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

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

"I know. There's a reason I don't read them."

Fair comment. I adored them when I was at Uni and in my early 20s. It was the sort of thing that an angsty Uni Student like me, majoring in Philosophy, could get his teeth into. I think if I read them now I'd find them a lot less appealing.

"Remember that warning discussion a while back? The one about people putting their artistic vision over the sensibilities of the people reading their fic, and blaming the victims for reading things that upset them? IMO, RTD's pretty much gone there with every viewer. He didn't have to *show that* long and lovingly and in our faces and think he was being clever and edgy and it's our fault for not turning off the TV the moment Stephen was grabbed by the soldiers."

On relfecting I think that's a fair point. Which is why I'm not argue the point. All I can say is that I found that scene to be anything but RTD does kiddie torture porn. I saw it as confronting piece of TV.

That said, it's not what you're expecting. And I can see why that would have angered you. The last thing you expect to see is child graphically dying and the mother wailing over the corpse.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think if I read them now I'd find them a lot less appealing.

I may like them more; despite what I'm ranting about now I'm more willing to tolerate dark stories than I was in college. But it's not so much the darkness as the fact that many of the ones I read were like early Torchwood - the authors were so thrilled at being beyond the censor restrictions that they forgot plot in the rush to play with sex and violence.

I saw it as confronting piece of TV.

That's how I would have classed Frobisher's storyline - at all times a man already damned trying to save what he could from the wreckage. Had this been just The Story of Frobisher, I would have adored it.

Having just typed that, I have to confront the bizarre fact that the reason I disliked the Torchwood miniseries is because it had Torchwood in it. O.o

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

"Having just typed that, I have to confront the bizarre fact that the reason I disliked the Torchwood miniseries is because it had Torchwood in it. O.o"

Couldn't agree with you more. This story was never about Torchwood. It was always about Frobisher. And you're right, his final scene is far more affecting than the ending.

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I pressed send before I finished my thought...

What I wanted to say is that storyline wibbles and wobbles everytime Torchwood appear. It's where all the plot holes and logic flaws live. And yet Frobisher's story really is a fantastic and dramatic arc.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Frobisher's story really is a fantastic and dramatic arc

Best part, IMO, which is why it would have worked best alone, with all the focus on him - the inevitable tragedy of a man who'd tried to do his best and was betrayed by everyone. Very Shakespearean. They could even have left the ambiguous ending of all the other kids being shipped off, and left the viewer to chew on that.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

"The last thing you expect to see is child graphically dying and the mother wailing over the corpse."

We don't NEED to see it. We can see it ANY time we want to by turning on the G*dd*mn NEWS of the Middle East! Every day brings us new headlines about how many civilians/bystanders/INNOCENTS were slaughtered today by walking/driving bombs. The news is FILLED with men and women wailing over the bodies of their loved ones, their own hearts torn out and their own souls destroyed.
We don't watch things like Doctor Who and Torchwood and Sarah Jane for more of the same Sh*t we get in real life.

I'm with Nea, Rusty's been put on my Banned for life list, and I hope he brings a rain slicker to Comic-Con, for the rotten tomatoes they'll be throwing at him.

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

"We don't NEED to see it. We can see it ANY time we want to by turning on the G*dd*mn NEWS of the Middle East! Every day brings us new headlines about how many civilians/bystanders/INNOCENTS were slaughtered today by walking/driving bombs. The news is FILLED with men and women wailing over the bodies of their loved ones, their own hearts torn out and their own souls destroyed."

I think there's an interesting argument and debate here about the role of escapist fiction. I'm currently reviewing the SF work of Thomas Disch on my LJ, and it was quite clear from his stuff that he used SF to comment on the world - in his case Vietnam, the Cold War etc - and his feelings about life in general. His work is grim and sad and disturbing and death play a major role. Algis Burdrys and others, who believed that SF should be about hope and the future, hated his work.

Personally, I think good drama, whether it be Torchwood or Doctor Who, should, sometimes, be confronting and hard to watch. But that's me.

"and I hope he brings a rain slicker to Comic-Con, for the rotten tomatoes they'll be throwing at him."

And I hope that doesn't happen. It's one thing to ban someone, but it's another to vilify someone in public over what is, at the end of the day, a TV show. He's not George Bush, and there should be throwing of shoes.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think good drama, whether it be Torchwood or Doctor Who, should, sometimes, be confronting and hard to watch.

I think that there is a line between drama and escapism, and that Torchwood and Who, both of which have a fairly well established reputation as escapism - sometimes with bite, but always escapism. If I wanted confronting and hard drama, I'd be watching something else.

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Agree with you on Who.

Torchwood I'm not so sure. But that's only because I don't think the show has ever had a steady direction. It's always been all over the place. I mean, it's not a hard stretch to think that a show that did a story on human cannibalism, or mind rape might do one which has a child dying painfully. Or maybe not.

But that's why I don't think children of Earth was actually Torchwood anyway.