Torchwood #9 [SPOILERS]

[ewx]

Station ident was CBBC - oops. We didn't notice whether it stayed that way all the way.

Eugene can sit in a car but he puts his hand thru people. Funny how ghost physics is so often compatible with dramatic necessity. They could have worked around it by having everything go down in walking distance, or whatever ghost travel distance is, of the death scene, for instance. I'm reminded of R2D2's ability to efficiently manage staircases provided they're off-screen (e.g. near the start of Return Of The Jedi).

Your son's dead. PS we're pillaging his room. Hope that's OK. Have a nice day. We're going to keep his body our vault too, BTW. But hey, at least Owen didn't say anything too horrible in your hearing, right?

The hand in a jar in an episode about a disembodied eye offers an (admittedly rather tenuous!) connection to the Hand of Rhyn and the Eye of Kwll, from Michael Moorcock's Corum stories. The missing parent thing also offers a slightly less thin connection to the previous episode, though evidently Eugene's father hadn't annoyed him as much as Suzie's had her.

Up until the end it's hard not to imagine that Eugene has no more existence in the story than any other dramatic device. Which would be even more annoying than being dead in the first place, in a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kind of way.

All in all? I preferred last week's episode; this managed to fail to be annoying in the ways that have become traditional for Torchwood but didn't really grab me - I think it had too much of Love And Monsters about it, although somewhat redeemed by the absence of the execrably bad alien.

Recognize this?

Comments

Ghost physics

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Is "not falling through the earth" any more plausible than "not falling through a car"? I should blog about this...

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

You have realised the hand belongs to the Doctor, right?

managed to fail to be annoying in the ways that have become traditional for Torchwood

Yes, that's what I thought about it - interestingly, I liked it simply because it was less shite than usual, whereas M picked up on the 'Love and Monsters' nature too and thought it sucked. I'll be fascinated to see if they grab the dangling thread of Gwen being possibly psychic later on, though my general level of expectations of the series would seem to indicate this is unlikely...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yes, someone pointed that out a while back, though I'd not twigged in the first episode it turned up in. It fits with the Rhynn/Kwll thing to some extent, though the Doctor's ability to grow his hand back means he's not likely to be searching for it the way Rhynn and Kwll were looking for their severed body parts.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

You have realised the hand belongs to the Doctor, right?

How is one supposed to have figured that out? Other than by reading the Radio Times (which I don't) or Wikipedia (which I hadn't, 'til just now).

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Werl, 's bloody obvious, innit? Torchwood is a Who spinoff and the Doctor lost his hand in the Big Series Finale In Wot Jack Got Brought Back From The Dead And The Doctor Regenerated And Disappeared From Jack's Life.

It's, like, Jack's only connection with his lost humanity, and stuff.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

the Doctor lost his hand in the Big Series Finale

That was a long time ago. :-) But thanks.

(Though it's not like ewx and I are the only ones who didn't immediately twig the "bloody obvious", either...)

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Recognize this?

Aargh! Nightmare. I have been lost so many times trying to drive around there. There's an Ikea somewhere on that map.

That's not what you meant, though, is it?

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

The station ident disappeared after about ten minutes. We thought that was about the most interesting thing in the episode, but then we were chasing a little field-mouse around for some of it, so may have missed something significant :)

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

I actually liked this episode. I thought it a sweet little story that benefited from having a likable hero for a change. This one didn't leave me feeling faintly dirty at the shallowness we have gotton used to. Obviously there are parallels to be draw from the DW absorbalof episode but I thought that one was rather sweet too. (Except the paving slab sex ref at the end.)

I'm finding the main cast more and more irritating as the weeks go by. Are the Torchwood writers deliberately trying to make them unpleasant or are they trying to make them appeal to this generation of selfish teenagers? I'm secretly hoping that the Doctor will turn up and spank them.