Re: The third instalment

On 9 July, 17:19, marc_CH <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
stargazer wrote:
I haven't read any of the publicity about a "new alien", nor have I
seen more than vague shapes which could be tentacles/claws/pincers
banging against the glass of a foggy tank and the odd spit or vomit
too! It would be nice to see the Macra in a Torchwood story;

It would be nice to see something imaginative instead.

Episode 3 left me cold, aside from the rather excellent 'staggered'
dialogue with the alien towards the end.

I'm not sure /specifically/ what it is about Torchwood that turns me off
so much - there are so many things. The central characters are
completely unsympathetic on any level;

Speak for yourself - Jack still doesn't interest me, but Gwen, Ianto
and Rhys hold my attention these days. I suppose watching the
characters for two years when they weren't interesting or sympathetic
probably doesn't help, though I thought season 2 did a lot to make
Rhys sympathetic - and season 3's pulling the same trick with Ianto.

the innumerate gay and atheist
references are tedious beyond all belief;

So far there have been two gay references this year (other than
Ianto's unease at being described as part of a couple with another
man), and such as they've been there they've related to the
characterisation of two protagonists in a gay relationship - do you
find the straight references in Gwen's and Rhys' relationship equally
tedious? This sort of reaction may be a fair response to 'gay
references' when they're gratuitous, but when they're actually
relevant to the characterisation (and in this season Ianto's closet
issues are one of his character points), it just seems like
kneejerking.

Ditto the 'atheist' references. I can recall few if any references to
atheism in Torchwood, and none at all this year. What I did notice
this year was an acknowledgment that Christians are part of the Who
universe - something rarely mentioned in Who or Torchwood. True, the
particular portrayal of the Christian in question was unflattering,
but you'd have to be particularly blinkered to argue that it's
unrealistic - as Andrew likes to argue so stridently, most Christians
are neither anti-science nor irrational, but it's absurd and somewhat
parochial to claim that Christians with more extreme beliefs don't
exist. You can take whatever implication you want from the example RTD
chose to use, but it was specifically a reference to an individual
Christian rather than an assault on the religion. It would be a shame
to berate it quite so simplistically, since as I said before it can be
read as a much more nuanced comment, and when done so actually adds to
the depth of the story rather than being *just* a cheap shot.

the tendency to laps into
plot-saving jargon is much as DW, only writ even larger (imagine that);
the dialogue and acting is really *wooden*...I might go on, but I really
just don't get it.

Now you know how I feel about the inexplicable popularity of Star
Trek: The Next Generation. But in this year's Torchwood there hasn't
been any plot-saving yet, so isn't this a little premature?

It's almost, like RTD found a really great anagram of the name of the
main series and felt compelled to write another one around what he has
just smugly discovered. And it's all around *him* - I don't care about
people being gay or not. I don't care about Cardiff. I don't care about
ELO.  I don't care about whether or not people are atheists.

Maybe that's it in a nutshell. I just don't care.

Doesn't that prompt the question, why are you watching it? Aggy loves
to scream how much he actively hates the shows he watches, but while
someone might watch things they dislike out of masochism, a desire to
have an opposing opinion to spend time writing on the internet, or
just as an excuse to have something to complain about, I find it
harder to understand why someone who genuinely doesn't care about a
story would watch it.

Phil
.

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