Torchwood: Children of Earth

[purplecat]

I'm not actually sure I have a lot to add to the several reviews of this I have already read. I thought it was considerably better than any other Torchwood I've seen and it was certainly TV I would have time for, even without the Who connection, but that doesn't mean it was flawless by a long shot.

As many people have commented, it is interesting to see that the central story, and the one the writers appeared to have put most effort into, was a very traditional 1960s BBC style production in which people in suits stand around talking on a handful of sets while minimal FX are used to build tension. And I was amazed how well that worked translated into an early 21st century setting. It was genuinely gripping and mostly well acted. However, as has been mentioned elsewhere, it's a shame RTD's world view seems to have only the most tenuous grasp of the behaviour of a group consisting of more than three people, let alone the realities of the operation of governments, the civil service or the armed forces.

Then around this rather traditional, but well made, TV SF tale we have Torchwood padding out five hours with capture-escape sequences and big explosions, presumably in order to keep our attention. Again I was interested to note how much less gripping this was than the stand around and talk bits. Torchwood gained points for being more competent this time out - give them a couple more years and I might actually start to believe they're a crack team. As usual they were lucky to be faced with bad guys who were less competent than they were but I was relieved that the whole general level of incompetence on display had raised itself above Torchwood's normal shout at the telly level.

There has been much talk of reboots, and more series. So I was also interested to note that, with RTD taking the helm for the first time, he basically got rid of nearly all the elements that have made up Torchwood - and I wonder now if Tosh and Owen's deaths at the end of last season were a first step in this. It looks very much like he's creating himself a virtually clean slate. If it is true he hopes to continue the show, I think its obvious that he can't have been very happy with what went before and has used this mini-series as an opportunity to clear the decks and allow him to build whatever it was he envisioned in the first place. It's a shame, though, that this story was so much stronger in all the scenes that featured no one from Torchwood.

And yeah, the resolution was throwaway nonsense designed to push obvious emotional buttons with no interest in making any kind of plot sense, but I'm over getting angry at RTD for pulling that kind of stunt.

In summary then, far from flawless, but this felt much more adult than the adolescent sex and angst Torchwood previously served up and looked much more like a show with the potential to produce some good TV SF.


As a last, meta-comment, there are times fandom really depresses me and the reaction of a sub-set of Torchwood fandom to these episodes is one of them. It depresses me that a writer like James Moran who, whatever you think of his work, has put a lot of time into talking with fans (he was great with the primeval_denial people, for instance, over the fun they made of him and the Danny Quinn character he created) should feel the need to post the following on his blog: http://jamesmoran.blogspot.com/2009/07/stepping-back.html

Comments

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten JM was that guy. There's some discussion going on over at bigtitch's journal about that blogpost; he seems not to have expected quite that level of backlash, and in general the consensus is that he probably ought to have at least laid in a supply of flame-proof undies in preparation. Some of the remarks were clearly out of order, but he got quite a bit of praise and support in between. Perhaps he's unused to fandom?

[purplecat]

I saw an interesting article somewhere, once, about the phases of an actor's engagement with fandom which starts out with a kind of puppy-dog excitement and ends up either in jaded disgust or a kind of highly professional polite distance. I think we've just seen the end of JM's puppy-dog phase. But I think its a shame that happens because the puppy-dog ones are a pleasure to interact with and its nearly always the fans who drive them away.

Although I've been in and out of fandom a long time, it still amazes me that fans can assume a writer did something like killing off a character entirely to spite said fans. I can understand not wanting to watch a show any more because the characters or aspects that interested you have gone and that's well within our rights as viewers. And I'm entirely happy with thinking that such decisions are ill thought out, or even stupid at a creative level. But the idea that the writers of a show have some obligation not to make changes or, more astoundingly, have made them deliberately to upset the fans never fails to amaze me.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The odd thing is that I am not a Torchwood fan yet one of the things I thought when watching the first two episodes was that they were designed to be pleasers for the shipper fans - and then the last two episodes, in particular, seemed to me, an outsider in this case, to be deliberately designed to smash said shipper fans into the dust and dance all over them yelling, "Meh, meh, meh!"

If I had been one of said shippers, I might have got annoyed about that, rather than what I did get annoyed about, which was primarily the clumsy emotional manipulation. It was that that made me blow up on Friday night.

bigtitch's researches do seem to suggest that Mr Moran is over-reacting to the sort of "U KILLED IANTO I HATE YOU" messages that I am sure we have all received at one time or another.

However, if I were either him or RTD, I would be much more worried about their attendance at a US con in a couple of weeks - neadods, a wonderfully sensible person but whose own reaction was, "Have cancelled my orders for Torchwood DVDs, CDs and books", is worried about what will happen there.

[purplecat]

It may be that as someone who doesn't get particularly attached to ships or, perhaps more accurately, secretly quite likes it when they end up all doomed and angsty that I didn't view the episodes in that way at all. But it may also be that I have relatively little interest in the Torchwood team and so found myself focusing much more strongly on the Quatermass-style stuff that was going on in the other half of the plot.

I think, if you don't like the direction Children of Earth clearly signaled Torchwood was going in, then its an entirely sensible reaction to cancel orders for Torchwood spin-offery. I know that I, myself, am far too prone to carry on reading or watching a series long after it has ceased to hold my interest. But I do think it's a little silly to do so over one creative decision you don't like, as a kind of revenge on the writers, if you are otherwise happy with the product. The reactions I've seen to Children of Earth seem to fall into both camps and there is sufficient noise to make them difficult to distinguish.

It may be James Moran is being an over-sensitive flower here. But the reactions quoted in his blog post seemed out of line to me, and I wasn't impressed by my quick skim of the twitter log thing.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed by his claim that his only duty was to himself and the story, which is ridiculous as he is a writer for hire whose duty is plainly to the producers, the broadcasters, and to the audience (as, in this case, licence fee payers.)

Also, if his claim was true, he would not have been annoyed by the audience reaction - after all, he claimed he had no duty towards them.

It may have had elements of the (worst) Quatermass about it (the non-BBC one) but these writers do not have Kneale's originality or his brilliance in creating realistic characters.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

In summary then, far from flawless, but this felt much more adult than the adolescent sex and angst Torchwood previously served up and looked much more like a show with the potential to produce some good TV SF.

I have to agree, mostly. I didn't like a lot of the Torchwood episodes because of the super angst and pointless sex. That said, it just isn't going to be the same show any more. :( And DAMN IT, I really did like Frobisher. I wish they hadn't killed him off.

[purplecat]

A friend of mine very amusingly pointed out that for all Torchwood's proclamations of adult content and its emphasis on sex - we have yet to actually see any breasts in its entire run. He felt it actually had a strange attitude to sex, which was both prurient and puritanical, and which rather contributed to the feeling that it was adolescent rather than adult.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

But we have seen hot naked male ass. XD Which is much more awesome!

All in all, thematically, Children of Earth is much darker and much more adult. And it did it without nudity! (Well, except that tiny blurry bit with Jack)

[purplecat]

I agree absolutely. I think we saw what RTD meant when he pitched Torchwood as adult SF with a Who-ish feel, rather than the way Chris Chibnall interpreted it (which seemed to be Who for 16 year-olds).

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Someone watched the whole of Torchwood, waiting for breasts? I'm imagining a sort of poised pose, notebook in hand, waiting to write '1'.

:-D

[purplecat]

Scarily accurate assessment. I think he watches pretty much everything waiting for breasts and with a notebook in hand. Nearly every day he writes an often insightful review of something he's watched and then tops it off with a breast count.

That's fandom for you I suppose.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

The sex was the part I liked least in the early Torchwood, to be honest, for all that I write and read slash - it got in the way of the plot too often. And when you think about it, even at the beginning it was never always shiny happy people. They didn't even appear to like each other very much; Suzie was blown away almost at once, Owen was a jerk, and Ianto was keeping his cyber-girlfriend in the basement (causing a bloodbath later on).

I tended to find the characters' relationships with guest characters more interesting than those within the team. And I love a good dose of angst :-)

[purplecat]

I didn't so much mind the Torchwood characters being flawed and, well, not getting on so much. I think you put the finger on the sex problem though - all too often the plot seemed to stop with a "hey! look! sex!" moment rather than the sex seeming to arise naturally from the story - though it wouldn't surprise me, if I went back an did a rewatch to discover that there was less sex than I think, part of the problem was the way it often seemed to be sign-posted in an "ooh! aren't we being adult" kind of a way.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I thought Frobisher was a good character. I'm probably not the only long-term Who fan who was wondering at one point whether he would turn into a penguin though.

[purplecat]

I think there were several name checks to well loved minor Who charactes and fans in the show - but that has actually been true of a lot of Cardiff's output.

Frobisher was excellent. I do wonder slightly, though, if the fact I found his parts of the story so much more interesting was partly due the rather superior acting chops on display in those parts.

[fredbassett]

That more of less sums up my reaction to it.

I feel sorry for Moran, who does seem to be a genuine bloke with a reasonable sense of humour. As you say, he entered into the general Denial piss-take with good humour and style and certainly endeared himself to a lot of Primeval fans. Perhaps those exchanges lulled him into a sense of false security in fandom, which have clearly turned round and bitten him in the bum.

It's a shame if this sort of thing colours his view of fandom as a whole, but it almost certainly will.

[purplecat]

I think its a shame when this happens, and I think it inevitably does happen when writers or actors get too close to fandom.

There are always a subset of fans who can't seem to tell the difference between disagreeing with and disliking an artistic decision and thinking the person responsible is somehow morally reprehensible. I should know better by now, but somehow I'm always both surprised and depressed when something like this occurs.

[gervase-fen.livejournal.com]

" ...padding out five hours with capture-escape sequences and big explosions, presumably in order to keep our attention" ~ something even more apparent if, like me, you've been watching The War Games and reading the exemplary text notes pointing out instances of an identical narrative strategy.

[purplecat]

You could argue that one of RTD's strengths is to make tired old material look fresh and new. You could argue that... I'm not sure that in this case I would :-)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

But he has, apparently, been hanging around Outpost Gallifrey, and, as a lot of people have already pointed out, that should have warned him what some fans are like when they are crossed.

[purplecat]

I think it doesn't alter the fact that it's stupid to take anything that happens in a TV show as a deliberate attack on fans (*cough* except maybe for the WhizzKid in Dr Who's Greatest Show in the Galaxy) and on the whole I'd defend his right to say "no this is unacceptable" when abuse gets sent his way as a result.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

If he wants the praise he must also take the knocks. That's the way it is.