Torchwood Episode Discussion (Spoilers for all eps aired in the UK)

[ShadowMaat]

You underestimate the man.

My sentiments exactly. I'm not even sure I'd limit it to "He's breathing."

[BruTak]

The only thing that's bugged me about "Adam", and "Reset" is the plot similarities to two of last year's Torchwood novels - "Border Princes" and "Slow Decay".

[Willow'sCat]

So what episode is being shown this week? As we have already had Reset, do they go to the next one or is Reset going to be shown on the "regular" channel this week instead?

[Madeleine]

9pm BBC2 Reset
9:50 BBC2 Torchwood Declassified
10pm BBC3 Dead Man Walking

[AvatarIII]

how they have the new "first look for freeview" setup, are they doing the family friendly vers on bbc2 and the uncut vers on bbc3?

[Willow'sCat]

Hmm, I think this is the weakest ep so far. OK so I am not a fan of back from the dead even though I wanted Owen to come back from the dead. This episode felt too disjointed, we see this child (girl) with tarot card things... wtf? Nothing is explained. Owen is or isn't a weevil king... he is or isn't death, death is or isn't death? I was mainly confused.

I found the throwing up and farting to be juvenile but then it was "Jack & Owen" so yeah. Martha was useless, I mean really what point did she serve? What "unique" gift did she bring to this episode??? No I can't think of anything either. Gwen, well at least she phoned the bf for once instead of fawning over Jack with her emotional states.

There was NO Ianto and Jack... well one or two brief eye contact type exchanges (hockey stick) but that was it!

Tosh was less convincing here for admitting she loved Owen then when we just assumed she did, and Owen... I think he really knows she does love him but still, hard to tell.

The effects and camera angles were less then impressive. I felt like I was watching a music video when Owen was in the bar (that may have been the point, but it was lost on me), the sloped camera angle when Jack is with the little girl... just odd. And the "monster of the week" looked like you could sneeze on it and it would blow away. Also, ALSO using the age old "kid in danger" to get our hearts racing just fell flat here, I didn't give a frak about the kid, dying of cancer or not, who cares?

I know what they were trying to make me feel but it didn't work here, yes defiantly the weakest of the series, maybe the whole series which is a real shame as I was so hyped for this one.

What other eps has Matt Jones written for Torchwood anyway?

[Reefgirl]

This wasn't the best episode so far and next weeks doesn't look that good either

[Flyboy]

I personally found Dead Man Walking to be one of the best yet. Loved the Death plot and the characterisation of the team. Loved the way Martha got stroppy about Torchwood not sharing with UNIT, because frankly it calls some things into question. Back in the day, Torchwood answered to the Crown and the Crown alone. In theory, they still do, but they don't have the resources they did have. They are, technically, illegitimate, as unlike other Intelligence services there are no safe guards or legislations to monitor what they do.

They are, technically, answerable to UNIT, as Torchwood is the dirty little secret of a single sovereign nationstate where as UNIT is a legitimate organisation from a world body which has safe guards in place to prevent misuse. UNIT doesn't even know about Torchwood. It's just the British contingient that does. And thus, we can gather that they're "allowing" Torchwood to exist by not reporting them to Geneva. Although, because of Torchwood's unrestricted access, the balance of power and superiority is complex.

In actuality, UNIT HQ has "authority" over Torchwood as it is given legitimacy by the British Government, but the UK Contingient of UNIT, as a military organisation, is on par with Torchwood if we consider it a regular intelligence organisation. However in terms of exercisable power, I'd say Torchwood comes up trumps. All because they don't have any safe guards.

[Willow'sCat]

I thought Martha was only in two eps? Is she in three now? Jack didn't say bye bye to her in Dead Man Walking.

[Mr Prophet]

UNIT doesn't even know about Torchwood.

I find the concept that anyone doesn't know about Torchwood utterly unrealistic. When you're hitting the night shift workforce of a hospital with 'Torchwood, clear the building', it's time to face the fact that your secret identity is just not punching at Batman's weight.

[BruTak]

The way I see it, UNIT goes to Torchwood when they need something done "off the books" so to speak.

Plausible Deniability it's called.

"Torchwood? Oh they're a civillain agency, nothing to do with UNIT at all..."

[Catsitter]

I haven't seen the second part of the two-parter yet so I've quickly skipped past the last few posts for now.

The Adam episode was pretty blah, I thought, not very original and didn't make a whole lot of sense. As for them all having lost 2 days of their lives at the end and not knowing who Adam was, I guess Rhys would fill that in for them as soon as Gwen went home.

Reset - I was expecting this one to be really good because it was written by J C Wilsher, but I found it quite disappointing. I would have expected J C Wilsher to know that women of Martha's age are not allowed to be used as "healthy volunteers" for medical trials in case they get pregnant during the trial, but I wonder if he was told that it was necessary for the plot that he make that happen? And why on earth would the medical trials company have such a high security level that they are allowed to delete medical records? I can't see any reason why anybody would be allowed to do that as the most likely reason for doing it would be to cover something up, surely? And does the NHS not have backups of its records in case they get deleted? (My OH pointed out that there are paper copies of the records anyway!) I suppose I expected too much. I haven't seen Martha Jones in Dr Who but I wasn't particularly impressed by her in this.

[ShadowMaat]

I still say that it isn't Torchwood's existence that's a secret, it's what they do.

Wasn't overly impressed by the ep, but then, I tend not to be impressed by anything where Owen is central to the plot. I thought the... imagery was a little melodramatic.

Spoiler:

Death as a big scary skeleton? It works in Discworld, but here it felt a little silly. I'd have settled for Death as a big scary phobia, morphing into whatever scares people the most, but a skeleton? Really? Pfft!

Not sure what to make of all the stuff with the Weevils, either. They've expressed fear of Owen before. Were they picking up on things to come or was that meant to be something else entirely?

The glove? Disappointing. It also resurrects people, but in a different way? I dunno. On the one hand I suppose I'm glad they got it out of the way so we don't have it hanging over us anymore, but on the other hand, it was kinda lame. I kept waiting for Owen to break out in Mystery Script; very Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, IMO.

They aren't planning on actually killing Owen, right? Not in a gone forever kinda way? I don't like him very much but I can't imagine them getting rid of him, either.

How come Martha was spared? And how come she didn't make any "now I know how the Doctor must have felt" comments?

I hope we at least get to find out more about the Mystery Girl. My first reaction was, "She's a vampire!" but I think that's because she reminds me of similar Creepy Preternatural Little Girl characters I've seen before. One in Blade the Series, one in some other vampire series (I think) and one from the Dresden Files books (although she isn't a vamp). I actually wondered if she was the Faith from Gwen's story, but I guess they weren't going in that direction.

[LaCroix]

Shadow

Spoiler:

the little girl reminded me of Wolfram and Hart's conduit, season 3/4 IIRC.

[ShadowMaat]

OK, maybe that was the other vampire show.