Torchwood 2.11 Adrift
Mar. 20th, 2008 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI'm always somewhat nervous before Chibnall-written episodes. (Can we say, err, varying quality?) This was a good one.
Mind you, that doesn't mean I'm not nitpicking. For starters, there is no logical reason why Jack couldn't have told Gwen the truth from the start, but it's in character for Jack to keep secrets from his crew in general (though he is getting a bit better about this), so it didn't bother me that much. Also, Jack's attitude towards Gwen here was clearly paralleled by Gwen's attitude towards Andy, and in both cases shown as something of a mixture between character trait and result of working for Torchwood that is problematical. In Gwen's case, we got the synthesis at the end in her scene with Rhys when they share, but I'll say a bit more about that later.
This was a Gwen episode, a serious one as opposed to the light-hearted comedy of Something Borrowed, and may I say the writing for her this season is one of the many things that improved from the last? Instead of being told about Gwen's caring nature, we're being shown instances when she cares, but she doesn't get singled out as "heart of Torchwood" anymore. She learns from her mistakes and is aware of the flaws in her that cause them. (See: retconning Rhys last season having left Gwen with a firm determination of not retconning Rhys this season. When Andy calls her on her using him in this episode, she admits it.) Instead of every over script varying in what she can or can't do, skill-wise (last season it drove me bonkers that Gwen's police training always seemed to desert her when the plot demanded it), she has consistently been shown as competent, in charge when necessary, and part of the team when not. One of my problems with Countrycide last season was that this was the episode that was supposed to show how working for Torchwood was cutting her off from her normal life with Rhys and her responding by starting her affair with Owen, but the actual case - the cannibals - was one of the few she could have told Rhys about without a problem back then, because it didn't entail any "alien" elements, and that the big punchline - humans can be psychopaths just because they see it as fun - shouldn't have been that much or depressing a revelation for a policewoman. Adrift is a good parallel/contrast episode. It also confronts Gwen with the question of just how much she has changed through her work at Torchwood when Andy challenges her, but the example chosen - that she's in danger of losing sight of the importance of the individual, of empathizing with them, via the big picture - is one that works far better. And Gwen's relationship with Rhys, which from the start of the show has been used as a counterweight to her work in Torchwood, serves as a genuine presentation of "real", non-Torchwood life. It's not ideal. They argue, and it's not that one of them is always right and the other always wrong. Occassionally, they disappoint and piss off each other. But they compromise, they come through, and at the end of the day, they share. I think I'm starting to get seriously 'shippy over Gwen/Rhys.
Something I'm in two minds about is the solution the episode comes up with re: the Rift victims. Not Nikki's reaction per se - because yes, there are parents who'd rather not know and hope than know something terrible and irreversible had happened to their child. But the way it is handled - Nikki asking Gwen not to do this to anyone else - seems to validate Jack having made this decision for ALL the victims and their families on his own. And Nikki can only speak for herself, not for everyone else. I can see that telling all the other families would make the whole secret organization thing somewhat redundant, but come on. In the Whoverse, there are alien invasions every Christmas, and if the inhabitants of London have wizened up and cleared out rather than be around for the latest one, surely the folks in Cardiff don't have to be victims to Sunnydale denial syndrome anymore?
Character interaction: and we get yet another proof that Ianto likes Gwen, and Gwen likes Ianto, and neither of them is burning with jealousy or envy about the other re: Jack, but I'm sure the fanon that has Ianto quasi-suicidal over Jack's dance with Gwen in Something Borrowed will ignore that. Seriously, I really liked how the whole "Gwen accidentally walks in on Ianto and Jack having sex" scene was handled. She was embarassed as one would be in such a situation, but no more than if it had been, say, Ianto and Tosh, and then quickly got to the reason why she had returned to the Hub. Ianto, as he had been earlier during the briefing, was sympathizing with Gwen on the disappeared Rift victims matter, not feeling disgruntled or victorious or what not. Jack's "well, there is always room for one more" quip came across as a typical Jack remark, not as Jack pining for Gwen and seriously offering a threesome. Oh, and the Jack/Ianto'shippers finally get male/male nudity for screencaps. Well, shirtlessness at any rate.
Gwen working with Tosh early in the episode makes me wish we'd get a story with the two of them as the main characters and a detecting duo (yet another way last week's episode could have been improved). I can see why it couldn't be this one, though, due to necessary screen time for Andy and Rhys, and Gwen's interactions with either, which were more important thematically, as well as for the victim of the week. The poor guy who played old Jonah was buried under the usual tons of BBC make-up, but the actress who played his mother was superb through the episode, getting across love, grief, denial, and the shattered disbelief and numbness at the end.
Next week: Out of Gas! Err, Torchwood does flashbacks.
Mind you, that doesn't mean I'm not nitpicking. For starters, there is no logical reason why Jack couldn't have told Gwen the truth from the start, but it's in character for Jack to keep secrets from his crew in general (though he is getting a bit better about this), so it didn't bother me that much. Also, Jack's attitude towards Gwen here was clearly paralleled by Gwen's attitude towards Andy, and in both cases shown as something of a mixture between character trait and result of working for Torchwood that is problematical. In Gwen's case, we got the synthesis at the end in her scene with Rhys when they share, but I'll say a bit more about that later.
This was a Gwen episode, a serious one as opposed to the light-hearted comedy of Something Borrowed, and may I say the writing for her this season is one of the many things that improved from the last? Instead of being told about Gwen's caring nature, we're being shown instances when she cares, but she doesn't get singled out as "heart of Torchwood" anymore. She learns from her mistakes and is aware of the flaws in her that cause them. (See: retconning Rhys last season having left Gwen with a firm determination of not retconning Rhys this season. When Andy calls her on her using him in this episode, she admits it.) Instead of every over script varying in what she can or can't do, skill-wise (last season it drove me bonkers that Gwen's police training always seemed to desert her when the plot demanded it), she has consistently been shown as competent, in charge when necessary, and part of the team when not. One of my problems with Countrycide last season was that this was the episode that was supposed to show how working for Torchwood was cutting her off from her normal life with Rhys and her responding by starting her affair with Owen, but the actual case - the cannibals - was one of the few she could have told Rhys about without a problem back then, because it didn't entail any "alien" elements, and that the big punchline - humans can be psychopaths just because they see it as fun - shouldn't have been that much or depressing a revelation for a policewoman. Adrift is a good parallel/contrast episode. It also confronts Gwen with the question of just how much she has changed through her work at Torchwood when Andy challenges her, but the example chosen - that she's in danger of losing sight of the importance of the individual, of empathizing with them, via the big picture - is one that works far better. And Gwen's relationship with Rhys, which from the start of the show has been used as a counterweight to her work in Torchwood, serves as a genuine presentation of "real", non-Torchwood life. It's not ideal. They argue, and it's not that one of them is always right and the other always wrong. Occassionally, they disappoint and piss off each other. But they compromise, they come through, and at the end of the day, they share. I think I'm starting to get seriously 'shippy over Gwen/Rhys.
Something I'm in two minds about is the solution the episode comes up with re: the Rift victims. Not Nikki's reaction per se - because yes, there are parents who'd rather not know and hope than know something terrible and irreversible had happened to their child. But the way it is handled - Nikki asking Gwen not to do this to anyone else - seems to validate Jack having made this decision for ALL the victims and their families on his own. And Nikki can only speak for herself, not for everyone else. I can see that telling all the other families would make the whole secret organization thing somewhat redundant, but come on. In the Whoverse, there are alien invasions every Christmas, and if the inhabitants of London have wizened up and cleared out rather than be around for the latest one, surely the folks in Cardiff don't have to be victims to Sunnydale denial syndrome anymore?
Character interaction: and we get yet another proof that Ianto likes Gwen, and Gwen likes Ianto, and neither of them is burning with jealousy or envy about the other re: Jack, but I'm sure the fanon that has Ianto quasi-suicidal over Jack's dance with Gwen in Something Borrowed will ignore that. Seriously, I really liked how the whole "Gwen accidentally walks in on Ianto and Jack having sex" scene was handled. She was embarassed as one would be in such a situation, but no more than if it had been, say, Ianto and Tosh, and then quickly got to the reason why she had returned to the Hub. Ianto, as he had been earlier during the briefing, was sympathizing with Gwen on the disappeared Rift victims matter, not feeling disgruntled or victorious or what not. Jack's "well, there is always room for one more" quip came across as a typical Jack remark, not as Jack pining for Gwen and seriously offering a threesome. Oh, and the Jack/Ianto'shippers finally get male/male nudity for screencaps. Well, shirtlessness at any rate.
Gwen working with Tosh early in the episode makes me wish we'd get a story with the two of them as the main characters and a detecting duo (yet another way last week's episode could have been improved). I can see why it couldn't be this one, though, due to necessary screen time for Andy and Rhys, and Gwen's interactions with either, which were more important thematically, as well as for the victim of the week. The poor guy who played old Jonah was buried under the usual tons of BBC make-up, but the actress who played his mother was superb through the episode, getting across love, grief, denial, and the shattered disbelief and numbness at the end.
Next week: Out of Gas! Err, Torchwood does flashbacks.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-21 03:13 am (UTC)Quite. I'd say you figure out that about Jack in a day at the very least, and Ianto worked for him for at least a year.
On the one hand, some loved ones probably would be happier knowing the truth, but on the other, there is absolutely no way to tell which ones ahead of time.
No, there really isn't. There is no "right" answer...