Torchwood 1.05 -- Small Worlds
May. 22nd, 2008 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesEven more incoherent than usual, because I didn't actually write it up until several days after I watched it. (And before anyone suggests anything, not because I was distracted by Ianto, because there wasn't much Ianto in this episode, though there was one good bit.) There are some flaws in this one, but it's still one of my favourites from the first season.
There are fairies at the bottom of a little girl's garden -- and they're more akin to the Unseelie Court than twee Victorian notions about sweet little gauzy-winged things, even if they initally look like the Cottingley fairy pictures. Jack's met them before and knows how dangerous they can be, but this time his personal life and a Torchwood case intersect in a very bad way.
A number of firsts for the series -- it's the first time the team have faced a threat entirely of this world rather than aliens and their toys, the first time they unequivocally lose, and the first time Jack's scared. The last isn't entirely unrelated to the first two. Oh, and for once Team Torchwood didn't cause half the trouble in the first place.
The episode's good, but it's not unqualified good. There's a mix of bad in with the good. But it's weird and creepy in a good way (and I'm now wondering what would happen if they let Tanith Lee loose on an episode), it references a selection of mythology in a way that makes sense, and overall I really liked this one.
Starting with the bad... It's got plotholes. Yes, it's Torchwood, but really, it's got plotholes. Why do the fairies kill Estelle? Out of sheer badness is perfectly plausible, but if they're that prone to random violence you'd think people would have noticed by now. Why don't they try to kill Jack in that boxcar in Lahore? They wouldn't succeed, of course, but there's no indication that they even touched him. I can think of plausible reasons, but there wasn't any attempt to sketch them in. This stuff didn't bother me too much first time round, but it was annoying on the repeat, when I noticed it more. And after the havoc at the garden party, the team seem to go straight to the SUV and go off without doing any clean-up. It's not just that we're not shown the clean-up, we're shown a sequence that to me actively suggests that there was no clean-up. Lots of traumatised witnesses, a corpse with a throat full of rose petals, and a missing child. But the team just drive off and leave the pieces for the ordinary police force to pick up.
Oh yes. Their relationship with the ordinary police force. Highly secret organisation, bombing around Cardiff in a shiny black souped up Range Rover with their name embossed on it just in case its shiny blackness and Jack's driving style aren't sufficiently attention-grabbing. Actually, this doesn't annoy me the way it does other people, because it's established in the very first scene of the series that the cover for the highly secret alien-catching organisation is "Special ops or something" -- which is a fairly practical cover if your job as alien catchers requires you to liaise with the police from time to time. You let everyone know that you're some sort of special ops group, and after that they never question exactly what sort of hush-hush business you're up to, *and* they call you in for some of the weird stuff without you even having to ask, as happens in this episode.
The good stuff -- a genuinely eerie story that looks at some serious issues without taking the easy way out. Sometimes you can't win, no matter what you do. Once again Jack has to make a hard decision to save the world. Last week all but one of his team were willing to back him, but this time none of him support him, even though Gwen at least has seen what the fairies can do and what they have threatened if thwarted, and that Jasmine *wants* to go with them.
There's a certain inevitability about the end. Right through the episode, it's clear that Jasmine sees the fairies as her friends and has good reason to do so. Cause and effect are thoroughly tangled here, but Jasmine is an isolated, friendless child who finds comfort and protection with the fairies. The only reason she'd have to stay with the human world is her mother, and even there, her mother didn't believe her about the fairies, and she didn't get on with her mother's partner. Jack's fighting a losing battle and recognises it -- it's clear that he'd fight for Jasmine in spite of the dangers if the fairies were taking her against her will, but when he accepts that this is what Jasmine truly wants, all he fights for is an assurance that she'll be safe.
We finally get some serious backstory for Jack, although when this episode was first broadcast it raised more questions then it gave answers. They've filled in a bit more of Jack's timeline in later episodes, but even so it's not entirely clear on which of his several trips through 1941 Jack met Estelle.
Jack's relationship with Estelle is wonderful. It's clear that he is still very much in love with her, and that it simply doesn't matter to him that she's in her eighties. This as much as all the flirting with pretty young things of either gender tells you that Jack's attitude to sexuality is not 21st century. And the way he gently flirts with her is lovely.
Something I noticed by this episode -- they were consistently using Jack's immortality, thinking about any implications for the plot and showing the effect it has on him, rather than simply using it as a plot device in the first episode and then forgetting about it. In Cyberwoman Jack deliberately uses it to buy the team time to escape; here they show what it does to his relationships. It also sets him apart from the team, as it's partly his long perspective that makes him willing to let Jasmine go.
More character development for Jack when he goes to Gwen's place after the fairies trash it, and is fascinated by the small details of a perfectly ordinary, normal home and relationship. Just a little reminder that our ex-conman hasn't had an ordinary normal life since well before he met a certain Time Lord.
Jack makes a habit of letting distraught people use him as a target for grief and anger. This isn't the last time he simply stands and accepts physical and verbal abuse from someone he's hurt in the course of duty. He's willing to make the hard decisions, but he takes responsibility for the consequences.
Gwen still hasn't quite got her head around some of the stuff the team has to deal with. She knows at gut level that Jack's immortal, having seen him die and revive, so she realises immediately that it must have been Jack whom Estelle knew more than sixty years ago; but she still can't believe that fairies might be real, even when Jack is taking it utterly seriously. I can see that very easily, as until now all the weird stuff she's seen has been alien tech stuff that makes sense once you know what it is, and now she's running up against the purely supernatural.
And in the shameless pervert section, I do like the scene where Jack is having nightmares. Semi-naked Jack is always good, and the follow-up with Ianto is pretty nice as well. We get an interesting piece of characterisation there, as Jack is badly shaken by the nightmares and finding the rose petal on his desk, and still a bit wobbly when he notices Ianto, but deliberately switches into calm and competent mode before catching Ianto's attention. Very fast, and rather subtle, but it's there. Good interplay with Ianto, with a lot of subtext that never once mentions dead girlfriends but makes it utterly clear that Ianto is still grieving, and Jack and Ianto are uneasy with each other but trying to get back to normal.
Jack's definitely trying to be comforting when he puts a hand on Ianto's shoulder. It's not so clear what Ianto's thinking when he has that quick, startled look down and behind at Jack's hand, and then up at Jack's face. It could be anything from sheer surprise that Jack's offering him comfort, to "get your hands off me, _sir_." But Jack leaves his hand right where it is, and Ianto doesn't seem bothered by it after his initial shock... The director says in the commentary that this scene was added very late to tie in the storylines, and filmed at the end of the filming block. While I enjoy it for the nekkid Jack and Jack-Ianto interaction, it does serve a purpose in the episode, and does a good job of showing that Cyberwoman wasn't without consequences. Without this scene it would be a little too much as if the team had completely forgotten about Ianto's extra-curricular activities in the previous episode.
DVD commentary -- this time it's by Alice Troughton, director, Dan Foster, composer, Eve Myles, Gwen. I found this commentary disappointingly thin in comparison with the ones on the first four episodes, and I suspect that a major reason is that previous commentaries have included two out of writer/producer/director, and they bounce off each other in discussing the mechanics of making the episode. It's worth listening to once, but I don't feel any urge to listen to it again.
There are fairies at the bottom of a little girl's garden -- and they're more akin to the Unseelie Court than twee Victorian notions about sweet little gauzy-winged things, even if they initally look like the Cottingley fairy pictures. Jack's met them before and knows how dangerous they can be, but this time his personal life and a Torchwood case intersect in a very bad way.
A number of firsts for the series -- it's the first time the team have faced a threat entirely of this world rather than aliens and their toys, the first time they unequivocally lose, and the first time Jack's scared. The last isn't entirely unrelated to the first two. Oh, and for once Team Torchwood didn't cause half the trouble in the first place.
The episode's good, but it's not unqualified good. There's a mix of bad in with the good. But it's weird and creepy in a good way (and I'm now wondering what would happen if they let Tanith Lee loose on an episode), it references a selection of mythology in a way that makes sense, and overall I really liked this one.
Starting with the bad... It's got plotholes. Yes, it's Torchwood, but really, it's got plotholes. Why do the fairies kill Estelle? Out of sheer badness is perfectly plausible, but if they're that prone to random violence you'd think people would have noticed by now. Why don't they try to kill Jack in that boxcar in Lahore? They wouldn't succeed, of course, but there's no indication that they even touched him. I can think of plausible reasons, but there wasn't any attempt to sketch them in. This stuff didn't bother me too much first time round, but it was annoying on the repeat, when I noticed it more. And after the havoc at the garden party, the team seem to go straight to the SUV and go off without doing any clean-up. It's not just that we're not shown the clean-up, we're shown a sequence that to me actively suggests that there was no clean-up. Lots of traumatised witnesses, a corpse with a throat full of rose petals, and a missing child. But the team just drive off and leave the pieces for the ordinary police force to pick up.
Oh yes. Their relationship with the ordinary police force. Highly secret organisation, bombing around Cardiff in a shiny black souped up Range Rover with their name embossed on it just in case its shiny blackness and Jack's driving style aren't sufficiently attention-grabbing. Actually, this doesn't annoy me the way it does other people, because it's established in the very first scene of the series that the cover for the highly secret alien-catching organisation is "Special ops or something" -- which is a fairly practical cover if your job as alien catchers requires you to liaise with the police from time to time. You let everyone know that you're some sort of special ops group, and after that they never question exactly what sort of hush-hush business you're up to, *and* they call you in for some of the weird stuff without you even having to ask, as happens in this episode.
The good stuff -- a genuinely eerie story that looks at some serious issues without taking the easy way out. Sometimes you can't win, no matter what you do. Once again Jack has to make a hard decision to save the world. Last week all but one of his team were willing to back him, but this time none of him support him, even though Gwen at least has seen what the fairies can do and what they have threatened if thwarted, and that Jasmine *wants* to go with them.
There's a certain inevitability about the end. Right through the episode, it's clear that Jasmine sees the fairies as her friends and has good reason to do so. Cause and effect are thoroughly tangled here, but Jasmine is an isolated, friendless child who finds comfort and protection with the fairies. The only reason she'd have to stay with the human world is her mother, and even there, her mother didn't believe her about the fairies, and she didn't get on with her mother's partner. Jack's fighting a losing battle and recognises it -- it's clear that he'd fight for Jasmine in spite of the dangers if the fairies were taking her against her will, but when he accepts that this is what Jasmine truly wants, all he fights for is an assurance that she'll be safe.
We finally get some serious backstory for Jack, although when this episode was first broadcast it raised more questions then it gave answers. They've filled in a bit more of Jack's timeline in later episodes, but even so it's not entirely clear on which of his several trips through 1941 Jack met Estelle.
Jack's relationship with Estelle is wonderful. It's clear that he is still very much in love with her, and that it simply doesn't matter to him that she's in her eighties. This as much as all the flirting with pretty young things of either gender tells you that Jack's attitude to sexuality is not 21st century. And the way he gently flirts with her is lovely.
Something I noticed by this episode -- they were consistently using Jack's immortality, thinking about any implications for the plot and showing the effect it has on him, rather than simply using it as a plot device in the first episode and then forgetting about it. In Cyberwoman Jack deliberately uses it to buy the team time to escape; here they show what it does to his relationships. It also sets him apart from the team, as it's partly his long perspective that makes him willing to let Jasmine go.
More character development for Jack when he goes to Gwen's place after the fairies trash it, and is fascinated by the small details of a perfectly ordinary, normal home and relationship. Just a little reminder that our ex-conman hasn't had an ordinary normal life since well before he met a certain Time Lord.
Jack makes a habit of letting distraught people use him as a target for grief and anger. This isn't the last time he simply stands and accepts physical and verbal abuse from someone he's hurt in the course of duty. He's willing to make the hard decisions, but he takes responsibility for the consequences.
Gwen still hasn't quite got her head around some of the stuff the team has to deal with. She knows at gut level that Jack's immortal, having seen him die and revive, so she realises immediately that it must have been Jack whom Estelle knew more than sixty years ago; but she still can't believe that fairies might be real, even when Jack is taking it utterly seriously. I can see that very easily, as until now all the weird stuff she's seen has been alien tech stuff that makes sense once you know what it is, and now she's running up against the purely supernatural.
And in the shameless pervert section, I do like the scene where Jack is having nightmares. Semi-naked Jack is always good, and the follow-up with Ianto is pretty nice as well. We get an interesting piece of characterisation there, as Jack is badly shaken by the nightmares and finding the rose petal on his desk, and still a bit wobbly when he notices Ianto, but deliberately switches into calm and competent mode before catching Ianto's attention. Very fast, and rather subtle, but it's there. Good interplay with Ianto, with a lot of subtext that never once mentions dead girlfriends but makes it utterly clear that Ianto is still grieving, and Jack and Ianto are uneasy with each other but trying to get back to normal.
Jack's definitely trying to be comforting when he puts a hand on Ianto's shoulder. It's not so clear what Ianto's thinking when he has that quick, startled look down and behind at Jack's hand, and then up at Jack's face. It could be anything from sheer surprise that Jack's offering him comfort, to "get your hands off me, _sir_." But Jack leaves his hand right where it is, and Ianto doesn't seem bothered by it after his initial shock... The director says in the commentary that this scene was added very late to tie in the storylines, and filmed at the end of the filming block. While I enjoy it for the nekkid Jack and Jack-Ianto interaction, it does serve a purpose in the episode, and does a good job of showing that Cyberwoman wasn't without consequences. Without this scene it would be a little too much as if the team had completely forgotten about Ianto's extra-curricular activities in the previous episode.
DVD commentary -- this time it's by Alice Troughton, director, Dan Foster, composer, Eve Myles, Gwen. I found this commentary disappointingly thin in comparison with the ones on the first four episodes, and I suspect that a major reason is that previous commentaries have included two out of writer/producer/director, and they bounce off each other in discussing the mechanics of making the episode. It's worth listening to once, but I don't feel any urge to listen to it again.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-22 05:08 pm (UTC)I thought it was because he was the only one in the group who had not participated in the pillaging (or whatever it was they had done) - The fairies were coming for those who had done wrong to make them pay. Why the fairies killed Estelle is a little less clear but I assumed it was because she was exposing them and they wanted to shut her up.
I can't figure out why I don't like this one more than I do... I love the backstory stuff on Jack, I love the relationship with Estelle, I love that bit with Jack waking up from the dream and the interaction with Ianto, I love the complexity of Jack's decision at the end and the team's reaction... And a dozen other little things. And yet, I tend to get a little bored when rewatching it. I can't figure out why.
Something I noticed by this episode -- they were consistently using Jack's immortality, thinking about any implications for the plot and showing the effect it has on him, rather than simply using it as a plot device in the first episode and then forgetting about it. In Cyberwoman Jack deliberately uses it to buy the team time to escape; here they show what it does to his relationships. It also sets him apart from the team, as it's partly his long perspective that makes him willing to let Jasmine go.
That's a really fabulous observation. :::ponders:::
Without this scene it would be a little too much as if the team had completely forgotten about Ianto's extra-curricular activities in the previous episode.
Totally. And as it wound up on screen, it was sublimely played and layered... I see a dozen nuances/messages in just those couple of lines/gestures. I can't imagine it *not* being a part of canon.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-22 05:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-22 05:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-22 05:49 pm (UTC)