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beccaelizabeth1) The more I read about the Suzie-Owen-Tosh montage in 1-01 and the more people call what Tosh does innocuous and innocent, the more I want to argue it.
Because she's actually the one who gets called by Gwen *most* in the first ep. All those databases she shouldn't have access to, all that use of CCTV. It's a deep and ongoing violation of civil liberties, and it is an extension of the tech she takes home - she reads everything. Same with 1-07, violation of people's minds, the ultimate privacy. Called power of gods, but feels like a curse. But it really should be up there with the other two - Suzie-life Owen-body Tosh-mind. What she did was a violation of data that span out of control through violations of privacy to violation of mind. So how is that lesser than the other two?
It's also significant in the context that all this data only once leads Tosh to make an empathy connection such as Gwen is always pushing as being ideal. Gwen telling them off that these are people, Carys and all the others. Well Tosh has the most data, all that about everyone's lives at her fingertips, but she isn't backing Gwen up on that one, she isn't there saying that empathy stuff about people. Even the humanising detail of intercepted emails about the relative merits of actors was mentioned by Gwen, not Tosh. And Toshiko is, in the first episode, the one talking about *faking* data, about covering up the truth of someone's life with a convenient lie.
Toshiko is the one back in the past in 1-12, finding out about Captain Jack Harkness. The way Jack took his name for his own convenience. And Tosh's reaction is that, somehow, this is a *good* thing. Jack altered other!Jack's record so that, instead of it being recorded that the man was a full on hero, it was there on paper 'never reported for duty'. (Unless - and this is a possibility - Jack wrote something else entirely but Jack's intervention in history caused real!Jack to not report for duty. But that would be paradox, have knock on effects, be a plot thing, and really be outside what we can infer from existing canon.) As far as we know, Jack erased from the record a purely heroic act just so he could use the name to make money.
And Toshiko *sees nothing wrong with that*.
Okay, so she also sees our!Jack as a hero, and maybe that's the overriding factor there.
But our!Jack and whoever was involved with faking the papers saw nothing wrong with erasing the identities of the new arrivals from the 50s; it plain didn't occur to them they could see that as important.
So what we have from episode one is Toshiko making fake history and using alien tech to acquire data. And both those things go bigger later on. And yet, people don't see them as wrong, or as wrong in the same league as Owen. In fact I'd bet most people don't *see* them at all.
Like CCTV. It's everywhere, but when was the last time you thought about it? When was the last time you thought of it as a rights issue? Used to be the idea of being watched all the time was a revolutionary form of prison - the panopticon, where criminals never saw the watcher and therefore always had to behave. These days it's common practice on the streets. Right from your front door onwards, for many people. And who thinks about it?
And since when did it get to be a good thing?
Tosh does the routine invasion and violation of people's privacy, for a living.
And nobody calls that wrong?
... that, right there, is deeply interesting.
2) Unrelated, I just private posted a looooong rant that started out being about... something completely random, then detoured via Jack and porn as per usual, then turned into something that can be summed up as "How do people do it? The being people thing? Or the doing other people? Because from the oops wrong planet perspective this thing called sex is both somewhat fascinating and vastly vastly mysterious and how *weird* is that?"
Only there was more funny and quite a lot of bitter and a very long rant about four in the morning as a unique convergence of time, people, and alcohol.
So *then* the two thoughts collided and turned into a vague thought about how Toshiko has all the data in the world, all the internet and a whole lot more, and yet couldn't reach out to the person at the next desk well enough to get a perpetually horny man to so much as snog her. And then to know what other people were thinking she needed technical assistance.
... I'm feeling that bitter kind of empathy here. And also envy. Because she at least one more chance of knowing at that level than anyone in this world ever gets.
... the more I think about it, the more I think that Tosh does in fact have a personality but it went invisible the same way CCTV cameras do, because it's all just so normal we don't think about it. She's the computer geek who loves talking about texts but can't find anyone to talk to. Hello to the familiar.
Only her favourite texts are not shared by millions, they're classified so secret she can get fired just for geeking about them. No fandom. No connection with, for random instance, Eugene. Was she even in that ep? But really, Eugene had more of a connection to a social network with a shared preoccupation, even though it wasn't shown. He knew people who were into the alien stuff too. Probably only on computer and not very well, but, my point is, Torchwood-the-company doesn't function as a fandom. Cult, yes, fandom, no. No shared appreciation. It's more like one of those message boards where you can't help but wonder why they're still watching if they hate it so much. Which, okay, this place can sound like some days, when I get my rant on. But I'm only paying attention because of the aspects that I love... which are those I find useful and valuable, in one model of what audiences do with texts. Torchwood-the-company has a version of useful and valuable based on defence and money. None of that social/poetry stuff. Like they think it's all technical manuals. Programmers, not Trek.
Huh.
It's seven in the morning and I spent the last two hours typing and I should probably attempt sleep at some point. Because I haven't. Since I woke up yesterday lunchtime, to get a parcel.
... which is a useful disclaimer I shall leave visible.
(Like Toshiko, Ianto's 'sin' was trying to protect the alien from Torchwood. Which is very reminiscent of Jack. Except that Jack has more knowledge and picked the right alien. Sort of. From a perspective given by a quarter century of watching the Doctor.)
(So really we're back to ignorance-is-poison, by way of attachment. Only the usual poison at Torchwood is hate, for anything Other. And they create ignorance on purpose. Huh.)
Because she's actually the one who gets called by Gwen *most* in the first ep. All those databases she shouldn't have access to, all that use of CCTV. It's a deep and ongoing violation of civil liberties, and it is an extension of the tech she takes home - she reads everything. Same with 1-07, violation of people's minds, the ultimate privacy. Called power of gods, but feels like a curse. But it really should be up there with the other two - Suzie-life Owen-body Tosh-mind. What she did was a violation of data that span out of control through violations of privacy to violation of mind. So how is that lesser than the other two?
It's also significant in the context that all this data only once leads Tosh to make an empathy connection such as Gwen is always pushing as being ideal. Gwen telling them off that these are people, Carys and all the others. Well Tosh has the most data, all that about everyone's lives at her fingertips, but she isn't backing Gwen up on that one, she isn't there saying that empathy stuff about people. Even the humanising detail of intercepted emails about the relative merits of actors was mentioned by Gwen, not Tosh. And Toshiko is, in the first episode, the one talking about *faking* data, about covering up the truth of someone's life with a convenient lie.
Toshiko is the one back in the past in 1-12, finding out about Captain Jack Harkness. The way Jack took his name for his own convenience. And Tosh's reaction is that, somehow, this is a *good* thing. Jack altered other!Jack's record so that, instead of it being recorded that the man was a full on hero, it was there on paper 'never reported for duty'. (Unless - and this is a possibility - Jack wrote something else entirely but Jack's intervention in history caused real!Jack to not report for duty. But that would be paradox, have knock on effects, be a plot thing, and really be outside what we can infer from existing canon.) As far as we know, Jack erased from the record a purely heroic act just so he could use the name to make money.
And Toshiko *sees nothing wrong with that*.
Okay, so she also sees our!Jack as a hero, and maybe that's the overriding factor there.
But our!Jack and whoever was involved with faking the papers saw nothing wrong with erasing the identities of the new arrivals from the 50s; it plain didn't occur to them they could see that as important.
So what we have from episode one is Toshiko making fake history and using alien tech to acquire data. And both those things go bigger later on. And yet, people don't see them as wrong, or as wrong in the same league as Owen. In fact I'd bet most people don't *see* them at all.
Like CCTV. It's everywhere, but when was the last time you thought about it? When was the last time you thought of it as a rights issue? Used to be the idea of being watched all the time was a revolutionary form of prison - the panopticon, where criminals never saw the watcher and therefore always had to behave. These days it's common practice on the streets. Right from your front door onwards, for many people. And who thinks about it?
And since when did it get to be a good thing?
Tosh does the routine invasion and violation of people's privacy, for a living.
And nobody calls that wrong?
... that, right there, is deeply interesting.
2) Unrelated, I just private posted a looooong rant that started out being about... something completely random, then detoured via Jack and porn as per usual, then turned into something that can be summed up as "How do people do it? The being people thing? Or the doing other people? Because from the oops wrong planet perspective this thing called sex is both somewhat fascinating and vastly vastly mysterious and how *weird* is that?"
Only there was more funny and quite a lot of bitter and a very long rant about four in the morning as a unique convergence of time, people, and alcohol.
So *then* the two thoughts collided and turned into a vague thought about how Toshiko has all the data in the world, all the internet and a whole lot more, and yet couldn't reach out to the person at the next desk well enough to get a perpetually horny man to so much as snog her. And then to know what other people were thinking she needed technical assistance.
... I'm feeling that bitter kind of empathy here. And also envy. Because she at least one more chance of knowing at that level than anyone in this world ever gets.
... the more I think about it, the more I think that Tosh does in fact have a personality but it went invisible the same way CCTV cameras do, because it's all just so normal we don't think about it. She's the computer geek who loves talking about texts but can't find anyone to talk to. Hello to the familiar.
Only her favourite texts are not shared by millions, they're classified so secret she can get fired just for geeking about them. No fandom. No connection with, for random instance, Eugene. Was she even in that ep? But really, Eugene had more of a connection to a social network with a shared preoccupation, even though it wasn't shown. He knew people who were into the alien stuff too. Probably only on computer and not very well, but, my point is, Torchwood-the-company doesn't function as a fandom. Cult, yes, fandom, no. No shared appreciation. It's more like one of those message boards where you can't help but wonder why they're still watching if they hate it so much. Which, okay, this place can sound like some days, when I get my rant on. But I'm only paying attention because of the aspects that I love... which are those I find useful and valuable, in one model of what audiences do with texts. Torchwood-the-company has a version of useful and valuable based on defence and money. None of that social/poetry stuff. Like they think it's all technical manuals. Programmers, not Trek.
Huh.
It's seven in the morning and I spent the last two hours typing and I should probably attempt sleep at some point. Because I haven't. Since I woke up yesterday lunchtime, to get a parcel.
... which is a useful disclaimer I shall leave visible.
(Like Toshiko, Ianto's 'sin' was trying to protect the alien from Torchwood. Which is very reminiscent of Jack. Except that Jack has more knowledge and picked the right alien. Sort of. From a perspective given by a quarter century of watching the Doctor.)
(So really we're back to ignorance-is-poison, by way of attachment. Only the usual poison at Torchwood is hate, for anything Other. And they create ignorance on purpose. Huh.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 10:57 pm (UTC)and yet
I keep reading people calling her innocent and blameless and stuff.
On the website somewhere she says she used the book scanner in a shop to get all the... I think it was Tintin books? Which, actually, technically, stealing.
But it's all the kinds of stuff that are increasingly common in the audience in the download age. And because we're watching them through cameras all the time their use of cameras might seem normal. But I think it's more it brings into question what we the audience are doing. Just like it creeps me the hell out when Owen uses the ghost machine and has to just watch that stuff going on, because it highlights that we're sitting there watching that same bad stuff for entertainment, and some aren't half as freaked out as he is.
My poll about what to do with the characters had most people want to be Tosh.
Put together it's all kinds of interesting in ways I'm having trouble getting specific about.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:58 am (UTC)I'm not denying that Tosh has a dark side - doesn't everyone? But I'm arguing that it's not what you make it out to be.
Another point that I find remarkable - no one's been attacking Jack for his past as a criminal. There've been discussions about Tosh, Owen and Suzie's misuse of alien artefacts and how it implicates them morally (and quite possibly legally), but I have yet to find someone who rages against Jack for being a con man.
~ sera
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:06 am (UTC)and see the Doctor's reaction on the Game Station to someone saying it was just their job.
Tosh wants to know. Especially things other people don't know, or don't want her to know. If there's good reasons for not-knowing then that's a dark side. But it's a dark side shared by a whole lot of people and, often, not considered dark. Sort of thing.
Jack's past? My main theory is that it isn't past at all. How did he get a job with Torchwood? It's not like he could pass even the most rudimentary security screening. Therefore either Torchwood know exactly where he's from and yet somehow trust him anyway, or... he's running a very big con indeed.
And he's using out of place tech to do it - that wrist computer of his isn't local, just for starters.
I guess Jack is so much front and center he gets invisible that way?
Like the way he talks all the time but says nothing much.
Whatever he's doing with Torchwood, whatever Torchwood does that is wrong, they do it on his watch, so he's doing the most wrong of all of them.
I guess maybe fans trust his motives?
Plus the whole 'dying to save the world' thing buys a lot of good karma.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:26 am (UTC)Question: Do you think Tosh was already working for TW in Aliens in London? Or was she recruited after that?
The thing about Jack's timeline is that we don't have enough information to say what happened when. Whenever time travel is involved, the whole before/after concept gets jumbled up anyway.
~ sera