Torchwood

[altariel]

So, Torchwood. Kind of... icky, wasn't it? I think I get the story might be about corruption now. But Gwen is a useless POV character (and I'll never forgive her for what she's doing to Barry Backstory; although I think Burn wotsisname is giving the best performance in the show). I think if I was about fifteen, I might think this was the best TV programme I had ever seen. As it is - well, it's better than Robin Hood. But nowhere near as good as Strictly Come Dancing.

Hey, though! They're showing Crown Court on Legal TV!

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I decided last week that I'd had enough of Torchwood. Horror just isn't a genre I go for and Jack lost his sense of humour somewhere, so there wasn't really enough left to induce me to download any more.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I saw a recent episode of Torchwood last night - thought I'd give it a shot - it was about welsh cannibals? is that the one you saw? I thought it was like a show written and directed by intelligent teenagers who had seen some films and had a good imagination, but had never actually experienced real life.

I thought the best performance was by the doctor who was in Bleak House?

[furius.livejournal.com]

Well, icky with the Gwen/Owen maybe, but I think the actual gore is pretty standard and not very gruesome. Is Gwen the POV character now though? She seems to be getting more emotionaaly distant from the average watcher than someone like Ianto or Tosh...

At 20, I think it's occasionally brilliant but always very funny. (The tractor rescue!)

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

I think if I was about fifteen, I might think this was the best TV programme I had ever seen.

So much for the gritty adult take, eh?

The trailer looked good, it's disappointing to see all these poor reviews. (Mind you, I don't mind a bit of ickiness, if, like nudity, it's all about The Integrity of the Story, and if they're finally getting into the corruption angle, good, but that's all so easily undermined if the characters are poor and things feel gratuitous.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It's very thin on humour, which I'd thought would have been one of its strengths. I'll keep going till the end, of course - I'm still watching Robin Hood for some bizarre reason.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'm only watching it so I can write acidic redactions of each episode in the style of Movies in 15 Minutes, and post them to LJ. Apparently my summaries are the only thing keeping a couple of my f'list loyal to it as well...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The first ep was quite amusing but that was it. Yes, I was expecting the Jack we met in the Blitz.

If I'm not enjoying a series or book, I just give up and move on to something better.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha! I'm not surprised; that's inspired.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Well, I thought it was pretty boring, but then I nearly always find horror dull (I did start thinking, halfway through this, "Wasn't Ravenous quite entertaining?"). There seemed to be long stretches that consisted of nothing but the characters running round the village clutching their guns and wondering whether the Big Bad Something was round the corner; possibly something else happened, but I was reading a newspaper and just glancing up occasionally to see if there was any sign of plot until Burn Gorman started talking again.

Owen was the only interesting bit, though I'm puzzled. They spent two episodes establishing that he was a nasty bit of work, and last night he's got the Tarrant-style "We've got to rescue the rest of our team" role. So are we supposed to think he's been un-corrupted by meeting Gareth Thomas? Or by his feelings for Gwen? Or he's putting on a show to get Gwen into bed? Or that The Same Person Can Be Nasty and Nice Depending On The Circumstances?

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

*grins and looks faintly embarrassed* Thankyou :)

I must say I think I'm looking forward to letting rip on this week's excrescence. I thought it sucked unbelievable rocks, and I'm actually sorely tempted to seriously fanfic the Episode That Should Have Been, as well as giving what they aired a righteous sending-up...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to your evisceration of this week's episode.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the one I saw, and I completely agree that it's a programme that smart teenagers would make (also what I think about Battlestar Galactica, although this seems to be a minority opinion).

The doctor who was in Bleak House is Burn Wotsisname, and it's by far the best performance - John Barrowman has been very disappointing. Mr A. reckins it's because he's doing theatre acting and projecting to the back.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The gore wasn't gruesome, but there was something slightly sordid about the whole thing. Maybe this was what they were aiming for.

My reading is that Gwen has been the POV character from the start: we entered Torchwood with her, she is the only one whose outside life we follow in any detail, and we are seeing her get further into the mire.

I was a bit bored by the time of the tractor rescue, but last night's had one laugh out loud moment, where Owen shouted out something like, "Only in the &£*%$ countryside!" Also, I love bad puns so I liked the title.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I find it very hard to give up on stuff. I'm assuming that they have some kind of story arc going on, so I want to see that through to completion. I've made the break with BSG now, I won't be going back to that when it turns up again.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

More of a gritty adolescent take. Which is fine, I suppose, just not quite what I was hoping for.

I thought last night's was perfectly well executed, it just didn't float my boat. Owen's characterization and performance were actually very good. Everthing else - meh. Love your icon.

[six-old-cars.livejournal.com]

I think the running-round-clutching-guns bit was an attempt at building suspense (required for horror to have any chance of working) and the Owen character change was simply a sloppy piece of writing.

I didn't see the very end of last night's - the scene where a naked Owen told a half-dressed Gwen "you can now" was just too vomit inducing. I don't suppose I missed much.

And I decided on seeing the first two episodes that they had done the sadly all too common thing of confusing "adult" with "smutty adolescent".

[raspberryfool.livejournal.com]

Egagds - i'd almost forgotten about Crown Court. I remember the theme tune too - it was staple school holiday fare on wet or cold days. I used to think it was a real trial until i was about seven when it dawned upon me that it couldn't be because there's no such place as Fulchester!. I never really liked it though - Rainbow was much more fun!

Today's version would be 'text 0898 xxx xxxx to decide the verdict. Texts cost £2.50 or more from a landline.'

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's interesting, because that was the moment when I thought "Finally, a plot development!" It was also the first bit of non-gratuitous sex in the show, because it wasn't really about sex at all; it was about Gwen becoming so isolated from normal life that she reached out for an unlikely source of comfort. Except that, if we hadn't had the first two episodes, Owen would be the likeliest source, because Jack seems to have mislaid his charm along with his mortality, Suzie's dead, Ianto looked quite cool while he was the man of mystery but now... not so much, and Toshiko hasn't got a character yet. Whereas Owen... well, he's being played by Burn Gorman, who's probably incapable of turning in an uninteresting performance. So I'm hoping the first two episodes were a false start, because he's turning into the only reason to go on watching.

[gfk88.livejournal.com]

Torchwood - er, I think I may be a week behind so the following probably makes no sense. It's been a bit disappointing so far, I reckon - no character development, rubbish plots, and so on. I can dimly see, though, that maybe it has some sort of ambition about it. In the last one I saw, with those fairy thingies, Jack deliberately sacrifices the little girl for some alleged greater good AND you get to see the consequences. Now I reckon that doesn't happen very often on the telly - TV heroes are generally falling over each other to sacrifice themselves or someone they think deserves it.

Crown Court - fantastic ! I grew up on that, you know.

[aervir.livejournal.com]

I sort of made it through the pilot and was booored. And when I saw screenshots of Lisa the bikini-clad cyberwomen two weeks ago I deleted all the unwatched episodes from my hard-drive in a fit of rage.

This week's reaction posts to / summaries of the Welsh cannibal hillbillies don't really make me regret this decision. Hasn't anyone in Wales seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre yet? Or at least a few X-Files episodes?

Actually, from what I've heard about it, Countrycide does remind me a bit of the X-Files stories Our Town and Home -- which I, aged 15, actually considered to be among the best things ever, so your observations re: Torchwood might be justified.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Fulchester turns up in Viz or something like that.

"Who should be sent down? You decide."

[brendan-moody.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder if the show is a contest to see how many different cliches they can fit into a 13-episode run. There was nothing here that you couldn't get in a B-grade horror movie, except possibly Gwen's "omg I have seen the face of eval!!" speech, which takes the character in exactly the opposite direction I might have hoped for. I was hoping Torchwood would develop a unique feel, much as Doctor Who has but of course very different; at this point I'd settle for any one feel, rather than an anthology of SF/F-horror types.

I think Burn Gorman is quite good, but I've been more pleased overall with Gareth David-Lloyd, who made the equally cliche-ridden "Cyberwoman" bearable; the rest of the cast is forgettable.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, do! I did that with a B7 ep, one that shall remain nameless considering whose LJ we're chatting on. ;-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I stopped halfway through S2 with that. I have occasionally been too quick to make up my mind, but from what I've heard from people who like it for reasons I wouldn't, I made the right decision.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I still recommend episode 5, although you might not like the resolution nearly as much as I did. But, knowing your tastes, vilakins, I think I can confidently say that you should not watch episode 6, ever. It's exactly the kind of horror that would really turn you off.

(Me, I'm enjoying the series, but not as much as I'd expected to, so I'm still hoping it'll get better as it goes along.)