End of Torchwood

[redfiona99]

Okay, so it wasn't as good as 'Captain Jack Harkness', but very few things are. I didn't like Abaddon, he was bad CGI, and looked like the balrog's grumpy cousin woken up early on a weekend. Would several hundred TV and film producers please learn that what worked for LOTR may not work for your production.

There were so many more fun places they could have gone than where they did go in the end, which makes it all the more annoying. Another Christian pantheon figure with a cult, and yawn. Sorry, it's boring now and more importantly, really difficult to do better than what's gone before, if you want to do a good God-related armageddon plot, go with Ragnarok. That was always far more dramatic. And hasn't been played out to death.

I would like to complain about the black death, because dude, no only are those not the likely symptoms, it was spreading too fast and surely it should have been obvious what it was, even to a doctor.

I loved Toshiko's Mum coming back, because whee, foreign languages on my screen. I'm also presuming that Gwen had no one suitably dead which is why Bilis killed Rhys. Which confused me, because surely he didn't need to show Gwen that, surely he could just have killed him, or was he just underlining the point and making damn sure that Gwen was in the hub when she flipped. Eve Myles brought it in this episode because Gwen upset is a scary, damaged, worrying thing indeed.

That's one of the things I love about this show, the good guys aren't very, or indeed at all, and everything's messy and there are consequences and generally everything that was missing with Doctor Who series 2, where if you weren't Rose you didn't matter to the Doctor (let's not go into how wrong that was). The one thing I did love about Abaddon was how his shadow killed people, lovely little bit of literalism there, and Jack was quite willing to make 2 seperate sacrifices. Okay, while he wouldn't have minded being stuck in the '40s again because it reminded him of home, but I imagine life would have gotten a little complicated having to avoid himself in various versions, and he was perfectly willing to die to save the world, never mind anything else.

There is also something very wrong right about a show where the lead character dies and you're not entirely certain if he wouldn't be happier off dead. Meanwhile, I've never been so happy to see a character alive as Rhys at various points during this. He's so nice. I hereby name him my TV boyfriend.

I preferred Bilis Mager when he wasn't totally evil and merely bizarre, and even evil there's a certain parallel to Jack, undying bloke in the service of a higher power who's fed up to the back teeth with it.

I'm deeply, deeply in love with idea that what it took to re-animate Jack was a kiss. Because, yes, was that ever perfect. And yes, people will whinge that it was Gwen that did the kissing, but really, this is Jack who kisses like other people say hello. And that smile. Gah!

I'm also in love with the way that Jack was not a happy bunny to be back alive. Until we heard that sound. Eee!

Which brings me to one of the main points of squeaking about the whole series. I love how they've handled the fact that we know more about Jack's backstory than the other characters do, by writing that in, by using their confusion. It's lovely and wonderful and wheee! and interesting way of dealing with it rather than having the other characters find it out slowly, they just never really find out. Although I think it's their turn to be pissed off at people leaving at random this time.

Burn Gorman is still the best actor in this because Owen the slappable wasn't really this time, no more than Jack was because we knew he had a good reason, even if it was only instinct, to keep the rift closed, but hello, you could have communicated that better, couldn't you Jack. I do love the explanation they give on the Torchwood site for why (http://www.torchwood.org.uk/html/bilis/im.shtml). Actually the Torchwood site is brilliant, it fills in gaps but not major things.

But yes, I love how Jack rips them to shreds in much the same way as Owen ripped Ianto last week. And then Owen shoots Jack, which was expected, but Jack stays down, which was unexpected, at least by me. I love that, by this stage, the rest of the gang were cold blooded enough to just carry on and take a photo of his retina and just leaving his body there. Just before that there was also the coolest shot of the entire series, where Gwen was deciding what to do, just after Owen had shot Jack, and she scans everyone and then sees Rhys and totally doesn't see Jack's dead body. Such love for that shot.



In very short, was far happier with the character bits of this than the plot bits.

I'd also like to thank the person who got me access to these last two episodes. Thanks muchly.

Comments

[nwhyte]

Glad to oblige!