Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

T3 link: lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/929522.html">is dubious about the Fox remake

So, the flist is buzzing about RTD and his creative team remaking Torchwood in the US under the aegis not of BBCA, but Fox. (I've already seen it dubbed "Foxwood.")

Let me rephrase this.

The guy who said he was moving on to fresh stories is instead continuing to recap an old project...

... in a completely different country than where the brand was successfully built up...

... a country in which this show only gets big numbers when compared only to the usual viewing numbers of a cable channel that doesn't appear in many markets...

... and he's doing this under the financial support not of that comparatively tiny cable company for which he got those ratings...

... he's doing it under the financial support of a company that got its financial ass handed to it the last time it tried to do an American reboot of the parent property.


And he is apparently going to continue to use the name of (and thus the concept of) a British group founded by a British Queen to forward British interests because of course America cares deeply about this sort of thing and doesn't have any baggage about the British Empire...

...and he's going to hang the show off of an actor that nobody outside of the fandom has heard of because he built his reputation in British theater and TV, not America.


When you look at it like that, it couldn't possibly be dubious news or (if real) remotely doomed to failure.

Warning: This post contains uncut CoE spoilers for Day 4 and bad language. It's uncut because it's not actually *about* CoE, but about fandom.

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When Catherine died, a Beauty and the Beast fan who'd been chairing a feed-the-hungry charity in the show's name shut it down because there was no point anymore if there was no Catherine/Vincent romance. (No point except HUNGRY PEOPLE NEEDING FEEDING. But that's just reality, which is so much less important than a TV show.)

This is why I'm so incredibly delighted that Ianto's death has started a Torchwood charity smackdown. There are now three - three! - charity drives started because of Children of Earth:
- Children of Earth Viewers for Children in Need (aka "Thank you, James Moran"): current total: 286.25 pounds
- Save Ianto Jones: current total: 2,674.83 pounds, also for Children in Need
(A smackdown so uneven that even the BBC doesn't bother mentioning that it is a smackdown.)

And now, Ianto Jones Wants a Pony. A serious charity with a silly name, (and already at 260 pounds and rising) this isn't for saying Ianto has to live or die. It's for adopting a pony from the Lluest Horse and Pony trust, a charity that Gareth David-Lloyd has been championing.

I eyeroll about the bags of coffee and the Internet petitions to bring Ianto back (as if RTD, or anyone, ever listens to the Internet fandom that much). [ETA: That said, I find it really amusing that both pro-Ianto charities are whipping CoE for CiN's financial ass. The fandom is speaking with its collective wallet, and loudly.] But what's wonderful is that even though the kids in Children in Need may not even know who Ianto is, and the horse surely doesn't give a damn about TV, all that angst and anger is doing good in the world for real living things.

And that beats the everlivin' fuck out of punishing hungry families because a fictional character snuffed it.

( Top posted shorter version of Torchwood CoE reaction )

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

T3: < lj user="neadods"> < a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/857337.html?#cutid1">TEXT

( Hmmmmm )

T3: < lj user="neadods"> < a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/856017.html">LINK TEXT [Spoilers, CoE 1 and 2]

( Before getting into Episode 2, I want to address a comment I keep seeing about Episode 1 (not Gwen's line) )

( We. We are. We are squeeing. (Still with one or two reservations and a couple of huh?s to boot) )

T3: lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/754445.html">reviews Skypoint, Pack Animals, and Almost Perfect

So, three new Torchwood tie-in books have come out. I've read them and found them to be full of massively depressed people who can't put together obvious clues until things are going to hell and someone else has to help them out, who live in a world where nothing has basic, obvious safety features, and who prefer retcon to personal communication.

Well, I can't complain that the books aren't just like the show.

They come with a distinct internal timeline, with Pack Animals coming first, set just before Gwen and Rhys' wedding. Someone is selling a monster-based collectible card game in which weevils figure prominently. Only someone is actually calling the monsters through...

Points to Peter Anghelides (author of the rather better Another Life) for finding a new reason for Ianto to get naked. Points are however deducted by those of us who remember the 70s show those scenes were based on. Also, points in general are deducted for the completely unrealistic means by which the monsters are manifested, and the sloppy solution (although it is doubtless a comfort to Torchwood that someone out there is more screwed up than they are.)

Next up is Skypoint, which should be titled "Take Prozac Before Reading." There's a new condo skyscraper in Cardiff, and it comes with all the modern conveniences - hidden lighting, convection ovens, private parking, psychotic mob boss in the penthouse, and meat-eating alien coming out of the walls. (It's this building that is missing basic, mandatory safety features. You'll know what I'm talking about when you get to that scene.)

Although Gwen and Rhys have just been married, it's Tosh and Owen who get to play unHappy Families in the newest-rented apartment. And unhappy families they are, what with Owen so miserable about being undead and taking it out on Tosh so she won't get any ideas about fantasizing about finally getting him. No fears there, Owen, she's too busy endlessly meditating on her own fractured family and her stint in military prison.

It's not that it's an unreadable book, but I did want them to shut up and do their jobs a lot sooner than they did. Not that the outcome is really in doubt - hello, Torchwood book. Torchwood will win in the end, and (due to the period when it's set) it means that maximum mileage will be gotten from Jack being unkillable and Owen being already dead.

Almost Perfect is set after the end of the season, and frankly, getting rid of the two most morose characters does wonders for the tone of the Torchwood team. Everyone left is in a relationship, however dysfunctional, and thus the reader is spared endless Oh Woe Is Me, I Have No Life internal monologues.

Almost Perfect is not almost perfect, but it is a damnsight better than the others. James Goss is being highly ambitious and a little bit too clever - it's not a linear narrative, all the chapters have obscure, cutesy titles, and one of the chapters is only 1 sentence long.

But for all of that, it's a good read - mostly because it breaks all of the Torchwood cliches. It's almost entirely character-driven. There is a plot and a solid one, but the action is focused on each member of the team, and each character gets something significant to do. Jack is tracking down bits of his past. Gwen is investigating the skeleton sitting at a fancy restaurant. And Ianto... woke up a woman.

Hijinks ensue.

I read the others because I read all the Torchwood books, but I enjoyed Almost Perfect.

The great thing about fandom in the Internet Age is that vicariously experiencing things is getting more and more real-time. And more and more outright real!

thefannishwaldo liveblogged the Julie Gardener - Stephen Moffat panel (small spoilers for Christmas special at end). There'll be a separate post for the Torchwood panel at some point. So far all she's posted is that there was a "marry, shag, or cliff" game with John, Julie, and Gareth, and Naoko (in which Naoko volunteered to be cliffed - John said he'd shag her first - he'd then shag Julie, but he'd marry Gareth "because I've seen him naked.")

And I don't know who grabbed the minute-long clip of John Barrowman and Naoko Mori singing Miss Saigon with Gareth in the middle.

The OG links to three interviews with Stephen Moffat from Comic Con


In Hamlet news, I'm more than a little appalled that the Tennant website has had to post basic theater etiquette - and I mean REALLY basic stuff, like "don't disturb the actors or the rest of the audience." *facepalm* The RSC/actors (who started it I'm not sure) have also put out a huge set of warnings that they will only sign stuff about Hamlet, not Star Trek or Doctor Who memorabilia. That makes sense enough. However, I'm sure it's the RSC that has added the rider that it must be materials from the RSC shop which does piss me off. For those of us who *have* theater diaries and/or favorite script copies, it seems frankly petty.

Not that anyone could necessarily tell in a glance say, an Arden that came from the RSC vs the Borders downtown DC anyway.

(I have a copy of the Arden complete that has served as notes and theater diary ever since I started going to Stratford Ont. & ushering at the DC Shakes; I've been writing down the dates/locations of the productions and (in the script itself) details of the particularly notable bits of business.)


PS - and since this is suddenly turning into the overarching Who post of the day, the Sun will just print anything they wank onto a page, won't they? The latest article is so full of facepalm fail I don't even know which loose end to start yanking to unravel it. Poor Freema, is she always going to end up being the whipping girl of the Whoniverse? (There was even Yet Another Ugly Rumor about the poor woman at Shore Leave, which was quickly and tidily shot down.)

It's going to be frickin' hilarious in retrospect if she's in both Torchwood and Law and Order: London, as is easily likely considering England's short show seasons. Far more likely than an experienced, professional showrunner somehow assuming that a working actress would turn down work in the hopes of some sort of last-minute "oops, we wrote huge scenes for you but forgot to actually sign you up" contract.

Truly, there is not enough eyeroll in the world.

T3, Who-Daily: lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/705917.html">has a TW vs. DW moral question (Spoilers for Journey's End)

A DW vs TW morality question: ( Cut for spoilers for Journey's End )

x-posted without poll to marriedonmars

And yet another fic rec from the tsunami coming out of the finale reactions: ionlylurkhere's utterly perfect The Moment Has Been Prepared For. Now this ought to be canon!

I've finished Torchwood: The Twilight Streets, finally. I've been holding it back because it seemed very Iantolicious. In the long run, though, the best that can be said is that if you're really, really into Jack/Ianto, this book is well worth the price.

If you're really, really into excellent books, not quite so much. And if you're really, really into the idea of an effective Torchwood, you're really, really screwed.

Okay, I'm going to stop using the "r" word. Really.

Something evil and supernatural came through the rift (again) screws up/ends a bunch of lives (again), Torchwood means well, throws itself headlong at the problem, falls over, screws up, and is saved by Jack. Again. In other words, your bog-standard episode of Torchwood. Oh, there's something about Bilis, and a bit that's slightly ripped off from Something Wicked This Way Comes (*sigh* I have to type "again" again), and an area of Cardiff that Jack can't go into, but they're just the trappings on the inevitable progression of A - A monster appears; B - Believing they can do something, Torchwood goes off-half cocked being C - completely incompetent as usual so that D - Dashing Jack can dash in again to save them from the E - evil (even though the original show was very skeptical about the supernatural... Oh, wait, silly me, I'm talking about Torchwood, whose original show is Angel), while he F) flirts all the way with quite a few men.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty "meh" about it. But there are a couple of major OTP moments between Jack and Ianto. And it starts with Ianto getting a fair amount of plot time. For that alone, it is elevated from the "total snoozer" category.

It's either pay the bills or spam LJ. Well, what would you do?

Having caught up on Torchwood, my thoughts. This season continues to mop the floor with last season.

( Adrift )

( Fragments )