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  • #105776
    littlesmegger
    Participant

    Without killing the child Jack wouldn’t have felt the need to go away. Plus the story of Jack being darker and sending the children the first time around wouldn’t have been a needed plot point. It’s all to give Jack more depth, not really a plot solver.

    If they’d just gone in guns blazing and killed it, Jack would’ve felt good about himself, Torchwood wouldn’t have shut down for the time being, and there wouldn’t have been an end to the show [for if the ratings weren’t good].

    At least this way everything was tied up, but in a way it can be restored if needs be. Which they clearly will do, seeing John has mentioned a filming block early next year being pre-booked in his schedule for if/when it’s comissioned.

    #105777
    Pete Part Three
    Participant

    >It?s all to give Jack more depth, not really a plot solver.

    Infanticide = character depth.

    #105779
    Andrew
    Participant

    > Without killing the child Jack wouldn?t have felt the need to go away

    So it was done to make him want to go away? Um…was that something that had to happen, then? He was written as leaving – fully six months AFTER the events of CoE – as a way of putting the show on hold. Fair enough. But the kid wasn’t killed off in order to make that occur; the kid was killed to allow some moral questions on the subject of sacrifice and greater good.

    Jack was able to be written as leaving because the kid was killed, the kid wasn’t killed in order to make Jack go. It wasn’t a set-up to allow his departure – what would be the point of that? Why do we need him to leave at the end?

    (In fact his departure is strictly mechanical. It puts the show on hiatus, but more importantly it means we can skip over a large part of the Miserable Jack stuff we’d otherwise have to endure. Nobody enjoyed that last time it was done, and this way he an just arrive in the new series more or less back to his old self. It’s a way to begin undoing what the CoE’s ending does to him…only moments after it happened.)

    > Plus the story of Jack being darker and sending the children the first time around wouldn?t have been a needed plot point.

    The whole point of the earlier sequences was to show this as a story of sins being revisited, sure. The 456 come back because they got what they wanted last time- it establishes that even this visit won’t be the last, that they’re likely to come back yet again demanding even more – and that this all began with Jack’s original crime.

    So his role this time around is to atone, or at least to revisit on him the horrible consequences of his actions. What killing his grandson was meant to do was – in story terms – was punish Jack. It was intended to make him pay. But it was done in such a clumsy way, in the final 17 minutes of a five-hour story, “Hey, or we could just fry your grandson!”, that it felt way more arbitrary than in needed to.

    And it didn’t need to. Jack’s had decades to think about the 456, to muse on his guilt and think how it could have gone. To realise a solution too late, to become obsessed with what he COULD have done. There’s a really interesting story to be told in Jack knowing from the start how to solve the problem and struggling with it, since it means making the same choice the government is having to – select a child. But instead the dilemma is started and concluded in about the same time it takes to cook a frozen pizza.

    It didn’t help that the kid lacked a rounded character – his mum’s annoying, but the kid’s just a blank, which means it’s hard to care about him personally. To make that conclusion work, and conceptually it does, the kid needed to be far more important to us. After you lose Ianto – the funniest and most likeable to the Torchwood characters – the sacrifice of the brat feels pretty flat.

    > It?s all to give Jack more depth, not really a plot solver.

    What Pete said. But also:

    Never said frying the kid was a plot-solver – ‘Hey, we can just send the signal backwards’ is the plot-solver, and it’s the same half-arsed, un-seeded, quick-wrap-up gibberish that threatens to overturn so much of the greatness of RTDs writing. (He has a real ending problem.) The sacrifice is conceptually fine, but to place it at the centre of the quick plot fix was a huge fault in the execution.

    The best endings are seeded good and early, they should slot in like the final jigsaw piece, there on the table from the start you just didn’t know it.

    #105781
    John Hoare
    Participant

    I really enjoyed the finale, and felt it was very powerful – but it’s difficult to disagree with most of your problems with it, and even I felt it was *slightly* too out-of-the-blue.

    It didn?t help that the kid lacked a rounded character – his mum?s annoying, but the kid?s just a blank, which means it?s hard to care about him personally. To make that conclusion work, and conceptually it does, the kid needed to be far more important to us.

    I found it upsetting enough – I think if they kid had mattered to us even more, it might have been *too* upsetting to watch.

    I certainly think it would have led to far more outcry about the show – as unfair as that might be…

    #105785
    Andrew
    Participant

    > I found it upsetting enough – I think if they kid had mattered to us even more, it might have been *too* upsetting to watch.

    Maybe it’s just me, but I so completely didn’t care.

    When the kid’s so generic, and our relationship with him is so young (he matters to Jack so much that we’ve not seen him in two years of Torchwood), Jack’s choice seems totally justified. It becomes the basic math problem – one child or millions – that it should never have been. The aim was to put a human face on the dilemma, and for for me it failed utterly at that.

    Plus, yeah, I was just reeling from the ‘Hey, here’s a dilemma for ya!’ arrival of the story’s climax…

    Still, I wish the outcry HAD been about the sacrificing of a child. That’s something to have an outcry about – hero makes hard, brutal choice. Instead it’s easily smothered by the tedious sound of shippers doing the Ianto whine.

    #105796

    > Maybe it?s just me, but I so completely didn?t care.

    RED DWARF ASSISTANT SCRIPT PRODUCER EDITOR WHATEVER ‘I’M OK WITH CHILD KILLING’ JIBE

    #105802
    Petetranterssister
    Participant

    >It?s all to give Jack more depth, not really a plot solver.

    Infanticide = character depth.

    lol

    I liked the way the show went, All the way through i expected there to be a “happy” ending but it has become very well separated from dr who now, whereas the dr always saves the day and everyones a happy chappy jack isnt the dr hes just a normal guy and doesnt have that magic make everything better ability.

    As great as the show was we found it left us on a bit of a downer and made us feel completely different about captain jack a charachter we loved and to do that meant it was a pretty powerful story.

    #105804
    JamesTC
    Participant

    >whereas the dr always saves the day and everyones a happy chappy

    Unless you are in the Peter Davison era.

    #105809
    Seb Patrick
    Keymaster

    >the dr always saves the day and everyones a happy chappy

    “Everybody lives, Rose! Just like always, everybody lives!”

    #105818
    Gwynnie
    Participant

    The sacrificing his own grandson really upset me. Not because of the actual child, but the way that he coldly ignored his daughter’s cries and screams as he allowed her son to be killed in front of her. But he’d just lost Ianto, so we can feel sorry for him or hate him. Either way, if the government hadn’t acted like a bunch of retards and just asked him to help in the first place instead of trying to seal him into concrete cells and the like… well, you know.

    #105830

    Hmmm. Happy or sad endings in the new series, let’s see…

    Rose – happy
    TEOTW – melancholic, bittersweet maybe
    Unquiet Dead – bittersweet again (Gwyneth dead, Dickens happy)
    AoE/WW3 – not really that happy all round
    Dalek – fairly happy, strangely enough
    Long Game – funny, throwaway ending
    Father’s Day – sad end, not dark though
    TEC/TDD – happy, the most uplifting ending so far
    Boomtown – unsure (can’t fucking remember the ending tbh!)
    BW/TPOTW – emotional, all over the place

    TCI – very happy indeed, self-congratulatory bollocks
    New Earth – sad with Cassandra, happy Doc and Rose smug
    Tooth & Claw – ominous Queen Vic warning but mostly smugness
    School Reunion – very happy, self-congratulatory smugness(…)
    TGITFP – sad, moving, masterpiece-like
    Cybes – who actually cares??
    TVs and shit – smug as fuck
    TIP/TSP – mostly happy
    L&M – hey I’m shagging a paving slab, how happy can you get??
    Fear Her – a storm’s coming, Tennant with Olympic flame!!
    AoG/Doomsday – sad, emotional departure

    That’s only a handful of happy endings in 27 episodes (series 2 smugness and all that). Expect plenty of happy endings in series 5 (of course, I mean the new series 1…) because Moffat seems to like them. All except TGITFP. Speaking of TGITFP, if he’s ever capable of that form again WE will be the happy ones.

    #105833
    JamesTC
    Participant

    >Boomtown – unsure (can?t fucking remember the ending tbh!)

    The TARDIS opened and it turned the Slitheen into an egg that didn’t fart.

    #105834

    Oh yeah, don’t know how I could forget that. Sort of a happy ending then, what with Jack in his non-brooding days.

    #105838
    John Hoare
    Participant

    In conclusion then, shippers are idiots.

    Excellent.

    #105840
    Plastic Percy
    Participant

    Boom Town does end though with Mickey and Rose’s relationship problems still hanging in the air. Rose runs off to the Doctor instead of Mickey and when she comes back looking for him he mearly watches her from afar then leaves silently, presumably back to London.

    But all this is ignored to an extent when he comes running back to her in ‘The Parting of the Ways’.

    #105842
    Ben Paddon
    Participant

    That’s because, as Mickey pointed out himself in Boom Town, he cares for Rose even after she abandoned him. “I can’t even go out with a stupid girl from a shop because you pick up the phone and I come running.” No matter what happens Mickey still feels for Rose. That doesn’t change, right through to the end of series two – he loves her. Logic and reason be damn’d.

    By series four he seems to have come to the realization that he can never be with Rose, which is why he doesn’t go back to Pete’s World. Does he still love her? Probably. That’s how love works, y’see. The Lister of Series I and II held above all things an irrational infatuation with Kochanski even though she’d barely ever spoken to him. The Lister of Series III onwards still held a ruddy great big torch for Kochanski even after she dumped him. Love, as well as being a device invented by bank managers to make us overdrawn, is a powerful emotion.

    #105845
    Gwynnie
    Participant

    And Rhys still loves Gwen even though she mostly treats him like shit (see how I veered it back to Torchwood). What is it with RTD and women treating their puppydog men badly? Hmm.

    #105848
    JamesTC
    Participant

    >What is it with RTD and women treating their puppydog men badly?

    It isn’t limited to women, look at Jack going off with John while he was with Ianto. It just seems like all the likable characters (Mickey, Rhys, Ianto) just get treated like shit by the people who are meant to be the main good guys, I don’t like that.

    #105849
    Plastic Percy
    Participant

    Being Mickey Smith –

    CONS: Are treated like shit by stupid, selfish girlfriend. Picked on by wheelie bins.

    PROS: Will end up as a cool Kyle Reese style resistance fighter, only with a bigger gun.

    #105850
    Pete Part Three
    Participant

    CONS: Gets buggered up the arse by the kid from Byker Grove.

    #105852
    JamesTC
    Participant

    That was Rickey

    #105853
    Pete Part Three
    Participant

    I always get those two guys mixed up. They have similar features. Were the actors related?

    #105857
    Gwynnie
    Participant

    Racist!

    #105862
    Ben Paddon
    Participant

    > It just seems like all the likable characters (Mickey, Rhys, Ianto) just get treated like shit by the people who are meant to be the main good guys, I don?t like that.

    You’d hate Battlestar Galactica then, what with the supposedly good characters doing quite blatantly nefarious things, and the supposedly bad characters making actually quite sensible points even if they go the wrong way about expressing it.

    You like your telly nice and clear-cut, don’cha?

    #105869
    Tarka Dal
    Participant

    I feel I’ve missed a quality discussion, but I did spot this…

    > even if it finished the job of almost entirely removing its core cast

    All in all a 100% successful trip.

    > You like your telly nice and clear-cut, don?cha?

    He sort of has a point though. You can have ‘grey’ characters without making them such arseholes that there’s very little reason to route for them.

    #105874

    Look at Kate on Lost (go on, I dare ya). Since they mostly took away that ‘grey’ side of her she has been an extremely boring char IMO. Not that she ever had the most thrilling story (or the best actress playing her, let’s be honest, though Evangeline is bea-ea-utiful to behold) but when there was at least some danger about her it felt refreshing. Now she’s goodie goodie blandness what’s the point??

    Of course, Jack has also been a weak link. So much so that his ending better be bloody specacular to merit him being the ‘main’ char. I think he was improved in season 5 to an extent, though it felt like he had less screentime. Sawyer was definitely the main good guy in season 5.

    #105876
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    Character.

    #105879
    Tarka Dal
    Participant

    > Now she?s goodie goodie blandness what?s the point??

    Well the point I was making is that grey characters are good. However if they get the balance wrong then they tip over into just being unlikeable people.

    I realise that’s not the same for everyone, but that was one of the main things that put me off Torchwood.

    Whereas in Buffy for example the lead character acted like a throughly unlikeable cow for a good couple of seasons, but great writing (for me) meant that she retained just enough sympathy to still be worth watching.

    #105890
    Gwynnie
    Participant

    Well… I watched Buffy for the other characters. She was just annoying.

    #105894
    Ben Paddon
    Participant

    Correction: Sarah Michelle Gellar is just annoying. She’s a bitch. Even Joss Whedon hated her – he couldn’t wait to kill her off in season five.

    #105897
    Jo
    Participant

    …and then bring her back to life in the first episode of season 6.

    That showed her!

    #105899
    Seb Patrick
    Keymaster

    She speaks very highly of you, too, Ben.

    #105901
    Ben Paddon
    Participant

    > ?and then bring her back to life in the first episode of season 6.

    At the time season five was written it seemed likely that’d be the end of the show as The WB had said they had no plans to pick it up again. Keep in mind that it’s not the same thing as being cancelled, which is what happened to Firefly and Angel. Whedon wrote an ending that’d work as a series finale should it have to serve as one.

    Ultimately it didn’t, because UPN jumped in and said “Yeah, we’ll have two more seasons of that, please.” So they kind of had to bring her back. Otherwise you’re stuck in a Taggart scenario.

    Another TV show that experienced a similar “non-cancellation”, but that went the other way entirely, is The Dresden Files. The first season was a ratings smash for The SciFi Channel here in the US, but it wasn’t making SciFi much money. They didn’t order any more episodes but they wouldn’t say whether or not they were cancelling it. Eventually time passed, the actors found themselves having to move on to other projects to make sure that they could, y’know, afford to live and stuff like that, and once the actors had done so SciFi made an announcement saying how disappointed they were that the actors had moved on and tried to make it sound like it was the fault of the actors and the production company, Lions Gate.

    It occurs to me that in the last week I’ve publicly slagged off Focus Features and SyFy, both of whom are owned by NBC Universal. That might explain why I haven’t heard from them about that job yet.

    #105903
    Gwynnie
    Participant

    If we’re on the subject of Whedon… has anyone watched Dollhouse? And what did you think? I’ve just finished season 1… I enjoyed it but I really want to discuss it.
    Where did this come from? Ah, Jack being bland? I don’t know… for someone who’d died that many times, spent 1000 years or something underground and seen so much of the universe, he still seems a bit too sane. But maybe the healing thing works on his mind, too (as it does in Heroes).

    #105906
    Dave
    Participant

    I loved Dollhouse season 1, I haven’t seen any of season 2.

    #105908
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    From what I’ve seen of Dollhouse season 2, it’s very excellent indeed. Much, much better than most of the (still enjoyable) season 1.

    #105909
    Pete Part Three
    Participant

    Got 4 episodes of Dollhouse on my Sky box. Haven’t mustered up the enthusiasm to watch them yet after been underwhelmed by Series 1.

    #105911
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    Watch them.

    #105912
    Ian Symes
    Keymaster

    This. I was a teensy bit underwhelmed by Season 1 too, but Season 2 has kicked its ass.

    Conversely, I really enjoyed Season 1 of Fringe, but the first few episodes of Season Two were so poor that we’ve got a bit of a Sky+ backlog.

    #105913
    Andrew
    Participant

    No spoilers, but…series two has really picked up that much? It’ll be great if it has, I just had the feeling the format was always going to get in the way of real excellence.

    #105914
    Dave
    Participant

    >I just had the feeling the format was always going to get in the way of real excellence.

    I did worry that Whedon’s reaction to Firefly being broadcast in the wrong order and Fox TV’s resistance to the overarching storyline of Angel seasons two to four, went too far in the opposite direction: “You want reset button TV? I’ll write the reset button into the narrative itself.” My fears were mostly groundless, but obviously simultaneously utilising and kicking against the horror movie or western genre yields more material than how many characters can the admittedly brilliant Eliza Dushku play, either one after the other or all at once. How many new and interesting ways are there to use that chair?

    #105915
    Seb Patrick
    Keymaster

    And by “the format” you mean “Eliza Dushku’s acting ability”, don’t you?

    #105916
    Andrew
    Participant

    > And by ?the format? you mean ?Eliza Dushku?s acting ability?, don?t you?

    Not especially – she does fine. Not exceptional, but fine.

    I think series one showed up a huge set of problems in the construction of the show. I need to get my NtS article on the subject finished; but if series two’s awesome it may not be worth it…

    #105917
    Dave
    Participant

    >she does fine. Not exceptional, but fine.

    I think she has pitched it just right, she’s different enough in each personality without it being: “And now I do my cowgirl accent.”

    #105918
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    Dollhouse season 2’s strengths lie in the fact that it jumps right into the over-arcing story that was being built up over season 1, sans fucking about with self contained episodes. No spoilers, but there’s also a bit of a character reshuffle that makes the whole thing tighter and more focused meaning that there’s some cracking momentum building up.

    Ian’s wrong about season 2 of Fringe, by the way. It’s definitely better than season 1, for much of the same reasons that Fringe is now better.

    #105919
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    (Although Dollhouse is of course several yards better than Fringe)

    #105941
    Andrew
    Participant

    And thus the writing of an article becomes even more pointless until I see season two…

    http://io9.com/5402497/the-apocalypse-comes-early-for-joss-whedons-dollhouse

    #105942
    Jo
    Participant

    :o(

    #105944
    Jonathan Capps
    Keymaster

    Shitbags.

    #105949
    Tarka Dal
    Participant

    Oh ffs. I’ve not even started watching it yet! Fingers crossed his next project rhymes with kipper.

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