Just spent some time away from the keyboard by watching Everything Changes, the opening episode of Torchwood. Am still bowled over by how beautifully constructed an opening episode that is. An excellent lesson on how to hook people on a show and get them up to speed on the basics of the show universe.

Yes, it's the extremely late book log for October, with books read 92 to 101 of 2011. All in one chunk below the cut.

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And I have to say that I prefer the Radio 4 version to the Starz version, and not just because it includes Ianto. Of course, it helps that Barrowman has learnt how to act for radio since the previous Radio 4 outing. :^)

Still have the third one to listen to, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

First impressions: slick, glossy, well written, well acted, and suffering from much the same problem as the 1996 Who telemovie -- they've taken a show whose primary appeal was a very British humour and sense of whimsy, and stripped it of everything that made it unique, offering us yet another formulaic US sci-fi thriller series. It's better than the 1996 effort, but the thing that really struck me about it was "Where's the sense of wonder?"

This is obviously a complete reboot of the Torchwood universe, and I'm not inclined to criticise it for the way it's been detached from the Whoniverse. That was clearly always on the cards, given that its creator never wanted it to be part of the Whoniverse in the first place, and this is a new show trying to hook a new audience. But one of the things that hooked me on the first series was that sense of wonder to be found with the best sf and fantasy. Gwen's first look at the Hub in "Everything Changes" is a thing of joy, and never was an episode more aptly titled. That joy, that wonder, was sadly lacking from Miracle Day's opener.

And yes, it's been utterly Americanised. The final scene reads to me as intended to make a US audience cheer for good guy Rex. What I see is a craven act of collaboration by the British government. Rusty is smart enough to play to both audiences at once, but I don't much like the message intended for the US audience.

I'm not sure there's enough here to sustain a single storyline over ten weekly episodes. Stripping Children of Earth across five consecutive nights worked, but here people have to want to watch it week after week. I finished the episode feeling inclined to watch the next episode, but I didn't feel that sense of "Oh no, I've got to wait a whole week for the next one!" that I used to get watching the "next episode" teaser. Because this slick Hollywood show isn't what I watched Torchwood for. The first two series always felt to me like fanboys and girls getting to put their fanfic on screen with a BBC3 budget. It was crackfic on acid, it had a pteranodon fighting a Cyberwoman. They weren't afraid to throw stuff at the screen and see what worked. When it was bad it was horrid, but when it was good it was very good indeed. I never saw a single episode that didn't have something worthwhile in it, even if there are episodes I'll never bother watching a second time. The action sequences in Miracle Day are wonderful, but they're not enough. There's no risk-taking here. I'm never going to see a little old lady at a pedestrian crossing muttering, "Bloody Torchwood."

It's the first episode, so there's a need to bring the audience in and up to speed, and it may pick up in later episodes. But if this is all there's going to be -- well, sorry, Rusty, but the show I want to watch is Torchwood in all its silly, funny glory, however dear to your heart your original Excalibur concept may be.

44) Gary Russell -- Torchwood: The Twilight Streets

Sixth of the Torchwood tie-in novels, set late in second season and with a lot of canon references. And my most favourite of all the canon references is the return of Idris Hopper, the Mayor's secretary from the Doctor Who episode Boom Town. :-)

There is a small block of streets in Cardiff, built by a Victorian businessman as model housing for his workforce. And never occupied for more than a few weeks at a time. Things happen to the people who try to live in Tretarri. Jack doesn't know why, because Jack can't get in. He gets a three day migraine every time he tries. But now the Council is renovating the block, with full-on gentrification and street parties to show off the results. Not just on the rate-payers' money, either -- private sponsorship is paying for the celebrations. But the block becomes more than a minor mystery for Jack's off-duty hours when it becomes apparent that Bilis Manger is behind the plans for change. And Bilis is still using visions of the future to prod the team into action.

It seems simple enough. Another round of stop Bilis Manger and save the world. But the old man's relationship with Good and Evil is rather more complex than that...

Really enjoyed this one. It's got an interesting plot, some excellent character development, and entertaining interactions between the various characters. All the regular characters get some page space, and there's some good stuff on the Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys and Tosh-Owen relationships. Also a delightful little scene in which Ianto tells Torchwood's Little Miss Sensitive (yes, he calls Gwen that) some home truths about what it's really like to be bisexual. :-> There's a lot of stuff referring back to canon, but most of it is tied into the story in such a way that it enhances the story for those who've seen the episodes without excluding those who haven't. It also includes a good in-universe explanation for why the Tardis crew didn't encounter Torchwood during the events of Boom Town (the external reason, of course, being that Torchwood the series was still a twinkle in RTD's eye at the time). The reason for the AU future's potential existence got a bit woolly in places, but the story in that timeline is really well done, if possibly over-angsty for some fans. Which is why I liked it, of course. :-)

Oh, and a word of praise for cover artist Lee Binding, who has done a lovely job in depicting some key elements of the story.

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Took the new Captain Jack into work this morning, still in his pristine factory packaging so as to protect him from getting squashed on the bus. When I got him out of my bag at lunchtime and cut open the plastic clamshell, it released a distinct odour. Of *rubber*... Presumably this was just the result of a small plastic figurine having been sitting around outgassing plasticisers into a sealed pod for several months, but given that this is Captain Jack, one wonders, one does.

I am pleased to report that he did indeed remain erect unaided all afternoon.

This is probably going to be Torchwood's version of the 1996 Who telemovie, isn't it?

I want my cracky little show back, or even Children of Earth, not some bland internationalised version that takes out what made it special.

Another long piece of Whoniverse fanfic from Sam_Storyteller/Sam Starbuck/Copperbadge. This one's about 40k words long, i.e. short novel length, and uses those words to great effect. Sam has taken the "Doomsday" and "Cyberwoman" material, and linked it with some of the things we're shown about the classic Cybermen in the Hartnell and Troughton eras. The result is a story that takes Torchwood season 1, drops in one small fact a second or two after the credits roll in Cyberwoman, and makes you see parts of that season in a whole new light. It's beautifully written, with characterisations that build on and deepen what we get in canon. But this is more than good characterisation. There's a solid story here, one that would make a good tie-in novel.

The small fact is that Ianto wasn't physically converted, but *was* subject to direct mind control by Lisa's Cyber personality. With her death, the conscious control is gone, but that doesn't mean Ianto's free. Jack's interrogated more than one person who's survived an encounter with the Cybermen, he's heard enough about their methods to recognise what he's seeing, and he's not giving up Ianto without a fight.

It's not quite compatible with canon for me, because it doesn't quite mesh with the scene towards the end of Cyberwoman where Ianto is pleading with Lisa to remember who she is. But it makes a great deal of sense in the context of what we've been shown canonically about Cybermen over the years, both the original Mondas Cybermen of classic Who and the parallel universe Cybermen of new Who. This is an excellent piece of work, tying together elements of classic Who, new Who and Torchwood in a satisfying way.

Posted in five parts, plus author's notes on the canon material used, part 1 here. Sam's own description:
Rating: PG-13; R in the final chapter
Summary: Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.

It's first season (pre-Countrycide, and probably pre-Cyberwoman), and Team Torchwood are doing their usual thing -- but they have an extra member. James has recently joined the team, he fits in very well, and he's conducting a romance with Gwen -- not just a stress relief affair, but an actual romance that leads Gwen to think about how to finish gently with Rhys. He is, in short, a classic Mary-Sue figure for the first half of the book.

Since this is in series 1 continuity and thus we're going to have a reset button pressed by the end of the book, it's obvious from page one that there's more to it than that. But the book's more than just the unfolding story of who James really is and what he's doing in Torchwood. This book does a nice job of showing the day to day work of Torchwood, and how it can often be a lot of little things, some tying together and others not. There is a definite main storyline, but there are other small stories entangled with that, and it's not always clear to the reader which is which until it becomes clear to the characters. It does make the book feel a little choppy in places, but not in a bad way.

It's competently written, there are some interesting ideas in it that develop aspects of the Torchwood universe, and I am particularly taken with the secondary character of Mr Dine. He's an excellent study of a non-human character who is trying to blend in, and who understands humans just well enough to recognise how very limited his understanding is. He reminded me a lot of the character of Death in Pratchett's Discworld.

But...

I'd have liked this book a lot more if I'd read it when it first came out, rather than after seeing all of series 1 to 3. It treats Rhys as a nuisance that Gwen stays with purely out of habit, rather than a man she loves but is tempted to stray from. This is just about compatible with series 1, but even in series 1 it's pretty clear that Gwen's affair with Owen is about the stresses of the job and the stress that puts on her relationship with Rhys, rather than because she actively wants rid of Rhys. The book portrays James as being the incentive Gwen needs to get on with ditching Rhys. While the eventual explanation for the presence of James might cover this, I don't get the impression that this was the author's intention. And for me this jars very badly with the Rhys/Gwen relationship as portrayed later in the series.

I suspect this is a reflection of the planned direction of the series at the time the writing brief was put together for the first trilogy of books (Rhys was originally supposed to be killed off in series 1), so I wouldn't consider it to be bad writing, just something that I personally didn't like.

The book focuses very strongly on James, Gwen, and Jack, with Owen and Toshiko getting less attention and Ianto being hardly present -- again, reflecting the show over the first few episodes.

I felt that the other two books in the first trilogy were accessible to readers who weren't already familiar with Torchwood, but I think this one would be much more difficult for someone new to the universe -- and perhaps pointless, given that much of the story is about the reader's understanding that James should not be there. If you've never seen Torchwood and want to pick up a book to see what the fuss is about, this isn't the one to start with.

In spite of my criticisms, I'm glad I read it. It's just not the one I'd pick up first for a re-read.

The book is also available in an (abridged?) audiobook read by Eve Myles, which I haven't heard.


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First of the Torchwood tie-in novels, and set a few weeks after the start of the series, i.e. after the second episode and before the fourth.

The book opens with a second-person role-playing game scenario -- except this game's not in the computer, and when the "you" loses a life and hopes for better luck next time, it's a real body that dies. Of course, it takes Torchwood a little longer to work out why their serial killer has just cheerfully committed suicide...

In a second story strand, Owen's been spending a lot of time in a more conventional multi-player game, though he's taking advantage of Torchwood technology, and Toshiko's technical skills, to ramp up the online experience a little. When he runs into an old girlfriend in the game and discovers that she's living in Cardiff, he sees it as both a personal and professional opportunity -- he wants to prove his theory that the game is a good initial screening tool for potential Torchwood recruits, and Megan's just the sort of person who would make a good recruit for Torchwood.

While Jack, Gwen and Tosh are tracking down who their serial killer was working with and what he's done with a set of stolen nuclear fuel rods, Owen and Megan stumble across part of the solution quite by chance. And all the while the rain pours down on Cardiff, as the Rift's latest problem plays havoc with the local weather system...

The mirrored plotlines make it obvious early in the book what's going on (intentionally so). But the real puzzle is who's doing it, and what their motive is. Anghelides carefully weaves the different strands together so that the reader can see the pieces falling into place, as what seem like separate stories start to interlock. By the end, what seemed like pieces of characterisation and scene-setting turn out to be crucial to Torchwood winning the day.

This is a nicely constructed novel, with an interesting story and good characterisations. There's a good spread of scenes across most of the characters, and even Ianto gets some nice characterisation vignettes, even though the book's set at a point in the series timeline when he was mainly a background character. Notably, that includes a fair bit of the flirty banter between Jack and Ianto that was in the tv episodes at this point in the timeline.

I liked this book a lot, and think a fair number of my friends would too. While it's a tie-in, Anghelides does a good job of working the universe set-up into the first few scenes, and I think the book should also work well for someone who hadn't seen the show, although obviously you'd get more out of it if you're already familiar with the characters.

It's also available as an audiobook read by John Barrowman, which I haven't heard.

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