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julesjones(If you're reading this on the Dreamwidth journal, you'll need to go over to LJ and pick up the torchwood boxset tag to see previous installments.)
"We're talking to the wrong corpse."
The very first episode showed how Torchwood is the worst and best job in the world, with Jack's second-in-command getting a little too carried away with her job, and ending up on ice in the vaults herself. Three months later, the team have reason to find out just what she knew about the background of their current problem -- and in Torchwood, even suicide isn't always an effective way to resign from the job...
Intricately plotted, well acted, and wonderfully filmed and directed, this meditation on life and death shows just what Torchwood is capable of -- from what was originally one of the over-commission scripts which were commissioned to give the production time extra material to draw on in case of problems with the primary scripts.
Watching it for the first time is like playing with one of those Russian doll sets; every time you open up a layer, you find something else nested inside. This does sometimes give me suspension of disbelief problems on rewatching, in part because Suzie's plan is so elaborate, but on my first time through I was too mesmerised by the developing story and character interplay to care.
There's just so much packed into this episode; not just the main plot concept and its twists and turns, but all the little character and world details. It's one of the best episodes in the first series, but it's one of the best in part because it builds on what we've already seen, often in episodes that considered as individual episodes weren't very good. It's a self-contained story that can stand on its own if necessary, but putting it in the setting of the rest of the series gives it a much greater richness and depth, a richness it reflects back onto the series as a whole.
In fact, there's a whole lot of continuity and world-building in this one. The way Torchwood operates in public as some sort of high-clearance special ops group, and the resentment that gets from the regular police force. The damage Torchwood does to the people who work there. Oh, and reinforcing that once you join up, Torchwood *owns* you, in life and in death, body and soul. Especially your body... The shifting relationships, both platonic and sexual, amongst the team. And, of course, something out there in the darkness.
So we've seen over the series that Torchwood as an organisation isn't exactly Cardiff's best kept secret. But this episode really drives home that the Cardiff branch operates semi-openly as "some sort of covert ops group" (to quote the police in the first episode), and the only really covert thing about them is exactly what sort of anti-terrorist/anti-espionage work they actually do. It's nice to see that someone's immune to the Captain's charisma. I like Detective swanson a lot and wish we could have seen more of her during the series, although I'm aware of the problems which irregularly recurring characters pose for the production team. She's competent, cynical, and can kick Jack's arse without getting in the way of him doing his job -- which for Jack's own good really needs to happen to him more often than it does.
Swanson's got reason to be annoyed, because she's investigating three murders that can be laid at Torchwood's door. And there's more than their name written in blood to link Torchwood with the killer. Retcon in the killer's blood makes the incident Torchwood's responsibility in more ways than one. There's an insight into the scale of their work, and the way in which Torchwood has in effect conducted clinical trials of their amnesia drug on an unsuspecting population. Granted, it's a lot kinder than what might happen if Torchwood didn't have Retcon, but it implies a fairly cavalier attitude.
It may be a fairly bleak episode overall, but there's a lot of lovely banter in this one. "It's the button on the top."
More than a bit heavy-handed in places with the "Gwen is the one with the empathy" theme, and it starts getting heavy-handed with Gwen's expertise with the glove. It's plausible that Jack can't work the thing, for reasons of being the living dead himself as well as being a hard bastard, and Owen's... Owen, but it's not entirely clear to me why Ianto and Tosh are disqualified through lack of empathy, other than to make a song and dance about how wonderful and unique Gwen is. (Gwen's Mary-Sueness is the one thing I don't like about this episode.)
When they revive Suzie, she says to Jack, "Wait a minute. Didn't I kill you?" -- and Owen at least picks up on that. Ianto and Tosh should have heard it as well. That could have made for an interesting "the things we don't know about our boss" conversation after the end of the episode. (Time to sharpen the plot bunny stake...)
Of course, sometimes empathy isn't a good thing, especially when it leads you to spring a prisoner for a road trip.
Lockdown and locked in courtesy of one of their own again. It's never blatantly referenced on-screen, but doubtless Jack and Ianto at least are thinking about parallels. Again, I like Swanson very much -- particularly the way she enjoys a quick gloat about Torchwood being locked in their own secret base, but then does her best to help them when Jack tells her one of the team is in danger.
And then things *really* start to twist and turn, with the team's realisation that Suzie planned the killings all along, that the craziness that ended in her first death wasn't just the influence of the glove, and Suzie has played them once more.
Yet it still hasn't finished unpacking. It's all too easy to feel sympathy for Suzie during that road trip, even knowing that her life means Gwen's death. Not least because it becomes clear at the end that Suzie regrets Gwen's death and would leave Gwen alive if she could do so without sacrificing her own link to life. And that having once seen the other side of death, she has a very good incentive to stay with the living, whatever the cost to others.
"Captain, my Captain… do you want to know a secret? Something moving in the dark. And it's coming, Captain Jack Harkness. It's coming for you."
Dear god, that gave me the chills first time round. Part of the buildup to the final episode, and the buildup was so good. Pity the the actual climax of that arc turned out to be so disappointing.
And on the character development side: in the final confrontation at the ferry dock, Jack goes after Suzie -- but Owen stays with Gwen. This starts a rapid sequence of showing the complex emotional relationships amongst the Torchwood team. And complex they are. Gwen's in love with Rhys, but falls in love with Jack, and then has an affair with Owen; Owen's the shallow womanising bastard who so clearly cares deeply about Gwen; Jack loves Gwen, enough to *not* interfere in her relationship with Rhys, but his reaction when he realises that Ianto's offering...
The stopwatch scene. Oh my. What I really like is that Jack doesn't even understand the subtext at first -- and then when he realises what Ianto's offering, he's so happy. Perhaps in part because what's being offered isn't just sex.
I've seen a lot of comment about it being a bit soon after Lisa's death at the hands of Torchwood for Ianto to be propositioning Jack. But my feeling is that this episode marks Ianto coming to terms with her death, and choosing to move on, partly prompted by seeing what happens when Suzie is brought back from the dead. While it's not made explicit in the episode (it's rare that Torchwood does make stuff like that explicit in-episode), it's stated fairly clearly in the first series website, in the IM message between Jack and Ianto after the others have left.
On the other hand... first time round, I could easily believe that Ianto was propositioning Jack and that he had *not* forgiven Jack for Lisa's death. There was the distinct possibility that the man who'd hidden himself emotionally from his teammates for months was plotting something, and I wondered at the time if this was the start of something that would end with Ianto making good on that threat in Cyberwoman to let Jack die. While I prefer the way things actually went, that could have been an interesting direction for the show to go in as well.
And even then we're not done with the layers. One last twist with "That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs." *Nice* closing line -- and according to the DVD commentary, added by Russell at a late stage. Chilling in its own right, and a nice hook for a future storyline.
The DVD commentary is by director James Strong, co-producer Chris Chibnall and script editor Brian Minchin. It's another solid commentary track with plenty of background detail and discussions about the creative choices made in putting together the episode. There's enough there to make it worth listening to more than once, and makes me even more annoyed that the DVD production team chose to save costs on the season 2 boxset by not doing commentaries.
"We're talking to the wrong corpse."
The very first episode showed how Torchwood is the worst and best job in the world, with Jack's second-in-command getting a little too carried away with her job, and ending up on ice in the vaults herself. Three months later, the team have reason to find out just what she knew about the background of their current problem -- and in Torchwood, even suicide isn't always an effective way to resign from the job...
Intricately plotted, well acted, and wonderfully filmed and directed, this meditation on life and death shows just what Torchwood is capable of -- from what was originally one of the over-commission scripts which were commissioned to give the production time extra material to draw on in case of problems with the primary scripts.
Watching it for the first time is like playing with one of those Russian doll sets; every time you open up a layer, you find something else nested inside. This does sometimes give me suspension of disbelief problems on rewatching, in part because Suzie's plan is so elaborate, but on my first time through I was too mesmerised by the developing story and character interplay to care.
There's just so much packed into this episode; not just the main plot concept and its twists and turns, but all the little character and world details. It's one of the best episodes in the first series, but it's one of the best in part because it builds on what we've already seen, often in episodes that considered as individual episodes weren't very good. It's a self-contained story that can stand on its own if necessary, but putting it in the setting of the rest of the series gives it a much greater richness and depth, a richness it reflects back onto the series as a whole.
In fact, there's a whole lot of continuity and world-building in this one. The way Torchwood operates in public as some sort of high-clearance special ops group, and the resentment that gets from the regular police force. The damage Torchwood does to the people who work there. Oh, and reinforcing that once you join up, Torchwood *owns* you, in life and in death, body and soul. Especially your body... The shifting relationships, both platonic and sexual, amongst the team. And, of course, something out there in the darkness.
So we've seen over the series that Torchwood as an organisation isn't exactly Cardiff's best kept secret. But this episode really drives home that the Cardiff branch operates semi-openly as "some sort of covert ops group" (to quote the police in the first episode), and the only really covert thing about them is exactly what sort of anti-terrorist/anti-espionage work they actually do. It's nice to see that someone's immune to the Captain's charisma. I like Detective swanson a lot and wish we could have seen more of her during the series, although I'm aware of the problems which irregularly recurring characters pose for the production team. She's competent, cynical, and can kick Jack's arse without getting in the way of him doing his job -- which for Jack's own good really needs to happen to him more often than it does.
Swanson's got reason to be annoyed, because she's investigating three murders that can be laid at Torchwood's door. And there's more than their name written in blood to link Torchwood with the killer. Retcon in the killer's blood makes the incident Torchwood's responsibility in more ways than one. There's an insight into the scale of their work, and the way in which Torchwood has in effect conducted clinical trials of their amnesia drug on an unsuspecting population. Granted, it's a lot kinder than what might happen if Torchwood didn't have Retcon, but it implies a fairly cavalier attitude.
It may be a fairly bleak episode overall, but there's a lot of lovely banter in this one. "It's the button on the top."
More than a bit heavy-handed in places with the "Gwen is the one with the empathy" theme, and it starts getting heavy-handed with Gwen's expertise with the glove. It's plausible that Jack can't work the thing, for reasons of being the living dead himself as well as being a hard bastard, and Owen's... Owen, but it's not entirely clear to me why Ianto and Tosh are disqualified through lack of empathy, other than to make a song and dance about how wonderful and unique Gwen is. (Gwen's Mary-Sueness is the one thing I don't like about this episode.)
When they revive Suzie, she says to Jack, "Wait a minute. Didn't I kill you?" -- and Owen at least picks up on that. Ianto and Tosh should have heard it as well. That could have made for an interesting "the things we don't know about our boss" conversation after the end of the episode. (Time to sharpen the plot bunny stake...)
Of course, sometimes empathy isn't a good thing, especially when it leads you to spring a prisoner for a road trip.
Lockdown and locked in courtesy of one of their own again. It's never blatantly referenced on-screen, but doubtless Jack and Ianto at least are thinking about parallels. Again, I like Swanson very much -- particularly the way she enjoys a quick gloat about Torchwood being locked in their own secret base, but then does her best to help them when Jack tells her one of the team is in danger.
And then things *really* start to twist and turn, with the team's realisation that Suzie planned the killings all along, that the craziness that ended in her first death wasn't just the influence of the glove, and Suzie has played them once more.
Yet it still hasn't finished unpacking. It's all too easy to feel sympathy for Suzie during that road trip, even knowing that her life means Gwen's death. Not least because it becomes clear at the end that Suzie regrets Gwen's death and would leave Gwen alive if she could do so without sacrificing her own link to life. And that having once seen the other side of death, she has a very good incentive to stay with the living, whatever the cost to others.
"Captain, my Captain… do you want to know a secret? Something moving in the dark. And it's coming, Captain Jack Harkness. It's coming for you."
Dear god, that gave me the chills first time round. Part of the buildup to the final episode, and the buildup was so good. Pity the the actual climax of that arc turned out to be so disappointing.
And on the character development side: in the final confrontation at the ferry dock, Jack goes after Suzie -- but Owen stays with Gwen. This starts a rapid sequence of showing the complex emotional relationships amongst the Torchwood team. And complex they are. Gwen's in love with Rhys, but falls in love with Jack, and then has an affair with Owen; Owen's the shallow womanising bastard who so clearly cares deeply about Gwen; Jack loves Gwen, enough to *not* interfere in her relationship with Rhys, but his reaction when he realises that Ianto's offering...
The stopwatch scene. Oh my. What I really like is that Jack doesn't even understand the subtext at first -- and then when he realises what Ianto's offering, he's so happy. Perhaps in part because what's being offered isn't just sex.
I've seen a lot of comment about it being a bit soon after Lisa's death at the hands of Torchwood for Ianto to be propositioning Jack. But my feeling is that this episode marks Ianto coming to terms with her death, and choosing to move on, partly prompted by seeing what happens when Suzie is brought back from the dead. While it's not made explicit in the episode (it's rare that Torchwood does make stuff like that explicit in-episode), it's stated fairly clearly in the first series website, in the IM message between Jack and Ianto after the others have left.
On the other hand... first time round, I could easily believe that Ianto was propositioning Jack and that he had *not* forgiven Jack for Lisa's death. There was the distinct possibility that the man who'd hidden himself emotionally from his teammates for months was plotting something, and I wondered at the time if this was the start of something that would end with Ianto making good on that threat in Cyberwoman to let Jack die. While I prefer the way things actually went, that could have been an interesting direction for the show to go in as well.
And even then we're not done with the layers. One last twist with "That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs." *Nice* closing line -- and according to the DVD commentary, added by Russell at a late stage. Chilling in its own right, and a nice hook for a future storyline.
The DVD commentary is by director James Strong, co-producer Chris Chibnall and script editor Brian Minchin. It's another solid commentary track with plenty of background detail and discussions about the creative choices made in putting together the episode. There's enough there to make it worth listening to more than once, and makes me even more annoyed that the DVD production team chose to save costs on the season 2 boxset by not doing commentaries.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 06:32 pm (UTC)If they wanted a new slogan for the series, they could do worse than: "Torchwood, where only the sex is explicit." :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 08:35 pm (UTC)Where do I find this? Thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 10:01 pm (UTC)The IM appeared in Suzie's section of "About Us" on the Torchwood site after TKKS aired. The Wayback Machine has it archived, and there's a copy at the relevant episode post in the Ianto's Desktop comm.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 10:12 pm (UTC)