Torchwood Out of Time
Dec. 18th, 2006 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn haste, since I'm in Berlin today: I kept watching Torchwood but wasn't motivated to review. The last episode, though, was fabulous, and contained some of the best acting and the most moving scenes so far. Consider this a place holder post for a proper review once I'm reunited with my laptop and find the time.
ETA:
Firstly, due to genre conditioning, I was expecting all three time travellers to die or be returned to their own time in the last five minutes, so the avoidance of that predictableness alone was great, but forget the comparisons, the episode was good by itself. You cared about the three guest characters, and the way they related to the three regulars made complete sense and build on what we knew about said guest characters before. Ever since Torchwood started, I wondered whether John Barrowman might not have a big range and felt uncomfortable outside the rogue charmer role, but he really delivered on the angst here, in Jack’s scenes with John – and kudos to the script, too, because Jack telling John more than he told any of the Torchwood team about himself made sense given John’s situation – and I loved such little details as Jack tuning the radio for John. The climactic scene of that plot thread, the suicide, was done without hammering it in that this was the wrong/right decision (depending on the agenda of the scriptwriter), it was just presented to the audience, and the quietness, Jack holding John’s hands throughout – it was wonderful. In that throat-constricting way. As was John’s earlier scene with his Alzheimer-suffering-son, which came close to making me cry.
(BTW, kudos for making John real by giving him a petty side, too, when he lashes out at Emma, trying to pull of a 50s pater familias in order to make things make sense again, in vain.)
Emma as the one of the three travellers who chooses to stay in this time and enjoys it could have been simply embodied optimism, but was more. And it figures that Gwen incorporating her into her life by lying (without even hesitating about it) leads to Rhys discovering the lie, and reacting accordingly. Emma, like sex-with-Owen earlier, is a way for Gwen to have her cake and eat it, find something tension-releasing from her work from Torchwood without compromising her non-Torchwood life, and even without the preview it’s obvious this will foreshadow Rhys finding out more. (Mind you, not telling Rhys doesn’t make much sense in any case and smacks more of the genre convention of the family/friends not being told of the heroine’s secret heroics.)
As for Owen, figures that he gets the casual-sex-leading-to-emotional-involvement storyline, that this scares him and that Diane does leave in the end (looking not for the past or death but new adventure and flying, because that, not love, defines her – good thing for a female character, too). Of course, we’ve had evidence before that Owen is kidding himself (in a convenient-for-him way) if he thinks the “fuckbuddy-without-deeper-feelings” principle means works when he’s the one applying it. (See also: Toshiko.) What happens with Diane is a wake-up call, and I’m just guessing he won’t be able to handle the aftermath very well.
Favourite little detail, other than Jack tuning the radio: the time travellers reaction to the supermarket and the fact the script was aware what this would mean to people who just left food rationing behind.
ETA:
Firstly, due to genre conditioning, I was expecting all three time travellers to die or be returned to their own time in the last five minutes, so the avoidance of that predictableness alone was great, but forget the comparisons, the episode was good by itself. You cared about the three guest characters, and the way they related to the three regulars made complete sense and build on what we knew about said guest characters before. Ever since Torchwood started, I wondered whether John Barrowman might not have a big range and felt uncomfortable outside the rogue charmer role, but he really delivered on the angst here, in Jack’s scenes with John – and kudos to the script, too, because Jack telling John more than he told any of the Torchwood team about himself made sense given John’s situation – and I loved such little details as Jack tuning the radio for John. The climactic scene of that plot thread, the suicide, was done without hammering it in that this was the wrong/right decision (depending on the agenda of the scriptwriter), it was just presented to the audience, and the quietness, Jack holding John’s hands throughout – it was wonderful. In that throat-constricting way. As was John’s earlier scene with his Alzheimer-suffering-son, which came close to making me cry.
(BTW, kudos for making John real by giving him a petty side, too, when he lashes out at Emma, trying to pull of a 50s pater familias in order to make things make sense again, in vain.)
Emma as the one of the three travellers who chooses to stay in this time and enjoys it could have been simply embodied optimism, but was more. And it figures that Gwen incorporating her into her life by lying (without even hesitating about it) leads to Rhys discovering the lie, and reacting accordingly. Emma, like sex-with-Owen earlier, is a way for Gwen to have her cake and eat it, find something tension-releasing from her work from Torchwood without compromising her non-Torchwood life, and even without the preview it’s obvious this will foreshadow Rhys finding out more. (Mind you, not telling Rhys doesn’t make much sense in any case and smacks more of the genre convention of the family/friends not being told of the heroine’s secret heroics.)
As for Owen, figures that he gets the casual-sex-leading-to-emotional-involvement storyline, that this scares him and that Diane does leave in the end (looking not for the past or death but new adventure and flying, because that, not love, defines her – good thing for a female character, too). Of course, we’ve had evidence before that Owen is kidding himself (in a convenient-for-him way) if he thinks the “fuckbuddy-without-deeper-feelings” principle means works when he’s the one applying it. (See also: Toshiko.) What happens with Diane is a wake-up call, and I’m just guessing he won’t be able to handle the aftermath very well.
Favourite little detail, other than Jack tuning the radio: the time travellers reaction to the supermarket and the fact the script was aware what this would mean to people who just left food rationing behind.
