Top posted shorter version of Torchwood CoE reaction

[neadods]

Now that I've had a night's sleep, I'm slightly able to more distill my main objection to CoE. It's not Ianto's death. It's not the death of the Frobisher family. (I found that quite effective, actually.)

It's that after using the power of suggestion with the Frobishers, I was then asked to watch the lengthy death of a child. It's as if I went to rent an action film and found a snuff film in the box. Making me watch that makes me feel soiled.

And then I was supposed to feel for the pain of the person who killed him. Feel bad for poor widdle feelings of the man who did it, who made everyone around him feel *worse* because it was All About Him and not actually about the lover who died never hearing "I love you," the daughter forced to watch her son die instead of being mercifully knocked out, the confused and frightened boy being fried without even a quick "I'm proud of you. You're saving everybody" that might have let him go into his last moments confused but calm.

Cry me a river, Jack Harkness. They felt something too, but in your sudden and uncharacteristic monstrous selfishness, it's as if you don't realize that they're actually people too. Even Gwen and Rhys, the one consistent bright spot of CoE, get blown off because other people have nothing worth saying. It's All About You.

I miss the Jack Harkness who was admittedly shallow and selfish, but who made a point of telling the Doctor that he never, ever hurt people.

That said, I'm surprising myself by making Torchwood fic recs. Both are CoE epilogues, so spoilers for the entire miniseries.

wendymr's Seventh Circle of Hell
dark_aegis' Damaged Goods

Comments

[chickwriter.livejournal.com]

I miss the Jack Harkness who was admittedly shallow and selfish, but who made a point of telling the Doctor that he never, ever hurt people.

Ditto. I don't know what RTD was thinking when he went to this awful place with Jack--the senselessness of it.

Thanks for the recs, thought it may be a while before I can actually read them.

[missbaxter.livejournal.com]

Amen to all of the above. I don't have a quibble with the whole thematic set-up of Jack killing Steven (it's got that awful, grimly compelling aspect to it, and I haven't watched enough of Torchwood to know whether or not it's a total character betrayal), but I do have HUGE reservations with the way it was presented. I found it to be both gratuitous and nauseating. The Frobisher family's death was tough to watch, but I at least thought that it was handled effectively and relatively sensitively in terms of violence onscreen. Steven's death was just...yeah...didn't need to see that. Really didn't need to see that. Thanks for your post, which deals with it much more coherently than I can manage.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

This.

You have put your finger directly on one of the main things that was wrong with episode 5.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And then I was supposed to feel for the pain of the person who killed him.

Basically what Orson Scott Card did with Ender Wiggin, then. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Davies is a fan.

Between Card and Whedon (another huge influence on Davies), we need to compile a list of writers who have ruined current genre storytelling (and I actually used to like Whedon, until I realized that his Emo dial has no setting lower than 11 and his much-vaunted "feminism" is actually as creepy as anything Larry Flynt could come up with).

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

"And then I was supposed to feel for the pain of the person who killed him. Feel bad for poor widdle feelings of the man who did it, who made everyone around him feel *worse* because it was All About Him."

Well, everything Ten does is also always about His Pain and not the consequences to anyone else, so frankly who's surprised?

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Personally, I thought it was brutal and confronting. And no, I don't think you're meant to feel sympathy for Jack. I think you're meant to be angry with him. To even be disgusted by what he'd done. I think it's that sort of mixed emotions that make the mini-series work.

The idea of the anti-hero in Doctor Who isn't new though. The New Adventures played with this idea first, and there were a number of people as disgusted by the Doctor's actions in some novels as you are by Jack's action.

That doesn't make it any easier, but for one, I'm glad that RTD had the balls to actually go there. Jack is a flawed hero. Torchwood - the two previous series - have hinted at this. Now we see what Jack was and is capable of.

As for the 'snuff film' aspect of it. I think the horror of that scene worked within the tone of the previous episodes. It's not meant to be easy viewing. That said, I can see why a number of people would have found it offensive.

(Sorry - html error first time)

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

I am glad that actual fans of the series feel this way.
I realize that I am no great loss to the producers, but no, I will never watch this show again.

Like the gov't guy couldn't have just put his kids in a car & driven around until after the deadline. No, the writers had to hit us over the head with a sledgehammer & have him kill his entire family instead of using a few brain cells. But that's just minor.

Like the writers - since they were pulling a last-minute "Vulcans can change time by standing on their heads & juggling" deus ex machina out of their collective rears - couldn't have come up with something less disgusting. Yes, I know that the whole episode was hammering it home that "Jack can't die, Jack needs to care, Jack needs to atone for handing over the children", but they didn't need to do this - because it didn't punish HIM - it punished everyone around him, especially his daughter & grandson. And I didn't see any real punishment for it. Maybe I'm thick. Maybe the actors weren't as good as they should have been. maybe the directing stunk. Whatever. It really masticated.

(As a side note - I remarked to The Hubby (tm) that I knew our 12 year old would throw herself in front of her little brother in a heartbeat - and once she found out what the plot was, she did say "Save [PuppyBoy] - let them take me instead." So yes, the whole "You're saving the whole world, we love you" bit would have realistically mitigated the awful writing just that much)