![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Day 5. Initial, scattered thoughts. (Everything except the final scene.)
So, was anyone else thinking ‘Schindler’s List’? As almost everything in this series the scenes where they took the children were so harrowing because they could be true. It’s happened. It could happen again.
And the reveal of what the 456 wanted the children for was truly a surprise. I’d seen a lot of speculation - they needed the children to breed, or maybe the children were really in charge and wanted to punish those who’d sent them away... I don’t think anyone saw the truth coming. I think my initial thought was ‘Bloody hell how many more messages can RTD cram into this?’, but hitting people over the head aside, I thought it was clever.
And Frobisher... damn, what a character. The whole ‘He was a good man’ scene was just incredible, and Bridget pwning the Prime Minister was excellent. The fact that the slime ball politician who was only out to cover his own ass will probably be replaced with the disturbingly pragmatic one (“What else are league tables for?”) was cynical, but *so* realistic. (Harriet Jones was truly something else. Oh Doctor, what did you do?) (Not that I’m blaming all this on him, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking it.) Also - Lois! I can like her (again) now when she won’t be taking Ianto’s place.
Oh and Johnson continued to be awesome. I have *such* a kink for highly efficient and competent people, and she with her black ops team just rocked my world. (Even when she was on the wrong side she was damn impressive. THANK YOU for not telling the good guys anything.)
Seriously the women have just kicked all kinds of ass, and I am so, so in awe.
Then the solution... I thought it’d probably be something with the children, and was sure that it would have something to do with Clem. I was also worried that somehow it’d involve Stephen, because why else introduce a child into Jack’s life? I still wasn’t really prepared... There’s so much there, about all the people willing to sacrifice other people’s children, but not their own. And does it make Jack more or less of a monster that he did what they couldn’t? Of course it all ties in with Jack (and heroes generally) always, always paying for their sins.
Thinking about this season, I think what RTD did was that he cannibalised his own show - he took Torchwood and used it to tell a story he wanted to tell. You can see the themes in this peering through in Doctor Who, but that *is* a family show, and it’s limited what you can do. Torchwood was always supposed to be the ‘adult’ version, and this time they finally used that to it’s maximum ability. In the process they destroyed the show as we knew it, and also nearly turned Jack into a complete Doctor clone. I’m not complaining btw - it’s just that Torchwood can show things Who never can. Such as the hero killing his own family to save the world. (I couldn’t watch that part. Fuck this show is dark. And still, we know that this is what the Doctor did too, only on a much bigger scale...)
I’ll get into this more in my post on the final scene, but for that I’m going to have to transcribe the whole thing, and I’m not sure when I’ll find the time. I’ll get there though.
Just wanted to say that I think I’m OK with Ianto’s death. I mean, of course I’m not OK - every time I think about him I get this horrible, empty feeling inside, and I might have to change my banner (like I changed my wallpaper) because I can’t bear to look at him. [don’t start crying I keep having to tell myself]
But.
He got a good death. A huge, enormous, overblown emotional send-off, in best Torchwood style, dying in Jack’s arms, and - hopefully - having managed to get a few home truths through before that, because he was one of the very few people that Jack actually listened to.
And yes, it KILLS me that it’s over, that my beautiful, beautiful messed-up 'ship is gone, but it is a little bit like Chosen. The show is over. The Hub is gone, EVERYTHING is gone... Jack/Ianto was just a moment of calm between the storms, but at least it was there. [Stopwatches make me want to cry now. What am I supposed to *do* now?]
Also he had to die for the sake of the ending. Ianto was probably the only thing in the world that could have kept Jack on Earth (“I came back for you”), so he had to be killed. It’s not something that makes me happy, but I understand it. Nothing left, clean sheet, new start.
By the way - the 'fic' that I posted last night is a letter from Ianto to Jack. I imagine Jack reading this at some point post S3.
::takes deep breath::
Will be back later, as I said, to deal with Jack in the last scene. But there’s a RL to attend to first.
ETA: My first thought to the reveal about Ianto's father? My god talk about jossing endless reams of fanfic...
And the reveal of what the 456 wanted the children for was truly a surprise. I’d seen a lot of speculation - they needed the children to breed, or maybe the children were really in charge and wanted to punish those who’d sent them away... I don’t think anyone saw the truth coming. I think my initial thought was ‘Bloody hell how many more messages can RTD cram into this?’, but hitting people over the head aside, I thought it was clever.
And Frobisher... damn, what a character. The whole ‘He was a good man’ scene was just incredible, and Bridget pwning the Prime Minister was excellent. The fact that the slime ball politician who was only out to cover his own ass will probably be replaced with the disturbingly pragmatic one (“What else are league tables for?”) was cynical, but *so* realistic. (Harriet Jones was truly something else. Oh Doctor, what did you do?) (Not that I’m blaming all this on him, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking it.) Also - Lois! I can like her (again) now when she won’t be taking Ianto’s place.
Oh and Johnson continued to be awesome. I have *such* a kink for highly efficient and competent people, and she with her black ops team just rocked my world. (Even when she was on the wrong side she was damn impressive. THANK YOU for not telling the good guys anything.)
Seriously the women have just kicked all kinds of ass, and I am so, so in awe.
Then the solution... I thought it’d probably be something with the children, and was sure that it would have something to do with Clem. I was also worried that somehow it’d involve Stephen, because why else introduce a child into Jack’s life? I still wasn’t really prepared... There’s so much there, about all the people willing to sacrifice other people’s children, but not their own. And does it make Jack more or less of a monster that he did what they couldn’t? Of course it all ties in with Jack (and heroes generally) always, always paying for their sins.
Thinking about this season, I think what RTD did was that he cannibalised his own show - he took Torchwood and used it to tell a story he wanted to tell. You can see the themes in this peering through in Doctor Who, but that *is* a family show, and it’s limited what you can do. Torchwood was always supposed to be the ‘adult’ version, and this time they finally used that to it’s maximum ability. In the process they destroyed the show as we knew it, and also nearly turned Jack into a complete Doctor clone. I’m not complaining btw - it’s just that Torchwood can show things Who never can. Such as the hero killing his own family to save the world. (I couldn’t watch that part. Fuck this show is dark. And still, we know that this is what the Doctor did too, only on a much bigger scale...)
I’ll get into this more in my post on the final scene, but for that I’m going to have to transcribe the whole thing, and I’m not sure when I’ll find the time. I’ll get there though.
Just wanted to say that I think I’m OK with Ianto’s death. I mean, of course I’m not OK - every time I think about him I get this horrible, empty feeling inside, and I might have to change my banner (like I changed my wallpaper) because I can’t bear to look at him. [don’t start crying I keep having to tell myself]
But.
He got a good death. A huge, enormous, overblown emotional send-off, in best Torchwood style, dying in Jack’s arms, and - hopefully - having managed to get a few home truths through before that, because he was one of the very few people that Jack actually listened to.
And yes, it KILLS me that it’s over, that my beautiful, beautiful messed-up 'ship is gone, but it is a little bit like Chosen. The show is over. The Hub is gone, EVERYTHING is gone... Jack/Ianto was just a moment of calm between the storms, but at least it was there. [Stopwatches make me want to cry now. What am I supposed to *do* now?]
Also he had to die for the sake of the ending. Ianto was probably the only thing in the world that could have kept Jack on Earth (“I came back for you”), so he had to be killed. It’s not something that makes me happy, but I understand it. Nothing left, clean sheet, new start.
By the way - the 'fic' that I posted last night is a letter from Ianto to Jack. I imagine Jack reading this at some point post S3.
::takes deep breath::
Will be back later, as I said, to deal with Jack in the last scene. But there’s a RL to attend to first.
ETA: My first thought to the reveal about Ianto's father? My god talk about jossing endless reams of fanfic...
no subject
Come to think of it, I stopped watching DS9 when I did for much the same reasons. For about five seasons that show was like . . . well, Star Trek: idealistic, philosophical, funny, largely self-contained episodes, lots of emphasis on tolerance, compromises, intellectual solutions. Star Trek never really feels out of control. In the last two seasons it evolved into a much different show with long-running plot arcs about a big war--it became a lot grittier and darker and more uncompromising. The real architect behind the shift was Ronald D. More, who moved on to create BSG and essentially cut his teeth with what he did with DS9. The people who continued watching said it was really impressive, and it's not like I don't like that kind of storytelling (hello, BSG), but that was not the show I signed on to watch, and I found that I very quickly stopped caring. I still had Voyager, though, and shifted my attention over there, so it's not like I was left feeling abandoned or betrayed or attacked or anything like that. But, yeah, it wasn't like the change was bad, per se, it was just now an entirely different show.
Although, from a writing POV, I was HUGELY grateful for that ending, because it meant that I could FINISH 'My Immortal' once and for all. I mean, I love that fic, but the idea of continuing to write it forever more as long as new TW canon came along was pretty draining. CoE gave me a clean cut.
Ah, I did not know that was an ongoing continuity kind of story.
I think that the two year gap will work beautifully, partly because they can hint at a lot but not show it.
Probably a good move. The thing that worries me is, will they put him back together just so that they can break him again? I mean, yes, it's always going to be a dark show with angst and horror and bad, bad things, but when Jack comes back he needs to have grown, not just repaired, and if they break him again it needs to be different and he needs to grow from that in turn. I feel like they need to be very, very mindful of that kind of progression and of the angst serving some greater character purpose. It's hard to avoid the feeling with Jack that RTD has made himself the perfect toy that he can torment forever and he always has to keep going. Hopefully he and/or some of the other writers can keep him from reveling in that too much, or hitting the same notes over and over again.
Getting Jack to hook up with Alonso was a stroke of unadulterated genius. Whoever he 'moved on to' after Ianto would have instantly been hated by the hardcore shippers with the power of a billion suns, but with Alonso we didn't just get a character who is adorable and unthreatening, we also got a character who wasn't created solely to be the re-bound guy. Srsly. Genius.
Heh. That is impressive :) I shall be interested to see reactions to whoever he hooks up with in the new series. (Also, I find RTD's totally unapologetic Midshipman Frame crush--from, seriously, the moment he first conceived the character--one of the cutest things in The Writer's Tale.)
no subject
It's an interesting thing - as I've mentioned, the same thing happened with Buffy. (Not as drastic a shift, but there were a lot of people who never adjusted to the change.)
Ah, I did not know that was an ongoing continuity kind of story.
Well it is and it isn't. The original fic is mostly set in 2004 and is all Buffy/Jack (Buffy moved to Rome and dated a mysterious figure known only as 'The Immortal' and who's such a perfect fit for Jack that you'd have sworn it was deliberate. Except it can't have been). Anyway, 'tis all rather epic, with lots of clever stuff to make the canons fit together, and of course people wanted a sequel. And me being me I couldn't help wonder what would happen if they met again (there's a whole 'The Year That Never Was' fic, but that mostly centered on the Master) - and then lots of ideas showed up. However it started to become a bit tenuous, and CoE - with Jack leaving meant that I could finish off properly and have people (hopefully) accept it as the final end.
The thing that worries me is, will they put him back together just so that they can break him again? I mean, yes, it's always going to be a dark show with angst and horror and bad, bad things, but when Jack comes back he needs to have grown, not just repaired, and if they break him again it needs to be different and he needs to grow from that in turn. I feel like they need to be very, very mindful of that kind of progression and of the angst serving some greater character purpose.
*nods a LOT* I've not got much to add, but there is the fact that unless they kill Gwen - or invent more family for him - there's not a lot of ways to hurt him. So I live in hope.
Heh. That is impressive :)
Isn't it just? I'm still SO PLEASED!
Also, I find RTD's totally unapologetic Midshipman Frame crush--from, seriously, the moment he first conceived the character--one of the cutest things in The Writer's Tale.
The actor who plays him is now George the werewolf on Being Human and continues to be adorable and brilliant every week on my TV! *hugs him*
no subject
Lol--good for you :)
However it started to become a bit tenuous, and CoE - with Jack leaving meant that I could finish off properly and have people (hopefully) accept it as the final end.
What would you have done if RTD hadn't come to your rescue? This is where a callous indifference to the demands of the readership does come in handy, I must say.
I've not got much to add, but there is the fact that unless they kill Gwen - or invent more family for him - there's not a lot of ways to hurt him. So I live in hope.
*shifty eyes* Don't say that too loud!
no subject
I've no idea what I'd have done, to be honest. It would have depended on the storylines and how they'd have worked with Buffy. The thing is that the sequelly bits aren't a re-write of canon in any way, with Buffy added - everything takes place inbetween episodes, and is partly bringing Buffy into the world of Torchwood (which he keeps a secret from her in the original story), and partly dealing with fallout from stuff in canon, and stuff I set up previously. So f.ex. 'Miracle Day' will undoubtedly be a lovely addition to canon, but it won't have any effect on my 'verse as such. (Does this make any kind of sense?)
*shifty eyes* Don't say that too loud!
I had all of my fingers and toes crossed and I didn't mean it anyway.