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Torchwood ramblings (also a bit of Agents of SHIELD)
Thinking about Torchwood (as one does) ... I think one thing about this show that makes it so satisfying for me is that it doesn't hesitate to commit. Whether or not it makes narrative sense. And I was thinking about Owen's condemned man's walk in "Dead Man Walking" in light of that.
That scene in the middle of "Dead Man Walking" when he's walking to his execution is such an absolutely gorgeous scene - the way it's staged and shot, the facial expressions, the subtleties of his unspoken goodbyes with his teammates. Some parts of that scene are the ones that stick with me most from the episode - especially running his hand up the railing next to Ianto's (there's something so intimate about it, for all that they don't touch each other), but also Gwen's spontaneous, clinging hug, and the way that he walks into the Hub, for what he thinks is the last time.
It's also, in some sense, absolutely unnecessary, from a big-picture narrative standpoint. It's staged as a huge dramatic thing - but he not only doesn't die, but the plot veers off in a completely different direction a few minutes later. It's a scene that's set up like a climax or a major game-changer in an episode in which it's not actually that, a scene that would almost certainly be cut down to its basic elements in a show that was trying to keep the plot "tight" and cut or combine any scenes that aren't narratively necessary.
But it's gorgeous! It's an absolutely glorious scene that is part of what makes the entire episode feel as emotionally indulgent as it does. Do we need Owen slowly running his hand up the railing next to Ianto's hand? Not really! But ... we also kind of do.
if you think about it, that scene is focused on his farewells with the teammates who aren't the ones he has his closest connections with. He has big dramatic moments with Tosh and with Jack elsewhere in the episode, but that particular scene is focused on saying goodbye to Gwen and Ianto. As far as any of the characters knows, these are his last moments to say anything to anyone. But one thing this episode does really well is spreading out the big emotional moments between the characters, and across the entire span of the episode. If he had goodbyes with Tosh and Jack here too, the scene would be crowded and it would essentially just repeat emotional beats that we get elsewhere. So instead, the emotional weight of this scene is focused almost entirely on his connections to Ianto and Gwen. In addition to the moments mentioned earlier, I love that bit where they flank him like a sort of honor guard. Tosh is the nearly-girlfriend and perhaps his best friend; Jack is his boss and mentor and the emotional fulcrum of his life at Torchwood; and Ianto and Gwen are his comrades in arms, which is very solidly conveyed here with the two of them being the ones who are basically his honor guard and pallbearers while he's still (sort of) alive. All of this is in contrast to earlier, in the autopsy goodbye scene, when it was, instead, Tosh and Jack who carried the emotional weight there.
But the general effect is to give heft and weight and uniqueness to each of his different relationships with his teammates. When confronted with what they think are their final moments with Owen, Tosh confesses her love (and refuses to leave him later; he has to trick her to get her to go), Gwen hugs him, Ianto offers wordless support, and Jack is - well, Jack is Jack, with a little of all of it, really. And we get all of that in a single episode, spread out enough that each of his goodbye scenes with his teammates gets its own flavor and stands alone enough to be memorable and have its own emotional heft. And it goes ahead and carries into the next episode, where we get unique and individual scenes with all of Owen's various relationships yet again (with the addition of more with Martha that time around) - also maybe "A Day in the Death" didn't develop Owen and Gwen quite as much? But there was a lot going on, and it managed to get in strong individual scenes with all of the others, plus the frame story with Owen and Maggie.
And I just really appreciate that the show went out of its way to do this. This was actually a problem I had with Agents of SHIELD this season - spoilers for AoS season 7 follow:
Agents of SHIELD incorporates Daniel Sousa (from Agent Carter) into the team in season 7, but also ... it kind of doesn't? I really enjoyed the first couple of Daniel episodes, and my interest slipped with each succeeding one, because the only relationship they really built in any detail was with Daisy, whose love interest he was. It would have been so easy to give him some individual and distinct relationships with the other teammates, but he just doesn't really ever have that. I think AoS in general has a problem with this - they have one or two major relationships per teammate, and they rarely develop the team beyond that, which I think is one of the reasons why - while I like the show, mostly - they never really turned into one of those found-family ensembles that I'm ride-or-die for.
But it's not just having emotional scenes with the characters, it's also providing enough additional touchstones with them to suggest that it matters. One show that used to drive me absolutely bonkers with its lack of this sort of follow-through was Lost, which would start to develop some kind of character relationship, and then just drop it - you'd get a single episode of two characters bonding, and then they'd never share an important scene again. W
With Torchwood though, you don't get a lot of future scenes with any given duo from the episode, but you get enough (Owen going to the theater with Ianto and Gwen, say, or dancing with Tosh, or the little shoulder-touch in “Fragments”) to suggest that this episode's emotional pivot-points actually did anchor something important.
And ... in a way, you don't even have to do this intentionally, if you commit to enough emotionally meaningful scenes with the characters; narratively necessary or not, throw in enough heartfelt touchstones and real feelings fall out. (Claremont's X-Men did this too - structurally it was a mess, but if you stick in enough relatively contiguous scenes of characters Having Feelings at each other, even if the overall plot is wandering in a million directions, you do tend to get something genuinely emotional out of it.)
That scene in the middle of "Dead Man Walking" when he's walking to his execution is such an absolutely gorgeous scene - the way it's staged and shot, the facial expressions, the subtleties of his unspoken goodbyes with his teammates. Some parts of that scene are the ones that stick with me most from the episode - especially running his hand up the railing next to Ianto's (there's something so intimate about it, for all that they don't touch each other), but also Gwen's spontaneous, clinging hug, and the way that he walks into the Hub, for what he thinks is the last time.
It's also, in some sense, absolutely unnecessary, from a big-picture narrative standpoint. It's staged as a huge dramatic thing - but he not only doesn't die, but the plot veers off in a completely different direction a few minutes later. It's a scene that's set up like a climax or a major game-changer in an episode in which it's not actually that, a scene that would almost certainly be cut down to its basic elements in a show that was trying to keep the plot "tight" and cut or combine any scenes that aren't narratively necessary.
But it's gorgeous! It's an absolutely glorious scene that is part of what makes the entire episode feel as emotionally indulgent as it does. Do we need Owen slowly running his hand up the railing next to Ianto's hand? Not really! But ... we also kind of do.
if you think about it, that scene is focused on his farewells with the teammates who aren't the ones he has his closest connections with. He has big dramatic moments with Tosh and with Jack elsewhere in the episode, but that particular scene is focused on saying goodbye to Gwen and Ianto. As far as any of the characters knows, these are his last moments to say anything to anyone. But one thing this episode does really well is spreading out the big emotional moments between the characters, and across the entire span of the episode. If he had goodbyes with Tosh and Jack here too, the scene would be crowded and it would essentially just repeat emotional beats that we get elsewhere. So instead, the emotional weight of this scene is focused almost entirely on his connections to Ianto and Gwen. In addition to the moments mentioned earlier, I love that bit where they flank him like a sort of honor guard. Tosh is the nearly-girlfriend and perhaps his best friend; Jack is his boss and mentor and the emotional fulcrum of his life at Torchwood; and Ianto and Gwen are his comrades in arms, which is very solidly conveyed here with the two of them being the ones who are basically his honor guard and pallbearers while he's still (sort of) alive. All of this is in contrast to earlier, in the autopsy goodbye scene, when it was, instead, Tosh and Jack who carried the emotional weight there.
But the general effect is to give heft and weight and uniqueness to each of his different relationships with his teammates. When confronted with what they think are their final moments with Owen, Tosh confesses her love (and refuses to leave him later; he has to trick her to get her to go), Gwen hugs him, Ianto offers wordless support, and Jack is - well, Jack is Jack, with a little of all of it, really. And we get all of that in a single episode, spread out enough that each of his goodbye scenes with his teammates gets its own flavor and stands alone enough to be memorable and have its own emotional heft. And it goes ahead and carries into the next episode, where we get unique and individual scenes with all of Owen's various relationships yet again (with the addition of more with Martha that time around) - also maybe "A Day in the Death" didn't develop Owen and Gwen quite as much? But there was a lot going on, and it managed to get in strong individual scenes with all of the others, plus the frame story with Owen and Maggie.
And I just really appreciate that the show went out of its way to do this. This was actually a problem I had with Agents of SHIELD this season - spoilers for AoS season 7 follow:
Agents of SHIELD incorporates Daniel Sousa (from Agent Carter) into the team in season 7, but also ... it kind of doesn't? I really enjoyed the first couple of Daniel episodes, and my interest slipped with each succeeding one, because the only relationship they really built in any detail was with Daisy, whose love interest he was. It would have been so easy to give him some individual and distinct relationships with the other teammates, but he just doesn't really ever have that. I think AoS in general has a problem with this - they have one or two major relationships per teammate, and they rarely develop the team beyond that, which I think is one of the reasons why - while I like the show, mostly - they never really turned into one of those found-family ensembles that I'm ride-or-die for.
But it's not just having emotional scenes with the characters, it's also providing enough additional touchstones with them to suggest that it matters. One show that used to drive me absolutely bonkers with its lack of this sort of follow-through was Lost, which would start to develop some kind of character relationship, and then just drop it - you'd get a single episode of two characters bonding, and then they'd never share an important scene again. W
With Torchwood though, you don't get a lot of future scenes with any given duo from the episode, but you get enough (Owen going to the theater with Ianto and Gwen, say, or dancing with Tosh, or the little shoulder-touch in “Fragments”) to suggest that this episode's emotional pivot-points actually did anchor something important.
And ... in a way, you don't even have to do this intentionally, if you commit to enough emotionally meaningful scenes with the characters; narratively necessary or not, throw in enough heartfelt touchstones and real feelings fall out. (Claremont's X-Men did this too - structurally it was a mess, but if you stick in enough relatively contiguous scenes of characters Having Feelings at each other, even if the overall plot is wandering in a million directions, you do tend to get something genuinely emotional out of it.)
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And the characters don't know that. Which doesn't make it feel superfluous to me; it makes it feel real. The writers know, first-time viewers will shortly find out that Owen isn't really saying goodbye to his friends for the last time, isn't really choosing his own death over the escalating likelihood of being the death of all of them, and since fiction does not spontaneously boil up like electrons in a vacuum, the fact that this scene exists despite narratively being kind of a red herring was a deliberate creative choice—but as you point out, emotionally it's chockablock with relevant information evocatively and efficiently conveyed, and that just speaks further to the nature of Torchwood as an essentially character-driven show. I complain a lot about movies that seem to have left their emotional connective tissue on the cutting room floor in favor of getting through the plot in time. (I especially complained about Marvel movies when I was watching them, so it interests me that Agents of SHIELD as a Marvel TV property had the same problem. I recognize that it may also just be a common failure mode of blockbuster movies, although not an inevitable one, cf. Pacific Rim.) Torchwood, if it had to choose, seems to have gone for the emotional tissue every time. But that makes everyone in it feel like people rather than plot counters to me, and I suspect that's one of the reasons it matters so much less to me if the plots are sometimes shaky. They are of secondary importance to the kind of story the show is telling. At least until it became a different kind of story, anyway.
also maybe "A Day in the Death" didn't develop Owen and Gwen quite as much? But there was a lot going on, and it managed to get in strong individual scenes with all of the others, plus the frame story with Owen and Maggie.
I think one of the reasons "A Day in the Death" stands out so much for me is that it's the strongest example of a Torchwood episode where the narrative and the emotional drives are running exactly in tandem. Everything that happens in it happens on both levels. Nothing in it is a detour. It's tightly scripted, almost self-contained by its framing and it's pure emotional follow-through of the previous episode. I still think it should have gotten a shot at a Hugo.
"Something Borrowed" handles some of the follow-through on Gwen and Owen, I think. They don't share that many scenes, but the scenes they don't share make it clear how important she is to him: he won't be left behind if Gwen's in danger, even though it's exactly the kind of field assignment that could really wreck a person who can't heal; he insists on bringing the hail-Mary of the singularity scalpel because he is legitimately (and correctly!) concerned that they might not have time to save Gwen with anything more tried and true; and when it comes down to the crunch, he doesn't even think about risking her life for his pride—he fucked up his hand, it might compromise his ability to operate the scalpel, Rhys gets a short course in alien surgery. Taking care of Gwen is the important thing. (I do appreciate the implication, from Ianto and Jack's reactions when he gets in the van with the scalpel, that Owen's idea of "working on it" may have involved further property destruction and/or having to clean up the lab.)
With Torchwood though, you don't get a lot of future scenes with any given duo from the episode, but you get enough (Owen going to the theater with Ianto and Gwen, say, or dancing with Tosh, or the little shoulder-touch in “Fragments”) to suggest that this episode's emotional pivot-points actually did anchor something important.
I love the theater scene because nothing about either Gwen or especially Owen suggests that either of them is any kind of film geek, but apparently Ianto is and that's reason enough for them to agree to spend an evening at the local retro cinema watching century-old documentary two-reelers with live music—which I have no reason to believe Owen wouldn't have continued to MST3K if the program had gone as planned, but still.
[edit] Were you the person who mentioned how Ianto and Owen's relationship in the second season evolves almost entirely in the background of the action, but can nonetheless be traced accurately, strongly, and heartwarmingly if you catch all the beats?
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Yes, I agree! I'm starting to notice, over time, that while I do really appreciate an intricately crafted plot, most of the creative works that I enjoy the most, and bond with the hardest, have that "messy" quality that makes them feel lived-in and real.
I especially complained about Marvel movies when I was watching them, so it interests me that Agents of SHIELD as a Marvel TV property had the same problem. I recognize that it may also just be a common failure mode of blockbuster movies, although not an inevitable one, cf. Pacific Rim.
Yeah, agreed - personally, I have greatly enjoyed quite a lot of blockbuster movies, including most of the Marvel ones, but they do tend to go for style over emotion, and they're also choreographed to the point where you generally don't get the messy, quirky, more real feeling that you do from less tightly edited works.
"Something Borrowed" handles some of the follow-through on Gwen and Owen, I think. They don't share that many scenes, but the scenes they don't share make it clear how important she is to him:
Oh, you're right! Actually, that's a really excellent point - we don't really get much Gwen in "A Day in the Death" (beyond her appearance in team scenes and the group goodbye), but we get an entire episode later on that focuses on her teammates' relationships with her. And you're right, it's very telling that this is what gets Owen back out in the field, over Jack's objections.
I love the theater scene because nothing about either Gwen or especially Owen suggests that either of them is any kind of film geek, but apparently Ianto is and that's reason enough for them to agree to spend an evening at the local retro cinema watching century-old documentary two-reelers with live music
Yes! And it's also something that's really important to Ianto - not just a particular geeky thing that his friends aren't into in the same way he is, but something that's really meaningful to him. And he chose these specific people to share it with him, and they wanted to share it with him even though they don't have any particular interest in it other than being there for him.
It's all such a dramatic demonstration of how far they've come from early season one, when the team was playing group games and going out for drinks without inviting him along.
which I have no reason to believe Owen wouldn't have continued to MST3K if the program had gone as planned, but still.
Hahaha. Yes. Agreed.
[edit] Were you the person who mentioned how Ianto and Owen's relationship in the second season evolves almost entirely in the background of the action, but can nonetheless be traced accurately, strongly, and heartwarmingly if you catch all the beats?
Yes, that was me! And yeah ... I love how it's subtle but it's there, and it's a thread that's present throughout the season - first of all, with their clearly increased level of comfort with each other early in season two compared to season one (partnering up on missions, say) but still on a casual "comfortable coworker" level; and then it takes a very obvious, dramatic leap forward when Owen dies and you can see Ianto's visible distress and grief, followed by how careful he is with Owen's emotions in the immediate wake of it. And then he takes Owen's side against Jack(!!) in "Something Borrowed," and then there's the theater scene, with Ianto choosing Owen as one of the people he wants to be with for something that is clearly important to him (something that Owen a season ago would probably have mocked him for), and "Fragments" where they've progressed to casual physical affection after a traumatic event.
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I think that may be true of me, too—there needs to be some weirdness to get hold of. Even Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and The Long Voyage Home (1940), which occurred to me as potential exceptions from the precision-tooled days of classic Hollywood, are stories about disaster humans holding on to one another against the dark, which means that even if the scripts are tight, those neatly written scenes are running on unpredictable emotion. (I may sense a theme.)
Yeah, agreed - personally, I have greatly enjoyed quite a lot of blockbuster movies, including most of the Marvel ones, but they do tend to go for style over emotion, and they're also choreographed to the point where you generally don't get the messy, quirky, more real feeling that you do from less tightly edited works.
I watched most of the Marvel movies until Infinity War and generally enjoyed them, but almost all of them—notably excluding Captain America: The First Avenger and Black Panther—felt like they had missing beats or sometimes even scenes, which I finally figured out were not mislaid bits of action but emotional arc. I suspect it's part of what drives the fandom, returning to that perennial question: those movies build so much between their characters and then rarely if ever follow all the way through. I like choreography as a way of thinking of it.
Actually, that's a really excellent point - we don't really get much Gwen in "A Day in the Death" (beyond her appearance in team scenes and the group goodbye), but we get an entire episode later on that focuses on her teammates' relationships with her.
Thanks! I feel like in some ways I have less of a handle on Gwen than her teammates because she is the lens for the audience, but I appreciate that the show managed not to let her recede into complete transparency: I like her, even if I have fewer ideas about what she does in her free time than I do about Owen or Tosh.
It's all such a dramatic demonstration of how far they've come from early season one, when the team was playing group games and going out for drinks without inviting him along.
Agreed. Which is another example of the show's attention to follow-through: it's not just Owen's character growth that's being illuminated here. Yet another reason I would have loved at least a third season with this cast is, for lack of a better word, the combinatorics. Personal common ground or professional roles notwithstanding, none of their bonds are exactly the same. Breaking up the team into two- and three-person groups, whether for hangouts or assignments in the field, produces such different results depending on the people involved, it wasn't like they were running out of dynamics to explore.
and then it takes a very obvious, dramatic leap forward when Owen dies and you can see Ianto's visible distress and grief
Yes! I remember being struck by the one shot of Ianto thousand-yard-slumped on the couch because he looks absolutely wrecked and it's not that we expected him to be indifferent, especially with all his trauma from losing his comrades from Torchwood One, but it's a reveal of a depth of attachment that had not previously been obvious from his interactions with Owen and therefore it hits differently from the grief of the rest of the team, which we were more braced for.
and "Fragments" where they've progressed to casual physical affection after a traumatic event.
I still haven't managed to watch "Exit Wounds." This is not how I usually am about completing stories, whether or not I like how they turn out, but here we are. I blame the year.
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I watched Agents of SHIELD for a few seasons and then felt increasingly disappointed by it. At the time, I was tired of the same characters making the same mistakes over and over—but they were making them with the same people, too. Having those more developed connections might have led to more interesting plots, or at the very least made the mistakes feel less repetitive!
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I literally just finished AOS this week, and I agree with you about Daniel Sousa (I'm just starting Agent Carter, so I don't know much else about him outside of AOS thus far). I think the show did "ensemble" much better in the early seasons, which did make me fall for it hard as a teamy goodness show, but the later seasons did kind of splinter off into relationship clumps. While it serviced the couples and "family" units, so to speak, it did make the team dynamic suffer somewhat.
At any rate, I would have liked to see more about Daniel and go much deeper with his reaction to being a man out of time. He just feels a bit too much like a "we have to fulfill this dude's contract" casting for me to be too excited about him as a character on AOS. TBD with Agent Carter.
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