![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Torchwood spoiler discussion post
You know, I've been discussing this weird, iddy show in various comment threads in various places and I know a number of people who follow me have watched it or are watching it - so let's have a central discussion post. There will be spoilers for all seasons of the show in the comments.
If you have an observation on the show, anything you want to say - say it here. :)
Meanwhile I'll just use the comments to stash some of my own observations.
If you have an observation on the show, anything you want to say - say it here. :)
Meanwhile I'll just use the comments to stash some of my own observations.
no subject
I still think the dead Owen arc is one of my favorite things I've ever seen a sci-fi show do. It hit me just as hard when I rewatched the show this May as it did when I watched it back in 2008, which I honestly wasn't expecting - I thought having ragenoped on this show in 2008 would have inoculated me against falling for it again, but actually I've fallen even harder this time around. My infatuation with the show in 2008 lasted something like 5 days (as long as it took me to marathon all of series 2 through 2x12 and then run facefirst into the series 2 finale; I'm not sure if I've ever ragequit a show that hard or that fast). And yet, I can see why I hung onto this icon for 12 years, through the move from LJ to DW, through a number of icon purges, and in spite of the fact that I had emotionally quit the show, or at least I thought I had.
Anyway, I don't know why it hit me quit like it did, or still does, but I still love it.
no subject
no subject
It has been a really interesting experience having dipped briefly into the fandom in 2008, and then getting back into it in 2020, with a total discontinuity in between. I don't think I've ever done that to quite this extent.
I was really surprised to find out that this show actually does have a pretty active fandom on Tumblr, composed mostly of 17-20 year olds who obviously did not watch the show when it was originally on TV, or else (there are a few of these) watched it as middle schoolers(!!) and then got into the fandom on Tumblr later. It's also an astonishingly friendly and chill fandom on Tumblr, which is surprising both because a) Tumblr, and b) the fandom as I found it in 2008 was already contentious and wanky with a lot of character hate, and then it turned into a smoking ruin after Children of Earth. (I ragenoped out on Owen and Tosh's deaths, but I did actually come back to watch CoE, and then quit completely.) Like a lot of fandoms of closed canons, it's chilled out considerably since the show went off the air, but what I really wasn't expecting was to find the fandom, at least the socially active part of the fandom on Tumblr, made up almost entirely of people who not only weren't in the original fandom, but weren't even old enough to have watched the show back then! It wasn't that long ago.
One very pleasant surprise for me is how much more the fandom, as a whole, likes Owen than they did in 2008. My recollection was that he was extremely unpopular then; there were definitely Owen fans around, but on the whole he was one of the least popular characters on the show, almost entirely due to early season one. I came back 12 years later to find that the fandom really likes him now! There is still a certain amount of Gwen-bashing around, which I hate, but in general the fandom is really character-positive and ship-and-let-ship. (They also seem to, uh ... actually not even recognize that the Owen-related issues that people chewed over endlessly back in 2008 ARE issues, which is downright wild to me. I think there are certain categories of things that 2020-era Tumblr fandom recognizes as Media Issues and they don't generally ping on anything outside that, whereas in 2008 it was a whole different set of issues that LJ fandom had just discovered and talked about endlessly, but then they overlooked whole other categories of issues that fandom is more clued into now.)
no subject
Unpack?
no subject
The extent to which Tumblr fandom doesn't notice or care about either of these things is absolutely fascinating to me. Every once in a while I do see someone bring up the alien roofies: either as a reason why they dislike Owen, or just to point out "Hey guys, there are consent issues with this." (Followed by shocked comments: "Ohhhhh you're right ...") I have never once seen the other one mentioned. In fact, Tumblr fandom rarely talks about race issues on the show at all, which was a huge topic of discussion back in 2008, with both Torchwood and Doctor Who.
One of the things the fandom has the biggest problem with now, though? Jack dancing with and kissing the guy in "Captain Jack Harkness." Tumblr Torchwood fandom very vocally hates that episode because - according to the posts I've seen - it's unrealistic for the time period and objectifies gay people. Tumblr sees that scene as female wish fulfilment objectifying gay men. For me, however, watching it as a product of a time period when queer kissing on TV was extremely rare, it reads as wish fulfilment of a completely different sort - knowing the showrunner and the main actor in that scene are both gay, that scene definitely reads to me in a "we can have this too" kind of way, even if, yes, it's technically not something you would have seen on a dance floor in 1944.
There's also a thread of recurring discourse about whether the show objectifies lesbians or not. And they do also talk about the metal cyber-bikini, which, okay, fandom was complaining about in 2008 too.
So basically I'd say, from those data points and also my own recollections of what fandom discourse was like in the mid-2000s, it comes down to this -
Things fandom was talking about in 2008: Consent, race issues, having any gay content on TV at all.
Things fandom is talking about in 2020: Queer issues, whether the show treats its queer characters fairly, and (which doesn't really come up in the context of Torchwood at all) underage pairings and age-gap pairings.
I think Tumblr fandom tends not to notice the consent issues with the roofie scene, or doesn't consider it as much of a problem as 2006-era fandom did, because Tumblr fandom in 2020 tends to see consent issues through the lens of power differentials (older person/younger person, boss/employee, teacher/student) and that scene really doesn't have any of that, so it doesn't "ping" consent issues for them. I've actually been seeing it happen the other way with the sudden upswing in Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom on Tumblr, which has had a major resurgence recently and there has been an abrupt explosion in discourse about consent issues and power differentials in the show's couples that didn't "ping" for anyone back in the show's original mid-2000s run - age differences (the show's characters span the ages of 12 to 16) and power differentials due to one of the often-shipped characters being from a colonizing force that's trying to conquer the others' countries.
(Of course it's also possible that I'm over-analyzing based on a limited number of data points.)
I actually AM very pleasantly surprised that the fandom in general is so chill and multi-shippy about the pairings and characters, given that the other thing that Tumblr fandom (overall, not this fandom specifically) has a preoccupation with is whether pairings/characters are abusive, toxic, or good role models, and the characters in Torchwood easily could be labeled too abusive to ship, but I think it helps that the show in general has a dark streak and is very clearly For Adults - it's mostly kids' media where that tends to be a big deal. And also, just in general - I mean, it does depend on who's in the fandom, and Tumblr Torchwood fandom in general seems to be pretty chill and nice.
no subject
no subject
I'm glad to hear it!
(Much of the rest of this answer reminded me why I try to avoid fandom discourse per se and just talk about things with friends whose opinions, however like or unlike mine, I generally trust. In 2020, I would if anything have expected race to play a more prominent part in fannish analysis and for viewers to have become even less okay with the alien roofies, and the entire thing about the m/m kiss in "Captain Jack Harkness" as straight female eye candy makes my brain go bzzzpft, especially in light of #ownvoices. Harshing on the Cyber-bikini is completely fair. Who knew that being technologically upgraded gave you permanent silver high heels?)
no subject
I'm also surprised about the non-reaction to the alien roofies. I actually wonder if part of that is what I think is the same reason why the writers didn't see it as roofies, which is that IIRC Owen sprayed himself, not the other people. It's morally the same thing, but the specific action is doing something to himself, not to others.
no subject
I just chalked it up to the similar blind spot that fantasy narratives have about love spells: they are not traditionally viewed as coercive. (I have no idea why. Ancient Egyptian magical practice classified them as such.)
no subject
no subject
Depressing about the Jack/Jack kiss, though. Seriously? Ugh. Especially the "female wish fulfilment" - are they so invested in what women want or like being bad that who created it, or the context in which it exists, don't matter at all?!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Or maybe they were just all high the whole time.
no subject
Even more than that, though, it's got--and we talked about this a lot when we were group-watching it--that sense of multiple personalities, where it would thrive as a monster-of-the-week show but not always be successful as a more serious, dark SF drama. So you get some interesting dissonance from that, because the show I, specifically, might be watching isn't always the show that the show thinks that it is, so you get choices made creatively that seem to either fulfill the promise of the show or break it, depending on which version of the show you're most in-tune with. And while that can understandably lead to rage-quitting--either at the end of season two or "Children of Earth," or, if you were really into the darkness and thought the show could do it well, when things seemed to occasionally work out too easily or without consequences--it can also provoke that fannish desire to unify the dissonance. To keep going with the team stuff after the show had abandoned it, or to sell the darkness and grimness in a way you find more convincing, or to unite both aspects in a way you find compelling. It's cool. And part of me wonders if you'd get the same enticements if you actually did split it up into two shows, one a serious, fatalistic look at people fighting darkness and gradually being consumed by it and one a goofier team show. Because I think something that makes it compelling to me is that feeling of "clair pockets in a noir universe," of the characters struggling to carve out a little place for themselves and their hopes and loves in the middle of a narrative that keeps pushing "we all die cold and alone" on them.
no subject
That tension is essentially Torchwood for me—it rendered the show almost instant comfort viewing when I picked it up at the start of this month, because everyone is fucked up and no one gets out alive and even saving the day generally seems to come at a cost of collateral damage and yet the characters never stop fighting no matter how ridiculous or horrifying the odds and I stand by my early description of the show's vibe as a moderately violent, rather hurt/comfort-driven workplace comedy inhabited by disaster humans who will literally take bullets for one another but are still working their way toward emotional maturity with a map and a flashlight. Take out the goofiness, take out the darkness, it would be something different. It was something different. I'm a lot less interested in that.
no subject
This exactly. I love this description so much, and it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of the show.
no subject
Thank you!
This show turned out to be more or less exactly what I wanted to watch under current conditions, which it makes it all the more aggravating to me that it blew itself up. (I saw Children of Earth before the other seasons and I am indebted to it for interesting me in Peter Capaldi, but I have absolutely no desire to watch it at the present moment; neither have I even attempted Miracle Day. Understood if you feel differently.)
no subject
no subject
And it's flexible. It can encompass the sacrificial romance of "To the Last Man," the serious existentialism of "A Day in the Death," the splatter comedy of "Something Borrowed," and it all feels like the same show; there's none of the fuzziness, the whiplash, or the just plain nope of the first season finding (often by falling over) its feet. I don't understand jossing such a strong, multivalent ensemble just as soon as it's gelled. I especially don't understand carrying it through something as disruptive to the team as a death that turns into an undeath—it doesn't just change Owen, it changes how the team relates to him, and the end result is an even more bonded sense of stronger in the broken places—and then just dropping a nuclear plant on it. I am sure I would still have objected had it happened at the end of a third season, because I never like losing favorite characters, but it wouldn't have felt so arbitrarily fast. I think that's why I keep wondering if there were production factors, because narratively, whuh?
no subject
This is absolutely baffling to me too. There are only a handful of episodes between the emotional one-two punch of "Dead Man Walking"/"A Day in the Death" (which completely upended the team dynamic and rebuilt it, and gave us that absolutely beautiful rearranging of Owen's relationship with his teammates) and the episode that brought it all crashing down. I still wonder why you'd do something like that with a character, and then close off the possibility of any future storylines with that character just four episodes later.
no subject
Even leaving aside the (not minor) consideration of the team and their evolving relationships, it makes for some weird dropped threads, like whatever the deal is with Owen and the Weevils and the suggestion that Jack's eternally eleven-year-old Tarot-reader may be the resurrected Faith who was an earlier doorway for Death/Duroc and similarly fought it off. If I hadn't known that the show hit a wall at the end of the season, I would have expected that to be revisited in some future arc.
Also, at the risk of TMI or tedium: Owen is the sort of character it is valuable for me to see not just surviving but sometimes even thriving ("You ready to see that dead man dance, Tosh?") and I suspect in 2008 it would have hit like the wrong kind of ton of bricks to watch him commit to figuring out how to live with what's happened to him and then have the decision taken away from him after all.
no subject
Yeah, I agree with you completely - I mean, in general, whether or not the writers intended it this way, I think the particular way that Owen's storyline hits my id (as a person with a disability myself) is as a disability narrative. He gets suddenly hit with an incredibly weird and very impairing disability, and I really loved watching him handle it with a degree of anger and misery and messiness that you just don't really see on TV all that often. And the fact that he eventually finds a way forward, and happiness (even qualified happiness) really meant a lot to me, back when I first watched it and now. Moving forward, surviving, and even enjoying himself (sometimes) is a key element in what I love about his arc, and I think this is why I resent his canonical ending so much.
There is just one thing that I don't resent about it, which you'll see when you get to the series two finale, and it's this: you do actually see that Owen really, really doesn't want to die. And I appreciated that a lot. They could very easily have framed his death as capitulation, or as an inevitable endpoint for the character arc of someone who has slipped into suicidal depression multiple times in the run of the show (as the Magicians show actually did) ... but they don't. I didn't want this ending for him, I hate this ending for him - but it does give us solid, incontrovertible onscreen evidence that Owen's suicidal ideation didn't win, and a disability that took away almost everything he loved didn't win either. He dies for stupid, preventable plot reasons, but he goes out heroically while fighting like hell to save people and trying not to die. That is the one and only bit of credit I'll give the show for that ending, but it really isn't nothing.
no subject
For me also. And specifically an invisible disability: Owen doesn't look dead. Unless you actually catch him cutting himself on a scalpel without bleeding or lighting himself up like a Christmas tree with a fistful of power cables, unless he trusts you enough to let you touch his room-temperature skin or listen to him when he's scared, there's nothing to tip you off that he's not just the ordinary grade of disaster person who looks good in leather jackets and probably couldn't make a good cup of coffee even when he was alive. He looks normal. He doesn't feel it. He's not. As a person who has been told ad nauseam, even kindly, that I never look like I'm in the amount of pain or exhaustion I am, I relate to that stupidly hard.
He dies for stupid, preventable plot reasons, but he goes out heroically while fighting like hell to save people and trying not to die. That is the one and only bit of credit I'll give the show for that ending, but it really isn't nothing.
I am glad the show knew that much at least.
no subject
I was surprised on the rewatch how queer this show actually is! I was expecting to find that my memories of it were exaggerated because it was so rare at that time to see anything like this in genre TV, and it's true that aspects of it have dated badly - but also, there really is a running thread of default background queerness on this show that's vanishingly rare on TV even now.
I think you're right about this show hitting the messy aspects really, really well, too. There's so much going on here, often in direct conflict with other aspects of the show, that you can pick and choose what you want to focus on; you can basically create your own fandom experience just by piecing together the aspects of the show that appeal to you most. It's almost too incoherent to be a megafandom - there isn't quite enough consensus on what the show actually is for that to work. But it's ideally suited to be a mid-range fandom - there is endless fandom material, of the shipping and worldbuilding and character variety, with plenty of space for playing with the in-betweens and discarding those aspects of canon you don't want to deal with while still being left with enough to work with.
Because I think something that makes it compelling to me is that feeling of "clair pockets in a noir universe," of the characters struggling to carve out a little place for themselves and their hopes and loves in the middle of a narrative that keeps pushing "we all die cold and alone" on them.
Yeah, I think the show leaned too hard towards "noir" in later seasons with not enough "clair" for me, but also, this is still a huge element of the show's appeal. The characters making their own little team-family while also being balanced on the edge of grief and disaster is what makes me love it; I just can't quite deal with the amount of eventual grief that it gave us. But at the same time, it's a definite case of "If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop your story" - the tragedy was implied from the beginning, it's just that I didn't want the show to actually go ahead and give it to us. But then again, if we'd gotten an entire season of Ianto at Torchwood One before it was destroyed, then Ianto joining Torchwood Three as the sole survivor of his former friend group would have actually been the tragic ending, rather than the start of the more optimistic story that it is in actual canon.
no subject
It was especially notable to me that it was not thematically important queerness—just canonically no one in the main cast is straight. (Maybe Rhys, but how do I know? We have exactly one relationship data point on him and it's Gwen.) I have gathered that the show took some flak for it at the time. I found it unironically comfortable.
But then again, if we'd gotten an entire season of Ianto at Torchwood One before it was destroyed, then Ianto joining Torchwood Three as the sole survivor of his former friend group would have actually been the tragic ending, rather than the start of the more optimistic story that it is in actual canon.
Having Ianto in the background of the Torchwood One episodes of Doctor Who would have been fascinating, though. (I doubt the production timeline would have accommodated it even if the idea had occurred to any of the writers, but it just occurred to me.)