Int. Bedroom. Night.
STUART, a rather handsome thirtysomething with cropped hair in a white t-shirt is sitting at a disconcertingly large dining table glowering at his computer monitor. He moves his mouse cursor across the screen, double clicks a small lime-coloured icon and opens his email software. After the new emails have arduously downloaded, STUART clicks and opens the top one.
EMAIL:
Stuart Ian Burns,
I'd like to invite you to be a guest author on my TypePad weblog, Waiting for Christopher. Just follow the instructions in this email message, and you'll be able to quickly sign up for the service and post within minutes.
STUART grins then clicks on the accompanying link.
TV And that’s how I ended up writing here, an invite from Neil, which is rather less exciting than having your fiancé’s brain turned into an incubation chamber for an alien but like working for Torchwood it’s been a fine line between pleasure and pain ever since. I’ve said this before but it's worth repeating, sometimes I’ll sit here at the keyboard after an episode of the many series we’ve covered and not had the first idea what to say. Sometimes that results in experiments like this, but more often than not I’ll literally bang my head against the keyboard (which is why it’s a good thing that they’re cheaper than they used to be – keyboards, not heads). Like Douglas Adams, I find it very difficult to write anything, specifically anything sensible and yet here I am day in and out, week in and out cheating myself into the conviction that one day I could be a writer.
But then I look at an episode like Fragments and suddenly my fingers are fluid and those words just keep coming. That was, screaming out the window, dashing round the park if it wasn’t quite so cold, scrotum tensingly brilliant. It was the kind of episode which almost makes sitting through the rubbish end of the first series worth it, which proved that actually the production team do have the ability to turn out work which you do want to watch over and over (unlike, as I indicated last week, most episodes). I can’t imagine ever wanting to see Adrift again. But I’m already trying to work out when I can sneak another look, a copy of Ahistory in hand with a pencil to fill in some of Lance's more arduous blanks.
Everyone put in a good performance, Chris Chibnall’s writing was measured and clever and the direction was top notch with Jonathan Fox Bassett (a man whose name is just a consonant and a vowel away from infringing the BBC’s guidelines on product placement) suggesting that his earlier work on From Out Of The Rain was an aberration brought on by an incomprehensible script. Believe me that it’s a complement when I say that this was the kind of work Whedon’s Mutant Enemy would be proud of, and yet still with a very British, very Cardiffy flavour.
I’ve gushed already about episodes this series, mostly out of surprise, but as things have progressed there’s no denying there’s been a drop off and a bit of uncertainty. In point of fact, in hindsight the first episode since the first episode which seemed as though it was made with the same joy as the parent series or The Sarah Jane Adventures, in which everyone seemed to know what they were doing. For once. When the only criticism I can really think of is that the ending wasn’t too much of a surprise because this week’s Radio Times rather gave the game away, I don’t know how much more praise I can heap on it.
One of the problems I’ve had with this series is its boring attempts to divorce itself from the parent show. In Fragments that all went out of the window and it’s not really a surprise that continuity king Gary Russell was the script editor, as each flashback was clad with a thick layer of squee. A certain timelord was name checked properly for the first time – not just a doctor, but The Doctor, a man very much on the minds of the We newly created Victorian Torchwood. We were introduced to the new baddaass edition of UNIT who probably use the pulling of naval hair as part of their arsenal let alone solitary confinement and this 'appearance' no doubt foreshadowed their appearance in The Sontaran Stratagem. Martha works for these guys? And look Ianto's talking Torchwood One! No explanation as to how Ianto managed to get Lisa into the basement! But confirmation that Jack had cut Torchwood 3 off from the lot of them!
All this and the reveal that Natasha Kaplinsky was already working for the BBC at the millennium in the Whoniverse and not only just finding her feet on the Sky News version of breakfast telly – in a section which was entirely consistent with Gary’s own recent novel The Twilight Streets. About the only thing this scene lacked was a break down of the molecular structure of the planet, an alert that some Autons were attempting to take over a company, a computer on the Thames was trying to change the laws of physics and that Prime Minister Brooks was attempting to declare martial law despite the power cuts hitting most of the country. What – you thought I was joking about Ahistory? I’ve got it in my left hand already and I don’t think I should say what I’m doing with the right one. Typing obviously.
But setting aside its somewhat accurate approach the nu-Whoniverse, the episode did exactly what it set out to do – rationalise exactly how the regulars found themselves working for this organisation (oh and give Eve Myles little to do so she could be off filming Adrift, probably). So what if each of the sections resembled some other genre pieces – it’s a flashback scene from Angel, it’s the interrogation scene from the Alias pilot, it’s the solitary confinement from V For Vendetta, it’s La Femme Nikita, it’s a gay The X-Files, it's Primeval, it’s House, MD (sort of -- but considering that man’s abilities with deductive reasoning I’m surprised he hasn’t put at least one illness down to alien influences). It homaged from the best (with one notable exception) and for once it didn’t feel like kleptomania.
Of course the freewheeling Jack wouldn’t volunteer to work for Torchwood, despite the enticement of Cardiff’s equivalent of Dru and Darla (sorry I can’t be more original comparison than that but Damon’s already used my Tipping The Velvet line. Tipping The Velvet indeed), but with the thirteen thousand odd deaths which ensued, the constant loss of work colleagues probably hardly ever through natural causes, the fact that being stuck in that basement usually sent them insane and an apparent lack of promotional prospects, no wonder he was a crabby bastard by the time we met him in the opening episode of Torchwood. As I think Mr. T Davies said in Torchwood Declassified afterwards, there are so many holes in Jack’s past which would be worth filling, although I hope this doesn’t herald a propensity for him to look far off and for a Highlander-style flashback to come crashing in (speaking of which – can Jack be beheaded? Would that sort him out? Or would he simply grow a new head? Ewe!).
Solitary confinement explains why Tosh always seemed so nervous and eager to please and decided that a character like broken Owen should be the object of her affections. We were promised an explanation as to why she would turn up pretending to be a doctor in Aliens of London, but perhaps that’ll happen next week. Similarly, no wonder Owen’s attitude to women could best be described as disposable when his fiancé died in such a horrific manner – why commit to a proper relationship if there’s always the possibility that the quasi-Dalek that’s latched onto her cranium could kill all the surgeons. About the only inconsistent character was Ianto who seemed far more in-keeping with the new version with added bounce than the rather dower winger we encountered last series. But then as he walked away, those tears signaled that actually he wasn’t quite right in the head, a breath of relief suggesting to him that he might be able to help his cyber-girlfriend.
Next Week: Jack deals with some unresolved issues and Cardiff Council have a reason to bid for EC funding so that they can remodel parts of the city centre. Again.