Torchwood 1-13
Jan. 3rd, 2007 03:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOkay, third viewing
They definitely spent more time selling Owen & Gwen's motivations than Tosh or Ianto.
We know Ianto is a fucked up woobie who badly needs a hug and would do damn near anything to undo the big badness of his life, so I don't think that actually needed much sell. He just hasn't pulled far back from overload since 1-04, and a little bit of a vision was enough to push him over again.
But he did not directly turn against Jack. He wasn't the one with the gun. He was the one who was completely shocked and went to Jack's side.
These things are important.
Ianto decided to disobey Jack, but he didn't do violence against him.
Gwen & Owen did. So the story concentrated on giving them motivation.
Toshiko has unexplored issues.
Or, to put it another way, her 'motivation' left us only with more questions.
Unless she's just supposed to be such a mousey quiet likes orders girl she'll do anything her mother tells her to, even when she's obviously rather dead.
Actually, do we know if her family are alive? I know 1-07 mentioned them, but.
... this leaves me hoping there's missing scenes, because otherwise Toshiko's reasons were ultra skinny.
Unless she's supposed to suddenly believe Owen more than Jack.
... Come on becca, tie it to 1-12 a bit, she knows Jack is a con man and a fake, there's repercussions from that!
Plus she's the one who's been working on rift equations, working on how to control the rift. It is obviously not unthinkable to her. That would lower the bar on how much was needed.
And, sadly, she did fancy Owen, and like him, and thinks a lot of him, and all the ways of saying that.
You can pull motive together out of those.
But I still say it doesn't stand up within the episode. Too skinny.
Ianto...
... whenever I try to have thinky thoughts about him I instead concentrate on that bit of his neck that is only visible when he's undone the top button and gone a bit unravelled.
This is, oddly, distracting.
Ianto gets his hug. Which is so badly needed.
And a kiss. While conscious and consenting. Which is also badly needed on several levels.
I was thinking about how they packed sooooo much more romance in with one off episodes, character they'd never have to bother with again, than they've given us between any regulars, even Gwen/Owen (who got quite a lot really).
Compare to the problem I anticipated with Robin Hood, where Robin/Much was clearly canon in Much's mind... okay, not-canon, but where it was seriously obvious and not hiding very much at all. What worried me there, upon thinking about it, is where do they go from there? With Robin Hood you have the complication of the legend, where if you make him gay you've rewritten something with a lot of momentum. Which I can see stopping a major TV show from going there. Which leaves? Breaking them up, chipping away at the closeness, to make the relationship move.
Gwen/Owen didn't so much chip as shatter, which is fun to watch.
But what if they actually don't want to split up Jack/Ianto?
Well they know they have to sort out Jack/Doctor, which will mean Jack flitting out at the first sign of TARDIS, as we see here.
Tie back to 1-12 - he had to leave after that one (incredible) kiss, because of duty.
Didn't make the feelings not count in the first place.
Which is a good trick.
Actually I was counting the ways Jack reacted to the words "Jack Harkness" in this one, and hell if it hasn't turned into a *keyword* right there. It was when Owen used the name that Jack snapped, it was when Gwen used the name that Jack got tearful. Because it's a name, it's his use-name for ages now, but now it's the name of loved-and-lost, and it hurts.
I love that.
But if he leaves Torchwood - and Tosh said "We need you", and Jack said it was his duty, and what that adds up to is if Jack runs out on all he has now, all he's cared about, for... what? The right Doctor?
... you can say love is more important than duty, and he did indeed risk duty for something like love when he risked the time it took for that kiss. But. You don't flit on duty without repercussions.
I love how this ties back in to the first thing Gwen found out about him - did not report for duty. 1941, that was what went into the records. And Torchwood-now loops back to that again.
Doing what we thought it meant the first time - flitting off with the Doctor.
If we'd got more Jack/Ianto this year - if they'd built it up as grand and romantic as they could, as we've seen them do with the one offs - how much of a bastard would Jack have to be to walk?
Not that it's entirely certain he did.
We get that look of joy when we get the TARDIS noise... *but*...
there's wiggle room for Something Wrong.
That hand got attention called to it three times, and third time the charm. First Owen saying the machine was on the blink, keeps losing power. Second Tosh & Ianto were fixing it when Jack walked out and radically distracted them all. Third time? Jack sees it, and then we get TARDIS noise.
If it's doing what Jack thinks it is doing, then he has cause for joy.
But what if it was broken?
... wiggle room.
With what we've seen... Two kisses and some suggestive talk, that might have meant interesting uses for a stopwatch.
There is Jack/Ianto, and we've seen how Ianto reacted to losing Jack, and anyone that doesn't want to hug him then obviously kicks puppies for fun ;-)
So we have massive Ianto angst. Which, er, restores him to the mini character description in a way very handy for the writers...
But we don't have enough to call Jack a jerk. Completely. It isn't like we've seen promises.
Ianto says "Jack needs me" but we can hear "I need Jack" just as clear.
... if Jack could hear it?
he is soooo going to have some explaining to do next year.
And it kicks right in his own issues. He left him behind.
But in a relatively safe place, so at least that part doesn't suck as much.
Quite.
This stuff is fun.
This stuff is also what 'ship wars are made of, but in a 'verse that has threesomes as close to canon as Doctor/Rose/Jack, make love not war works out rather better.
... Can you imagine Ianto meeting the Doctor?
The coffee-tea wars commence!
... note to self, icon ...
Yeah, all this also had a plot, but once the episode is over so is the plot, more or less. The emotions and relationships are what keeps going in the next ep.
With any luck, anyways.
*re-reads*
you know, it isn't actually like I get more coherent on subsequent viewings.
:eyeroll:
They definitely spent more time selling Owen & Gwen's motivations than Tosh or Ianto.
We know Ianto is a fucked up woobie who badly needs a hug and would do damn near anything to undo the big badness of his life, so I don't think that actually needed much sell. He just hasn't pulled far back from overload since 1-04, and a little bit of a vision was enough to push him over again.
But he did not directly turn against Jack. He wasn't the one with the gun. He was the one who was completely shocked and went to Jack's side.
These things are important.
Ianto decided to disobey Jack, but he didn't do violence against him.
Gwen & Owen did. So the story concentrated on giving them motivation.
Toshiko has unexplored issues.
Or, to put it another way, her 'motivation' left us only with more questions.
Unless she's just supposed to be such a mousey quiet likes orders girl she'll do anything her mother tells her to, even when she's obviously rather dead.
Actually, do we know if her family are alive? I know 1-07 mentioned them, but.
... this leaves me hoping there's missing scenes, because otherwise Toshiko's reasons were ultra skinny.
Unless she's supposed to suddenly believe Owen more than Jack.
... Come on becca, tie it to 1-12 a bit, she knows Jack is a con man and a fake, there's repercussions from that!
Plus she's the one who's been working on rift equations, working on how to control the rift. It is obviously not unthinkable to her. That would lower the bar on how much was needed.
And, sadly, she did fancy Owen, and like him, and thinks a lot of him, and all the ways of saying that.
You can pull motive together out of those.
But I still say it doesn't stand up within the episode. Too skinny.
Ianto...
... whenever I try to have thinky thoughts about him I instead concentrate on that bit of his neck that is only visible when he's undone the top button and gone a bit unravelled.
This is, oddly, distracting.
Ianto gets his hug. Which is so badly needed.
And a kiss. While conscious and consenting. Which is also badly needed on several levels.
I was thinking about how they packed sooooo much more romance in with one off episodes, character they'd never have to bother with again, than they've given us between any regulars, even Gwen/Owen (who got quite a lot really).
Compare to the problem I anticipated with Robin Hood, where Robin/Much was clearly canon in Much's mind... okay, not-canon, but where it was seriously obvious and not hiding very much at all. What worried me there, upon thinking about it, is where do they go from there? With Robin Hood you have the complication of the legend, where if you make him gay you've rewritten something with a lot of momentum. Which I can see stopping a major TV show from going there. Which leaves? Breaking them up, chipping away at the closeness, to make the relationship move.
Gwen/Owen didn't so much chip as shatter, which is fun to watch.
But what if they actually don't want to split up Jack/Ianto?
Well they know they have to sort out Jack/Doctor, which will mean Jack flitting out at the first sign of TARDIS, as we see here.
Tie back to 1-12 - he had to leave after that one (incredible) kiss, because of duty.
Didn't make the feelings not count in the first place.
Which is a good trick.
Actually I was counting the ways Jack reacted to the words "Jack Harkness" in this one, and hell if it hasn't turned into a *keyword* right there. It was when Owen used the name that Jack snapped, it was when Gwen used the name that Jack got tearful. Because it's a name, it's his use-name for ages now, but now it's the name of loved-and-lost, and it hurts.
I love that.
But if he leaves Torchwood - and Tosh said "We need you", and Jack said it was his duty, and what that adds up to is if Jack runs out on all he has now, all he's cared about, for... what? The right Doctor?
... you can say love is more important than duty, and he did indeed risk duty for something like love when he risked the time it took for that kiss. But. You don't flit on duty without repercussions.
I love how this ties back in to the first thing Gwen found out about him - did not report for duty. 1941, that was what went into the records. And Torchwood-now loops back to that again.
Doing what we thought it meant the first time - flitting off with the Doctor.
If we'd got more Jack/Ianto this year - if they'd built it up as grand and romantic as they could, as we've seen them do with the one offs - how much of a bastard would Jack have to be to walk?
Not that it's entirely certain he did.
We get that look of joy when we get the TARDIS noise... *but*...
there's wiggle room for Something Wrong.
That hand got attention called to it three times, and third time the charm. First Owen saying the machine was on the blink, keeps losing power. Second Tosh & Ianto were fixing it when Jack walked out and radically distracted them all. Third time? Jack sees it, and then we get TARDIS noise.
If it's doing what Jack thinks it is doing, then he has cause for joy.
But what if it was broken?
... wiggle room.
With what we've seen... Two kisses and some suggestive talk, that might have meant interesting uses for a stopwatch.
There is Jack/Ianto, and we've seen how Ianto reacted to losing Jack, and anyone that doesn't want to hug him then obviously kicks puppies for fun ;-)
So we have massive Ianto angst. Which, er, restores him to the mini character description in a way very handy for the writers...
But we don't have enough to call Jack a jerk. Completely. It isn't like we've seen promises.
Ianto says "Jack needs me" but we can hear "I need Jack" just as clear.
... if Jack could hear it?
he is soooo going to have some explaining to do next year.
And it kicks right in his own issues. He left him behind.
But in a relatively safe place, so at least that part doesn't suck as much.
Quite.
This stuff is fun.
This stuff is also what 'ship wars are made of, but in a 'verse that has threesomes as close to canon as Doctor/Rose/Jack, make love not war works out rather better.
... Can you imagine Ianto meeting the Doctor?
The coffee-tea wars commence!
... note to self, icon ...
Yeah, all this also had a plot, but once the episode is over so is the plot, more or less. The emotions and relationships are what keeps going in the next ep.
With any luck, anyways.
*re-reads*
you know, it isn't actually like I get more coherent on subsequent viewings.
:eyeroll:
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-03 11:07 pm (UTC)Toshiko has unexplored issues.
Or, to put it another way, her 'motivation' left us only with more questions.
Unless she's just supposed to be such a mousey quiet likes orders girl she'll do anything her mother tells her to, even when she's obviously rather dead.
It should be noted that her parents were born in Japan, and she calls her mother "okaasan," which is a traditional name. So, we can gather then, that Toshiko was raised fairly traditionally. That being the case, of course she would have listened to her mother.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 12:41 pm (UTC)To be fair, it wouldn't be that unexpected if Ianto was a bit uncertain about Jack. Tosh had reported that Jack had told her that he was immortal. I can see this shaking Ianto as Jack chose to share a confidence in Tosh, and from Ianto's reaction Jack had never spoken about this to him. Which might have stung a little considering that Ianto was earlier convinced that Jack needed him. It's also a little telling that Ianto's reaction to the news of the immortality and the real Jack Harkness was immediately to question what Jack was and to bring up the issue of trust. Plus there might have been a more personal sting that Jack so quickly fell for someone else. Though on the plus side, it does make that final fleeting kiss between them all the more lovely.
All in all, I can see that shaking the blind trust Ianto had in Jack before the temporal shift. Which possibly is why he does buy into the idea that opening the Rift might actually cause all the deaths to end. Incidentally, I do see that as a major difference between Owen, Gwen, and Tosh and Ianto. Owen and Gwen did it almost specifically to try and right very personal wrongs (bring back Rhys/Diane). Tosh and Ianto went along because they genuinely believed it was the only way to stop the flood of deaths - Rhys being the final straw.
As for Tosh herself, I agree, I just don't quite buy her abandoning Jack like that. Unless she really was just so moved by Gwen's personal grief that she thought the risk was worthwhile if it meant bringing an end to the plagues/timeslips/etc.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-06 08:09 pm (UTC)(also, I agree with most of your points. I'm just a bit busy trying to figure out why *exactly* I like the format. *squints*)