Torchwood - Greeks again
Nov. 29th, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethrewatched the episode
always find I watch the faces more on second watch, first being more about the subtitles. bit of a drawback, I know.
ANYways
seemed to clunk even more this time. I didn't miss any plot developments, they really did change direction without any reason. And there were more points where I blinked and wondered what got cut and why, because those lines just didn't stick together, much less flow.
Other times, mostly with Jack, they were having two conversations at once. Which was rather cool.
There were some themey links between parts. Specifics - domestic violence, betrayed by someone you love. Tosh feels betrayed by Owen, even though Owen has no reason to think what he does counts. Tosh randomly bumps into the guy who is about to go kill his family, rather an unreasonable over reaction to being dumped. Space lesbian girl apparently decided to rip Tosh's heart out in the literal as well as metaphoric sense (and still with the WTF at the total lack of logic). And Gwen calling what she was doing a betrayal. So it had theme.
It just lacked logic, even in SF sized portions. There really was no action in between 'don't take me to Torchwood' and 'take me to Torchwood' that would explain the change.
There was a difference in Tosh - first she was all cool and collected and calling her boss, second she was all tell me what to do. So you could say that spacegirl was waiting for Tosh to break. The only problem being that did not in fact get her secure access to the transporter. It could not reasonably be supposed that it could, given the givens. Not once she's walked in there.
Given her apparent bursts of super speed she could have just gone around and cut everyone's throats. Bit of a problem for the logic right there. Why did she bother with the hostage situation? Could Jack have broken the thing he was holding? If she was thinking of that, why get caught by his trap?
... I think Mary's overconfidence makes more sense in light of a possibility - she may be telepathic without the pendant. The glowy form spoke without moving lips, and she was confident in what Owen was thinking. If that is the case, she could have got used to the idea she could see danger coming. That would make Jack being impossible to read a Plot as well as Character thing. Which would irritate me less in the 'and he needs more mysteries for why' department, but rather more in the 'if your plot needs a whole new mystery maybe the plot is broken' way.
... I still don't like this story. It's like it makes perfect sense as angsty space lesbians, and then it breaks when Tosh does and tacks on an ending that doesn't fit. Yet at the same time the ending fit themes from before, so it must be the intended ending.
I really hate the *how* of the storytelling. Someone needs beating with the show not tell stick. Though only selectively - Jack was great... possibly, though that time filler speech while he's holding the transporter was really rather peculiar. And the way the alien doesn't talk back was... cheap and strange. If I'd written a scene like that he wouldn't get to monologue so much, because it would suggest I'd forgotten to turn the thing around and figure out what the others were thinking. ... ironic ...
But the alien chick that did data dumps throughout and for some reason stood around giving out her biography to explain it all at the end. That purely sucked.
There was no logic and it relied on telling because it had nothing to show us. That's the feeling I'm left with on second viewing.
So even without the still makes me sick specific, I don't think this one was very good.
always find I watch the faces more on second watch, first being more about the subtitles. bit of a drawback, I know.
ANYways
seemed to clunk even more this time. I didn't miss any plot developments, they really did change direction without any reason. And there were more points where I blinked and wondered what got cut and why, because those lines just didn't stick together, much less flow.
Other times, mostly with Jack, they were having two conversations at once. Which was rather cool.
There were some themey links between parts. Specifics - domestic violence, betrayed by someone you love. Tosh feels betrayed by Owen, even though Owen has no reason to think what he does counts. Tosh randomly bumps into the guy who is about to go kill his family, rather an unreasonable over reaction to being dumped. Space lesbian girl apparently decided to rip Tosh's heart out in the literal as well as metaphoric sense (and still with the WTF at the total lack of logic). And Gwen calling what she was doing a betrayal. So it had theme.
It just lacked logic, even in SF sized portions. There really was no action in between 'don't take me to Torchwood' and 'take me to Torchwood' that would explain the change.
There was a difference in Tosh - first she was all cool and collected and calling her boss, second she was all tell me what to do. So you could say that spacegirl was waiting for Tosh to break. The only problem being that did not in fact get her secure access to the transporter. It could not reasonably be supposed that it could, given the givens. Not once she's walked in there.
Given her apparent bursts of super speed she could have just gone around and cut everyone's throats. Bit of a problem for the logic right there. Why did she bother with the hostage situation? Could Jack have broken the thing he was holding? If she was thinking of that, why get caught by his trap?
... I think Mary's overconfidence makes more sense in light of a possibility - she may be telepathic without the pendant. The glowy form spoke without moving lips, and she was confident in what Owen was thinking. If that is the case, she could have got used to the idea she could see danger coming. That would make Jack being impossible to read a Plot as well as Character thing. Which would irritate me less in the 'and he needs more mysteries for why' department, but rather more in the 'if your plot needs a whole new mystery maybe the plot is broken' way.
... I still don't like this story. It's like it makes perfect sense as angsty space lesbians, and then it breaks when Tosh does and tacks on an ending that doesn't fit. Yet at the same time the ending fit themes from before, so it must be the intended ending.
I really hate the *how* of the storytelling. Someone needs beating with the show not tell stick. Though only selectively - Jack was great... possibly, though that time filler speech while he's holding the transporter was really rather peculiar. And the way the alien doesn't talk back was... cheap and strange. If I'd written a scene like that he wouldn't get to monologue so much, because it would suggest I'd forgotten to turn the thing around and figure out what the others were thinking. ... ironic ...
But the alien chick that did data dumps throughout and for some reason stood around giving out her biography to explain it all at the end. That purely sucked.
There was no logic and it relied on telling because it had nothing to show us. That's the feeling I'm left with on second viewing.
So even without the still makes me sick specific, I don't think this one was very good.