redfiona99

I picked up a bunch of Torchwood hardbacks from one of the local charity shows so there might be a few of these in the next few weeks.

( Not actually part of the review, just some notes )

On to the actual review:

A good solid book, which uses an interesting and plausible premise, and is pleasingly creepy in places. I loved a lot of the little details about the alien (and the alien tech). The characterisation of Toshiko was spot on and Jack, Gwen and Rhys were also very well done, even if a few of Jack's speeches made it clear we really haven't given John Barrowman enough credit for making some really bad dialogue sound like human speech. I thought the characterisation of Owen was a bit broad. The lack of Ianto made sense since the book is from the period where Ianto was just the teaboy.

Definitely worth a read.

( LibraryThing Suggestions )

( LibraryThing Unsuggester )

( Details )

My non-spoilery general opinion is that you can tell other people have been at this, there's only been one m/m kiss and that was in the trailer. In fact, all in all, it's all been a bit horribly restrained. What have you done to my terrible/wonderful show of choice. People are competent and sensitive. And no one has a sense of humour. And generally, I miss the things I loved about TW.
However, I felt that way about the glory that was season 2 so I shall give Torchwood version 3 more chances.

Day 30 - Saddest Character Death

There are two options:

( If you mean the one that even today still makes me go wah then it's (Torchwood spoilers) )

( If you mean, the one that made me wake up at two in the morning sobbing then it's (spoilers for Dance To The Music of Time) )

( The Other Days )

I appear to be the only person who liked the way it wrapped up, mostly because RTD has fallen out of love with the reset button.

( I like Torchwood, it is my happy consequences place )

I live in hope for season 4.

You are bastards. Absolute and utter bar stewards. How dare you?

(Certain of us are picking holes in the science to prevent crying)

Oh beloved show. Never leave me again.

( Spoilers )

For the tropes meta/fic thing penknife is running.

So I had the choice of three tropes, Chained to the Bed (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainedToABed) which I have no real interest in, Vichy Earth (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VichyEarth) which I have a real and extreme interest in but my view points are possibly obnoxious, terribly long-winded, and require references and actual research so I have settled for the third option - ultimate job security (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UltimateJobSecurity).

Why is it a trope? Because TV drama has two needs, it needs drama, often caused by inter-personal problems, and it needs continuity, because you can't keep hiring and firing actors, you end up with a bad reputation. Also, a lot of drama hinges on personal, shall we say abrasiveness, that you don't get in real life. If we take my work as an example, it's a pit of vipers, several layers of nested vipers at that, but we're terribly polite about it and always do it behind each others backs, and that just doesn't work for TV drama.

Drama also needs a setting and since the two most common settings are work and home, and home tends to be the setting for comedies, while work tends to be for dramas. So you have a situation where people do things that should get them sacked and they don't for reasons that have nothing to do with the story and more with backstage reasons. Cue trope.

Another thing that tickled me was that two of the shows named in the tropes are things I'm into, and two others I know well enough to understand that their rationalizations work. The latter two are House and MASH, and yes, doctors are nigh on impossible to sack.

Onto the two I'm fannish about which are Torchwood and Wrestling. Torchwood first:

You can almost forgive them for this one because there is an in-canon reason not to replace them, because it would be damned difficult, given that it appears that it took Jack a fair few years to get a team post the thing that happens in Fragments (why the hell Torchwood fandom doesn't go 'Oh Jack' like Supernatural does is beyond me. Possibly because we're too busy doing it about the whole lot of them). Except, especially in season one, they were that bad it might have been worth it. So why was no one making them behave - well the whole unpleasant thing at Canary Wharf went down, but I refuse to believe someone, like say UNIT, didn't come and smack them down and hard. So yeah, there's something totally bizarre in canon (except I think they enjoy pretending UNIT doesn't exist unless they need to use it). House at least explains why the lead character cannot be sacked. Torchwood never does. It's not like they're running low on ret-con.

Wrestling: First a quick definition for the non-wrestling fans who read this - kayfabe is the story we see on screen. I'm going to use that world as the real one, mostly because what goes on backstage is even more convoluted.

TV tropes chose Austin as the example of someone who never gets sacked no matter what. This makes me believe that whoever it was really didn't watch that hard because he was forever getting sacked and just ignoring that fact. The person I'd put up there is Vince McMahon, the chairman himself, because really, if a real executive behaved like that, he'd be kicked off the board and possibly thrown in jail. Admittedly he does get shoved out of the way at various time by the rest of his brood but much like the Maxwell family, I'm reasonably sure all the members of the McMahon family cluster should have been up before one magistrate or another a long time ago.

This is also one of those tropes that people notice a lot, possibly because very few people in the real world are lucky enough to have this. I've noticed that people spot and object to its existence more when the person is incompetent (see Torchwood, series one especially) than when they're good at their job, but obnoxious (see House). It really grates a lot of people because it's so different to how the world works, but is found a lot more often in real-world based programmes than in absolutely and resolutely non-reality related ones.

It's a very silly trope, but due to confines of television, one that will be with us 'til doomsday.

I'd say spoiler has gone crazy, except I think crazier would be more fitting.

( Spoilers )

MASSIVE SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

( A short reaction )

( Longer reaction. )

Not that it was perfect or anything because ( I think )

( More general Whoniverse talkage )

( Discussion of some rumours re: Torchwood )

Onto more amusing matters. I find it funny that the moment that Max Mosely, possibly the most hated man in motorsport whose name is not Alonso or Ecclestone, is in trouble (short synopsis - orgies with hookers in Nazi-style fetish gear. From the man whose Dad was the leading figure in British fascism.), the entire F1 world seems to circle the wagons and come out in his favour. Admittedly I also want to know how he's annoyed Bernie enough to cause him to leak this because you know that Ecclestone's got to be behind it some how. When in doubt assign to Bernie Ecclestone those powers you would assign to an evil, omniscient dwarf God.