Torchwood: Who’s the daddy
Torchwood, BBC4’s ‘adult’ ‘Doctor Who’ spin-off was launched to a record UK digital television audience on Sunday. If you weren’t able to tune in and watch the television event of the year then - please - pity those of us who did.
Oh God, where to start. We say ‘adult’ although, apart from the odd splash of blood and some gratuitous sex scenes, it would have insulted the intelligence of a six year-old.
In putting the show together, writer and producer Russell T Davies has stolen the best elements from around a dozen other shows and movies and combined them into what he thinks is a rich, compulsive broth.
Let’s see. We have a team of disparate personalities investigating mysteries (See Buffy, Angel or Scooby Doo - Torchwood even have a stupid van they travel around in). They have a charismatic leader (see CSIs Las Vegas, Miami *and* New York). They’re top secret (’We’re separate from your Government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations,’ says team leader and Doctor Who refugee Captain Jack Harkness) and chase aliens (like the ‘Men in Black’ - they even have a way of wiping people’s memories). The plots play out like any number of police procedurals from ‘Hill Street Blues’ to ‘The Shield’. The team’s Cardiff-based underground bunker has the cluttered and dingy stylings of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’.
They have a row of cells, in which they imprison their quarry, which is *exactly* like the row of cells in ‘Silence of the Lambs’. Although, the show not having that movie’s budget, the cells’ Perspex windows are very thin - you expect the buck-toothed alien in the end cell to burst out at any second. They also, for reasons unexplained, have an impressive CGI pet pterodactyl roosting in the roof. We’re not told why the place isn’t littered with dinosaur guano or whose job it is to clean it up. (They also let it out to fly around Cardiff where it seemingly goes unnoticed by the general population.)
Yes, the ingredients are the finest available. The trouble is, they don’t complement each other. Imagine a soup made from the best filet mignon, a dollop of Beluga caviar, a splash of Chanel No.5, a grated Miles Davies CD and one of Pele’s football boots. Would you eat it? It’s all the more galling coming from a man of Davies’ manifest talents. We are talking, after all, about a writer who even managed to turn Christopher Eccleston into a convincing Mancunian Jesus in ‘The Second Coming’.
Then there’s the characters themselves. A member of the Torchwood team is revealed (in a *hilarious* scene) in the opening episode as a bisexual rapist who traps his victims using an alien aftershave he’s borrowed from work that makes him irresistible. That he’s played by the rat-faced bloke who was also the unsettling Mr Guppy in the recent BBC adaptation of ‘Bleak House’ and who we later see naked didn’t help either. Oh yes, we’ll be rooting for him in the coming weeks, won’t we?
The characters are so poorly drawn too. One scene even went to great lengths to explain that none of the team members have partners or lives outside of their day jobs. No messy back stories required there then. The ex-copper new recruit (the ‘emotional heart’ of the show, if you like, through whose eyes we view proceedings) has a dopey boyfriend who does something boring. No doubt he’ll come in useful later for a bit of peril or emotional impact when they get around to killing him off.
In ‘Doctor Who’, Captain Jack was the puckish pan-sexual secret agent from the future, as likely to try and shag you as shoot you. Now he’s stranded in the 21st century he mopes about the place like a lovesick schoolgirl, his whole appeal stripped away. In another of the show’s many visual non-sequiturs, he’s taken to standing on the tops of very tall buildings for no good reason, like Batman, broodingly staring into the distance. The many, many impressive aerial shots of the city that pad out the episodes must have cost a fortune (see also the computer-generated pterodactyl) while advancing the plot not one jot. Wouldn’t the money have been better spent on the script?
Take the plot of the second episode, for example, which was lifted wholesale from ‘The Wire’ episode of the last series of ‘Doctor Who’. Except now the villain isn’t an alien, trapped inside a television, that feeds on the electrical energy of the human brain, it’s an alien trapped in the body of a jailbait teenage girl who shags people to death in order to absorb their ‘orgasmic energy’. Really. Torchwood duly capture her and lock her up. The naïve new girl goes down to the cells for a chat and, affected by the alluring pheremones the alien gives off to attract its prey, ends up in some hot girl-on-girl action. The rest of the team look on amusedly via CCTV seemingly forgetful that their colleague is frenching a deadly alien parasite.
If you hadn’t seen the last two series of ‘Doctor Who’ you must have wondered what the Hell was going on. Torchwood is littered with nods to its parent series. Why does Jack lovingly tend to a severed hand in a jar? (It’s the Doctor’s that was chopped off in the Christmas Special. Don’t worry, a convoluted plot device allowed him to grow another.) They have an elevator that comes up in the street which nobody else notices (something to do with the Tardis once having landed in the exact same spot). Why is Captain Jack now immortal? Because after being exterminated by Daleks at the end of the Christopher Eccleston series he was resurrected by the Doctor’s assistant who had looked into the Heart of Tardis (please bear with us) and therefore had the power of Creation at her fingertips.
From the trailer, it looks like next week’s episode is going to be a re-run of ‘Minority Report’ where the characters are given the ability to see into the near future. We bet they don’t do anything even remotely interesting with the power like use it to win the lottery or find out who wins ‘Strictly Come Dancing’.
See, aren’t you glad you missed it?
(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)
Update: Hello to all fans of inter-species/same sex action. Stay a while.
Posted on October 27th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
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Nicely written, sir. It was a stinking pile of horseshit wasn’t it?
DK
God awful. If anything, I pulled my punches.
They’re right about the pterodactyls though. We live near Roath and the fuckers nest on the roof. Make a right mess of the car too.
As far as I can tell, that plot’s already been used about three times in the last two series of Dr Who; of course, not with sex aliens and masturbation.
Funny how this ‘adult’ series is more juvenile than it’s parent.
OK so it was derivative. I still enjoyed it, yer miserable so & so!
Sue
You enjoyed it? Oh Sue, I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do to help?
Only joking.
I’m going to be kind and say it’s still bedding in, and after a few episodes may come good. There were a few bits of hope, but not much to cling to. But that just about sums up how I felt… I was probably far too kind with my appraisal of it.
I’ve been very late for assorted things when there’s been a really good episode of Dr. Who on. Thursday nights, until recently, were built around Extras. This Sunday there’s a film quiz at a bar with good coffee, cakes and obscure European beers. Easy choice that doesn’t require a moment’s consideration.
Afraid I quite liked it too, Just. As I re-examine my critical facilities I think - “is quite liked it” enough? And the answer is “yup”. I wasn’t looking to be hugely challenged,or, preserve us, for realism. Is it that you’re disappointed in it, that you feel it could have been done better? Well sure it could, but couldn’t everything?.
Hey, you can’t complain about the chameleon circuit/elevator to the street business being ludicrous ‘cos the whole TARDIS concept is ludicrous anyway.
And my pterodactyl has a litter hammock.
I take your point about the realism, scotch, and of course all such shows depend on the massive suspension of disbelief.
I watch all manner of shows like this from Doctor Who to Firefly to the new Battlstar Galactica (one of the best shows on the planet right now, I reckon) and I don’t think I’ve ever gone ‘that’s bollocks’ because the scripts work hard to create a plausible reality.
I just think Torchwood is lazy television in that it didn’t work hard enough to achieve and maintain that suspension of disbelief.
You may be right, Coffee Lover, and it might come good but who gives these things the time these days? It should have been excellent out of the gate. I think a certain amount of complacency may have been involved. And possibly a little contempt in that they thought people would lap it up however it turned out.
A piss-poor trailer and a 10pm timeslot probably means I’ll skip episode three - I predict a pretty big audience drop-off.
“A piss-poor trailer and a 10pm timeslot probably means I’ll skip episode three - I predict a pretty big audience drop-off.”
I’m inclined to agree with you there (not the skipping bit
).
Do you think there is any possibility that the series could get darker?
Sue.
Well, I liked it. Both episodes. I’d go so far as to say that the first one reminded me what a great writer Russell T. Davies is. I could have done without some of the aerial shots of Cardiff - OK, Cardiff looks beautiful from the air, we’ve got the point - but I don’t think you can object on cost grounds - 50 ten-second aerial shots wouldn’t cost much more than 5.
he’s taken to standing on the tops of very tall buildings for no good reason
Being invulnerable seems like a good reason to me.
Apparently, season 3 of my beloved Battlestar Galactica is not doing so well, audience figures wise, in the US.
If people can voluntarily switch off the majesty of BSG, then, why, there is no hope.
If they want to make it truly terrifying they should sent the cast to Merthyr, Aberdare and Haverffordwest and Port Talbot for a couple of episodes.
I’ll be one of those contributing to the drop-off on Sunday I think.
It’s a BBC3 show by the way - far too low-brow to be from BBC4 (or so BBC4 would have one believe at any rate
).
I didn’t see it last Sunday, but watched a recording of Wednesday’s BBC2 repeats yesterday. I agree it is pretty derivative and formulaic, although I thought it mildly amusing in parts. I’ll probably give one more episode a chance, but if it doesn’t shape up then I’ll probably do more important things like read a good book in future weeks. Personally I didn’t particularly care for the last series of the revamped Dr Who either; the superficial slickness of the production and writing doesn’t hide the fact that it’s a pale imitation of the original series I recall seeing as a child. Torchwood is even weaker, if the first two episodes are a guide. It’s a real shame.
Where Torchwood got their stupid car.
Apparently, season 3 of my beloved Battlestar Galactica is not doing so well…
Really? I’ve seen four episodes of it so far and they’ve been brilliant if you ask me.
Just feel I gotta say that the masturbation scene was bang out of order. Gives wankers like me a bad name. It has to be said though that without the bouncer having a bash the bishop session it would be highly probable that the case wouldn’t have been cracked. So remember that next time anyone thinks of taking the piss out of we masterbaters if thats how you spell it.
[...] He was, of course, John Barrowman, and he seems like a very nice guy. So it pains and embarrasses to totally agree with Justin: Torchwood sucks. It sucks in lots of ways. Russell T Davies and co-writers may be willing you to suspend your disbelief, but they aren’t helping at all. Their opening episode had ‘opening episode’ all over it; so much for starting in media res. [...]
I’ve seen 5 episodes now and agree it is superb.
I was referring to the news of disappointing ratings stateside.
So was I , Wallace. I’m amazed that interest in it would tail off considering how bowel-clenchingly tense the first four episodes have been.
Torchwood…
Over at The Sharpener Dave Weeden doesn’t like Torchwood. …it pains and embarrasses to totally agree with Justin: Torchwood sucks. It sucks in lots of ways. Russell T Davies and co-writers may be willing you to suspend your disbelief, but…
Weird. I haven’t seen it, the whole ‘no TV licence’ thing stops me, but every review I’ve read up until now from people I normally agree with on such things has been either reasonable or positive. You and Dave are the first two negatives I’ve seen.
Strange. I’ll still get the DVDs I suspect. In the meantime, I can always re-watch BSG (again).
Apparently, ratings are falling in the US as the Right thought it was sci-fi on ‘their’ side, up until Tigh started calling for suicide bombs and they realised the Cylons are the US allegory, not the Colonials…
Is that the reason, Mat? I love to see some links to those theories if you have any.
Shows how wrong I was - I thought it was an allegorical cautionary tale about relinquishing one’s humanity in the face of an implacable enemy that also speaks against the dehumanising that enemy. The American Right obviously have an insight that I lack.
OK, very quickly, can’t find the original stuff, but this is pretty good as a summary. Whoever it is has copy/pasted, but it’s what blogsearch got me (I’m at work late as usual)
I’ve read a lot more, but it’ll be dug in around my LJ friends page, which functions like a non-saveable feedreader, and I forgot who linked to it or what filter they’re on.