Torchwood 19 The Death of Captain Jack
Jul. 9th, 2018 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI hate to say it, but that was just boring.
I mean, it had a couple of amusing bits at the start, and some interesting grunting because Jack and John have a lot of sex, but on the whole, that was boring.
Because it just has John do random shit and kill people who do not resemble themselves.
I mean the point of a decent AU is to reveal interesting stuff about the canon characters, and this has a lot of cameos from... everyone, ish, but you don't get anything even vaguely relevant for most of them, and for John you get nothing new after the first few minutes.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It starts well, with John and Jack bouncing through history stopping time traveling aliens, shagging people, and stealing stuff, and in three easy steps it goes from saving people to realising they're causing problems to just killing people. Except it's just John, doing the killing, double crossing Jack, so it don't exactly explain how Jack ended up where he was when he was introduced. So that's not as interesting as it could be.
I mean, all that 'the glitter of the galaxy', a speech I can apparently do from memory this many years on, that was the good bit. John represented a temptation, that was what made him interesting. Here he's an enemy in minutes. And they're just small time. Bouncing through history, not the galaxy at all, and there's reasons for that because it's time paradox the story plays with, but still, it's... boring.
John Hart represents a lifestyle Jack stepped away from, the temptation, the glory of being one step ahead, temporal tricksters with all the shiny shiny.
But not here. Here they're competing, backstabbing, stealing from each other, and killing each other.
Rubbish way to use him. All one side of him, no tension.
I mean, it has John come back to the Victorian era doing a time travel thing. Jack was miserable then. Show us what the schtick does for him when he's drunk in a gutter!
But no.
So I'm frustrated with how they chose to use him.
But beyond that, after the first few minutes, as soon as he makes a major alteration to history, it becomes obvious they're going to hit reset. After which point they can do absolutely anything.
And they do a bunch of gags where John kills people without really caring.
I mean, why? Why was that worth our time?
They had a whole story to work with, and instead of showing us what John envies about Jack and vice versa, the stuff that could pull them together, then putting it in tension where John uses it to get rich in the end... they do a looney tunes everyone goes splat.
So we get mental images like Gwen dying to lighten the car (splat)
Rhys dying because he complained about that (bang)
Myfanwy getting shot because she crapped on John (boom)
and Ianto's usual work uniform involving a leather thong and some mesh, and maybe a mask. Which isn't precisely the same, but it's also not ... I mean Ianto seems miserable so what exactly is the joke here? Not okay.
It's just random nasty gags. And it didn't have to be. You've got an AU where a guy who could be dark side Jack is in charge, and that has potential.
I mean I'm still typing because I'm still getting plot bunnies for improving it, starting from this exact setup.
But it's just murder addict John killing people for funsies.
Who gets such wonderful toys and does so little with them?
I'm going to have to give this a lowish rating, and given how much of the cast is on here, it really had to work to be that bad.
I mean, it had a couple of amusing bits at the start, and some interesting grunting because Jack and John have a lot of sex, but on the whole, that was boring.
Because it just has John do random shit and kill people who do not resemble themselves.
I mean the point of a decent AU is to reveal interesting stuff about the canon characters, and this has a lot of cameos from... everyone, ish, but you don't get anything even vaguely relevant for most of them, and for John you get nothing new after the first few minutes.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It starts well, with John and Jack bouncing through history stopping time traveling aliens, shagging people, and stealing stuff, and in three easy steps it goes from saving people to realising they're causing problems to just killing people. Except it's just John, doing the killing, double crossing Jack, so it don't exactly explain how Jack ended up where he was when he was introduced. So that's not as interesting as it could be.
I mean, all that 'the glitter of the galaxy', a speech I can apparently do from memory this many years on, that was the good bit. John represented a temptation, that was what made him interesting. Here he's an enemy in minutes. And they're just small time. Bouncing through history, not the galaxy at all, and there's reasons for that because it's time paradox the story plays with, but still, it's... boring.
John Hart represents a lifestyle Jack stepped away from, the temptation, the glory of being one step ahead, temporal tricksters with all the shiny shiny.
But not here. Here they're competing, backstabbing, stealing from each other, and killing each other.
Rubbish way to use him. All one side of him, no tension.
I mean, it has John come back to the Victorian era doing a time travel thing. Jack was miserable then. Show us what the schtick does for him when he's drunk in a gutter!
But no.
So I'm frustrated with how they chose to use him.
But beyond that, after the first few minutes, as soon as he makes a major alteration to history, it becomes obvious they're going to hit reset. After which point they can do absolutely anything.
And they do a bunch of gags where John kills people without really caring.
I mean, why? Why was that worth our time?
They had a whole story to work with, and instead of showing us what John envies about Jack and vice versa, the stuff that could pull them together, then putting it in tension where John uses it to get rich in the end... they do a looney tunes everyone goes splat.
So we get mental images like Gwen dying to lighten the car (splat)
Rhys dying because he complained about that (bang)
Myfanwy getting shot because she crapped on John (boom)
and Ianto's usual work uniform involving a leather thong and some mesh, and maybe a mask. Which isn't precisely the same, but it's also not ... I mean Ianto seems miserable so what exactly is the joke here? Not okay.
It's just random nasty gags. And it didn't have to be. You've got an AU where a guy who could be dark side Jack is in charge, and that has potential.
I mean I'm still typing because I'm still getting plot bunnies for improving it, starting from this exact setup.
But it's just murder addict John killing people for funsies.
Who gets such wonderful toys and does so little with them?
I'm going to have to give this a lowish rating, and given how much of the cast is on here, it really had to work to be that bad.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-09 09:19 pm (UTC)when Captain John Hart
was bracketed by
what are you wearing
note the sarcasm
characters who change their name are a pain, but that was indubitably not his birth name nor settled use name, since they had to introduce themselves to each other
nagging irritation