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Mar. 13th, 2008 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleMaybe my expectations were unreasonably high due to PJ Hammond's reputation and his episode last year, but god, that Torchwood episode was rubbish. Really nice idea, with the sinister circus folk coming to life from film - I don't mind that it was a magic plot, I'd rather leave it as 'a wizard did it' than have an "as you know, these are actually advanced aliens from planet Zipulon VI" exposition - but it would've been much scarier if we'd just seen them advancing on the woman, rather than having an interminable chat with her, then bottling her breath in the flask... it means Torchwood's about 20 minutes behind the audience, and when they finally catch up with someone who knows what's going on we have to listen to a description of what we've already seen. And wasn't that convenient, that Jack repeated the catchphrase in front of the one nurse who'd worked with the old woman and who had no niggling qualms about patient confidentiality? Then we get to see the Ghostmaster and the mermaid wandering around in daylight, looking perfectly normal and non-sinister, having more interminable chats among themselves, where they exposition about stealing people's life into the flask. Again.
No emotional continuity at all. Gwen's apparently back from honeymoon, but for all we know the wedding might have been a week ago or three years. Or maybe we've jumped back in time. The only way we know this whole episode isn't a season 1 flashback (it'd fit with the 'and loads of civilians, including children, died' ending) is that Owen's dead - which is used in exactly the same way as it was last week, with a monster going to attack him and then recoiling. There's hardly any sort of characterisation going on; you could make Gwen instead of Ianto the main character and not change a line.
Oh, and people in the dark days before TV and the internets must have been easily impressed if a woman waving her arms around qualifies her as a mermaid. She could have at least been underwater or something. I would have wanted my thrupenny bit back. Humph.
Thank god I have the OG to tell me that I'm only complaining because I'm a Jack/Ianto fanbrat crying about the lack of sex and/or hate Gaimanesque fantasy, though, because there's no possible reason that people could dislike the episode on its own merits.
No emotional continuity at all. Gwen's apparently back from honeymoon, but for all we know the wedding might have been a week ago or three years. Or maybe we've jumped back in time. The only way we know this whole episode isn't a season 1 flashback (it'd fit with the 'and loads of civilians, including children, died' ending) is that Owen's dead - which is used in exactly the same way as it was last week, with a monster going to attack him and then recoiling. There's hardly any sort of characterisation going on; you could make Gwen instead of Ianto the main character and not change a line.
Oh, and people in the dark days before TV and the internets must have been easily impressed if a woman waving her arms around qualifies her as a mermaid. She could have at least been underwater or something. I would have wanted my thrupenny bit back. Humph.
Thank god I have the OG to tell me that I'm only complaining because I'm a Jack/Ianto fanbrat crying about the lack of sex and/or hate Gaimanesque fantasy, though, because there's no possible reason that people could dislike the episode on its own merits.
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on 2008-03-13 06:07 pm (UTC)Also, why couldn't Owen, Gwen, and even to an extent Ianto, figure out what Jack was doing in the freak show? I mean, it was blatantly obvious that he was shooting himself in the head, yet Gwen was joking about him doing stand-up, and Ianto was all 'ahh' when Jack revealed that he had been the man-who-can't-die. Like with the images of the Ghost Maker and Mermaid- they were so obviously missing when they played the film back, but it took Ianto several minutes to determine what was different. Felt like the prop people (or whoever) made the film without paying much attention to the dialog in the script- I can't really phrase this right, but I think I'm saying what I mean. It's too early...
But, yea. After the episode ended, I said it would have worked better as a Supernatural episode, only Sam and Dean would have handled it better. To which my boyfriend responded that yes, they would have determined the monsters were made of film, and got some film-dissolving acid to throw at them at least. Torchwood Master Plans = asdkfjhksfh huh?