Meta/review of season three of Torchwood.
Jul. 11th, 2009 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaselettTorchwood Children of Earth
Meta/Review.
Spoilers for all of Children of Earth so beware.
This is all completely my own perspective on the show and I know not everyone will agree with me, but I wanted to do this meta, so here it is, take from it what you will and feel free to argue with me.
It is in three sections, One: The Journey, Two; The Plot and Three; The Characters and Their Relationships.
Part One: The Journey Or How to deconstruct your own creation.
Children of Earth does one thing continuously throughout its five episode run, it takes each and everything that the fans expect to see away. In the end, only two things survive the cull, Jack Immortality and Torchwood’s ‘darker themes’ that the writers and producers are always going on about.
The things that are typically expected from a Torchwood episode are the following; The Rift, The SUV, The Hub, action centred around Cardiff, the team working together, Gwen’s stubbornness, a certain amount of self-awareness, humour/wit, heroic Jack; with Gwen by his side, Jack’s Immortality and darker themes than Doctor Who. Oh and rather distinctive dialogue, which I’ve seen described as ‘clunky’ a lot. There’s more little things too, but those are the main ones that come to mind.
In Children of Earth almost all of these things are either taken away or gradually phased out as you draw closer to Day Five.
Firstly, the alien threat, the 456, did not come through the Rift. The Rift is in fact barely mentioned at all apart from when Johnson etc talk about it being somehow connected to Jack’s immortality, which the fans know it isn’t.
Secondly, the SUV is stolen and never reappears. Yes I realise they were busy doing other things and had other things on their mind, but I had at least expected one further mention of the SUV, or for it’s theft to have some point in the plot.
Then, we have the 456’s first message, the distribution of which making it clear that whatever is coming, it’s not just going to effect Cardiff.
The Hub is then thusly blown sky high and the action, by Day Three, is almost solely London based.
That’s four things down, nine to go.
Jack’s Immortality is then threatened, but as the regular fans know, it isn’t a real threat, he’s a fact, a fixed point. There’s no getting rid of that one.
The team are separated and each work on their own for most of Day Two, but we get back to team work again in Day Three and Four, before that too vanishes, with Jack sending Gwen away to save Ianto’s family.
Heroic Jack comes next, as we learn about this awful thing he did in 1965 (it wasn’t so awful, but it’s sold to us as though we’re meant to think it is.) and in the end, he gives up, spending the whole of the first half of Day Five sitting in a cell being useless. His being the hero is then turned on its head and he saves the day but at a high personnel cost, oh and then he runs away.
Gwen is very rarely at Jack’s side in Children of Earth, we don’t get any of the moments like we did in ‘Sleeper’ or ‘Random Shoes’, in the end Gwen has very little to do with saving the day. She just runs away a lot and gets overly bitter (shall we blame Gwen’s hormones for all that?).
With Ianto’s death, Gwen’s stubborn bloody mindedness also dies, leaving her desolate and certain that they’ve already lost; though she comes back into the game a little towards the end.
That’s four down, one untouched and four left to discuss.
Okay, so the humour/wit. This particular part of the show typically comes from one of the following characters; Andy, Ianto, Owen or Rhys. Owen however is dead, so he can’t contribute this season and Andy offers the occasional comic relief moment whenever he appears (which isn’t often and he in fact offers the ONLY piece of humour in the whole of Day Five.).
Rhys has a few moments in the first four days, but most of that stems from his plot appointed position as ‘illustrator of the shows self awareness’.
This leaves almost all of the wit/humour to come from Ianto, which goes a way to explain why it isn’t in Day Five, because he’s dead. His very last public act in fact, is to make a witty comment, the last one of the series (Irony becomes the new thing in Day Five and mostly on the part of the politicians.).
Now the shows self awareness, I know what people reading this are thinking, what am I on right? Well, I’m talking about that thing that appeared in Season Two and made some of the issues that existed in Season One go away, best explain of what I’m talking about? The old woman in ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’, bloody Torchwood indeed.
It’s present in Children of Earth, if not to the degree it was in season two and it’s mostly sitting in Rhys’ court, oh and Ianto’s sister gets to say some bits too (‘you’re a civil servant, they invented weekends’ ‘we need his moth’ etc).
By Day Five however this is also gone (if you can find examples from Day Five PLEASE point them out to me, I would actually be hugely grateful.)
That leaves the dialogue characteristic of Torchwood and its dark themes.
It is unfortunately, very much dependent on the person just what they expect from the dialogue, but personally, I just didn’t see any of it in Day Five, maybe it was just because of how damn bleak it was. We had it before though, for example, when Jack and Ianto talk while Rhys is making dinner and in Day Four, Lois’s speech.
To me, personally, Day Five was not the Torchwood I know and love. It took dark and it ran and ran with it, dragging you to the point that all you could feel with empty, the only hope we were offered, the way that the day was saved, was a bitter pill.
Jack is, in the end, the hero, but once he’s walked through the brightly lit door even that vanishes.
So there, in the end, in the last moments of Children of Earth, we have a broken Gwen still standing more because she still has Rhys then anything else and only two pieces of the old Torchwood survive, Jack’s Immortality and the darkness.
This is where I admittedly, will probably lose you all. This part comes second because al lot of what I am going to say here then goes on to relate to what I aim to discuss in part three.
I going to say this now, because I know what people who read this are going to say, yes Ianto Jones was and will always be my favourite Torchwood Character, his death broke me, however, I also loved Jack and Gwen. I loved the show that we got for Day One-Three. I loved moment of Day Four and there are parts of Day Five that should NEVER be changed, because they worked and were damn good. But I am all too aware of how many threads were left dangling and how many decisions were made but not quite SOLD.
As I said before, there are things I personally came to expect from Torchwood, things that many of my friends who watch the show also expected. Yes there were things we didn’t agree on, I learned to love Gwen during season two, I have friends who continue to hate her; I am willing to see other pairings than the ones that are canon (Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys) or at least consider them and their merits, while others will refuse to see anything BUT those canon pairings.
Such is how TV shows are in the eyes of those who watch them. Everyone gets something of their own out of it.
So, that said and in the open, the following are my best attempt at a critical non-biased view point on the plot. Feel free to throw things at me and tell me I failed, I know it won’t be completely unbiased, I am human and I am still reeling more than a little.
Okay, Children of Earth, the plot is: Aliens who visited Earth, in particular Britain previously, have returned and they want more. The government is the government and does stupid and ethically questionable things in order to a. protect themselves and b. save the world, at whatever cost.
This in it’s self, could have worked without Torchwood, yeah, I did say you’d be wanting to throw things at me, but it’s true. You could have written the same thing but using a UNIT commander instead of Jack, but they didn’t. This had to be said first and openly, because that personally, was the main fault for me about Children of Earth, the fact that it could have been so easily interchanged.
It was however, one Captain Jack Harkness, man who can not die, who did the deed back in 1965, which means that the Torchwood team are going to be facing a battle for their lives and the government does their typically burnt offerings approach to covering their asses.
And the whole of the government side of the plot works magnificently, the writing is amazing and draws you right in, you can believe that it could happen. The only times it stumbles a little is the lengths taken to get Lois into certain situations, which are slightly more…drastic than needed.
The main example of this being when she lies and says that she’s in a relationship with Frobisher and he wants her with him, when all that needs to have been done is what happened before, when they took her previously. He is going to need both of his staff aids, especially under the circumstances; they didn’t need to sell that to us.
I am completely in awe of the balls it took to write that scene in Day Four, when they basically save their own families and casually dismiss 10% of Britain’s children by the reasoning that it’ll do them good to get rid of the lower, dumber kids. That was amazing writing and totally THERE.
I also am perfectly happy with the ending for Frobisher, he was headed there the whole time and it was the bravest thing, the best thing, for him to do. He saved his children and saved himself and his wife the pain of losing them. Yeah, in some ways, it’s cowardly, but put yourself in his position, it was either give up his girls to the 456 willing and live with that for the rest of his life and know that in doing so he had made the public actually trust in some manner, the government; OR tell his girls and the world what was really happening and see just have broken that leaves the world, more so even then it would have been with them not knowing the full details; OR do what he did.
Then we have the Torchwood side of the plot (with the third side being the bad guys themselves). This side is a little more patchy than the government’s, but it’s still amazing and it is this part of the plot that really broke people (including me).
There are scenes missing that would I hope plug some of the gaps (I say this going off the stills on the BBC website, some of which having backgrounds that I don’t remember seeing).
We get so much more of Ianto in this, it is that which makes losing him so heart breaking (one other thing as well – but that will be covered in part three – as will my one main issue with Ianto’s plot line and it isn’t his death). He was the most mysterious of the main characters left, we knew about Ianto as a part of Torchwood, but not all that much about Ianto the man. His family are important to the plot, providing motivation for Ianto and later a very broken Gwen who needs something to hold on to.
We get more of Jack’s past, both light and dark, in the form of the events of 1965 and his daughter and grandson. It is exactly what we need to get us to the end.
Gwen however gets Clem and her much needed case to work on.
All of these separate threads run together to make this part of the plot work.
Jack’s actions in 1965 and what they ultimately meant, as the reason that he is willing to sacrifice what he does in the end. The situation is in the end as much his fault as it is anyone of the government. He aided in the initial mistake, he gave the initial gift, it is Jack who in the end suffers the most for it, who saves the rest of the world from suffering the same.
It is clear, looking back on Children of Earth as a whole that it was planned to do exactly what it did. End Torchwood as we knew it. I’m not going to discuss possible reasons for this here, all I am going to say is that is what it did, slowly and surely.
There are issues with the Torchwood plot, with them not doing tests on Clem like they keep meaning to; the vagueness of the plan that leads Jack and Ianto to Thames house and their fate; the whole of the beginning of Day Five, though that is mostly just a sign of how bad times are for them. But ultimately it seems clear that Children of Earth did everything it was meant to do.
And finally the 456 themselves, the place where the plot is admittedly the weakest, but really, the 456 aren’t the real point of Children of Earth. Children of Earth is looking at humanity and its extremes, so it does work, even with the amount of CRACK that becomes the 456 and their reasons.
The issues with the 456 are many and numerous, most of the all being what we learn, finally, in Day Five, is the reason they want the kids. DRUGS. Though it does explain the vomiting and general behaviour. The 456 is a junkie race and they act just like junkies, if slightly more rational.
We never learn though, why they came initially though we do know why they picked Britain, thanks to that brilliantly written moment in Day Three, where they keep their agreement with Frobisher but also answer the question. Britain has no particular significance, it’s just where they ended up, they picked a location at random and then returned to it as any junkie would. You have a proven source, they have previously given you what you wanted; you think it’s very likely that they will ‘yield’ again, so that is where you go. (Yield was chosen I think, as the word they used for a number of reasons, not least of all how it relates to the fact that they are asking for DRUGS).
How is it, that suddenly, they are able to get control of Thames House? How do they know how to lock it down? How did they get the poison in? That whole situation hurt because nothing they had done previously had made you think they would do that, but those questions are still valid.
As are; how did the poison dissipate? How did people know it was safe to go in and get the bodies? How did they undo the lockdown? (also – the Hazmat gear was in the meeting room before…when the camera guy went in…) Enquiring minds want to know.
Their defeat in the end is a disappointment, more so because it isn’t actually clear what actually happened. Did the 456 all die? Or just the one who was on level 13? Or was it just injured enough to run away with it tail between its legs?
Will they be back?
Did it actually have to be children that had to be used to destroy them? They were connected to Clem…who was an adult, even if the initial connection was from childhood.
So many unanswered questions.
Finally the kids – the one thing that bothered me – in Day Five, when they were being taken away, none of them acted like kids would have. There was no screaming, no fighting, none of it. They were too calm, too behaved and I would have liked to have seen the kids fight against what was being done to them like they would have. Like Jack’s grandson did.
The plot works, at first it seems like it isn’t as tight as it could be, but once taken as a whole, it is paced exactly as it needs to be. We’re given exactly what we need to keep us watching (which makes it all the more painful for us in the end) to the very end and that is a sure sign of damn good writing.
There are two bits of the plot that could have been changed/altered and had the same if not a greater effect I think, personally, one was mentioned before; how Lois winds up with Frobisher at the talks.
The other is the Thames House scene. This is, I hold my hands up and openly admit, more as a result of getting fed up with characters I like dying in everything and the constant use of death for dramatic impact over other possibilities. I also hate the sentence ‘no one dies in sci-fi’ with a deep and intense hate these days, because it has become so overused, along with reset buttons, that the deaths are often no longer as meaningful as they should be.
Ianto did not have to be with Jack; yes it was in character, but we were given so little of the rest of the plan. I loved the death scene, it was amazing and heart breaking and exactly what it should have been, I’m not immensely happy it happened, more because of what a damned waste it was, but it was good and it worked.
I think, personally, that the end scene of Day Four, with Gwen going in to claim/see the bodies/fetch Jack was heart breaking, but it could have been even more so, if it had been Ianto and Gwen, if it was the team together facing the fact that they still want to fight the 456, they said they would and they will; BUT they are just now seeing, in reality, before the fight has even really begun, just what the cost will be. Just how many people will die awful, horrible, pointless deaths.
It worked though, as it was and I will be seeing those scenes over and over in my head for a good while yet.
I am also not going to touch the plot of the last ten minutes with a barge pole, because there were so many questions raised by it and it was the one part of the plot that really made Children of Earth the end of Torchwood as we knew it. It was the part that took away that last piece of hope that I had.
Right the final part of my meta/reaction and the one that I openly admit will be the most emotionally compromised part of this, because I got involved with these characters, I was invested in the show because of the characters.
I am only going to discuss the main three characters, because it is them that we get the most from; them that we the audience know the best, or so we thought.
Firstly, Gwen, because I am going to do this alphabetically.
Gwen, of the regulators, has the smallest progression, we learn the least about her, because we already knew Gwen. We’ve met her family, we’ve seen her ups and downs, she is the one we have been shown the most.
By the time Children of Earth begins, Gwen has worked though issues that a lot of people would take a lot longer to. In Exit Wounds, her best friend’s (her own words in COE when referring to Jack) brother invaded her safe place, the hub and murdered three of her friends (I count Jack, even if he did come back in the end). She was faced with the true reality of Torchwood and a God awful knowledge that she really isn’t safe, not even in the places she should be.
She has clearly worked though those issues (which are summed up with ‘I don’t think I can, not after this’) as she is happy and confident in the Hub, she isn’t looking around the corner expecting the next big bad to grab her up. She has come to terms with what life in Torchwood means and she’s content.
Until she discovers she’s pregnant that is, because from that point on everything pretty much goes to hell in a hand basket. She has to face the things that she thought she’d dealt with for a second time in a very short period. The hub is destroyed by a bomb that has been placed in Jack’s stomach, she gets attacked by people who by all rights should be on her side (and this totally conflicts with her morals). She’s fighting to stay alive while not knowing whether either of her remaining team mates are going to actually survive.
She deals very well with it all overall though, even as her own beliefs are overturned again and again (with the people she is meant to be able to rely on, who should be fighting on her side, constantly betraying her). She even takes the knowledge of what Jack did in 1965 with much better grace than she would have before. You can tell that she’s grown as a person.
Her breaking point however, is the death of Ianto (and, at least partly, Clem). Once she’s seen his body, once she knows he is dead despite having been doing the right thing, she breaks. Day Five, Gwen is a broken person, desperately clinging to whatever she’s thrown. That’s what makes her go to Rhiannon to help save the kids (though she wanted something small, the look on her face when she walks into that room says it all, she expected to be saving Ianto’s family, not fighting like she is forced to). She can’t stomach the thought of bringing a child into what she’s living through and she’s not the only person who would feel like that, but in the end she faces up to it, to the fact that what she’s living through is humanity.
Humanity is a dark and terrible as it is bright and shining and Gwen comes out of COE with that knowledge.
She comes back around by the end, when the worst doesn’t happen, but she is at a very different point than she was in Day One. The fact that she cries most of the way through the conversation with Jack at the end, needing him to stay but knowing he won’t, is painful and I will admit, certain bits of Day Five made me a little more hard to Gwen, but I still like her.
Under everything, she is still the same Gwen as always, she’s just a lot wiser.
Gwen’s relationships with everyone deepen throughout COE and I am certain that now, after all of that, she and Rhys will make it though just about anything together, but in the end that very fact raises some difficult issues that I hope RTD etc will put to rest in some way (more on this once I’ve done Ianto and Jack, because I think I need to explain this better).
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Ianto Jones, the man we knew the least about, who we learn the most about in COE and it is heart breaking.
Ianto up to COE has been building up to the point he is at at the beginning of Day One, so uncertain of what it is he and Jack are doing, wanting confirmation that he isn’t alone in it.
I loved his relationship with his sister and her family. I loved the dynamic and the way that it played out; it is here however that I also have the biggest issue in the end, thanks to one throw away line in Day Five.
Rhiannon loves her brother and he loves her, I have no issues with the things mentioned about his relationship with his father (It wasn’t abusive, if I see that appearing in fics I will not be best impressed.), I loved the coming out scene (all of it, what’s said in words and what’s said in body language). In that moment Ianto takes a very important step towards accepting what he has with Jack, because he finally says it out loud, finally admits it to himself.
He comes to terms with a lot of things in COE, his place in Jack’s life and what it really means to be in love with a man who will never die, who will never age.
He is even utterly content (even if he didn’t get sex) for about an hour, which makes it all the more painful when he dies. Unlike Gwen and Jack, Ianto in canon hasn’t had all that much of that, he’s been on uncertain ground and he always seemed to know it.
We learn so much about the man who is Ianto Jones, finally get to see him beyond his job and it explains so much. He is just as smart and brave as the other two, just in his own way and like Gwen he spends the whole of COE obeying his own morals. More than that we are made painfully aware of just how much potential he has, only to have it all taken away in one heart wrenchingly painful moment.
His death was played brilliantly (and with so much that could be read/inferred from the exchange), and it hurts, when he follows ‘I Love You’ with ‘Hey, it was good wasn’t it’. That and the fact that even as Jack swears he’ll always remember him, Ianto knows the truth.
Up to that point of COE I adored everything they did with Ianto, his journey, cut short just as he got to where he deserved to be and then I saw Day Five.
After Gwen tells Rhiannon that Ianto’s dead and they have that whole scene about Gwen knowing Ianto and then it comes. I forgave the turn with Johnny from his moment in Day Two when he points out that he, Rhiannon and the kids are all Ianto’s got, to him asking about his bloody car. It’s his reaction to the situation, he’s a bloke’s bloke and he is not going to shown his pain.
Being told that Ianto lied about who his father was, being told that the pride with which he made that comment in ‘Something Borrowed’, was a piece of old shit that Ianto fed people, that it means that if you believed that you never knew him at all, that was a kick in a painful place. Not only that, it effectively reverses half of the development of Ianto’s character in COE. He lied to Jack, fed him a piece of shit, but he says, in Day Four, that he’s told Jack everything; that hurts.
It makes it impossible to look at what seems to have been Ianto finally finding his place in his relationship, in finally being able to admit what it is, in telling Jack he loved him, in the same light.
It paints Ianto as a pretender, in every way, not only has he only just come clean about how he feels and dealt with it, but he’s also been lying to them while claiming to be the open one in the relationship. Yeah I know, they have a normal relationship, there are things he won’t have told Jack, but that there is a very important thing that he lied about.
If there’s one thing that we’re shown in COE, and that it seemed we’d been shown in ‘Something Borrowed’, it is that Ianto is who he is because of his father. A father he was proud of, or seemed to be; only apparently that was a lie.
It is that one line that I dislike the most in all of COE, besides the last ten minutes.
I know that it is Rhiannon acting out because of her grief. Ianto’s never really told her anything, but here’s this woman she’s never met before, telling her that she knew Ianto, like Rhiannon felt she didn’t any more, but that line is a killer.
I understand why it’s there, but I doubt I will ever like it.
/edit: This is me feeling the need to further explain why I have issues with it - I know it's all together possible that Ianto has since come clean with Jack regarding this (as it's canon - though I am still debating how Rhiannon meant what she said) but it's still one of those things that more than anything, I wish if it had to be said, had been said while ianto was still alive, so he could defend/explain himself. Plus, that was a really huge punch in the gut for poor Gwen.
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Jack Harkness has yet another skeleton fall out of his closet and this one bites him in the arse worse than any of the other ever could.
Though Day One to Three, Jack is exactly the man we expect him to be, self sacrificing, heroic and undying. Yeah, he’s a bit of an ass to Ianto, but that seems to be more because he’s not certain about what it is exactly that has Ianto so bothered and he doesn’t know how to find out without pushing buttons that he really doesn’t want to push.
He’s happy with their relationship. He knows what it is and thinks Ianto should as well. Jack is an idiot, as always when it comes to the feelings of those closest to him.
Even once Day Four comes around, he is still Jack Harkness as we know him, yes once upon a time he did a bad questionable thing, but he was a different person, more like the man we met at the beginning of season one.
He was facing eternity unable to die, he’d been abandoned by the Doctor, the Jack who lived in 1965 was a very broken, damaged man and who was spending life times waiting. It’s no wonder they wanted him.
By COE time he has had his reconciliation with the Doctor, a few times over, he has finally stopped not caring. This Jack knows what he did and he will do whatever he needs to do to fix it.
Day Four Jack, with the confrontation with Ianto (which, like so many bits of COE, was an emotional ride) he has clearly had enough of both the situation he’s found himself in and Ianto’s timing (which sucked more than a little but thank god we got that at least). He gives Ianto something back though, makes it clear there’s a reason why he’s been acting like he has and Ianto pulls back, from that point on until his dying moments, Ianto is strictly professional around Jack, just as we had come to expect.
Jack reaction to Ianto death is emotionally wrenching and an undoubtably purposeful echo back to Jack’s deaths earlier (Ianto taking Jack in his arms after Clem shoots him, Ianto’s screaming denial in Day One as Jack forces him onto the lift), making it all the more gut wrenching.
Ianto is always watching Jack die and having to wait for him to come back, but he does, he is always there, unless otherwise incapable, when Jack revives.
Now its Jack’s turn to watch Ianto die, only, unlike Jack, Ianto can only die the once. No matter how long Jack stays, waiting, after Ianto passes, he is never going to come back.
And that is what breaks Jack.
He knew undoubtedly, on some level, that Ianto loved him, but until Ianto says it, as he lies dying in Jack’s arms, it has been something that he could avoid facing. He could shield himself from the knowledge that every time he died he hurting Ianto, even as he came back to life.
Jack, faced with the same thing that Ianto has had to live through on countless occasions by now, breaks because he never wanted this. He was never meant to be holding a young Ianto while he died in a way that could have been prevented.
And for the first time in a very long time, Jack goes very willingly into the arms of death, not because of guilt, but because at that moment he wants nothing more than for it to be over.
This goes a long way to explaining the opening of Day Five, where Jack is so clearly done. It was kinda a toss up as to whether he would break and just give in, or whether he would go vengeful god. It would have been nice to see the later, but the decision was clearly made to have Jack echo what the audience would be feeling, so broken Jack we got.
The rest of Day Five (up to his walking through the door of shiny light) is all about Jack making a choice, deciding, even in the face of what he’s already lost, that he is willing to sacrifice both his grandson, who he adores and his relationship with his daughter, if it means that it’s over. The 456 are gone, the children are safe and Jack, the one who is responsible in many ways for the whole situation, is the one who suffers the most.
He did make the right decision, one child for all of the children, even if it forced him to go against the philosophy that he quoted only the day before. It was horrific and I may have spent the whole of that scene wincing and hiding behind my hand so I didn’t have to watch that poor boy melt away, but it was the only choice.
The end though, what Jack does afterwards, is the worst part of it all and it ended up making me completely despise Jack during the end scene.
Jack, the man who reshaped Torchwood in honour of the Doctor, the man who has always faced up to his responsibilities since he returned from his time with The Master, who had finally stopped running, runs away.
He ran away from the guilt, from the knowledge and constant reminders of what he lost and what he had sacrificed; he cheapened Ianto and Stephen’s deaths because suddenly he’s backslid so far that he can’t even try to do something to make their deaths worth it.
He doesn’t even try to redeem himself for the sins he sees painted on his soul, he just runs, like somehow that is going to help, despite the fact that this is a lesson he has already learned, multiple times. He gives up on making amends, on doing everything he can to make sure that it doesn’t ever happen again.
And that really is the death of Torchwood as we knew it.
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End notes – relating to previous comments regarding Gwen and Rhys’s relationship and how while it’s a fantastic thing, in the face of the death of one half of one of the few well written functioning gay couples on TV, will bring a lot of flak the production team’s way.
I see the issues, and it’s annoying, but it isn’t, I hope, purposefully done. The production team haven’t set out to show that the heterosexual woman, who is basically in the end, the only one of the team left standing, is the best thing in the world with her good heterosexual marriage and the baby on the way while the gay couple were bad and never going to work and one of them had to die so the other one could be incredibly weak and run away in the face of his man!pain.
So yes – it’s there, but no, I am not going to yell and curse at anyone about it.
I am also very interested to see what the Torchwood books coming out in october are like, as they have to be set in the point between s2 and s3 whihc means they can't progress the characters beyond where they are at the beginning of COE, so we will never get to see where Jack and Ianto would have gone next, with their relationship better defined.
This has been my, Weaselett’s own opinion, no one else’s, you all have the right to agree or disagree with me and I will respect that.
I will however, delete any comments that start to put blame solely on a particular person’s shoulders, or is hateful towards any of the people involved in making torchwood.
Meta/Review.
Spoilers for all of Children of Earth so beware.
This is all completely my own perspective on the show and I know not everyone will agree with me, but I wanted to do this meta, so here it is, take from it what you will and feel free to argue with me.
It is in three sections, One: The Journey, Two; The Plot and Three; The Characters and Their Relationships.
Part One: The Journey Or How to deconstruct your own creation.
Children of Earth does one thing continuously throughout its five episode run, it takes each and everything that the fans expect to see away. In the end, only two things survive the cull, Jack Immortality and Torchwood’s ‘darker themes’ that the writers and producers are always going on about.
The things that are typically expected from a Torchwood episode are the following; The Rift, The SUV, The Hub, action centred around Cardiff, the team working together, Gwen’s stubbornness, a certain amount of self-awareness, humour/wit, heroic Jack; with Gwen by his side, Jack’s Immortality and darker themes than Doctor Who. Oh and rather distinctive dialogue, which I’ve seen described as ‘clunky’ a lot. There’s more little things too, but those are the main ones that come to mind.
In Children of Earth almost all of these things are either taken away or gradually phased out as you draw closer to Day Five.
Firstly, the alien threat, the 456, did not come through the Rift. The Rift is in fact barely mentioned at all apart from when Johnson etc talk about it being somehow connected to Jack’s immortality, which the fans know it isn’t.
Secondly, the SUV is stolen and never reappears. Yes I realise they were busy doing other things and had other things on their mind, but I had at least expected one further mention of the SUV, or for it’s theft to have some point in the plot.
Then, we have the 456’s first message, the distribution of which making it clear that whatever is coming, it’s not just going to effect Cardiff.
The Hub is then thusly blown sky high and the action, by Day Three, is almost solely London based.
That’s four things down, nine to go.
Jack’s Immortality is then threatened, but as the regular fans know, it isn’t a real threat, he’s a fact, a fixed point. There’s no getting rid of that one.
The team are separated and each work on their own for most of Day Two, but we get back to team work again in Day Three and Four, before that too vanishes, with Jack sending Gwen away to save Ianto’s family.
Heroic Jack comes next, as we learn about this awful thing he did in 1965 (it wasn’t so awful, but it’s sold to us as though we’re meant to think it is.) and in the end, he gives up, spending the whole of the first half of Day Five sitting in a cell being useless. His being the hero is then turned on its head and he saves the day but at a high personnel cost, oh and then he runs away.
Gwen is very rarely at Jack’s side in Children of Earth, we don’t get any of the moments like we did in ‘Sleeper’ or ‘Random Shoes’, in the end Gwen has very little to do with saving the day. She just runs away a lot and gets overly bitter (shall we blame Gwen’s hormones for all that?).
With Ianto’s death, Gwen’s stubborn bloody mindedness also dies, leaving her desolate and certain that they’ve already lost; though she comes back into the game a little towards the end.
That’s four down, one untouched and four left to discuss.
Okay, so the humour/wit. This particular part of the show typically comes from one of the following characters; Andy, Ianto, Owen or Rhys. Owen however is dead, so he can’t contribute this season and Andy offers the occasional comic relief moment whenever he appears (which isn’t often and he in fact offers the ONLY piece of humour in the whole of Day Five.).
Rhys has a few moments in the first four days, but most of that stems from his plot appointed position as ‘illustrator of the shows self awareness’.
This leaves almost all of the wit/humour to come from Ianto, which goes a way to explain why it isn’t in Day Five, because he’s dead. His very last public act in fact, is to make a witty comment, the last one of the series (Irony becomes the new thing in Day Five and mostly on the part of the politicians.).
Now the shows self awareness, I know what people reading this are thinking, what am I on right? Well, I’m talking about that thing that appeared in Season Two and made some of the issues that existed in Season One go away, best explain of what I’m talking about? The old woman in ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’, bloody Torchwood indeed.
It’s present in Children of Earth, if not to the degree it was in season two and it’s mostly sitting in Rhys’ court, oh and Ianto’s sister gets to say some bits too (‘you’re a civil servant, they invented weekends’ ‘we need his moth’ etc).
By Day Five however this is also gone (if you can find examples from Day Five PLEASE point them out to me, I would actually be hugely grateful.)
That leaves the dialogue characteristic of Torchwood and its dark themes.
It is unfortunately, very much dependent on the person just what they expect from the dialogue, but personally, I just didn’t see any of it in Day Five, maybe it was just because of how damn bleak it was. We had it before though, for example, when Jack and Ianto talk while Rhys is making dinner and in Day Four, Lois’s speech.
To me, personally, Day Five was not the Torchwood I know and love. It took dark and it ran and ran with it, dragging you to the point that all you could feel with empty, the only hope we were offered, the way that the day was saved, was a bitter pill.
Jack is, in the end, the hero, but once he’s walked through the brightly lit door even that vanishes.
So there, in the end, in the last moments of Children of Earth, we have a broken Gwen still standing more because she still has Rhys then anything else and only two pieces of the old Torchwood survive, Jack’s Immortality and the darkness.
This is where I admittedly, will probably lose you all. This part comes second because al lot of what I am going to say here then goes on to relate to what I aim to discuss in part three.
I going to say this now, because I know what people who read this are going to say, yes Ianto Jones was and will always be my favourite Torchwood Character, his death broke me, however, I also loved Jack and Gwen. I loved the show that we got for Day One-Three. I loved moment of Day Four and there are parts of Day Five that should NEVER be changed, because they worked and were damn good. But I am all too aware of how many threads were left dangling and how many decisions were made but not quite SOLD.
As I said before, there are things I personally came to expect from Torchwood, things that many of my friends who watch the show also expected. Yes there were things we didn’t agree on, I learned to love Gwen during season two, I have friends who continue to hate her; I am willing to see other pairings than the ones that are canon (Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys) or at least consider them and their merits, while others will refuse to see anything BUT those canon pairings.
Such is how TV shows are in the eyes of those who watch them. Everyone gets something of their own out of it.
So, that said and in the open, the following are my best attempt at a critical non-biased view point on the plot. Feel free to throw things at me and tell me I failed, I know it won’t be completely unbiased, I am human and I am still reeling more than a little.
Okay, Children of Earth, the plot is: Aliens who visited Earth, in particular Britain previously, have returned and they want more. The government is the government and does stupid and ethically questionable things in order to a. protect themselves and b. save the world, at whatever cost.
This in it’s self, could have worked without Torchwood, yeah, I did say you’d be wanting to throw things at me, but it’s true. You could have written the same thing but using a UNIT commander instead of Jack, but they didn’t. This had to be said first and openly, because that personally, was the main fault for me about Children of Earth, the fact that it could have been so easily interchanged.
It was however, one Captain Jack Harkness, man who can not die, who did the deed back in 1965, which means that the Torchwood team are going to be facing a battle for their lives and the government does their typically burnt offerings approach to covering their asses.
And the whole of the government side of the plot works magnificently, the writing is amazing and draws you right in, you can believe that it could happen. The only times it stumbles a little is the lengths taken to get Lois into certain situations, which are slightly more…drastic than needed.
The main example of this being when she lies and says that she’s in a relationship with Frobisher and he wants her with him, when all that needs to have been done is what happened before, when they took her previously. He is going to need both of his staff aids, especially under the circumstances; they didn’t need to sell that to us.
I am completely in awe of the balls it took to write that scene in Day Four, when they basically save their own families and casually dismiss 10% of Britain’s children by the reasoning that it’ll do them good to get rid of the lower, dumber kids. That was amazing writing and totally THERE.
I also am perfectly happy with the ending for Frobisher, he was headed there the whole time and it was the bravest thing, the best thing, for him to do. He saved his children and saved himself and his wife the pain of losing them. Yeah, in some ways, it’s cowardly, but put yourself in his position, it was either give up his girls to the 456 willing and live with that for the rest of his life and know that in doing so he had made the public actually trust in some manner, the government; OR tell his girls and the world what was really happening and see just have broken that leaves the world, more so even then it would have been with them not knowing the full details; OR do what he did.
Then we have the Torchwood side of the plot (with the third side being the bad guys themselves). This side is a little more patchy than the government’s, but it’s still amazing and it is this part of the plot that really broke people (including me).
There are scenes missing that would I hope plug some of the gaps (I say this going off the stills on the BBC website, some of which having backgrounds that I don’t remember seeing).
We get so much more of Ianto in this, it is that which makes losing him so heart breaking (one other thing as well – but that will be covered in part three – as will my one main issue with Ianto’s plot line and it isn’t his death). He was the most mysterious of the main characters left, we knew about Ianto as a part of Torchwood, but not all that much about Ianto the man. His family are important to the plot, providing motivation for Ianto and later a very broken Gwen who needs something to hold on to.
We get more of Jack’s past, both light and dark, in the form of the events of 1965 and his daughter and grandson. It is exactly what we need to get us to the end.
Gwen however gets Clem and her much needed case to work on.
All of these separate threads run together to make this part of the plot work.
Jack’s actions in 1965 and what they ultimately meant, as the reason that he is willing to sacrifice what he does in the end. The situation is in the end as much his fault as it is anyone of the government. He aided in the initial mistake, he gave the initial gift, it is Jack who in the end suffers the most for it, who saves the rest of the world from suffering the same.
It is clear, looking back on Children of Earth as a whole that it was planned to do exactly what it did. End Torchwood as we knew it. I’m not going to discuss possible reasons for this here, all I am going to say is that is what it did, slowly and surely.
There are issues with the Torchwood plot, with them not doing tests on Clem like they keep meaning to; the vagueness of the plan that leads Jack and Ianto to Thames house and their fate; the whole of the beginning of Day Five, though that is mostly just a sign of how bad times are for them. But ultimately it seems clear that Children of Earth did everything it was meant to do.
And finally the 456 themselves, the place where the plot is admittedly the weakest, but really, the 456 aren’t the real point of Children of Earth. Children of Earth is looking at humanity and its extremes, so it does work, even with the amount of CRACK that becomes the 456 and their reasons.
The issues with the 456 are many and numerous, most of the all being what we learn, finally, in Day Five, is the reason they want the kids. DRUGS. Though it does explain the vomiting and general behaviour. The 456 is a junkie race and they act just like junkies, if slightly more rational.
We never learn though, why they came initially though we do know why they picked Britain, thanks to that brilliantly written moment in Day Three, where they keep their agreement with Frobisher but also answer the question. Britain has no particular significance, it’s just where they ended up, they picked a location at random and then returned to it as any junkie would. You have a proven source, they have previously given you what you wanted; you think it’s very likely that they will ‘yield’ again, so that is where you go. (Yield was chosen I think, as the word they used for a number of reasons, not least of all how it relates to the fact that they are asking for DRUGS).
How is it, that suddenly, they are able to get control of Thames House? How do they know how to lock it down? How did they get the poison in? That whole situation hurt because nothing they had done previously had made you think they would do that, but those questions are still valid.
As are; how did the poison dissipate? How did people know it was safe to go in and get the bodies? How did they undo the lockdown? (also – the Hazmat gear was in the meeting room before…when the camera guy went in…) Enquiring minds want to know.
Their defeat in the end is a disappointment, more so because it isn’t actually clear what actually happened. Did the 456 all die? Or just the one who was on level 13? Or was it just injured enough to run away with it tail between its legs?
Will they be back?
Did it actually have to be children that had to be used to destroy them? They were connected to Clem…who was an adult, even if the initial connection was from childhood.
So many unanswered questions.
Finally the kids – the one thing that bothered me – in Day Five, when they were being taken away, none of them acted like kids would have. There was no screaming, no fighting, none of it. They were too calm, too behaved and I would have liked to have seen the kids fight against what was being done to them like they would have. Like Jack’s grandson did.
The plot works, at first it seems like it isn’t as tight as it could be, but once taken as a whole, it is paced exactly as it needs to be. We’re given exactly what we need to keep us watching (which makes it all the more painful for us in the end) to the very end and that is a sure sign of damn good writing.
There are two bits of the plot that could have been changed/altered and had the same if not a greater effect I think, personally, one was mentioned before; how Lois winds up with Frobisher at the talks.
The other is the Thames House scene. This is, I hold my hands up and openly admit, more as a result of getting fed up with characters I like dying in everything and the constant use of death for dramatic impact over other possibilities. I also hate the sentence ‘no one dies in sci-fi’ with a deep and intense hate these days, because it has become so overused, along with reset buttons, that the deaths are often no longer as meaningful as they should be.
Ianto did not have to be with Jack; yes it was in character, but we were given so little of the rest of the plan. I loved the death scene, it was amazing and heart breaking and exactly what it should have been, I’m not immensely happy it happened, more because of what a damned waste it was, but it was good and it worked.
I think, personally, that the end scene of Day Four, with Gwen going in to claim/see the bodies/fetch Jack was heart breaking, but it could have been even more so, if it had been Ianto and Gwen, if it was the team together facing the fact that they still want to fight the 456, they said they would and they will; BUT they are just now seeing, in reality, before the fight has even really begun, just what the cost will be. Just how many people will die awful, horrible, pointless deaths.
It worked though, as it was and I will be seeing those scenes over and over in my head for a good while yet.
I am also not going to touch the plot of the last ten minutes with a barge pole, because there were so many questions raised by it and it was the one part of the plot that really made Children of Earth the end of Torchwood as we knew it. It was the part that took away that last piece of hope that I had.
Right the final part of my meta/reaction and the one that I openly admit will be the most emotionally compromised part of this, because I got involved with these characters, I was invested in the show because of the characters.
I am only going to discuss the main three characters, because it is them that we get the most from; them that we the audience know the best, or so we thought.
Firstly, Gwen, because I am going to do this alphabetically.
Gwen, of the regulators, has the smallest progression, we learn the least about her, because we already knew Gwen. We’ve met her family, we’ve seen her ups and downs, she is the one we have been shown the most.
By the time Children of Earth begins, Gwen has worked though issues that a lot of people would take a lot longer to. In Exit Wounds, her best friend’s (her own words in COE when referring to Jack) brother invaded her safe place, the hub and murdered three of her friends (I count Jack, even if he did come back in the end). She was faced with the true reality of Torchwood and a God awful knowledge that she really isn’t safe, not even in the places she should be.
She has clearly worked though those issues (which are summed up with ‘I don’t think I can, not after this’) as she is happy and confident in the Hub, she isn’t looking around the corner expecting the next big bad to grab her up. She has come to terms with what life in Torchwood means and she’s content.
Until she discovers she’s pregnant that is, because from that point on everything pretty much goes to hell in a hand basket. She has to face the things that she thought she’d dealt with for a second time in a very short period. The hub is destroyed by a bomb that has been placed in Jack’s stomach, she gets attacked by people who by all rights should be on her side (and this totally conflicts with her morals). She’s fighting to stay alive while not knowing whether either of her remaining team mates are going to actually survive.
She deals very well with it all overall though, even as her own beliefs are overturned again and again (with the people she is meant to be able to rely on, who should be fighting on her side, constantly betraying her). She even takes the knowledge of what Jack did in 1965 with much better grace than she would have before. You can tell that she’s grown as a person.
Her breaking point however, is the death of Ianto (and, at least partly, Clem). Once she’s seen his body, once she knows he is dead despite having been doing the right thing, she breaks. Day Five, Gwen is a broken person, desperately clinging to whatever she’s thrown. That’s what makes her go to Rhiannon to help save the kids (though she wanted something small, the look on her face when she walks into that room says it all, she expected to be saving Ianto’s family, not fighting like she is forced to). She can’t stomach the thought of bringing a child into what she’s living through and she’s not the only person who would feel like that, but in the end she faces up to it, to the fact that what she’s living through is humanity.
Humanity is a dark and terrible as it is bright and shining and Gwen comes out of COE with that knowledge.
She comes back around by the end, when the worst doesn’t happen, but she is at a very different point than she was in Day One. The fact that she cries most of the way through the conversation with Jack at the end, needing him to stay but knowing he won’t, is painful and I will admit, certain bits of Day Five made me a little more hard to Gwen, but I still like her.
Under everything, she is still the same Gwen as always, she’s just a lot wiser.
Gwen’s relationships with everyone deepen throughout COE and I am certain that now, after all of that, she and Rhys will make it though just about anything together, but in the end that very fact raises some difficult issues that I hope RTD etc will put to rest in some way (more on this once I’ve done Ianto and Jack, because I think I need to explain this better).
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Ianto Jones, the man we knew the least about, who we learn the most about in COE and it is heart breaking.
Ianto up to COE has been building up to the point he is at at the beginning of Day One, so uncertain of what it is he and Jack are doing, wanting confirmation that he isn’t alone in it.
I loved his relationship with his sister and her family. I loved the dynamic and the way that it played out; it is here however that I also have the biggest issue in the end, thanks to one throw away line in Day Five.
Rhiannon loves her brother and he loves her, I have no issues with the things mentioned about his relationship with his father (It wasn’t abusive, if I see that appearing in fics I will not be best impressed.), I loved the coming out scene (all of it, what’s said in words and what’s said in body language). In that moment Ianto takes a very important step towards accepting what he has with Jack, because he finally says it out loud, finally admits it to himself.
He comes to terms with a lot of things in COE, his place in Jack’s life and what it really means to be in love with a man who will never die, who will never age.
He is even utterly content (even if he didn’t get sex) for about an hour, which makes it all the more painful when he dies. Unlike Gwen and Jack, Ianto in canon hasn’t had all that much of that, he’s been on uncertain ground and he always seemed to know it.
We learn so much about the man who is Ianto Jones, finally get to see him beyond his job and it explains so much. He is just as smart and brave as the other two, just in his own way and like Gwen he spends the whole of COE obeying his own morals. More than that we are made painfully aware of just how much potential he has, only to have it all taken away in one heart wrenchingly painful moment.
His death was played brilliantly (and with so much that could be read/inferred from the exchange), and it hurts, when he follows ‘I Love You’ with ‘Hey, it was good wasn’t it’. That and the fact that even as Jack swears he’ll always remember him, Ianto knows the truth.
Up to that point of COE I adored everything they did with Ianto, his journey, cut short just as he got to where he deserved to be and then I saw Day Five.
After Gwen tells Rhiannon that Ianto’s dead and they have that whole scene about Gwen knowing Ianto and then it comes. I forgave the turn with Johnny from his moment in Day Two when he points out that he, Rhiannon and the kids are all Ianto’s got, to him asking about his bloody car. It’s his reaction to the situation, he’s a bloke’s bloke and he is not going to shown his pain.
Being told that Ianto lied about who his father was, being told that the pride with which he made that comment in ‘Something Borrowed’, was a piece of old shit that Ianto fed people, that it means that if you believed that you never knew him at all, that was a kick in a painful place. Not only that, it effectively reverses half of the development of Ianto’s character in COE. He lied to Jack, fed him a piece of shit, but he says, in Day Four, that he’s told Jack everything; that hurts.
It makes it impossible to look at what seems to have been Ianto finally finding his place in his relationship, in finally being able to admit what it is, in telling Jack he loved him, in the same light.
It paints Ianto as a pretender, in every way, not only has he only just come clean about how he feels and dealt with it, but he’s also been lying to them while claiming to be the open one in the relationship. Yeah I know, they have a normal relationship, there are things he won’t have told Jack, but that there is a very important thing that he lied about.
If there’s one thing that we’re shown in COE, and that it seemed we’d been shown in ‘Something Borrowed’, it is that Ianto is who he is because of his father. A father he was proud of, or seemed to be; only apparently that was a lie.
It is that one line that I dislike the most in all of COE, besides the last ten minutes.
I know that it is Rhiannon acting out because of her grief. Ianto’s never really told her anything, but here’s this woman she’s never met before, telling her that she knew Ianto, like Rhiannon felt she didn’t any more, but that line is a killer.
I understand why it’s there, but I doubt I will ever like it.
/edit: This is me feeling the need to further explain why I have issues with it - I know it's all together possible that Ianto has since come clean with Jack regarding this (as it's canon - though I am still debating how Rhiannon meant what she said) but it's still one of those things that more than anything, I wish if it had to be said, had been said while ianto was still alive, so he could defend/explain himself. Plus, that was a really huge punch in the gut for poor Gwen.
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Jack Harkness has yet another skeleton fall out of his closet and this one bites him in the arse worse than any of the other ever could.
Though Day One to Three, Jack is exactly the man we expect him to be, self sacrificing, heroic and undying. Yeah, he’s a bit of an ass to Ianto, but that seems to be more because he’s not certain about what it is exactly that has Ianto so bothered and he doesn’t know how to find out without pushing buttons that he really doesn’t want to push.
He’s happy with their relationship. He knows what it is and thinks Ianto should as well. Jack is an idiot, as always when it comes to the feelings of those closest to him.
Even once Day Four comes around, he is still Jack Harkness as we know him, yes once upon a time he did a bad questionable thing, but he was a different person, more like the man we met at the beginning of season one.
He was facing eternity unable to die, he’d been abandoned by the Doctor, the Jack who lived in 1965 was a very broken, damaged man and who was spending life times waiting. It’s no wonder they wanted him.
By COE time he has had his reconciliation with the Doctor, a few times over, he has finally stopped not caring. This Jack knows what he did and he will do whatever he needs to do to fix it.
Day Four Jack, with the confrontation with Ianto (which, like so many bits of COE, was an emotional ride) he has clearly had enough of both the situation he’s found himself in and Ianto’s timing (which sucked more than a little but thank god we got that at least). He gives Ianto something back though, makes it clear there’s a reason why he’s been acting like he has and Ianto pulls back, from that point on until his dying moments, Ianto is strictly professional around Jack, just as we had come to expect.
Jack reaction to Ianto death is emotionally wrenching and an undoubtably purposeful echo back to Jack’s deaths earlier (Ianto taking Jack in his arms after Clem shoots him, Ianto’s screaming denial in Day One as Jack forces him onto the lift), making it all the more gut wrenching.
Ianto is always watching Jack die and having to wait for him to come back, but he does, he is always there, unless otherwise incapable, when Jack revives.
Now its Jack’s turn to watch Ianto die, only, unlike Jack, Ianto can only die the once. No matter how long Jack stays, waiting, after Ianto passes, he is never going to come back.
And that is what breaks Jack.
He knew undoubtedly, on some level, that Ianto loved him, but until Ianto says it, as he lies dying in Jack’s arms, it has been something that he could avoid facing. He could shield himself from the knowledge that every time he died he hurting Ianto, even as he came back to life.
Jack, faced with the same thing that Ianto has had to live through on countless occasions by now, breaks because he never wanted this. He was never meant to be holding a young Ianto while he died in a way that could have been prevented.
And for the first time in a very long time, Jack goes very willingly into the arms of death, not because of guilt, but because at that moment he wants nothing more than for it to be over.
This goes a long way to explaining the opening of Day Five, where Jack is so clearly done. It was kinda a toss up as to whether he would break and just give in, or whether he would go vengeful god. It would have been nice to see the later, but the decision was clearly made to have Jack echo what the audience would be feeling, so broken Jack we got.
The rest of Day Five (up to his walking through the door of shiny light) is all about Jack making a choice, deciding, even in the face of what he’s already lost, that he is willing to sacrifice both his grandson, who he adores and his relationship with his daughter, if it means that it’s over. The 456 are gone, the children are safe and Jack, the one who is responsible in many ways for the whole situation, is the one who suffers the most.
He did make the right decision, one child for all of the children, even if it forced him to go against the philosophy that he quoted only the day before. It was horrific and I may have spent the whole of that scene wincing and hiding behind my hand so I didn’t have to watch that poor boy melt away, but it was the only choice.
The end though, what Jack does afterwards, is the worst part of it all and it ended up making me completely despise Jack during the end scene.
Jack, the man who reshaped Torchwood in honour of the Doctor, the man who has always faced up to his responsibilities since he returned from his time with The Master, who had finally stopped running, runs away.
He ran away from the guilt, from the knowledge and constant reminders of what he lost and what he had sacrificed; he cheapened Ianto and Stephen’s deaths because suddenly he’s backslid so far that he can’t even try to do something to make their deaths worth it.
He doesn’t even try to redeem himself for the sins he sees painted on his soul, he just runs, like somehow that is going to help, despite the fact that this is a lesson he has already learned, multiple times. He gives up on making amends, on doing everything he can to make sure that it doesn’t ever happen again.
And that really is the death of Torchwood as we knew it.
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End notes – relating to previous comments regarding Gwen and Rhys’s relationship and how while it’s a fantastic thing, in the face of the death of one half of one of the few well written functioning gay couples on TV, will bring a lot of flak the production team’s way.
I see the issues, and it’s annoying, but it isn’t, I hope, purposefully done. The production team haven’t set out to show that the heterosexual woman, who is basically in the end, the only one of the team left standing, is the best thing in the world with her good heterosexual marriage and the baby on the way while the gay couple were bad and never going to work and one of them had to die so the other one could be incredibly weak and run away in the face of his man!pain.
So yes – it’s there, but no, I am not going to yell and curse at anyone about it.
I am also very interested to see what the Torchwood books coming out in october are like, as they have to be set in the point between s2 and s3 whihc means they can't progress the characters beyond where they are at the beginning of COE, so we will never get to see where Jack and Ianto would have gone next, with their relationship better defined.
This has been my, Weaselett’s own opinion, no one else’s, you all have the right to agree or disagree with me and I will respect that.
I will however, delete any comments that start to put blame solely on a particular person’s shoulders, or is hateful towards any of the people involved in making torchwood.
