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

[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.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Steven's death was just...yeah..

Gratuitous and nauseating are good words for it.