Torchwood: Sleeper
Jan. 24th, 2008 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I didn't really watch Sleeper with my full attention but with sort of half an eye while I sorted some stuff out on my laptop. So I spent some time thinking there was a reason why Beth kept her identity after the other sleepers lost theirs. Perusal of the internet today suggests I hadn't missed anything after all.
So, my not paying full attention impression, was that finally the Torchwood team had met a threat that was even more rubbish than they were. Given that the sleeper's plan was to blow up Cardiff, it wasn't clear why they bothered with all the Kill the Councillor/blow up the roads stuff - with the added idiocy of blowing themselves up at the same time. So, the aliens were rubbish tacticians unless... its all a cleverly foreshadowed plot.
Of course the upside of this was that for pretty much the first time ever the Torchwood team came across really well. The mind probe scenes showed them unafraid to disagree with Jack, but prepared to obey him nevertheless. Gwen's role as the "heart of the team" was finally put to good use whereas, in the past, I've felt we were told a lot in publicity about how "human" she was, but in the show this most appeared to involve getting taken in by people like Suzie (I could say the same for Rose, actually, much was made in the pre-publicity about her humanizing the Doctor and teaching him things like compassion, but I never really felt we saw much of that in the show itself). No one was conspicuously stupid, mutinous or ineffectual - which I think is a first for the show.
Now all they have to do is actually engage my interest a little more...