I just watch it because I fancy Eve Myles.
ew, really?
Torchwood Sucks
- Thread starter Freakness
- Start date
ew, really?
What, I shouldn't?
^Even at their worst, I'd still take the bitchy Season 1 incarnations of Gwen & Owen over most of the human rubbish that has populated Battlestar Galactica for the last 3 years.
I'll agree that Torchwood can be very uneven. At the same time, I often enjoy its more character driven episodes as opposed to Doctor Who, which too often follows the formula of "The Doctor & generic female companion get involved in some arbitrary alien weirdness." Don't get me wrong. Doctor Who can be a great show much of the time. It just has a bad habit of sacrificing character development for plot development, and the plots are often very hit & miss. Torchwood is slightly more stable because it more frequently errs on the side of sacrificing plot development for character development. (I can't really remember what that alien wanted in "Greeks Bearing Gifts" but I do know that it was a watershed episode for Tosh's character.)
Has Torchwood made mistakes with its characters? Hell yes. Even the writers clearly want to forget that the Gwen/Owen affair ever happened. But things have improved a lot in Season 2. I particularly like what they've done with Rhys.
My favorite highlights of Seasons 1 & 2:
"Cyberwoman." A tense, thrilling episode where the team is trapped with a killer Cyberwoman when the Torchwood Hub goes into lockdown.
"Countrycide." I wish they would do more episodes like this where the team goes beyond Cardiff. I've always wanted to see them do an episode where they go to Torchwood's Scotland branch (first mentioned by Jack in "Everything Changes").
"Greeks Bearing Gifts." This episode really develops Tosh's character. But I do wish we'd seen more of the Tosh/Mary romance.
"They Keep Killing Suzie." Best title ever!
"Random Shoes." A much more effective version of the Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters."
"Out of Time." Star Trek did a couple episodes like this, "The Neutral Zone" & "The '37s." But neither of those had the realism & pathos of this episode. Especially touching is the father who meets his now senile son. And when Owen is genuinely in love, he's much less of a bastard.
"Captain Jack Harkness." A great WWII time travel story, although a bit too much gay for my tastes. BTW, the creepy old guy from this episode & "End of Days" would, IMO, be an excellent William Hartnell stand-in if they ever wanted to do a multi-Doctor story with the 1st Doctor.
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." James Marsters (Buffy/Angel) is excellent as Jack's ex-lover/rival, Captain John Hart.
"To the Last Man." A great Tosh episode and a great WWI time travel story. You really feel for the guy.
"Meat." This is where I think they truly redeemed the Gwen/Rhys relationship by letting Rhys in on the secret.
"Adam." A great story about an alien who alters everyone's memories so that they all remember him being an integral member of the Torchwood team.
"Reset"/"Dead Man Walking"/"A Day in the Death." Mostly notable for Martha Jones' 3-episode stint on the show. "A Day in the Death" helps make Owen not such a bastard by giving him real issues to complain about. It also explores the darker side of reanimation.
"Something Borrowed." A fun romp where a shapeshifting alien ruins Gwen & Rhys' wedding.
"From Out of the Rain." It's kind of dull episode but it has a good moral. Be careful when you find old film cans. They might contain lost William Hartnell/Patrick Troughton episodes but they also might contain psychotic circus people that want to kill you!
"Adrift." This story really reestablishes Gwen as the most human, sympathetic member of the team. And the ending is very disturbing.
"Fragments." A great flashback episode that shows us how Jack, Owen, Tosh, & Ianto first joined Torchwood. Although, I find Ianto's backstory kind of implausible considering what we know of his history from "Cyberwoman."
I'll agree that Torchwood can be very uneven. At the same time, I often enjoy its more character driven episodes as opposed to Doctor Who, which too often follows the formula of "The Doctor & generic female companion get involved in some arbitrary alien weirdness." Don't get me wrong. Doctor Who can be a great show much of the time. It just has a bad habit of sacrificing character development for plot development, and the plots are often very hit & miss. Torchwood is slightly more stable because it more frequently errs on the side of sacrificing plot development for character development. (I can't really remember what that alien wanted in "Greeks Bearing Gifts" but I do know that it was a watershed episode for Tosh's character.)
Has Torchwood made mistakes with its characters? Hell yes. Even the writers clearly want to forget that the Gwen/Owen affair ever happened. But things have improved a lot in Season 2. I particularly like what they've done with Rhys.
My favorite highlights of Seasons 1 & 2:
"Cyberwoman." A tense, thrilling episode where the team is trapped with a killer Cyberwoman when the Torchwood Hub goes into lockdown.
"Countrycide." I wish they would do more episodes like this where the team goes beyond Cardiff. I've always wanted to see them do an episode where they go to Torchwood's Scotland branch (first mentioned by Jack in "Everything Changes").
"Greeks Bearing Gifts." This episode really develops Tosh's character. But I do wish we'd seen more of the Tosh/Mary romance.
"They Keep Killing Suzie." Best title ever!
"Random Shoes." A much more effective version of the Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters."
"Out of Time." Star Trek did a couple episodes like this, "The Neutral Zone" & "The '37s." But neither of those had the realism & pathos of this episode. Especially touching is the father who meets his now senile son. And when Owen is genuinely in love, he's much less of a bastard.
"Captain Jack Harkness." A great WWII time travel story, although a bit too much gay for my tastes. BTW, the creepy old guy from this episode & "End of Days" would, IMO, be an excellent William Hartnell stand-in if they ever wanted to do a multi-Doctor story with the 1st Doctor.
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." James Marsters (Buffy/Angel) is excellent as Jack's ex-lover/rival, Captain John Hart.
"To the Last Man." A great Tosh episode and a great WWI time travel story. You really feel for the guy.
"Meat." This is where I think they truly redeemed the Gwen/Rhys relationship by letting Rhys in on the secret.
"Adam." A great story about an alien who alters everyone's memories so that they all remember him being an integral member of the Torchwood team.
"Reset"/"Dead Man Walking"/"A Day in the Death." Mostly notable for Martha Jones' 3-episode stint on the show. "A Day in the Death" helps make Owen not such a bastard by giving him real issues to complain about. It also explores the darker side of reanimation.
"Something Borrowed." A fun romp where a shapeshifting alien ruins Gwen & Rhys' wedding.
"From Out of the Rain." It's kind of dull episode but it has a good moral. Be careful when you find old film cans. They might contain lost William Hartnell/Patrick Troughton episodes but they also might contain psychotic circus people that want to kill you!
"Adrift." This story really reestablishes Gwen as the most human, sympathetic member of the team. And the ending is very disturbing.
"Fragments." A great flashback episode that shows us how Jack, Owen, Tosh, & Ianto first joined Torchwood. Although, I find Ianto's backstory kind of implausible considering what we know of his history from "Cyberwoman."
The Ianto thing just came out of no where. They gave no hints that he would lean that way seeing as distraught he was over his girlfriend. But I accepted it as he was pretty much just a sack of potatoes in terms of characterization prior to that. If nothing else, it gave him something to do.
The Sex Gas episode was an incredibly stupid episode IMO.
Tosh is considering she was in a relationship with a woman. I think that's pretty much a given.
Owen in the pilot. Where he pretty much just rapped an innocent person. Possibly two. Now I remember why I hated his guts for so long.
Season 1 Owen was a nasty piece of work, yet oddly probably my favourite character of season 1 by a mile, best actor in the cast and most 3d character to boot.
I could forgive Torchwood a lot if it ever, ever got even slightly scary. The Doctor Who writers are hampered by old baggage half of the time, but episodes like Blink and Midnight managed to be genuinely frightening. Torchwood never even comes close, so it ends up with a bunch of immature adults running around after aliens and bonking each other.
I'd mostly agree, apart from I'd say Series 1=Mostly Shite, Seires 2=Mostly not bad. And the rest you're applying to the Whoniverse, I'd just apply to British Sci-Fi in general. We could do with more of it.Season 1? Shite.
Season 2? Mainly shite.
True, I could just stop watching. But I really do want it to improve - I love the idea of the expanded Whoniverse on TV, so I'm forever hoping that Torchwood will get better. There's no law saying it can't, is there?
I'd mostly agree, apart from I'd say Series 1=Mostly Shite, Seires 2=Mostly not bad. And the rest you're applying to the Whoniverse, I'd just apply to British Sci-Fi in general. We could do with more of it.Season 1? Shite.
Season 2? Mainly shite.
True, I could just stop watching. But I really do want it to improve - I love the idea of the expanded Whoniverse on TV, so I'm forever hoping that Torchwood will get better. There's no law saying it can't, is there?
Pretty much agree Bob, series one had the odd moment (the 3rd ep with Gareth Thomas in it, Countrycide, Captain Jack Harkness) but on the whole was shite. In some mitigation it does feel like it was thrown togeather too quickly. Could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure the S2 scripts had a lot more time spent on them and were polished a lot more.
The show still isn't brilliant, and still nowhere near as good as Who, but S2 was a definite improvement and it was a lot more relaxed and a lot more enjoyable.
Re Red Dwarf I quite enjoyed it. Strikes me that what it needs are new/fresh writers that's all. The concept and the cast are still great.
Yeah, apparently they only had 4 months to get Series 1 together, or something like that, that's why series 2 was pushed back from Winter 2007 to Spring 2008 to give them more time to polish it.I'd mostly agree, apart from I'd say Series 1=Mostly Shite, Seires 2=Mostly not bad. And the rest you're applying to the Whoniverse, I'd just apply to British Sci-Fi in general. We could do with more of it.Season 1? Shite.
Season 2? Mainly shite.
True, I could just stop watching. But I really do want it to improve - I love the idea of the expanded Whoniverse on TV, so I'm forever hoping that Torchwood will get better. There's no law saying it can't, is there?
Pretty much agree Bob, series one had the odd moment (the 3rd ep with Gareth Thomas in it, Countrycide, Captain Jack Harkness) but on the whole was shite. In some mitigation it does feel like it was thrown togeather too quickly. Could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure the S2 scripts had a lot more time spent on them and were polished a lot more.
The show still isn't brilliant, and still nowhere near as good as Who, but S2 was a definite improvement and it was a lot more relaxed and a lot more enjoyable.
Re Red Dwarf I quite enjoyed it. Strikes me that what it needs are new/fresh writers that's all. The concept and the cast are still great.
I agree with you on Red Dwarf, Back To Earth wasn't anywhere near as bad as made out, but it lacked in a lot of areas I felt. Feels like it needs some new blood on the writing side, with Doug as maybe a consultanting/overseer role
Just noticed this on Tube Talk
So looks like next month is when Torchwood returns.
So looks like next month is when Torchwood returns.
it's a matter of personal taste obviously, but i just think she's really unattractive.
Oh well. I like all kinds of women.
I couldn't disagree more. I though Season 1 Owen was a one-dimensional caricature of every bad boy, anti-hero stereotype in genre entertainment. It was RTD's lame attempt to recreate Spike from Buffy(just as Jack sadly became his lame attempt to recreate Angel) minus Spike's self-deprecating humor, charisma, and - well - anything even slightly redeemable about the character. The only time I find boorish rapists like Owen entertaining is when Jack Bauer or Frank Castle are killing them.
They gave no context at all as to why a noble person like Jack would put up with such an irredeemable scumfuck. A guy who's values are the exact oppositte of what the team is all about. They gave no context as to why he was such a scumfuck. He just was. Spike at least had context. He was a vampire. Vampires are evil monsters. There for Spike is an evil monster. And their lame excuse as to why he acted like that was stupid as well. He had a gwirlfwend who died. Gimme a break.
Later on they did redeem the character though. They calmed him the fuck down. Gave him some basic hummanity. And acted like his character in the first season was a bad dream.
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