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Miracle Day ep 7.
I'd rather leave this to a later time, but I realised that it's Thursday and there'll be more tonight, so I better get this down.
First of all - this episode felt as if it was beamed in from a completely different show, something like 'The Life and Times of Captain Jack Harkness'. It still wasn't Torchwood, but at least it was interesting.
Now, Jack said the word 'Rome' and there were ITALIANS and honestly, they could have done anything at all, and I would still have watched. And having an Italian as someone particularly important to Jack, tied in with EVERYTHING EVER, and I loved it. Thankfully though it was set between CoE and MD, so there's no need to go fiddle with anything in My Immortal. *wipes brow* (Am still editing. Darn DW eating my brain and stealing my time with meta...)
Why between CoE and MD? Four things.
1. The coat. (WW2 greatcoat in the 1920s!)
2. The '700 years since my last confession'. This actually gives us a time scale, which was lovely.
3. The fact that he *knows* what he is (a fact), which he doesn't find out until Utopia.
4. His whole demeanor:
- When he speaks of the Doctor, it is not with anger or incredulity or hurt, but by paralleling himself to him. Which also ties in with 'I came back for you. I never do that.' Very Doctor-y, and implies coming and going.
- His reaction to Angelo's offer of 'staying together', which makes perfect sense when keeping Ianto in mind, but not really otherwise.
- His acceptance of/comfort with his immortality, and the way he uses it (letting himself fall off the building).
- Not to mention 'Men like you - you kill me', which gives us an achingly brilliant insight into Jack and the wisdom/insight he has gained having lived for so very long. (If he's only just around 100, and stuck on Earth waiting for the Doctor, it... falls rather flat.)
Basically if this was meant to be during his wait for the Doctor, then the continuity errors are so massive no amount of fanwanking can fix them. So there.
What else? Oh yes. This was Russel T. Davies squared. Quadrupled, even. I know Jane E. wrote it, but it truly is RTD through and through. It ticks EVERY box (including the one that stipulates that the audience needs to be hit over the head with large bricks. Repeatedly) - and although I found it very interesting, I've no great urge to re-watch it (which I ought to, cause Darcy didn't see it, but...).
I'm sorry, I really don't want to come across as so negative. The show just really isn't my cup of tea, which is a shame, but it's not like they ruined everything OMG! (I read Buffy s8. Comparatively MD is a master piece.)
First of all - this episode felt as if it was beamed in from a completely different show, something like 'The Life and Times of Captain Jack Harkness'. It still wasn't Torchwood, but at least it was interesting.
Now, Jack said the word 'Rome' and there were ITALIANS and honestly, they could have done anything at all, and I would still have watched. And having an Italian as someone particularly important to Jack, tied in with EVERYTHING EVER, and I loved it. Thankfully though it was set between CoE and MD, so there's no need to go fiddle with anything in My Immortal. *wipes brow* (Am still editing. Darn DW eating my brain and stealing my time with meta...)
Why between CoE and MD? Four things.
1. The coat. (WW2 greatcoat in the 1920s!)
2. The '700 years since my last confession'. This actually gives us a time scale, which was lovely.
3. The fact that he *knows* what he is (a fact), which he doesn't find out until Utopia.
4. His whole demeanor:
- When he speaks of the Doctor, it is not with anger or incredulity or hurt, but by paralleling himself to him. Which also ties in with 'I came back for you. I never do that.' Very Doctor-y, and implies coming and going.
- His reaction to Angelo's offer of 'staying together', which makes perfect sense when keeping Ianto in mind, but not really otherwise.
- His acceptance of/comfort with his immortality, and the way he uses it (letting himself fall off the building).
- Not to mention 'Men like you - you kill me', which gives us an achingly brilliant insight into Jack and the wisdom/insight he has gained having lived for so very long. (If he's only just around 100, and stuck on Earth waiting for the Doctor, it... falls rather flat.)
Basically if this was meant to be during his wait for the Doctor, then the continuity errors are so massive no amount of fanwanking can fix them. So there.
What else? Oh yes. This was Russel T. Davies squared. Quadrupled, even. I know Jane E. wrote it, but it truly is RTD through and through. It ticks EVERY box (including the one that stipulates that the audience needs to be hit over the head with large bricks. Repeatedly) - and although I found it very interesting, I've no great urge to re-watch it (which I ought to, cause Darcy didn't see it, but...).
I'm sorry, I really don't want to come across as so negative. The show just really isn't my cup of tea, which is a shame, but it's not like they ruined everything OMG! (I read Buffy s8. Comparatively MD is a master piece.)
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new banner!
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That is true. But MD's main failing is that it's too long, too heavy handed and not Torchwood. Buffy s8 is... a destruction of every single thing that was great about the show. Really, it's almost impressive.
new banner!
I made it myself! And it struck me, that 'Intellect and romance triumph over brute force and cynicism' is LKH is a nutshell. And River is very pretty. ♥
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I think that's her whole story, really :D
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When he speaks of the Doctor, it is not with anger or incredulity or hurt, but by paralleling himself to him.
and
His acceptance of/comfort with his immortality, and the way he uses it (letting himself fall off the building).
together with your 2nd and 3rd point (I must admit I never really noticed that the coat might be anachronistic) originally made me think that this was a Jack travelling back in time from a post CoE, post-MD future, but apparently not. It's not entirely clear to me, though, what JE meant by different timelines, whether this is supposed to refer to Jack travelling back & forth through humanity's history, or to alternative timelines.
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I'd heard something, but not what was said exactly, and... I'm not quite sure what to think. Pre-CoE and post-Utopia makes no sense AT ALL. Alternate timeline? Could be. it's all rather confusing, so - until proven otherwise - I'm sticking to between CoE and MD, since that makes sense, which none of the other options do! :) But thank you for trying to explain - I'm rather out of the loop, so it's nice to know what's been said.
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I don't really understand it though, because after all RTD wrote the S3 final and this timeline for Jack. He must have some sort of... if not detailed plan, then at least a vague idea at which point of his journey Jack is right now? (ETA: Even if he failed to communicate it...)
Between CoE and MD doesn't fit characterisation-wise in my opinion, because however much time had passed between CoE and MD, Jack couldn't even deal with a simple, deliberately no-strings-attached one night stand in ep.3. without breaking down. At first I thought it was Jack from 1927, waiting for the Doctor, a Jack who was still more ready to open up to people and let them in; then I thought it was Jack from the future, already at least a little more comfortable with his immortality and at peace with himself... I actually still rather like the second version.
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Surely she would have been TOLD when her own episode took place? (Not that RTD wouldn't have re-written anything he wanted changing, but even so... *is even more puzzled*)
I don't really understand it though, because after all RTD wrote the S3 final and this timeline for Jack. He must have some sort of... if not detailed plan, then at least a vague idea at which point of his journey Jack is right now?
Yeah, count me puzzled. Esp since RTD is all about the characters.
Between CoE and MD doesn't fit characterisation-wise in my opinion, because however much time had passed between CoE and MD, Jack couldn't even deal with a simple, deliberately no-strings-attached one night stand in ep.3. without breaking down.
Well a) The breakdown was all about his sudden mortality and b) it was a one-night stand. Angelo was many things, but not that.
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I'm not so sure about that. The whole sequence of events started right after Rex accused Jack of getting his staff killed, that was when Jack suddenly discovered he had 'mortal needs'. I think in the end it's very much about loneliness and loss, because Jack finds himself in bed with someone who liked his coat, but doesn't know anything about him, doesn't know about Torchwood or what Jack had done and gone through. He thought that was what he wanted, uncomplicated sex and nothing else, but I think it only showed him what he'd lost, because if Ianto had been there, he wouldn't have to phone Gwen in the middle of the night, he could have talked to the person beside him.
b) it was a one-night stand. Angelo was many things, but not that.
I think Jack would have been even warier and less willing to let someone in as quickly as he let Angelo in after Ianto, and the Jack in ep. 7 is more open emotionally than we've ever seen him on TW, more at peace with himself and his situation. I don't think a post-CoE Jack would have said what Jack said in that church when he and Angelo watched the wedding. If that makes any sense, Jack's pain in the ep.7 flashbacks feels like old pain to me, whereas in all the other episodes I had the impression that he's still completely broken in a lot of ways and that his wounds haven't really healed at all.
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But currently he's back with Gwen, and that's bound to make him remember everyone he's lost and open all his old hurts, and remember the man who once used to watch him sleep...
Mostly then I can't see it as being stuck-on-Earth Jack because the continuity errors are just massive in that case. To be honest I'm finding this to be quite a stumbling block in my appreciation of an otherwise good episode (well, minus the gore), because when is of paramount importance when it comes to Jack. 100 year old Jack was in a VASTLY different place emotionally and developmentally to 1000 year old Jack, and the conclusions to be drawn from the story change, as does the character's arc, depending on which one it is.
*is glum*
I can look past RTD's religious issues (which are, quite frankly, insulting), because I know that he likes to play with these things, and it's fair enough, it's his show. But sloppy writing and bad continuity, in a show about a time traveller, I find it very hard to forgive.
(Sorry to rant at you, it's not your fault. But this stuff isn't difficult to get right.)
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Anyway, hello! And thanks for commenting. :)
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(I've got to say though, as an (ex-)catholic, I thought the religious angle was convincing, given the time and situation. I'm actually more bothered by the fact that they seemed to have immediately dropped it again, because there were so many possibilities for the plot there...)
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Oh I don't have a problem with *that* (it actually worked quite well), it was all the other stuff, the points where RTD is so clearly putting his words into the characters' mouths. Not to mention the gay Pieta... *winces* (There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just the high jacking of powerful imagery for the sake of *drama* just seems cheap. But then Rusty is ALWAYS doing that, so I just ignore it.)
Jack said he'd lived for thousands of years in Submission, which was definitely pre-CoE, so that must have fit RTD's head canon somehow?
But again, that could be fluke. Although I sincerely hope not.
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Ouch - that must be *incredibly* frustrating! I have one exceedingly long canon-compliant WIP (which is almost finished), but thankfully this story - even if it was set during Jack's long stay on Earth pre-Utopia - wouldn't impact anything. (Although it does fit beautifully with the overall story, since Italy features rather prominently.) I can imagine how annoying it must be to actually need this information and not be able to work it out. *kicks the writers*
My two cents are still the same as above - looking only at the episode and the clues we get, I'd set it between CoE and MD. However, we might still get a proper explanation. I hope...
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I have just watched MD ep 8 and I am now kind of reverting to the opinion that Angelo *was* supposed to be from Jack's 'slow path' years (since Jack says it was a long time ago, and he *seems* to mean it from his perspective as well as Angelo's, though it could honestly be taken either way - damn writers!) but I still expect to have to do a lot more working it out in my head before I'm happy with any explanation.
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Indeed that's the story. And I almost couldn't stop writing it - there's just so much there! If you're curious the index post is here, but be warned - it's novel length. :)
I have just watched MD ep 8 and I am now kind of reverting to the opinion that Angelo *was* supposed to be from Jack's 'slow path' years
I've not seen ep 8 yet, but will be paying attention when I do. Damn writers! *shakes fist*
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Oh, look, John Barrowman!
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Not likely. I mean, it's not often that a show that I loved to pieces (and which broke my heart) mutates into something different... As for this episode then it's the continuity that gets me. Grrr. When is VITALLY important. (Of course it doesn't help that Moffat is meticulous in these things. I never expect the same from RTD, but slightly less fail would have been nice.)
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I never expect the same from RTD, but slightly less fail would have been nice.
Genuine lol--this is my new Rusty motto.