More things learned from Doctor Who and Torchwood

... and Highlander and Forever Knight and probably every other show I've ever watched:

The concept of One True Love is *damn* depressing.
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valuing the One seems like a pretty good start. But when they're already dancing with the whole blessed universe?

I don't want to think of them becoming that small.

It is possible to love completely, and yet love more than one.

It is, in fact, desireable. And an ideal of many religions. Though for reasons unknown, some of them leave the sex parts out.

Possibly because it do tend to get a bit complicated having someone be more than 5 places at once.

Doesn't mean it's bad to try.

What Lord of the Rings has to do with Countrycide

... because my brain is a deeply, deeply strange place:
I just spent a couple of hours lying in the dark with eyes closed attempting sleep, and vaguely speculating on a LotR xover with Torchwood.

I have concluded that it would, rather spectacularly, Never Work.

Not so much because the people wouldn't fit together. In true fanfic xover fashion, I'm sure they'd fit together in many combinations. No, the problem would be the skill set. Because take Team Torchwood away from their toys, and it seemed to me they would be *spectacularly* useless.

... and then I go, aha, so *that's* why Countrycide.

Take the team out of their element, take their tech away, strip them down to just what they're carrying or less, then throw problems at them. Shows you who the people are, not just the shiny. Because any 'verse with as much tech to play with as Torchwood could have has a possibility of making the people using it seem like the less interesting half of the equation.

Not that they made that mistake in canon. Characters are all wonderfully screwed up and fun to play with. Though I think Tosh could still stand to develop more of a personality.

But if you drop them into a medaeval tech level you set up much the same problems for them that the series gets simply by sending them out of Cardiff. Which makes a lovely point about the close/far countryside and how isolated you can be the other side of a hedge, let alone a mountain. Alone and unarmed is alone and unarmed; whatever the possibilities they're rather out of reach.

So, Countrycide makes sense. Even makes sense at that point in the arc. Establish characters, establish usual setting and how the world works, then strip it all down to highlight what is left.

I still don't *like* it.



The only one I can see transplanting easily between 'verses is Captain Jack. And not just because the obvious porn bunnies. Though a man that seeks out new life forms to dance with isn't going to have issues with a bit of height difference or hirsuteness. And he could have interesting conversations about relative life spans and relationships.

But also, he has skills that transfer - he has command presence and voice. He can step in to a situation and rally the troops, even talk regular people into being troops, set up defensive positions, get people to hold the line, all that stuff. The guy that can take charge and bring order to chaos is always going to be in demand.

I have a theory that this skill is 100% of how he got to be working with Torchwood. Because there are certain points in their history, that we know of, when walking in and acting like you know what to do could be all it would take, when everyone else is stumbling around in wreckage.

Jack loves the tech toys, but he can get by without them, because he has the social skills that are immensely transferable. Which is how he's survived so long already. And why he's the go anywhere guy.


Is fun.


The rest of Team Torchwood? I rather wonder. How far outside their usual can we take them and they still work?