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beccaelizabethYeah, more thoughts. more spoilers.
Okay, I want to say up front that the most important thing, for me, about Torchwood, was that we had Queer Heroes Saving The World A Lot. Since we don't have that anywhere else every step away from that lost something really important. I don't see the excuse for wrecking that, and I won't accept any.
That said... I think I can see why to tell this story.
I've been rather blinded by the LARGE PRINT MESSAGE that seems to be selling us on the idea that Killing Children Is Wrong. And So Is Making Them Suffer.
But it was also about not letting children grow up. That's wrong. Lying to them and handing them over to beings who will make sure they never change, that's wrong. And that's interesting. There's a residual idea that peter pan style kid-forever would be pretty cool.
Unfortunately interesting as that is it's rather hidden behind LARGE SHOUTING about kids being used to give pleasure to, well, did those look like penis monsters to anyone else or am I weird? Added to explicit textual mentions of pervs and paedophiles... eeew.
(And it was Ianto being called a perv, and Jack handing the kids over, and in a story about them being called queer and a lot of other words, and I'm trying not to see it as 'gays harm children' but it's... eew. The only saving grace is Ianto was the one getting called names and he died insisting not one child be harmed, so I think that takes some poison off.)
Even if the pleasure is chemical, still eew.
And those machines for keeping them alive, also eew.
The thing is, it would be interesting to me if the Bad was only the bit about keeping them children forever and lying to them.
Because that's one of the problems about how Torchwood, the organisation, treats the citizens of Britain.
A lot of the story is about lies and coverups and spin. And we start out with Torchwood doing? Lies and coverup and spin. And when Jack finds Rupesh dead? First thing up when he gets back to base is more coverup. So Torchwood is playing the same game.
Torchwood are the bad guys. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I liked those stories. They show how bad the consequences get if you take the apparently-easy bad guy choices. Everything goes horribly wrong. The thing is, I want to write about how you go from there to fixing it. And this really, really didn't do that.
It was about Jack. Jack as old school Torchwood doing horrible deals and coverups. And it wasn't interested in letting him change. it was about the bill coming due.
The Torchwood institute lies to people and keeps them ignorant and claims to protect them by pushing them around at will. They have traded children for being left alone. They have traded children for cures. I can believe all that.
One problem with the coverup, one way con artists get to use the same tricks over and over, is people can't adapt to what they don't know. Aliens can turn up and pull the god grift or be the big scary and demand whatever the hell they like, and every time it's news to the people trying to deal with them. The DW 'verse Prime Minister says when he was a kid the threat was communists, reacts to the sky siege like it's something new. It isn't, he isn't that old. UNIT has been defending the earth since he was a kid. But it's new to him, and he hasn't adapted yet. Same over and over, as long as the coverup goes on.
Jack could be teaching people to know as much as he does, deal with as much as he can (almost).
But he doesn't. He makes sure they can't find out. Keeps them in the dark, never growning.
And he says Torchwood is ready? Torchwood is 3 people in a basement. How about the human race? Is that ready?
So Jack has been doing it wrong, and the knock on consequences go off the scale here.
Ianto said look Jack up. But you can't. He's been off the record, deniable, retconning his way through history.
That costs. That kills Ianto.
That's a plausible consequence.
And then Jack loses absolutely everything, including the idea that he's a hero.
And that's what this set is about: Doing it Wrong, Comes Back to Bite.
So it pushes consequences as far as they could possibly go.
And Gwen is the one not touched by it because Gwen is the compassionate one?
Shouldn't make sense. Gwen is the one who retconned her now-husband and her whole family at the wedding. Gwen's been playing in the muck same as everyone.
And if the point was secrets and lies and how you can't defend yourself if you don't have the info-tools then why is there so much secrecy still at the end?
But it did show the flip side, that if you have the info-tools you can fight back. Ianto's family. Jack as soon as he pulled the pieces together.
I think I can see what they could be doing, but it's hiding in small print and might not be properly there.
So if the message is Secrecy Is Wrong, if it's Hide Truths From Kids And They Walk Into Traps, if it's something about letting people grow up... okay. That's worth telling.
But... I don't think it's told.
I think I can see a point to telling it this way, with the terrible consequences... but it's the wrong point.
Jack has done wrong. Okay. Jack needs to acknowledge that fully before he can change and do different. True. But the way they did it?
I've been reading up on a lot of old lit lately so religious terms come to mind like repentence and damnation. Where is the story about figuring it out and doing better? Where is the story about trying to live up to what others see in you and becoming better? There's just the problem eating them all. Damnation, no salvation in sight. That's wrong.
And I keep looping back. Why do this to them? Who else is giving us the hero story, the one about the answers, about doing better this time?
Where do I get to see people like me who aren't evil, miserable, dead?
I think this is a problem with trying to be too many versions of 'adult' at once.
So this was a huge tragedy. 150 years of dubious and unaccountable, bill due, paid, destroyed them all.
Destroyed the Torchwood series too.
I can see how a next season could set up. It would be Gwen in charge not because she's... any of the bad words thrown around, but because she's the one with connections to the community who goes around telling them things and acknowledging what they know. She'll recruit, not leave them hanging around to figure it out themselves. Reaching out.
And I guess this is why Jack was in cold and isolating mode, shutting out. Because that's the problem.
I still don't think the plot holds together.
And I still don't want the world they just made.
Okay, I want to say up front that the most important thing, for me, about Torchwood, was that we had Queer Heroes Saving The World A Lot. Since we don't have that anywhere else every step away from that lost something really important. I don't see the excuse for wrecking that, and I won't accept any.
That said... I think I can see why to tell this story.
I've been rather blinded by the LARGE PRINT MESSAGE that seems to be selling us on the idea that Killing Children Is Wrong. And So Is Making Them Suffer.
But it was also about not letting children grow up. That's wrong. Lying to them and handing them over to beings who will make sure they never change, that's wrong. And that's interesting. There's a residual idea that peter pan style kid-forever would be pretty cool.
Unfortunately interesting as that is it's rather hidden behind LARGE SHOUTING about kids being used to give pleasure to, well, did those look like penis monsters to anyone else or am I weird? Added to explicit textual mentions of pervs and paedophiles... eeew.
(And it was Ianto being called a perv, and Jack handing the kids over, and in a story about them being called queer and a lot of other words, and I'm trying not to see it as 'gays harm children' but it's... eew. The only saving grace is Ianto was the one getting called names and he died insisting not one child be harmed, so I think that takes some poison off.)
Even if the pleasure is chemical, still eew.
And those machines for keeping them alive, also eew.
The thing is, it would be interesting to me if the Bad was only the bit about keeping them children forever and lying to them.
Because that's one of the problems about how Torchwood, the organisation, treats the citizens of Britain.
A lot of the story is about lies and coverups and spin. And we start out with Torchwood doing? Lies and coverup and spin. And when Jack finds Rupesh dead? First thing up when he gets back to base is more coverup. So Torchwood is playing the same game.
Torchwood are the bad guys. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I liked those stories. They show how bad the consequences get if you take the apparently-easy bad guy choices. Everything goes horribly wrong. The thing is, I want to write about how you go from there to fixing it. And this really, really didn't do that.
It was about Jack. Jack as old school Torchwood doing horrible deals and coverups. And it wasn't interested in letting him change. it was about the bill coming due.
The Torchwood institute lies to people and keeps them ignorant and claims to protect them by pushing them around at will. They have traded children for being left alone. They have traded children for cures. I can believe all that.
One problem with the coverup, one way con artists get to use the same tricks over and over, is people can't adapt to what they don't know. Aliens can turn up and pull the god grift or be the big scary and demand whatever the hell they like, and every time it's news to the people trying to deal with them. The DW 'verse Prime Minister says when he was a kid the threat was communists, reacts to the sky siege like it's something new. It isn't, he isn't that old. UNIT has been defending the earth since he was a kid. But it's new to him, and he hasn't adapted yet. Same over and over, as long as the coverup goes on.
Jack could be teaching people to know as much as he does, deal with as much as he can (almost).
But he doesn't. He makes sure they can't find out. Keeps them in the dark, never growning.
And he says Torchwood is ready? Torchwood is 3 people in a basement. How about the human race? Is that ready?
So Jack has been doing it wrong, and the knock on consequences go off the scale here.
Ianto said look Jack up. But you can't. He's been off the record, deniable, retconning his way through history.
That costs. That kills Ianto.
That's a plausible consequence.
And then Jack loses absolutely everything, including the idea that he's a hero.
And that's what this set is about: Doing it Wrong, Comes Back to Bite.
So it pushes consequences as far as they could possibly go.
And Gwen is the one not touched by it because Gwen is the compassionate one?
Shouldn't make sense. Gwen is the one who retconned her now-husband and her whole family at the wedding. Gwen's been playing in the muck same as everyone.
And if the point was secrets and lies and how you can't defend yourself if you don't have the info-tools then why is there so much secrecy still at the end?
But it did show the flip side, that if you have the info-tools you can fight back. Ianto's family. Jack as soon as he pulled the pieces together.
I think I can see what they could be doing, but it's hiding in small print and might not be properly there.
So if the message is Secrecy Is Wrong, if it's Hide Truths From Kids And They Walk Into Traps, if it's something about letting people grow up... okay. That's worth telling.
But... I don't think it's told.
I think I can see a point to telling it this way, with the terrible consequences... but it's the wrong point.
Jack has done wrong. Okay. Jack needs to acknowledge that fully before he can change and do different. True. But the way they did it?
I've been reading up on a lot of old lit lately so religious terms come to mind like repentence and damnation. Where is the story about figuring it out and doing better? Where is the story about trying to live up to what others see in you and becoming better? There's just the problem eating them all. Damnation, no salvation in sight. That's wrong.
And I keep looping back. Why do this to them? Who else is giving us the hero story, the one about the answers, about doing better this time?
Where do I get to see people like me who aren't evil, miserable, dead?
I think this is a problem with trying to be too many versions of 'adult' at once.
So this was a huge tragedy. 150 years of dubious and unaccountable, bill due, paid, destroyed them all.
Destroyed the Torchwood series too.
I can see how a next season could set up. It would be Gwen in charge not because she's... any of the bad words thrown around, but because she's the one with connections to the community who goes around telling them things and acknowledging what they know. She'll recruit, not leave them hanging around to figure it out themselves. Reaching out.
And I guess this is why Jack was in cold and isolating mode, shutting out. Because that's the problem.
I still don't think the plot holds together.
And I still don't want the world they just made.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 09:36 pm (UTC)No.
Ianto died because he believed in Jack. The way most of us believe in the Doctor, he believed in Jack. He loved him as a person and believed he cared.
Ianto died to take that away from Jack.
Hollow Jack out.
Make it story-true that believing in Jack was wrong.
I still think it's a stronger story if Ianto stays, sees, and can't accept.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 06:16 pm (UTC)I think for me the story was so powerful because it was not the world they had just made it was the world we already have made for ourselves. It was not telling us anything we don't already know - it was holding up a mirror to our world and saying 'look, look really closely, and be ashamed'. It didn't give answers because there aren't simple answers yet - the closest we have to an answer is when we get to vote in a general election next year, and try to pick out candidates who understand what is wrong and can start to fix it. But the solution can't come from heroes and Torchwood because the nature of the problem is too big for a single hero. In fact belief in single heroes (politicians like Tony Blair) is part of what got us in this mess.
Which yes, is politics with Torchwood added and I can see why you don't like that if you come to Torchwood for your shiny escape place.
I'm working slowly through all your posts and really enjoying reading the thoughts you are throwing out, but I'm not responding to most of them because I can see your thoughts are evolving as you go along and I don't want to be talking to the thoughts you had days ago if you've had new thoughts on top of them since. But this post really stuck out so I wanted to say something.