It's the Torchwood Holiday Special!
Sep. 11th, 2008 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lonelybritDue to epic unfairness work expected me to actually be working this afternoon - I know, the cheek! Thankfully the Beeb twigged this might be a not uncommon problem and so provided a free download, huzzah!
Lost Souls was a rather 'lite' TW episode, but this was to be expected considering the whole day was about CERN. In the same way as The Archers often veers off into profound discussions of BSE/bird flu/hunt bans, the TW plot was frequently put on hold for the science to be explained again. And again. And again, while everyone went 'OOOOH' as if they had never heard of so much as electricity before.
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. It was a fun frothy, harmless 40 minutes. The main star was the accelerator, but there were enough throwaway comments from Team TW that those familiar with the past two series could take a guess as to what had been/was going on in these peoples' lives. In terms of audio acting, Eve Myles in particular came across very, very well.
Because I'm me, I'll start with the gripes.
x. The Science. Not the believability as such (this is Torchwood) but just the fact it felt so heavy-handed when being explained. I have no doubt that Gwen and Ianto would have heard of this accelerator and read up a bit given their line of work, I'm not convinced they needed to be so clueless, the scientific exposition could have been worked in other ways. It also didn't need repeating quite so frequently, it sounded at times like 'This parrot is dead. Dead is this parrot. This parrot is no more. This is a dead parrot'.
x. Jack's concern for his team. Or rather the unevenness of it. I can't tell whether it was script or JB's delivery or a mixture, but to me it sounded that any worries Jack had for his team were mainly worries for Gwen, with Ianto as the obligatory afterthought. I suppose you could argue that this is because Gwen is the most emotional of the team, this is her first big loss, and whereas Jack and Ianto are relative old hands at this whole moving on deal, I can imagine Jack and Ianto worrying about her taking the loss of Owen and Tosh the hardest. In which case, fine, but a little sentence hinting at this would have been nice. But, to be honest, Jack in general seemed rather unconcerned about what his team was getting up to, which did seem to go against him saying how his team was so important to him. Ah well.
x. No Burn Gorman! *sniffle* When 'Owen' started speaking, I did have a brief flare of hope that at least we might hear him one last time, but no such luck.
But enough of this, on to the good points!
x. Gwen and Ianto. They do make a lovely pair and it did feel like we were getting a bit of a preview as to the dynamic of series 3. They gossip, they joke, and will quite happily team up to tease Jack. The Welsh ambassador and his wife scene was brilliant, with the cherry on top being Ianto's Ferrero Rocher quip. Equally I loved seeing how they stuck together when running away from the alien, Gwen so so determined to not lose Ianto too and her trying to remind him of coffee and Jack to get him moving again. Yes it would have been nice to have seen kick-ass!Ianto, but with this alien playing on bereavement then, yes, Ianto's previous experiences with TW1 and Lisa did make him the obvious target of the two, so I can accept him becoming the damsel in distress. Again.
x. Erm... well I did like the line about a rock having to substitute for a sonic screwdriver. And Jack suddenly getting to be physics genius and save the day - hurrah!
Anyway, all good fun. And once it was done I watched Lost in Austen. Again, silly but fun and I think it's got me hooked. I'm still hoping that Ms Price will wind up eloping with Jane, but that aside I'm generally content to just sit back, giggle, and generally trust the writers to come up with a good way to wrap this all up happily before Austen turns in her grave :)
Lost Souls was a rather 'lite' TW episode, but this was to be expected considering the whole day was about CERN. In the same way as The Archers often veers off into profound discussions of BSE/bird flu/hunt bans, the TW plot was frequently put on hold for the science to be explained again. And again. And again, while everyone went 'OOOOH' as if they had never heard of so much as electricity before.
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. It was a fun frothy, harmless 40 minutes. The main star was the accelerator, but there were enough throwaway comments from Team TW that those familiar with the past two series could take a guess as to what had been/was going on in these peoples' lives. In terms of audio acting, Eve Myles in particular came across very, very well.
Because I'm me, I'll start with the gripes.
x. The Science. Not the believability as such (this is Torchwood) but just the fact it felt so heavy-handed when being explained. I have no doubt that Gwen and Ianto would have heard of this accelerator and read up a bit given their line of work, I'm not convinced they needed to be so clueless, the scientific exposition could have been worked in other ways. It also didn't need repeating quite so frequently, it sounded at times like 'This parrot is dead. Dead is this parrot. This parrot is no more. This is a dead parrot'.
x. Jack's concern for his team. Or rather the unevenness of it. I can't tell whether it was script or JB's delivery or a mixture, but to me it sounded that any worries Jack had for his team were mainly worries for Gwen, with Ianto as the obligatory afterthought. I suppose you could argue that this is because Gwen is the most emotional of the team, this is her first big loss, and whereas Jack and Ianto are relative old hands at this whole moving on deal, I can imagine Jack and Ianto worrying about her taking the loss of Owen and Tosh the hardest. In which case, fine, but a little sentence hinting at this would have been nice. But, to be honest, Jack in general seemed rather unconcerned about what his team was getting up to, which did seem to go against him saying how his team was so important to him. Ah well.
x. No Burn Gorman! *sniffle* When 'Owen' started speaking, I did have a brief flare of hope that at least we might hear him one last time, but no such luck.
But enough of this, on to the good points!
x. Gwen and Ianto. They do make a lovely pair and it did feel like we were getting a bit of a preview as to the dynamic of series 3. They gossip, they joke, and will quite happily team up to tease Jack. The Welsh ambassador and his wife scene was brilliant, with the cherry on top being Ianto's Ferrero Rocher quip. Equally I loved seeing how they stuck together when running away from the alien, Gwen so so determined to not lose Ianto too and her trying to remind him of coffee and Jack to get him moving again. Yes it would have been nice to have seen kick-ass!Ianto, but with this alien playing on bereavement then, yes, Ianto's previous experiences with TW1 and Lisa did make him the obvious target of the two, so I can accept him becoming the damsel in distress. Again.
x. Erm... well I did like the line about a rock having to substitute for a sonic screwdriver. And Jack suddenly getting to be physics genius and save the day - hurrah!
Anyway, all good fun. And once it was done I watched Lost in Austen. Again, silly but fun and I think it's got me hooked. I'm still hoping that Ms Price will wind up eloping with Jane, but that aside I'm generally content to just sit back, giggle, and generally trust the writers to come up with a good way to wrap this all up happily before Austen turns in her grave :)
