apply alien technology to crimefighting the way Gwen wanted them to in 1-01. That makes it *much* more interesting.
And add a twist of sympathetic action - make it that she brought Toshiko back to Torchwood for treatment, because her gift seemed to be driving her insane.
Only leave it just a little ambiguous, make it just a bit possible she's using her to get in, and just a bit possible she's risking herself to help her.
And then it gets *fun*.
Because now Jack has a choice. They've got an alien cornered in their base. Breach of security, big problem. We get a confrontation, but written just a little better, without the huge great uninterrupted speechifying or the gradiose confessions. A conversation, with taking turns. Hmmm, domination of turns as power move could indicate what Jack and Mary are trying to do with both being the boss. But it kind of sounded silly.
Jack says about the dead people
Mary says she has the right and responsibility
it all looks very murky.
There's a two person transport all charged up with coordinates set
and Mary ends up gone. Because she's a one episode character.
I can see how threatening Toshiko with a knife ties to the domestic violence stuff from earlier, but it mostly just makes her unequivocally evil in a way that links to her being in a lesbian relationship. Which I'd rather avoid.
How about if she telepathically asks Tosh to act as human shield?
Then the outside of the confrontation remains the same but the inside is different enough to make it a bit ambiguous. Is Tosh in danger or not?
Jack acts as if she's in danger. This is reasonable even if he's a mind reader.
And then... Mary gets hold of the two person transporter, and only one person leaves, and oh yeah, dies burning.
That dead part is annoying.
Why?
They couldn't transport her to a cell?
Or just another planet
or home like she claimed to want?
If she's a criminal, she should be in prison. Executing her would be playing judge jury and executioner... and sometimes it's nice to be noticeably different than the alleged bad guy.
We know there's interstellar law enforcement - Judoon. We didn't know that while Torchwood was on, but say there's planets out there suitable for exile, as backwards as Earth was a hundred years ago. Why not just send her to somewhere like that? A middle of nowhere kind of place? Well, there's the thing where she kills people...
Avoiding 'dead' is the hardest part.
But why not send her home? Let her own people deal with her? Like the Doctor was going to with the Slitheen - who killed a bunch of people.
The episode just has her declare many reasons she's evil bad wrong and then obviously she gets killed. Once you give her a motive it's less obvious.
Could still happen, and I'd still hate it. Jack could have reasons, like security and protecting Torchwood and Earth. What if the others are like her? What if they come back with reinforcements? So there's reasons, ignored as they are in the episode.
There's the 'don't know how' reason too.
But I don't like them. She should survive and be complicated instead of die being simple. It would be more fun if there was complicated, and a possibility of more later.
So set it to activate right away, sure, but just send her home. And risk the repercussions.
Because making more story threads is yaay anyway, and it would be Jack being different than the kind of Torchwood that cuts up aliens just because they land here.
There remains the thing where the alien possessed Mary just like the gas possessed Carys but nobody tried to save Mary. That annoys too. Especially since nobody noticed this time.
But mostly, just give Mary a motive and the story gets more complicated in the good way and sticks together and stuff.
It makes it clearer what was annoying when you have to try and fix it.
I'm probably being rather boring. I'm mostly writing this because I'm in a fixing things mood. I'll have to fix some reality pretty soon but fixing stories is more fun.
There's also the issue where the writing doesn't actually lead to the ending and it's all a bit crap because of that.
But I think I can keep almost all of it and it still not be crap by the end.
There's assorted oddness introduced by the fact that the final cut obviously rearranged scenes compared to the script they filmed from, as can be observed by the frequent and illogical changes of clothes. But I ignore that. If they'd had things in that order from the start the clothes would match and it would all be peachy.
So: How to fix Evil, Insane, Dead, and rather disconnected.
Give Mary a Motive.
This seems like it should be obvious, but apparently "she's wicked and evil and steals hearts" seemed adequate to enough people it got on our TV screens. Sad, really.
Mary needs a motive for getting involved with Torchwood in the first place. The fact they have the transporter is inadequate - she was there when they were digging it up, she knew all along where it was, and apparently she has superspeed and superstrength and telepathy. If she couldn't nip in to the tent, pull it out, and run, then what are superpowers good for? So if Torchwood have it, it's because she wants them to.
What does she need from Torchwood?
That is also the question raised when she first won't go to the base and later uses Tosh to get in. I mean, either her plan was 'stay away from Torchwood' or 'get in to Torchwood'. Having it switch in the middle wasn't very smart.
So still, What does she need from Torchwood?
Specifically, why Tosh? Because she's the tech girl? But she isn't actually dealing with the transporter. Also all the others have access to it. So we're left with an answer to "Why Tosh?" that makes the story about Tosh being a lonely repressed lesbian, and I'd rather it weren't.
Say she's got the ship but doesn't know the star to steer it by. They landed on this planet by accident, and she doesn't know where to go next to get home. There's data in the machine but she needs to crunch some serious numbers and human computers haven't been up to it yet.
Torchwood have the best computers in the world, and Toshiko programs them.
Motive the first sorted.
(also, if the math requires all the computing power, small niggle can be ironed over as well: why ask Jack out loud who Philoctetes is when she could ask the internet? Well the internet is godawful slow because the computer is busybusy, she gets frustrated, Jack asks what's up, she says Philoctetes, he happens to know. That makes more sense than asking in the expectation he'd know. But that's a niggle.)
Motive the second: Why does she kill people, and how exactly does the episode lead up to that?
What has Tosh done in this episode? Worn the pendant to spy on people, found a man about to do murder, hit him over the head with a golf club.
Note: Did not arrest him.
Torchwood may or may not have the power to arrest people, but they act as if they do. However hitting over the head with a golf club without warning or reading rights or whatever is not by any stretch of the definition a valid arrest. So she saw a crime and took what seemed to her necessary action in response.
What if Mary is doing the same?
That removes 'insane' from the checklist. And possibly 'evil' too.
Especially if... she wasn't the prisoner, she was the police. Or, used to be police until the regime changed. Or police transporting prisoner and got cut off when the regime changed and didn't want police to come home. Several possibilities. But what I mean is, if she's a prisoner and she's killing people, she's a bit nuts. If she's the police, albeit police from another world... oooh, interesting moral ambiguities.
She has the pendant. She could look in their minds and see what they've done. But human authorities will never arrest on that evidence - which was exactly Owen's problem in 1-03. So here's someone with the tool and the motivation and a lot longer to play with. She's been taking it upon herself to get rid of them. Stop them. Kill them.
There's a slight problem with that if she's answering murder with murder every year and it's all in Cardiff. Either spread the geography or the types of crime. I think. I mean, there aren't that many murders, right?
... one hopes.
The thing is, this way around, she's not insane, she's not evil, and she's doing a job very much like what Tosh did and what Owen wanted to do and what Torchwood *could* do if they apply alien technology to crimefighting the way Gwen wanted them to in 1-01. That makes it *much* more interesting.
And add a twist of sympathetic action - make it that she brought Toshiko back to Torchwood for treatment, because her gift seemed to be driving her insane.
Only leave it just a little ambiguous, make it just a bit possible she's using her to get in, and just a bit possible she's risking herself to help her.
And then it gets *fun*.
Because now Jack has a choice. They've got an alien cornered in their base. Breach of security, big problem. We get a confrontation, but written just a little better, without the huge great uninterrupted speechifying or the gradiose confessions. A conversation, with taking turns. Hmmm, domination of turns as power move could indicate what Jack and Mary are trying to do with both being the boss. But it kind of sounded silly.
Jack says about the dead people
Mary says she has the right and responsibility
it all looks very murky.
There's a two person transport all charged up with coordinates set
and Mary ends up gone. Because she's a one episode character.
I can see how threatening Toshiko with a knife ties to the domestic violence stuff from earlier, but it mostly just makes her unequivocally evil in a way that links to her being in a lesbian relationship. Which I'd rather avoid.
How about if she telepathically asks Tosh to act as human shield?
Then the outside of the confrontation remains the same but the inside is different enough to make it a bit ambiguous. Is Tosh in danger or not?
Jack acts as if she's in danger. This is reasonable even if he's a mind reader.
And then... Mary gets hold of the two person transporter, and only one person leaves, and oh yeah, dies burning.
That dead part is annoying.
Why?
They couldn't transport her to a cell?
Or just another planet
or home like she claimed to want?
If she's a criminal, she should be in prison. Executing her would be playing judge jury and executioner... and sometimes it's nice to be noticeably different than the alleged bad guy.
We know there's interstellar law enforcement - Judoon. We didn't know that while Torchwood was on, but say there's planets out there suitable for exile, as backwards as Earth was a hundred years ago. Why not just send her to somewhere like that? A middle of nowhere kind of place? Well, there's the thing where she kills people...
Avoiding 'dead' is the hardest part.
But why not send her home? Let her own people deal with her? Like the Doctor was going to with the Slitheen - who killed a bunch of people.
The episode just has her declare many reasons she's evil bad wrong and then obviously she gets killed. Once you give her a motive it's less obvious.
Could still happen, and I'd still hate it. Jack could have reasons, like security and protecting Torchwood and Earth. What if the others are like her? What if they come back with reinforcements? So there's reasons, ignored as they are in the episode.
There's the 'don't know how' reason too.
But I don't like them. She should survive and be complicated instead of die being simple. It would be more fun if there was complicated, and a possibility of more later.
So set it to activate right away, sure, but just send her home. And risk the repercussions.
Because making more story threads is yaay anyway, and it would be Jack being different than the kind of Torchwood that cuts up aliens just because they land here.
There remains the thing where the alien possessed Mary just like the gas possessed Carys but nobody tried to save Mary. That annoys too. Especially since nobody noticed this time.
But mostly, just give Mary a motive and the story gets more complicated in the good way and sticks together and stuff.
It makes it clearer what was annoying when you have to try and fix it.
I'm probably being rather boring. I'm mostly writing this because I'm in a fixing things mood. I'll have to fix some reality pretty soon but fixing stories is more fun.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 10:20 pm (UTC)And I do think Tosh was right in hitting the guy with the golf club, since he was right that very second about to shoot his family - she could have waited and arrested him afterward, but I'm not sure that would be as helpful.
I would rather have seen Mary have more of a motive...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 11:23 pm (UTC)but from a character perspective. From a writer perspective, why wasn't it an issue this time? Because they didn't want to tell that story.
I didn't mean she was wrong. I meant only to set up a parallel to exploit.
and I think police arrest people in the middle of crimes quite often. I mean on cop shows they yell 'freeze!' and stuff. But knocking him out was probably more practical right then.
motives are better.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 10:38 pm (UTC)I think Torchwood sees itself as having licenses to kill, like James Bond. I still think this is a violation of Britain's unwritten constitution, but from a legal realist perspective that doesn't matter very much because everyone else from UNIT to the local police seems happy to let Torchwood do whatever it wants.
Executing her would be playing judge jury and executioner... and sometimes it's nice to be noticeably different than the alleged bad guy.
But this is Torchwood, which is very much about playing judge, jury, and executioner. If they were noticeably different than the alleged bad guy, they'd be OOC...not to mention the show would be implicily endorsing all the stuff they do that infringes on civil liberties (although what if any liberties you Brits have still isn't 100% clear to me) and torturing people and all that stuff. Would be a very different show.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 11:21 pm (UTC)