I know I’m overloading this blog with silly TV show related posts but I felt that given my raving about Captain Jack Harkness, I should do a follow up now that I’m caught up on Torchwood. I had likened Torchwood to the dessert after the healthy meal of Dr Who. It was fun, slashy and silly. Captain Jack Harkness really is one of the best characters I’ve come across in a long while. He’s full of charisma with a healthy dose of cheese and camp. Torchwood as a whole was really starting to come into it’s own and develop into a good balance of the silly and the serious when the second half of season two went somewhat off the rails leading into the travesty of what was to come. Then someone threw my yummy dessert into the mud … and pissed on it before grinding it further into the mud. That someone was the godfather of all things New Who, Russel T. Davies.
Yeah, I’m talking about that steaming pile of shit that was the Children of Earth miniseries, cop out semi third season of Torchwood. It wasn’t bad enough that the end of season 2 was a ridiculous blood bath of deceased characters leaving only Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto. No, no, Davies had to go even further to completely smash the show he’d created like a child that spends hours painstakingly constructing a block castle only to destroy it in two seconds flat… Only Davies was more sadistic, as if the aforementioned child tortured each block and ground them to dust as he went. Children of Earth, was a miniseries that was so offensively bad it deserves to be striken from the record as ever having existed. Not only did yet another regular character die but it went in directions that no show should go unless it really had a message in mind … which this didn’t. It was contrived, poorly written nonsense intent on being shocking and edgey just for the sake of being shocking and edgey. Normally I like shocking and edgey … but this was neither. It went so far in that direction that it bypassed shocking and edgey and went straight into revolting crap. So intent was Davies on being shocking and edgey, in fact, that he hacked together the most ridiculous back story possible with no attention to small details like keeping his characters in, you know, CHARACTER. Seriously, I can go on and on but it all comes down to this: Children of Earth is the reason Russel T. Davies is going to hell (if there is a hell … and I find myself hoping there is and that it is a really painful place just for RTD).
I still love the character of Captain Jack Harkness (if the evil things that was done to besmirch his name in CoE can be ignored) so I find myself torn. Do I even give season 4 a chance? The answer is maybe … only if Captain Jack is involved and only if it can redeem itself even a little bit after a few episodes. It will take a lot to win me back, I think. For now, though, there is always fanfic … a world I never really delved into apart from some iladvised forays into the Star Wars universe prior to puberty (only the published books, mind). Too bad retcon doesn’t really exist.
Rant:
Yes. Completely, absolutely out of character for the individual and for the organization.
I have to agree with another blogger I read recently who characterized Jack and Gwen as being suddenly uncharacteristically “mopey” in this one. They totally gave up in a completely non-Torchwoodish way and just ran away, cried, and did bad things for no (writerly) reason.
You can’t tell me that the guy who was buried alive under Cardiff for 2,000 years and came out all perky is someone who would be all “Weah weah, there’s no way to do this…oh wait, maybe if we kill a kid” in the face of some dumb aliens in a tank. No.
The machinations to make it seem like Jack was “forced” to make the choice he did just seemed completely contrived and way more ridiculous than the contrived “saves” of previous shows.
To be internally consistent with the Torchwoodiverse, there’d be some overlooked, probably unrealistic, detail that he’d figure out and it would save them all. And Gwen would be kicking ass instead of crying all over the place, pregnant or not.
Also, the writers sacrificing a kid like that? Atrocious. If they had even made it so he bravely volunteered himself, I could have nearly stomached it, plot-wise.
And the implication that this was somehow “noble” because it was his own grandson…I barf on that premise. It’d be noble if he sacrificed himself, maybe, but that’s about it. Another person is another person, full stop.
I prefer to kind of erase this series from my memories of this show. Like it doesn’t count. Because it doesn’t. Dammit.
Yes, yes and yes! Everything you said! It was all shit and needs to be forgotten. The problem is, I can’t! I need to wash my brain! *holds head and screams*
Y’know, I did see an analysis of this series that claimed the aliens symbolized The Church (which? whichever, I guess), which kind of made sense. Nevertheless, all my arguments about how it was implemented still stand.
I don’t care if it was meant to be deep and meaningful, it did not come off that way. It came off as a douche bag writing a douche bag story just to shock people or whatever. I think, honestly, the aliens symbolizing the Church theory is just a desperate attempt to make sense of the whole debacle. It was, plain and simple, a disgusting mess of poorly executed bullshit trying to pass as shocking and edgy television.
I wish, I wish I could disagree. But I can’t.
[…] West to Sen. John McCain to your average internet troll fuckwit on Twitter (and don’t forget Russell T. Davies). You know what? Being a douchebag is really bad. You shouldn’t do it. So, fuck off, […]