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Post by fenris on Feb 19, 2008 19:53:18 GMT
Episode 2.5: Adam
Despite the claims by the producers that Torchwood was much improved this year, with all the problems of the initial season having been addressed, in my opinion nothing has changed (apart from some humour being shoehorned in, via Ianto's somewhat forced one-liners). Torchwood still manages the occasional good episode, but the flaws and inconsistencies of the first season are still very much in evidence.
'Adam' was one of the better instalments (and contained a plot device previously used in the Torchwood spin-off novel 'Border Princes'), but it still suffered from the producers' insistence that Torchwood's stories be self-contained. Like the first season's 'Cyberwoman', 'Greeks Bearing Gifts' and 'Random Shoes', Adam's storyline would have been much improved if it had been either foreshadowed or taken place over two/three episodes. How effective would it have been if the episode had begun with Adam as a member of the team and nobody acting as though this was unusual, with only the audience aware that something was wrong? The episode could have had Adam helping the others deal with a typical Torchwood threat, behaving all the time like a fully trustworthy colleague. At the end of the episode, Gwen would leave for home, complaining that she's not slept in her own bed for over 24 hours. Upon arriving at the flat, she sees Rhys and starts freaking out - leading into the following week's episode, in which Adam's intrusion into the team's memories is exposed.
Incidentally, the resolution of 'Adam' contained a huge plothole: Jack may had made the entire team (including himself) take amnesia pills wiping out two days memories, and deleted the last 48 hours of all the Hub's records, but what about Rhys? He's still going to remember Gwen not knowing him, and also Adam's brief appearance at their flat... unless this is deliberate by the scriptwriter, leaving a way for Adam to return (?).
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Post by fenris on Feb 26, 2008 18:59:55 GMT
Episode 2.6: Reset
‘Mysterious deaths occur. Link discovered to research project carried out by large corporation. Team member goes undercover to find out what’s going on, is found out and nearly meets a sticky end, but is saved at the last minute by colleagues coming to the rescue.’
Oh dear. This was a wholly unoriginal, no-frills storyline that standard detective shows have been using for decades, and ‘Reset’ just slavishly regurgitated it without any attempt at variation (merely bolting on sci-fi trappings - by having the corporation experimenting on captured aliens – doesn’t count). This was simply lazy television, with the writer and producers apparently thinking that by adding Martha Jones to the cast (with several time-filling scenes of her and Jack repeatedly making references to their adventures in New Who, but coyly not mentioning the Doctor by name) they could just coast for the duration of the episode.
Whatever promise Torchwood displayed in it’s first season seems to have been lost. If things don’t improve over the next couple of weeks I might stop watching.
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Post by orokiah on Feb 27, 2008 18:05:59 GMT
I'm still recording it, but I've given up watching first-run. There's more consistent, compelling drama in an episode of Grand Designs. Martha's appearance was a breath of fresh air, and Alan Dale was excellent, as he always is (he gave some great interviews to accompany his appearance, too), but -- spoilers, since I'm recording at BBC3 pace -- it's the Owen resurrection plot in 'Dead Man Walking' that really killed my interest. It's nowhere near as deep and meaningful as it seems to think it is.
The idea of having Owen as a man who can't live whereas Jack is a man who can't die should be dark and terrifying and an interesting direction to take a character - but it's not. There's a great idea in there somewhere, and Burn Gorman is a great actor when given the chance, but I thought the episode as a whole was a mess. The only saving grace was Ianto's line about WeightWatchers. This series has been so hit and miss that it's just frustrating to watch.
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Post by fenris on Mar 1, 2008 17:08:41 GMT
Episode 2.7: Dead Man Walking There was the potential to tell a really intriguing story here, but instead we get a confused re-hash of the first season's 'They Keep Killing Suzy' (even down to the inclusion of a life-glove), with the team not knowing how to react when faced with an unexpectedly resurrected colleague. Huge plotholes as well: if Jack suspected that the second life-glove was somewhere in Cardiff, why hadn't he tried to track it down before? Surely that's the whole purpose of Torchwood - locating potentially dangerous alien technology and making it safe. And the revelation of the identity of the "thing in the darkness" that had previously been mentioned in 'They Keep Killing Suzie' and 'Combat' (and which most viewers - including myself - had assumed to be the first season's last minute apocalypse-bringer Abaddon) was not only underwhelming, but seemed like a clumsy afterthought. Owen's climatic grappling with this supposedly dreaded death-spirit was just embarrassing. The only bright spot in the whole mess was the Tarot reading little girl whom Jack went to for information. If she appears again I'm guessing she'll be revealed as being Faith, the resurrected child who defeated the death-spirit centuries earlier. Alan Dale was excellent, as he always is. That was another of the problems with 'Reset'. The producers brought in a talented, big name guest star like Alan Dale... and then gave him practically nothing to do. Madness.
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Post by fenris on Mar 9, 2008 17:07:23 GMT
Confess I didn't bother watching last week's episode of Torchwood (#2.8: 'A Day in the Death'). I did happen to catch the last fifteen minutes of subsequent episode 'Something Borrowed' on BBC Three, but it looked so awful that I won't bother watching it when it's shown in BBC 2 this coming Wednesday (12/03/08).
The second season has turned out to be haphazard, riddled with the same old problems, and hugely disappointing. I might try to catch the occasional episode in future if it sounds interesting (there's an upcoming instalment about people in an old cinefilm appearing in the real world, that might be worth a look), but otherwise Torchwood is over for me.
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Post by matsee on Mar 17, 2008 4:47:17 GMT
Finally got started with the second season.
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: Episode 1 of Torchwood season 2. A very good season opener. When Jack was previously seen in Last of the Time Lords it was daytime and looked like he was heading back to Torchwood. Yet when he appears here seeing the team for the first time since End of Days it is night time. Question is what was Jack doing between saying goodbye to the Doctor and Martha and seeing his team again. James Marsters makes a welcome addition to the Doctor Who Universe as Captain John Hart. I am very curious to find out who this Grey person that John mentions at the end.
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Post by matsee on Mar 22, 2008 5:46:12 GMT
Sleeper: Episode 2 of season 2. I have seen Nikki Amuka-Bird before in Afterlife & Robin Hood where she played devious characters.
Here in contrast in Torchwood she plays Beth who genuinely did not know about her own self and Nikki delivered on the character's agony.
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Post by matsee on Mar 26, 2008 3:17:52 GMT
To The Last Man: Episode 3 of season 2. First of all I should have known the title would refer to something General Haig said during World War I who did not get an impressionable view of from history lessons at school. Written by Helen Raynor and like her previous Torchwood episode Ghost Machine in the previous season it has the "bringing the past into the present" theme and the episode definitely works thanks to Naoko Mori's performance as Tosh. This episode is certainly better than the last Tosh episode Greeks Bearing Gifts. Brilliant episode.
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Post by matsee on Apr 5, 2008 3:38:36 GMT
Meat: Episode 4 of season 2. Very amazed on how big that alien was. Glad that Gwen did not go through what she got asked to do at the end of the episode.
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Post by fenris on Jun 16, 2008 19:11:32 GMT
As I explained in my previous post on this thread, dated 09/03/08, I stopped watching Torchwood during the middle of the second season. I just wasn't enjoying it, and there weren't enough good things about the show to make me persevere. But for anyone who's still a fan of Torchwood, in case you haven't already seen the news elsewhere, it's been confirmed (after much internet rumour and speculation) that the third season will be just a single story, spread over five episodes. The show will also be screened on BBC1 instead of BBC2. For more info, here's a link; www.digitalspy.co.uk/cult/a99807/shortened-torchwood-moves-to-bbc1.html
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Post by orokiah on Jun 17, 2008 19:53:28 GMT
It's been confirmed (after much internet rumour and speculation) that the third season will be just a single story, spread over five episodes. The show will also be screened on BBC1 instead of BBC2. I think it's a smart move, whatever the reasons behind it. Hopefully the reduced run will produce five high quality episodes in a row instead of a couple of good ones here and half a dozen miserably mediocre ones there. If it means they distil the good things about series one and two into series three and produce something worth sticking with (like fenris, I bailed out halfway through series two), I'm all for it. Complaints that the adult content might have to be toned down for BBC1 don't really wash with me either. The brilliant Sarah Jane Adventures was more grown up - and watchable - than a lot of Torchwood, even without the sex'n'swearing. I hope the rumours that [possible spoilers] Martha and Mickey will join the cast for series three aren't true, though. I'd much rather see them replace Tosh and Owen with fresh, brand new characters.
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Post by fenris on Jun 23, 2008 19:47:55 GMT
I hope the rumours that [possible spoilers] Martha and Mickey will join the cast for series three aren't true.Sadly, I strongly suspect those rumours will turn out to be correct. Any chance that Torchwood would stand on it's own two feet, and distance itself from it's parent show, were scuppered by Martha guest-starring in three episodes of the second season. The Beeb seem intent on turning Torchwood into New Who Mark Two.
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Post by fenris on Sept 7, 2008 13:26:14 GMT
This coming Wednesday (10/09/08) the Large Hadron Collider, the seventeen mile long particle accelerator in the underground CERN laboratory in Geneva, will be switched on for the first time, and Radio 4 are marking the occasion by declaring it Big Bang Day and devoting their schedule to a series of themed programmes. One of these is a special radio-only episode of Torchwood, entitled 'Lost Souls' and starring John Barrowman and Freema Agyeman as Captain Jack and Martha Jones. It will be broadcast from 14:15 until 15:00.
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Post by robgairey on Sept 10, 2008 21:19:17 GMT
I'm going to have to listen to today's episode again, as I fell asleep in the middle. Nothing wrong with the episode. It's just that, when I take a week off work - as I'm doing this week - I always tend to fall asleep after lunch! And listening to anything on the radio or CD - no matter how good it is - is fatal! One of the little things I have been up to in my sojourn away from this site is actually an attempt at Torchwood fan fic. Very likely my first and last attempt at fan fiction, as the whole process I found exhausting. Fenric, I don't know how you manage! Anyway, for anyone interested, my little story - all eight and a half thousand words of it (all I could manage really!) - can be found here: www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=22602
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Post by fenris on Sept 12, 2008 19:26:43 GMT
One of the little things I have been up to in my sojourn away from this site is actually an attempt at Torchwood fan fic. Very likely my first and last attempt at fan fiction, as the whole process I found exhausting. Anyway, for anyone interested, my little story - all eight and a half thousand words of it (all I could manage really!) - can be found here: www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=22602That's quite polished and confident writing for a first effort, rob. I like the way you get inside the characters' heads, and describe very effectively what they're thinking and feeling - something which I've never managed in my own writing (that's why I mostly tend to use dialogue and/or descriptions of a character's actions, reactions and expressions to try to convey what's happening internally). And I was really impressed by (spoiler font) the final twist, when it turns out that the Gwen we assume is 'our' Gwen is actually from a dimension that is identical to our own. The Eugene reference is also a nice touch - but raises an intriguing question; As the alternative version of Gwen had been killed in 'our' world, was she being greeted by 'our' Eugene, or her dimension's version of him?
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