Counting Torchwood

[beccaelizabeth]

I am counting characters that get to speak but with no weighting for number of lines or screen time or being series regulars. (Those would also be valuable, but require more math.) Are speaking characters: male or female, white or of color, and did they get dead (although the Dead count got complicated when I started counting corpses that never spoke first). Also Bechdel pass/fail.
My count is likely imperfect. I can only count what I see.

Wiki reckons Cardiff is "Ethnicity 91.57% White, 1.99% Mixed, 3.96% S. Asian, 1.28% Black, 1.20% Chinese or other."
http://www.icar.org.uk/4733/statistics/about-cardiff.html
seems to be Wiki's source and that's the 2001 census figures they're quoting.
So 9/10 white would accurately reflect the ethnic variety of the area.

I'm going to assume men and women are about 50/50 in real life without looking it up.

1-01 Everything Changes

20 characters
5 women, 15 men.
2 of color, 18 white.
Bechdel pass: Gwen and Suzie talk about murder and resurrection and their job.

Dead characters: 4
1 man, 3 women
2 white, 2 of color
2 speaking 2 in photos


1-02 Day One

18 speaking characters
4 women, 14 men.
2 of color, 16 white.
Bechdel pass: Gwen talks to Carys, about why she is arrested (killing a man), having an alien inside her (erm), and sex (which after testing turns out must be with men). Pass if you squint.

Dead characters: 7 (8 if you count Carys' mum, death mentioned but long ago)
7 men, 0 women (unless Carys' mum counts)
7 white, 0 of color.
3 speaking, 4 only seen sitting around
one of them says "I'm gay" right before she kills him with sex anyway.


1-03 Ghost Machine

Characters: complicated because 2 are portrayed at 2 different ages. I'll count them as one person at two ages. Because.
Also there's 3 at the start and more in the Bernie chase that are on the transcript because they yell 'oi' as the chase goes past, or similar nonsense. And you can't always see who is yelling. So do I count them? I'll say not.
With all that fiddling about that's
18 characters ... or 26.

6 or 8 women, the rest men
1 character of color
Bechdel fail: women only talk to women about finding Bernie Harris

Dead characters:
2 speaking
1 man 1 woman


1-04 Cyberwoman

8 characters
4 women 4 men
3 of color 5 white
Bechdel pass: Gwen and Lisa, "Let me go!" "Do not struggle. You will be like me."
... it's short, but it's not about men.

Dead characters:
3 speaking
2 women 1 man
2 of color 1 white


1-05 Small Worlds

19 characters
10 women, 9 men
2 of color, 17 white

Bechdel pass: Jasmine and her mum talk about Jasmine's fairy friends.

Dead characters:
on screen speaking: 2 white males
flashback: couldn't count them, and it's all sepia toned, but seemed more ethnic mixed.


1-06 Countrycide

11 speaking characters
4 women, 7 men
1 of color, 10 white

Bechdel fail: no scene has only two women.

Dead characters:
1 white woman seen killed
lots and lots of people seen dead, but in such a state you can't count them


1-07 Greeks bearing gifts

28 speaking roles, 10 named and 18 mind-voices
4 named women and 9 mind voice women, the rest men
3 named people of color, *maybe* 2 mind voices but it's very hard to see.

Bechdel pass: two women talk about sex with each other.
... and as soon as they stop are back to talking about men :eyeroll:

clear f/f activity, and one of them dead by the end of the episode.

Dead characters:
1 white woman, 1 white man, on screen
lots and lots and lots and lots of dead bodies on the Torchwood computer screens.


1-08 The Keep Killing Suzie

11 speaking characters
4 women
5 people of color

Dead characters:
5 (Mark, his wife, Alex, Suzie, her dad) 3 speaking, 2 silent.
2 women
3 people of color

Bechdel: Pass. Tosh & Suzie talk about honor. Gwen and Suzie talk about everything.


1-09 Random Shoes

Counting Eugene only once, and I think the Moderator and Mr Garrett are one and the same.
17 speaking characters
5 women
2 people of color

Dead characters:
Just Eugene, a white male

Bechdel: Fail, unless you extract individual sentences. Gwen and Linda talk, but Linda always talks about her life in relation to Craig, her boss she's dating, and Eugene, who was going to get her a ticket to Australia.


1-10 Out of Time

16 speaking characters
7 women
3 people of color

1 Dead character
white male

Bechdel: Pass, early and often. There's enough conversations between women in this one I'm interested in measuring the percentages. And they're about jobs and planes and housing and all sorts.


1-11 Combat

11 speaking characters
3 women
2 people of color

2 dead characters
both white males

Bechdel: Fail.
It is the only episode in the first season with a scene between Tosh and Gwen.
They talk about who Owen is/was shagging.


1-12 Captain Jack Harkness

15 characters
6 women
1 person of color

no dead characters

Bechdel: fail, no scene with only two women in it. women talk to each other in crowds.

Toshiko makes references to Japanese culture, and history in Britain. Other characters respond to her ethnicity. Tosh notices "easy for you to say, I'm the only asian person here" (I quote from memory) So the fact that she's the only person of color in the episode is deliberate and has been thought about.

The lack of women in speaking parts... I think the two Captains have teams that mirror each other, with George and Tim being Owen and Ianto, but 1941 has no equivalent to Tosh and Gwen. So there's a deliberate lack of women? But that's extrapolating way beyond the numbers.


1-13 End of Days

15 speaking characters
7 women
3 people of color

dead characters are difficult to count.
there's more diversity in non-speaking roles, and dead people.

Bechdel: Pass, Tosh speaks to her mother.

The return of dead and departed girlfriends, and Toshiko's injured mother, brought the female character count up. Use of women to inspire the series regulars, business as usual. Use of mother to inspire daughter, relatively unusual. Use of dead boyfriend to inspire a woman, quite unusual. Only the guys got to come back from death though.
And large parts of Cardiff, probably.


That's the first season done, I'll do another post for second season.

Feel free to join in with later episodes.


Note on Bechdel test: I'm only counting it when the scene is about women, not when they're part of a mixed male and female group. This is because I want to see if women only exist when men are around. Bechdel failing movies do that a lot. Women exist solely in relation to men. When we're not observed by or observing men, we're schrodingered into voiceless invisibility. It's weird and creepy. So: if there's men around when two women talk, if they're part of the same group, it doesn't count. Other tests may vary.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Interesting counts!

My impression is that Torchwood fares better than most television on the Bechdel test, which is simply to say that the female characters seem more real to me than most women in fiction.

But Torchwood does have its writing flaws and that plays out with the women as well as the men.

[beccaelizabeth]

Many Bechdel pass, but it's not as easy and quick as the m-m conversations.

It's always interesting to see why they pass/fail.

Countrycide fails because once the characters are split up they're in m-f pairs. Since there's only two women on the team they would have captured all the women if they gave Tosh and Gwen a chance to talk, or left them in a group with Jack. This way one woman gets captured and escapes, the other woman... well, gets shot and eventually captured, but there's not that damsel in distress quality of having both women locked up waiting for rescue. Both times a woman gets captured a man gets caught along with her, so there's not that gendered quality to it.
The only other 2 person conversation was when Gwen and Owen went off into the woods together. If that had been Tosh and Gwen... well, Tosh would have been frostily polite, and Gwen would attempt conversation badly, and it would be interesting but not get where Gwen and Owen went. Though now I want to write it so it does. Hmm...

7 and 8 have longer sequences where women talk to women.
5 is almost all Jack and Gwen talking, Jack is the center of that story.

4 revolves around Lisa and Jack and Ianto. Long conversations involve those three. I think it handles Gwen poorly, having her stand around frozen and all that, she's excessively useless. Sending her to look for weapons with Owen makes sense; having her not pick up any weapons, hide, back away, and only be in that scene to snog Owen... well, there's fail there. Owen gets to be all protective, Gwen gets to play damsel repeatedly. Tosh gets to be a bit awesome, but in ways that seperate her from others. In logic world she and Gwen should have been sent to get the door open, since as Owen said it weighs a ton and Tosh shouldn't be able to get it open on her own (clearly she developed slayer powers when we weren't looking).
... I love Cyberwoman but I spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.

3 avoids f-f conversations in interesting ways. Owen gets sent to have tea with the woman in the kitchen, Owen gets to experience the ghost machine from the female point of view. It's doing something interesting with Owen there.
But still, I feel like I must have missed a conversation.

2 is so many kinds of dodgy.

1 passes because of Suzie. The gender ratio Gwen exists within at the police is interesting.

The gender ratio of most episodes is interesting.
The one with more women than men was the one about children.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Interesting too to see when and why women get more focus. Did you notice a statistical difference with the ones written by women? That would be "Ghost Machine", "Out of Time", "Random Shoes", "Captain Jack Harkness", "To the Last Man", "Meat" and "Adam".

"Captain Jack Harkness" shares the situation of "Countrycide" where the two women (I'm thinking Tosh and Gwen) don't get conversations together - aren't even in the same era. The two other women don't speak to other women specifically.

The one with more women than men was the one about children.

Small Worlds?

On a tangential note: I think Torchwood follows the comic book pattern of characters being orphans or having only one parent. Gwen is an exception. (An exception also in that she has a husband. I like that.) Jack also has two parents mentioned or shown, but they're long dead. (Or will be.) Only Owen's mother has been mentioned, and only Ianto's father, and only Tosh's mother and grandfather. (Giving her the same pattern as Donna Noble.)

[beccaelizabeth]

Small Worlds *nods*
girl children + teacher + mother + woman at party + WPC + Gwen and Tosh = more women

I haven't counted all the episodes yet, so I can't compare them by written-by.

there's more than two women in CJH, but I don't think they talk alone.


I'm not sure about the comic pattern. The Archives book mentions Ianto's mum. Owen has a mother. Only Jack's parents are definitely dead.

[caladria.livejournal.com]

and only Tosh's mother and grandfather. (Giving her the same pattern as Donna Noble.

On a tangent, but Donna Noble wasn't meant to have that pattern - it was rejiggled because the actor that played her father in Runaway Bride was severely ill and later died. They had to reshoot some scenes.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It all came out rather interesting in the end. I liked the family dynamics, and the way they turned out.

[caladria.livejournal.com]

When your last-minute replacement is Bernard Cribbens, ur doin it rite. I loved him, I loved his scenes with Donna, and I think that after Rose and Martha's families, it was brilliant to see this supportive male father figure there.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It was great - I loved not just that they did it, but the way they did it. Beautiful characterization.

[fide-et-spe.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting and food for thought. I guess I superficially think TW is better than most shows, possibly because of the treatment of sexuality as well. Also as mentioned the women are strong,and the structure of the show is that a woman and a man are the leads so often in relation to each other. Then three and four are also different genders.

Still I saw Watchmen last night, that was so misogynist it made TW look like a feminist treatise.

[beccaelizabeth]

One reason I'm getting numbers is that I feel Torchwood is doing pretty well and I want to compare that feeling to my results.
2/5 main characters are women. That's a good start.
But doing the math comes out interesting.

[andreth47.livejournal.com]

Nifty! Thanks for doing this. (I'm actually kind of amazed at how many eps passed the Bechdel.)

[beccaelizabeth]

It surprised me a bit too, but I was mostly remembering Tosh and Gwen, and if it only passed if they talk to each other, very seldom passing.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

When I was thinking about it after reading your other post, I remembered that Gwen was very often the one interviewing the witness or suspect, so I suspected that would raise the score.