Torchwood 2.08 A Day in the Death
Feb. 28th, 2008 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOr, Yes, We Know Burn Gorman Is The Best Actor In Our Cast: Part II
Other than Eugene in Random Shoes, who was a one episode character, this is the first Torchwood episode who gets first person narration. Eugene, of course, mirrored Elton on Doctor Who who also narrated the episode in Love and Monsters. Both of them were addressing the audience in a fourth wall breaking manner. In this episode, Owen is talking to a listener within the story, and the framing device - Owen and Maggie the almost Suicidee - works amazingly well. The very end of the teaser is a jolt, because you think: if Owen is ready to talk a girl into jumping he truly has crossed the line to villaindom. Once the credits are over, it's easy to twig that he's actually working on the opposite, saving her life in his Owenish abrasive manner, and the fact the audience can see Owen as capable of both possibilities says something about the character. This episode showcases the messed-upness in Owen as much as it does his need to find meaning (both in the general sense and in what has happened to him), and the need to save lives. Incidentally, I'm inclined to see the scene with Tosh in his flat as support of londonkds' Tosh-and-Owen theory, because his rant basically reads as: I have no idea why you love me, because there is nothing to love, fucked up as I am, and if you love me, you're twisted and wrong just like me." "I have nothing left to give to you" extends further than the Tosh-and-Owen situation to Owen's entire post mortem existence, especially since Jack grounded him: he needs something to do because he needs a reason, and his own continued existence certainly isn't one.
Sidenote: Jack grounding Owen is not one of Jack's brighter ideas because the whole Diane aftermath illustrated pretty graphically why leaving Owen on his own without giving him something to do is almost certainly a recipe for disaster. Well, okay, disaster in this case did not follow, but only because Jack eventually did allow him to go on a mission. On the other hand, I have no problem reconciling Jack's affectionate approach from last week with his authoritarian approach from this week: he probably he figured Owen needed tough love. (With the whole thing summed up in the scene where it turns out Jack has been guarding Owen's underwater stint - but doesn't help him up, which promptly makes Owen get up himself.)
As a take on someone wanting to commit suicide, I thought Maggie was a good creation. She came across as real, not a plot device (though of course she was one), her horrible situation wasn't patronized away, and as for the ending, in terms of continuity, the whole thing had an echo and reply to Suzie's suicide in the Torchwood pilot. Remember what Suzie said then:
You do this job for long enough, and you end up thinking, "How come we get all the Weevils and bollocks and shit?" Is that what alien life is? Filth? But maybe there's better stuff out there, brilliant stuff, beautiful stuff. Just ... they don't come here. This planet's so dirty, that's all we get - the shit.
In its first season, TW was dark not just about life, people and their ability to hurt each other, but aliens, who were pretty much uniformly evil. This season, we already got tragic aliens instead of evil ones, but now we get pretty much the antithesis of the invasion topic. The messages from the 70s Owen mentions, full of all the aspects of human life, embody optimism, hope, the idea of peaceful contact and communication instead of war and mutual destruction. So I find it very apropos that what gives Owen and Maggie a bit of hope is an alien reply to this, containing the wonder, brilliance and beauty Suzie never saw (and which indeed was not on TW and rarely on DW, though on DW you get at least some of it every season along with the monsters). A reply to a message always says: "You're not alone." In the DW/TW universe, the gesture that symbolizes this more than any other is mutual hand holding, which is what Owen does with the two strangers he connects with in this episode: Henry, the old man he can't save, and Maggie, who might or might not get back to living again but who doesn't want to die anymore for now.
In the things he lists at the end who help you make it through the next day, and the one after, Owen starts with tea and cigarettes and then says "...or your mates". The last episode gave us Jack-and-Owen and one Gwen-and-Owen scene, this one provided Ianto-and-Owen and of course Tosh-and-Owen. The one with Ianto in a way was a callback to their bitter argument from Captain Jack Harkness last season, and as with the Suzie echo, also a reply to it. It bears repeating: all the team relations this season are ever so much improved, as you can see Ianto is concerned about Owen. I found "I wasn't aware there was a competion" interesting - Owen probably thought there was one, for Jack's attention, not in the sexual sense (I really don't think Owen wants Ianto's position as Jack's boyfriend), but in terms of emotional importance. The Rin Tin Tin exchange was pricelessly apropos of nothing and weird in a funny way, and illustrated Owen and Ianto must have had a lot of non-hostile conversations while Jack was with the Doctor. About Owen and Tosh I already wrote, and let me add that their final scene, with Owen admitting he's scared, looks like progress in the friendship, not the romance department.
Lastly, there were the scenes with Martha. Let me repeat that I really, really liked how the Owen and Martha relationship played out. Unlike some friends of mine, I never was afraid they'd make the mistake of letting the two have an affair (there was a RTD interview, no, not one of the infamous ones, pretty early on in which he said that Martha, as a DW character, would neither swear or have sex on Torchwood, which pretty much cancelled that out), but I was afraid there's be hostility on sight. Instead, we had the two becoming buddies, with the banter clearly not meant as a serious pass, and Owen's occasional envy of Martha not dimming his respect for her. Case in point in this episode: he's aggressive when arguing with Jack about her doing his job, but not towards her when talking with her about the same issue. And Martha handles him just right, being matter-of-factly about the entire undead mess, returning banter on the same level and not letting herself getting distracted from being what has been at the core of her in either show, a doctor.
Second sidenote: Martha kissing Jack as a goodbye because pretty much everyone else in the universe had a Jack snog cracked me up. I've seen complaints that there was no real point in her guest starring beyond Reset, but I disagree; in both Dead Man Walking and A Day in the Death, she was an important touchstone for Owen and a reality check for Jack in the former. (Everyone else already knew about the glove and resurrections.) The obvious comparison would be Jack's role in the last three episodes of season 3/29 on DW; he had his character exploration scenes in the first one, Utopia, and afterwards he had a supporting role because the dramatic focus was and had to be elsewhere. Same with Martha in her three TW episodes.
Trivia:
- along with every every Jossverse fan, I thought "here we go again" when the non-breathing issue came up. This did not make sense for Angel and Spike, given that they can talk, and does not make sense for Owen, either for the same reason, but if I can handwave it on BTVS and AtS, I can handwave it here.
- Owen seems to have moved. This isn't the same flat he lived in last season.
- I know Richard Briers was on DW in ye olde days, but I first and foremost associate him with Kenneth Branagh, given he is in every Branagh film and radio production EVER. Short role, but nice job, Mr. B.
- for those of us who keep watch on Messiah/Christ references on TW and DW, bless their atheistic religion-obsessed scriptwriters: did I mishear or did Owen tell Maggie he got resurrected by Jesus "only without the beard"? *puts reference to Jack being dead for three days before returning and ending up as Face of Boe*
Other than Eugene in Random Shoes, who was a one episode character, this is the first Torchwood episode who gets first person narration. Eugene, of course, mirrored Elton on Doctor Who who also narrated the episode in Love and Monsters. Both of them were addressing the audience in a fourth wall breaking manner. In this episode, Owen is talking to a listener within the story, and the framing device - Owen and Maggie the almost Suicidee - works amazingly well. The very end of the teaser is a jolt, because you think: if Owen is ready to talk a girl into jumping he truly has crossed the line to villaindom. Once the credits are over, it's easy to twig that he's actually working on the opposite, saving her life in his Owenish abrasive manner, and the fact the audience can see Owen as capable of both possibilities says something about the character. This episode showcases the messed-upness in Owen as much as it does his need to find meaning (both in the general sense and in what has happened to him), and the need to save lives. Incidentally, I'm inclined to see the scene with Tosh in his flat as support of londonkds' Tosh-and-Owen theory, because his rant basically reads as: I have no idea why you love me, because there is nothing to love, fucked up as I am, and if you love me, you're twisted and wrong just like me." "I have nothing left to give to you" extends further than the Tosh-and-Owen situation to Owen's entire post mortem existence, especially since Jack grounded him: he needs something to do because he needs a reason, and his own continued existence certainly isn't one.
Sidenote: Jack grounding Owen is not one of Jack's brighter ideas because the whole Diane aftermath illustrated pretty graphically why leaving Owen on his own without giving him something to do is almost certainly a recipe for disaster. Well, okay, disaster in this case did not follow, but only because Jack eventually did allow him to go on a mission. On the other hand, I have no problem reconciling Jack's affectionate approach from last week with his authoritarian approach from this week: he probably he figured Owen needed tough love. (With the whole thing summed up in the scene where it turns out Jack has been guarding Owen's underwater stint - but doesn't help him up, which promptly makes Owen get up himself.)
As a take on someone wanting to commit suicide, I thought Maggie was a good creation. She came across as real, not a plot device (though of course she was one), her horrible situation wasn't patronized away, and as for the ending, in terms of continuity, the whole thing had an echo and reply to Suzie's suicide in the Torchwood pilot. Remember what Suzie said then:
You do this job for long enough, and you end up thinking, "How come we get all the Weevils and bollocks and shit?" Is that what alien life is? Filth? But maybe there's better stuff out there, brilliant stuff, beautiful stuff. Just ... they don't come here. This planet's so dirty, that's all we get - the shit.
In its first season, TW was dark not just about life, people and their ability to hurt each other, but aliens, who were pretty much uniformly evil. This season, we already got tragic aliens instead of evil ones, but now we get pretty much the antithesis of the invasion topic. The messages from the 70s Owen mentions, full of all the aspects of human life, embody optimism, hope, the idea of peaceful contact and communication instead of war and mutual destruction. So I find it very apropos that what gives Owen and Maggie a bit of hope is an alien reply to this, containing the wonder, brilliance and beauty Suzie never saw (and which indeed was not on TW and rarely on DW, though on DW you get at least some of it every season along with the monsters). A reply to a message always says: "You're not alone." In the DW/TW universe, the gesture that symbolizes this more than any other is mutual hand holding, which is what Owen does with the two strangers he connects with in this episode: Henry, the old man he can't save, and Maggie, who might or might not get back to living again but who doesn't want to die anymore for now.
In the things he lists at the end who help you make it through the next day, and the one after, Owen starts with tea and cigarettes and then says "...or your mates". The last episode gave us Jack-and-Owen and one Gwen-and-Owen scene, this one provided Ianto-and-Owen and of course Tosh-and-Owen. The one with Ianto in a way was a callback to their bitter argument from Captain Jack Harkness last season, and as with the Suzie echo, also a reply to it. It bears repeating: all the team relations this season are ever so much improved, as you can see Ianto is concerned about Owen. I found "I wasn't aware there was a competion" interesting - Owen probably thought there was one, for Jack's attention, not in the sexual sense (I really don't think Owen wants Ianto's position as Jack's boyfriend), but in terms of emotional importance. The Rin Tin Tin exchange was pricelessly apropos of nothing and weird in a funny way, and illustrated Owen and Ianto must have had a lot of non-hostile conversations while Jack was with the Doctor. About Owen and Tosh I already wrote, and let me add that their final scene, with Owen admitting he's scared, looks like progress in the friendship, not the romance department.
Lastly, there were the scenes with Martha. Let me repeat that I really, really liked how the Owen and Martha relationship played out. Unlike some friends of mine, I never was afraid they'd make the mistake of letting the two have an affair (there was a RTD interview, no, not one of the infamous ones, pretty early on in which he said that Martha, as a DW character, would neither swear or have sex on Torchwood, which pretty much cancelled that out), but I was afraid there's be hostility on sight. Instead, we had the two becoming buddies, with the banter clearly not meant as a serious pass, and Owen's occasional envy of Martha not dimming his respect for her. Case in point in this episode: he's aggressive when arguing with Jack about her doing his job, but not towards her when talking with her about the same issue. And Martha handles him just right, being matter-of-factly about the entire undead mess, returning banter on the same level and not letting herself getting distracted from being what has been at the core of her in either show, a doctor.
Second sidenote: Martha kissing Jack as a goodbye because pretty much everyone else in the universe had a Jack snog cracked me up. I've seen complaints that there was no real point in her guest starring beyond Reset, but I disagree; in both Dead Man Walking and A Day in the Death, she was an important touchstone for Owen and a reality check for Jack in the former. (Everyone else already knew about the glove and resurrections.) The obvious comparison would be Jack's role in the last three episodes of season 3/29 on DW; he had his character exploration scenes in the first one, Utopia, and afterwards he had a supporting role because the dramatic focus was and had to be elsewhere. Same with Martha in her three TW episodes.
Trivia:
- along with every every Jossverse fan, I thought "here we go again" when the non-breathing issue came up. This did not make sense for Angel and Spike, given that they can talk, and does not make sense for Owen, either for the same reason, but if I can handwave it on BTVS and AtS, I can handwave it here.
- Owen seems to have moved. This isn't the same flat he lived in last season.
- I know Richard Briers was on DW in ye olde days, but I first and foremost associate him with Kenneth Branagh, given he is in every Branagh film and radio production EVER. Short role, but nice job, Mr. B.
- for those of us who keep watch on Messiah/Christ references on TW and DW, bless their atheistic religion-obsessed scriptwriters: did I mishear or did Owen tell Maggie he got resurrected by Jesus "only without the beard"? *puts reference to Jack being dead for three days before returning and ending up as Face of Boe*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 10:11 pm (UTC)Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-28 11:27 pm (UTC)At least, that's my bullshit take on it.
PJW
Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-29 04:04 am (UTC)Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-29 11:40 am (UTC)Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-03-02 10:15 pm (UTC)And, as a former lifeguard, I've exhausted myself on an Annie doll *brief moment of considering rephrasing and then decides it's funny to leave as is* and been incapable of continuing, but still been able to talk through gasps.
PJW
Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-03-02 11:06 pm (UTC)Just in case, you understand.
PJW
Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-29 11:41 am (UTC)Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-29 11:43 am (UTC)Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-02-29 04:05 pm (UTC)Plus, if Parker had enough money to maintain his estate, he would probably have had a nurse on-site 24/7. *handwaves*
Re: Deluxe fanwanking
Date: 2008-03-02 10:22 pm (UTC)Golly, I'm quite worryingly good at this game.
PJW
no subject
Date: 2008-03-02 10:17 pm (UTC)Made I larf.
PJW
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 05:16 am (UTC)