Torchwood ep 5
Nov. 17th, 2006 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethRewatched. Feels more uneven on second watch. And I wasn't playing so much in the middle, when it was being about not-Jack. I wandered off to get food, on account of being hungry.
When in the middle of fannish pursuits I have been known to not get out of my chair for 14 hours straight, so this is not so much the good sign. More of the story needs to be about the regulars.
Specifics -
There feels like more discontinuity between the Torchwood team of the previous few eps and this one, like the lines were all slightly off. Which is a good trick with so few episodes. I don't know if I'm just pickier today or what. But who says 'since ancient times'?
And they're all a bit too Scully for this 'verse. Which could have been smoothed over by making more of an issue of the science/myth divide - that they're perfectly willing to believe in aliens but Jack keeps saying that this can't be figured with science. To the science paradigm types everything can be figured with science, so it don't make sense. So the clunky excess of scully. Feels like it needed just a few more words to smooth it. *shrugs*
Jack's line to Ianto about his private life being his own was misplaced. Before last ep, yes, after it, no way.
There's a couple of niggly bits that I can smooth over in my head - Estelle didn't drown in rain, she drowned in the same process as made the rain, which also made water in her air spaces. And it took longer to drive over there than to watch them drive, so she was cold and very dead when they got there.
Still, the lack of CPR annoys.
Why lack CPR? Owen was there, and he's supposed to be the A&E medic.
Owen was not there in the cell with the dead paedophile. Why?
Has been suggested he needed time off in RL, but for just that one scene? He was there, albeit in the background, the whole rest of the time.
So... putting him in the cell with the dead guy would bring in his chain of associations - Owen being the one who re-experienced that rape, and with the rape spray, and suchlike. In my mind anyway that is the obvious Owen stuff.
Also to stay in character he'd have made a bad joke or something.
Having him try CPR would... maybe make it more about him? Like, they stay dead, means he failed.
So for practical reasons it sucks, but in story terms it means this isn't Owen's story at all.
Why do the faeries do what they do?
Spare Jack on the train.
Warn Jack, with the petal.
Kill Jack's ex-girlfriend.
Killing Estelle makes no sense from her own actions, but he did say they kill as a warning. She dies, he is warned.
But for story reasons, we need to know these aren't nice guys. Estelle thinks they're good. We see them attack and kill one of the few kinds of people that even nice, caring, liberal people quite often want to see strung up. So at that point there's room to think of them as basically good creatures.
Which would make Jack letting the little girl go off with them have no downside.
It would in fact make Jack look dodgy for doubting the faeries, thinking of them as bad things, trying to keep the girl from being made immortal.
To set up that final choice and make it *hurt*, they have to kill people who have done them absolutely no harm.
The 'wicked' stepfather fits the fairy tale, but I didn't see it here. He hit the kid, she had just bit him. He didn't much like her, she didn't much like him, we the audience hadn't any reason to like either of them. When he gets killed, some people might be yaay, others horrified. Doesn't set up the final choice, or have much impact on Jack, who wouldn't have even as much data as the audience.
So they kill Estelle.
Basically both inside and outside the story she's a refrigerator case - a woman killed to have a specific emotional effect on a male character, spur on character growth, set up angst and all that.
It do annoy.
Now what they did to Gwen's flat I think has a story arc function as much as a story one. In episode logic would be she mocked them, so they went and proved they exist. She weren't scared of them so they went and proved their power. They want her to back off, like they want Jack to back off. So scared suits them fine.
But story arc, writer world - Gwen's little speech about work never following her home would be her first warning.
And she was wrong. She brought it home. Brought an alien machine in with her. Doesn't count that as badness following her though.
So to make it clear to her and us, here's the bad things gone to her home. It isn't two seperate worlds she's got going on there, not home and work all split up with barriers. They interpenetrate, overlap, mingle. The world is all one world and she can't just go home and get away from the danger.
Build up. Promise. Incoming danger.
I'm looking forward to it ;-)
But she were still trying to fight them. And Jack stopped her.
Here's the thing - if the faeries go back and forth in time, if that little girl could be in that photograph well after they saw her: The faeries on the train knew Jack would make this decision one day.
So they left him alive to make it.
Okay, it could be he just undied. But we don't know where on his timeline he was, if he could possibly have done that then. And he didn't have any petals. So I don't think so.
They left him alive.
And they gave him a warning.
And he gave them exactly what they want.
Now the only slight flaw in all this is, how could he ever have stopped them? The choice only has meaning if he could have chosen otherwise. If his choice was give her up or die then lose her then being dead wouldn't actually be so good for the world in the long term. And it wouldn't give the faeries any incentive to play power games at him. Power only plays at power.
So what *could* he have done?
The only thing I'm coming up with is 'snap her neck', which wouldn't exactly have saved her. From most points of view.
Maybe is a timeline thing - kill a woman as warning because you can't kill the man right then, get what you want, leave him alive earlier from gratitude. Or maybe he was unkillable all along.
But it still comes down to, they wouldn't have needed to kill for warning, kill Estelle, if there wasn't something could be done to get in their way.
The chosen one was vulnerable. Could still be run over. Or won over?
Were they worried he'd charm her?
... Which leads to all kinds of ick in my brain, because of earlier bad man.
Yeah, I know, I may be trying to puzzle out in-story reasons where only writer reasons exist. But that would be where the fun lives.
Anyway.
Bazillion ways to read this, or write in the gaps.
Is fun stuff.
Is also fun watching the pretty. And watching the pretty angst.
I do kind of miss the DW version a teensy bit though. I mean, angst isn't everything. Charming flirtation through half the universe is a lot more fun.
When in the middle of fannish pursuits I have been known to not get out of my chair for 14 hours straight, so this is not so much the good sign. More of the story needs to be about the regulars.
Specifics -
There feels like more discontinuity between the Torchwood team of the previous few eps and this one, like the lines were all slightly off. Which is a good trick with so few episodes. I don't know if I'm just pickier today or what. But who says 'since ancient times'?
And they're all a bit too Scully for this 'verse. Which could have been smoothed over by making more of an issue of the science/myth divide - that they're perfectly willing to believe in aliens but Jack keeps saying that this can't be figured with science. To the science paradigm types everything can be figured with science, so it don't make sense. So the clunky excess of scully. Feels like it needed just a few more words to smooth it. *shrugs*
Jack's line to Ianto about his private life being his own was misplaced. Before last ep, yes, after it, no way.
There's a couple of niggly bits that I can smooth over in my head - Estelle didn't drown in rain, she drowned in the same process as made the rain, which also made water in her air spaces. And it took longer to drive over there than to watch them drive, so she was cold and very dead when they got there.
Still, the lack of CPR annoys.
Why lack CPR? Owen was there, and he's supposed to be the A&E medic.
Owen was not there in the cell with the dead paedophile. Why?
Has been suggested he needed time off in RL, but for just that one scene? He was there, albeit in the background, the whole rest of the time.
So... putting him in the cell with the dead guy would bring in his chain of associations - Owen being the one who re-experienced that rape, and with the rape spray, and suchlike. In my mind anyway that is the obvious Owen stuff.
Also to stay in character he'd have made a bad joke or something.
Having him try CPR would... maybe make it more about him? Like, they stay dead, means he failed.
So for practical reasons it sucks, but in story terms it means this isn't Owen's story at all.
Why do the faeries do what they do?
Spare Jack on the train.
Warn Jack, with the petal.
Kill Jack's ex-girlfriend.
Killing Estelle makes no sense from her own actions, but he did say they kill as a warning. She dies, he is warned.
But for story reasons, we need to know these aren't nice guys. Estelle thinks they're good. We see them attack and kill one of the few kinds of people that even nice, caring, liberal people quite often want to see strung up. So at that point there's room to think of them as basically good creatures.
Which would make Jack letting the little girl go off with them have no downside.
It would in fact make Jack look dodgy for doubting the faeries, thinking of them as bad things, trying to keep the girl from being made immortal.
To set up that final choice and make it *hurt*, they have to kill people who have done them absolutely no harm.
The 'wicked' stepfather fits the fairy tale, but I didn't see it here. He hit the kid, she had just bit him. He didn't much like her, she didn't much like him, we the audience hadn't any reason to like either of them. When he gets killed, some people might be yaay, others horrified. Doesn't set up the final choice, or have much impact on Jack, who wouldn't have even as much data as the audience.
So they kill Estelle.
Basically both inside and outside the story she's a refrigerator case - a woman killed to have a specific emotional effect on a male character, spur on character growth, set up angst and all that.
It do annoy.
Now what they did to Gwen's flat I think has a story arc function as much as a story one. In episode logic would be she mocked them, so they went and proved they exist. She weren't scared of them so they went and proved their power. They want her to back off, like they want Jack to back off. So scared suits them fine.
But story arc, writer world - Gwen's little speech about work never following her home would be her first warning.
And she was wrong. She brought it home. Brought an alien machine in with her. Doesn't count that as badness following her though.
So to make it clear to her and us, here's the bad things gone to her home. It isn't two seperate worlds she's got going on there, not home and work all split up with barriers. They interpenetrate, overlap, mingle. The world is all one world and she can't just go home and get away from the danger.
Build up. Promise. Incoming danger.
I'm looking forward to it ;-)
But she were still trying to fight them. And Jack stopped her.
Here's the thing - if the faeries go back and forth in time, if that little girl could be in that photograph well after they saw her: The faeries on the train knew Jack would make this decision one day.
So they left him alive to make it.
Okay, it could be he just undied. But we don't know where on his timeline he was, if he could possibly have done that then. And he didn't have any petals. So I don't think so.
They left him alive.
And they gave him a warning.
And he gave them exactly what they want.
Now the only slight flaw in all this is, how could he ever have stopped them? The choice only has meaning if he could have chosen otherwise. If his choice was give her up or die then lose her then being dead wouldn't actually be so good for the world in the long term. And it wouldn't give the faeries any incentive to play power games at him. Power only plays at power.
So what *could* he have done?
The only thing I'm coming up with is 'snap her neck', which wouldn't exactly have saved her. From most points of view.
Maybe is a timeline thing - kill a woman as warning because you can't kill the man right then, get what you want, leave him alive earlier from gratitude. Or maybe he was unkillable all along.
But it still comes down to, they wouldn't have needed to kill for warning, kill Estelle, if there wasn't something could be done to get in their way.
The chosen one was vulnerable. Could still be run over. Or won over?
Were they worried he'd charm her?
... Which leads to all kinds of ick in my brain, because of earlier bad man.
Yeah, I know, I may be trying to puzzle out in-story reasons where only writer reasons exist. But that would be where the fun lives.
Anyway.
Bazillion ways to read this, or write in the gaps.
Is fun stuff.
Is also fun watching the pretty. And watching the pretty angst.
I do kind of miss the DW version a teensy bit though. I mean, angst isn't everything. Charming flirtation through half the universe is a lot more fun.