thoughts at four in the morning

[beccaelizabeth]

comprehension is cyclic: what you see influences what you know, and what you know influences what you see



is from the Language and Characterisation book I'm reading (laboriously slowly)

I keep wanting to apply the whole thing to Owen and the Large Arguing About 1-01
(Because we're not all seeing the same thing, or bringing the same prior knowledge to it, so of course there's going to be arguing, and about a charged topic it gets to be Large Arguing)

but can also apply to Torchwood 'verse and the basic perception issues mundanes face there.



I keep reading people saying that 'obviously' Joe Normal is not ready to deal with the kind of stuff Torchwood deals with.

And if we're talking large guns in the hands of, for instance, whoever the fuck it was making a lot of noise outside the flats at 0300 tonight, I'd have to agree.

They'd need a lot of gun related education first.


But if it's the idea that knowing all this would drive mere mundanes nuts then it's an odd kind of arrogance on the part of us-audience to buy that even for an instant. Because we're sitting at home watching all this stuff and our heads haven't exploded yet.

Granted, it is a fictional universe seen from here.

But in their 'verse? Torchwood personnel can handle it. UNIT can handle it. Politicians can handle it. The Doctor's companions can handle it. The Doctor's companions' *family* can handle it. LI'n'DA can handle it, in their own personal and idiosyncratic ways. So basically *every level of 'verse society* can, in fact, handle it, without going bibble in a corner somewhere.

What they do with it is a large and ongoing problem.

So what 'they couldn't handle knowing' basically means is 'the average man on the street would fuck it up and so we hide because we know better'.

Seeing as I reckon there's no fundamental difference between the average man on the street and the Torchwood bigwigs and/or the Queen herself except education and experience I have an actual problem with that.

So the Torchwood man on the street doesn't see the alien. Calling him names isn't helpful. Teach him how.

And the idea that Torchwood knows better is radically called into question by how completely they fuck things up. Regularly. In big ways.

Gwen asks who Torchwood are answerable to. They're powerful enough at the start to think the answer is nobody. Well, by the end of the series there's the rather larger answer of 'reality', 'karma' and (rough translation) 'laws of cause and effect'.

Plus more and more Cardiff locals are getting a clue and asking good questions.


If Torchwood stay answerable to no-one and covering things up and all that then by laws of the 'verse they are the bad guys. Same with keeping on ending up on the opposite side to the Doctor. Same with the blowing up space ships, really.

So if next season continues same as this one has, we're watching the bad guys fuck up a lot and nearly die. That's... kind of fun.

I'd like it more if Torchwood get outed. They're eventually the famous institute of game shows. How do they get there from here? And what are the repercussions?

It would require some fairly structural changes to the show, but they do tend to have a completely different thing going on in every episode, so change kind of is the template.

21st century is when it all changes... so what changes would be the most fun to see?

Comments

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I think the rules of the universe isn't letting the Average Joe be able to comprehend it.

Mostly for the fact that I can not think of a single reason how the hell anyone could have covered up the Cyberman invasion. I can think that Torchwood and the government is refusing to explain it, but I don't see how they could have convinced everyone it was a mass hallucination without some denial from the populace (or Retcon in the water.)

[beccaelizabeth]

retcon in the water isn't entirely impossible - as early as 1-02 we hear in the car Gwen suggesting putting stuff in the water and the others saying the water board got annoyed last time they did that. Torchwood could work large scale if they wanted to.

But then drugs in the water was Rhys' explanation for the whole thing in the first place.

And before that everyone thought it was ghosts.

Interesting to imagine how that turn around happened.


If there is a built in difference between mundanes and illuminati in the 'verse, if there's people that literally cannot see what's right in front of them rather than just a lot of people operating from an inadequate paradigm, that's a very annoying statement about How People Work built in there.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I think it's a question of psychology rather than intelligence? It's not that the people aren't smart enough to understand it, I think, but that deep down they don't want to understand it and thus repress it?

I mean, the same thing happened in Sunnydale, and with people who were by no means stupid--Shelia was incredibly intelligent albeit sort of shortsighted, while Joyce was more roundly intelligent.

It's certainly people operating from an inadequate paradigm--it's not that they can't see what is right in front of them, it's that they interprete what they see in different ways than do the Torchwood staff.

So if next season continues same as this one has, we're watching the bad guys fuck up a lot and nearly die. That's... kind of fun.

Yep.

[beccaelizabeth]

want world to be one way, only see what backs it up => Cyberwoman. Small Worlds. Countrycide to start with. Random Shoes. Er... this could be a theme.

*nods*