Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 October 2006 10:14:57
So after last Wednesday's shennanigans (I refer casual readers to previous posts) I arrived home in time to unpack the stuff and watch Torchwood. I'd missed it on the sunday for various reasons (can't remember) but I'm a sucker for a big, daft, overhyped space series (sci-fi appeals to me as a concept, I like the increased scope the stories can give you but dislike the same paths they often tread).
So after being a big bad fanboy of something like Deep Space 9, Firefly, Star Wars (4, 5 and 6), Men in Black, Battlestar Gallactica (both old and new) and others I thought I'd tune into TW, expecting little to only recieve less. Did go into college the following day to work with the BA students and we did cover a little of just how bad it (and 24:5) was, so in a way the time watching was well spent. During the night, having been adrenaleine charged all throughout the day, I must admit to sitting there in a bit of a daze as to how much it tetched me off.
To wit:
Instantly the high concept was concerning. As soon as someone describes something as sexy you know that, 9 times out of 10, they're generally talking about showing naked bodies or sex scenes or similar. Sexy the word illustrates sex on screen in the same way that horror the word when used in conjunction with TV shows illustrates decapitations or some such gore. A smile, well shot and lit and filmed, can be sexy. A lesbian scene shot purely for the gratification of the assumed audience and with little point within the context of the story was not. TW was also about using adult themes, which, unsurprisingly meant they sprinkled the script with swearwords. Only one line in the entire two hours amused me (the CSI Cardiff line) yet in a way it also pointed towards the main issue the show lost out to: it wasn't what it wanted to be rather it was that it wanted to be something that it wasn't...
So, anyway, wanting to not get into a rant and to type for not too long, TW was utterly silly, not in a good way, in a bad way. From the mock CSI shots which DO NOT WORK if you're not co promoted by a tourist information board to the painful looking splits of presenting a childrens format show in a 'sexy', 'adult' manner, from the awful cliches to the terrible representations of a secret outfit (hey, we're so secret we do everything in the open! on a mental fashion catwalk! with... meaningful... dialogue!) And the opening scenes of ep 1: what happens when you die? (asks the man in a haphazardly shown piece of foreshadowing who seems to conveniently have forgotten that he in fact has died) Nothing! says the man who is about to die the second time.
Well, there's so much mystery in the show we don't have to say anything ambiguous do we...
And so many plotholes it was like a recent George Lucas Star Wars film. But in a stunning move the plotholes are out in the open and waved away with a postmodern nod: world wide war between two alien races? Mentioned only as a 'maybe it was all a bad dream' referance. Invisible lift? 'why do you always question everything?' Pterodactyl flying over the streets of Cardiff? slo-mo lift to ground level when there's a door to the left? Leaving a suspect to run off to write a note to herself and then assuming that it'll be on computer? (phew).
Just so utterly banal and cliched and tired. Even the logo (a t-shaped phallus made of hexagons) spoke of the sheer tiredness of the conceptualisation. For people who want cheap sci-fi entertainment done well have a look at Ultraviolet the Channel 4 series of... the late 80s? Funnily enough it still trod the same old police officer becomes a part of a secret unit and brings an outsiders viewpoint to something that is strange and alien cliche but it did it well.
Torchwood could have been very interesting: contemporary sci-fi with more stretching themes. Instead it's just Dr Who with more swearwords and the 'promise' of increased bisexual tensions between the staff and the aliens it works to protect us from. Wifey said that spin offs never work so they probably didn't even try... (the Friends into Joey thing) I assume that it was a design by committee disaster but who knows. As it was (imo) it missed the target by a very long shot indeed. Who is the product of an innocent age and, because of that, transcends the dampening effect of any specific ages vices upon it because in general it does not rely on plot (de) vices. Torchwood is a product, so obviously, of a 00s mentality of increased sexualisation, nihilism and cynicism, not even writ well into the fabric of the narrative (this was the BA type talk you understand :) ). Because of this focus it was tired before it even hit the screen and who knows where on earth it will go next? Ep 1 and 2 had the highest multichannel audience so far I read elsewhere. Not that I want to seem like I'm enjoying this but atm I'll be interested in seeing what the drop off between the first and second week is.