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

[fyrdrakken]

The Doctor has a lot of points in his ledger on the side of "Not going for the practical solution that involves deliberately sacrificing someone else," allowing him to look nobly griefstricken when someone else saves the day with deliberate self-sacrifice. It was grimly fitting with Torchwood's massive collateral damage record that the final solution involved forcing someone to be the sacrificial lamb, but making the lamb in question be Jack's pastede-on grandson doesn't make up for his having been a part of handing over a dozen orphans forty years back.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

but making the lamb in question be Jack's pastede-on grandson doesn't make up for his having been a part of handing over a dozen orphans forty years back.

By the time you've got the guilt of what he did, and being unable to save them or Clem, and killing his own family, killing Ianto gets a little gratuitous.

[fyrdrakken]

Yeah, there's pretty much no point in doing it unless you're trying to write his character out of the universe so nothing else can be done using him.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to feel that the "clean slate" is really "scorched earth."