Category Archives: Torchwood
>A few bits of things not big enough for their own posts
>I alternated reading Atlas Shrugged with surfing the web today and, as a result, I found numerous interesting tidbits that are all very nice, but not nearly thought provoking enough for an individual post. I figured I’ll just throw them all in here and see what happens.
This is like my cooking experimentation…and like that experimentation it could end well (like that foray into making chicken pot pie last month) or in tears (The Mustard Seed catastrophe of 2009).
First of all.
Tears of joy for Evanescence (or as they should really be called, Amy Lee and her random back-up musicians) is making a new album. I’m happy, other fans should be happy, Amy and her music are…happy? Not the word I generally associate with Evanescence, but considering they did their part in getting me through my teenage angst…well, I suppose they deserve a shot at playing happy music for a while as well.
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| Amy Lee, once again making me wonder why it took me so long to realize I liked girls… |
“The record is fun — and that’s a totally new thing for us,” singer Amy Lee, 29, tells SPIN. “When I listen to our old music I see that’s where I was in my life at that time. This has been a long trip and parts have been hard. But it’s about not taking everything so seriously this time.”
Next.
World War Z (based on the novel by Max Brooks) may begin filming next week and the production company has hired cinematographer Robert Richardson (Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds) to work on the film.
This can mean only one thing…a new cult zombie movie classic!
I know I have friends who can’t understand my love of bad zombie films, but I don’t understand them. How can someone not love watching a movie with bad special affects and lots of gunfire? I’ll go see it in theaters just to mock it loudly and openly along with everyone else in the theater.
Next.
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| Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy |
In a turn of events that I fully believe may give one of my best friends a heart attack, a few new actors have been chosen for The Dark Knight Rises. The movie already contains Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (both of Inception fame, as well as various other films), but now Burn Gorman (of Torchwood fame) has been brought on as well. These are some of my friend’s absolute favorite actors and when I texted her to tell her about Gorman, I initially said “Okay, don’t pass out. I don’t know how reliable the source is, but…” and her response was “WHAAAAAAAT”
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| Burn Gorman |
Luckily she continued texting, so I know she did not hyperventilate and then pass out when hearing this news.There are more additions listed in the article and I’m sure I’ll be railing or cheering at casting choices as we get closer to the big day, but I’m not going to get too excited yet. There is too much time for things to change between now and filming.
And finally…THE BIG ONE.
I won’t even expound on it…much. It’s spoilers for the upcoming season of Doctor Who and we all know who much of a Who fan I am. Matt Smith is even growing on me…slowly, like mold, but he is growing on me. David Tennant will forever be MY Doctor though…
In completely unrelated news. I almost cut my own head off today on a DVD that was hiding behind a pillow…the damn things are sharp. Also, I really want these shirts…from Despair.com
>Season 4 of Torchwood: Or, When will Russell T. Davies stop stealing Supernatural episode plots?
>My posts have all been way to serious lately and that blog description up top does say something about pop culture does it not? Time for a little snarkiness at the expense of a television show.
I just read this article from January 8th of this year. It details both the name change of season 4 of Torchwood. Originally the season was to be called Torchwood: The New World and now it is to be called Torchwood: Miracle Day.
Now…this name is just too ridiculous for words. Why is it necessary to NAME the seasons? When did Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, etc. become too good for television series? Movies have names for each installation, a series has a series name and season numbers, no need for a name for each season…
However, that’s not even what I wrote this post.
I wrote this post because this new season seems like Russell T. Davies seems be stealing his plots from Supernatural even more these days.
I wouldn’t have even noticed except RTD made the massive mistake of actually getting me WATCH Supernatural in the first place when he said that if fans wanted to watch a show where the main characters never die, we should watch Supernatural.
Good going man, tell angry fans to watch a show that is made in another country and broadcast on a different channel than the one that signs your paychecks…and happens to the be the one that you enjoy yanking plots from? I thought you were smarter than this…I should be used to disappointment where you are concerned by now.
The plot for this season (don’t read the rest of this post if you don’t like spoilers!) is
John Barrowman returns as the British Captain Kirk
Eve Myles also returns, playing the character I can’t stand at all on this show. The plot of Miracle Day is the most explosive Torchwood storyline yet. One day, nobody dies. All across the world, nobody dies. And then the next day, and the next, and the next, people keep aging — they get hurt and sick — but they never die. The result: a population boom, overnight. With all the extra people, resources are finite. It’s said that in four months’ time, the human race will cease to be viable. But this can’t be a natural event – someone’s got to be behind it. It’s a race against time as C.I.A. agent Rex Matheson investigates a global conspiracy. The answers lie within an old, secret British institute. As Rex keeps asking “What is Torchwood?”, he’s drawn into a world of adventure, and a threat to change what it means to be human, forever.
There is 10 episodes of this…it’s like RTD just yanked the plot from season 4 (episode 15 “Death Takes a Holiday”) of Supernatural and put a multi-national, government conspiracy twist on it…which is admittedly what RTD seems to do best.
I would call this a coincidence, if it wasn’t for the fact that this is not the first time this has happened in Torchwood.
In season 1, the episode Countrycide, the plot is almost identical to that of the episode “The Benders” of the first season of Supernatural. The plot? Oh yes, our heroes hear of mysterious disappearances in the boonies (Breacon Beacons for our Torchwood elite and Hibbing, Minnesota for our Supernatural boys). Both groups assume that the disappearances have to do with their special area of expertise (Aliens and supernatural creepy crawlies, respectively), so off they go to investigate. Team mates are kidnapped (or team mate, singular, for Supernatural) and those that remaining are trying to find out what happened to them. It turns out that what they are hunting is not aliens or supernatural creepy crawlies, but some rather fucked up humans who are cannibals (in Torchwood’s case) or just redneck hicks who enjoy hunting humans for sport (in Supernatural’s case, they never explicitly mention cannibalism, but their is a scene where a man is using cleaver and a saw on something in a kitchen.)
Both groups keep souvenirs of their kills, piles of shoes and jars of eyeballs and organs in the case of the cannibals and “hunting” photographs, wind chimes made of, what looks like, a human pelvic bone and a jar of teeth in the case of the rednecks.
There is even ridiculous amounts of similarity in some the dialogue. At one point in “The Benders” Dean is looking at the “souvenirs” and says:
“I’ll say it again. Demons I get, people are crazy” – Dean
Near the end of “Countrycide” Gwen is questioning the cannibal ringleader and says:
“I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine and this, this is the only thing I can’t understand” – Gwen
Similar, yes?
Also at the end of both episodes, the ringleaders are questioned, and almost begged in both cases, by the good guys about why they did the things they did. They answer, in similarly creepy tones, with similarly disturbing facial expressions:
“Because it made me happy.” – Torchwood
“Because it’s fun.” – Supernatural.
The only difference being that after Gwen questions the man, he’s carted off by the police and after the policewoman (who was also captured by the rednecks) who questioned the hunter the scene cuts with the sound of a gun shot, she later tells Sam and Dean that she shot him because he was trying to escape.
Now, some might point out that this plot has been used often in sci-fi and horror. X-files had a couple of episodes similar to the “Our show is about the supernatural/alien, but we would like to show you that humans can be fucked up sons-of-bitches too” theme.
I’m not saying that RTD can’t use the theme, but damn if the plot lines of the episodes aren’t almost identical. Watch them side by side, really, you’ll agree.
Combine this with the fact that Davies, spiteful, recommendation that fans angered by Ianto’s death in Children of Earth (okay, that was a mini-series, they are exempt from rules of not having a separate name) watch it because no main characters die, means that he is fairly familiar with the series himself.
I just have one more note to add about the plot line for this new season of Supernatu…er, I mean Torchwood.
Russell, you were the one that said you were keeping sci-fi realistic (patently ridiculous given that the point of sci-fi is not realism, by the way) because everyone dies. You already have a man who has a teflon non-stick coating against death, an alien who regenerates into a new body if the plot calls for his death (or the actor decides he wants to swan off), a woman who is your pet character who never seems to die, even when put in situations where she should have and now a whole 10 episode season where people LITERALLY CANNOT DIE! Can we try for a little consistency please?
I have to agree with Meredith Jacobs, who wrote:
Too bad this concept didn’t come about before the deaths of Ianto, Owen (Burn Gorman), and Tosh (Naoko Mori). The series definitely won’t be the same without all three of them.
>The Eleventh Hour 5.01 of Doctor Who – Steve Moffat could be good for this show
>
Just watched the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. I was expecting to hate it and hate the new Doctor. Surprisingly I liked the new episode (it was written by Steve Moffat the new director, so no real surprise there. I love all his episodes) and I like Matt Smith’s version of the Doctor, I don’t love him yet, but it could happen. The new companion, Amelia Pond, is quirky and I like her too…though she’s no Rose Tyler, so we’ll see how much I like her in the coming season.
The only things I had issue with was the Doctor’s new wardrobe (very geeky college student, complete with tweed, checkered shirt, bowtie and suspenders) I firmly believe that the only people who can pull of a bowtie are sweet British Gentlemen, like Ducky from NCIS. I also thought that the new Doctor’s attitude and mood were a major jump from the 10th doctor, but then again that tends to happen whenever he regenerates so I’m not going to pick at that too much. Every version of the Doctor seems to have a personality that greatly deviates from the one before. I think it has something to do with the memories of his former version not affecting him quite as personally anymore.
On that note.
I have to say that I am quite pleased with the new tone for the show and for the Doctor. I’m not a fan of Russell T. Davies, for all that I am glad he brought back Doctor Who and started Torchwood, and I have not made that a secret to anyone who would listen. RTD seems to have a penchant for lots of angst in his shows and that has been clearly seen in every season and special of Doctor Who and Torchwood. It’s been like one long series of angsting for the characters and, of course, the fans who get involved in the character’s stories.
Matt Smith’s Doctor has new hope, a new body and a new zest for life that I find refreshing, especially after the monumentally depressing year we had for DW and TW last year. The Doctor Who specials (aside from the first which was lighthearted, but poorly written IMO) were all depressing as hell and any fan of Torchwood is well aware of why Children of Earth the Torchwood Miniseries was depressing. I felt like I was on one long crying jag no matter where I turned in my Sci-fi fandoms.
(Of course I’m a tad thankful for this as it hurtled me into finding some new fandoms, Criminal Minds and Supernatural being two of them)
I’m grateful that it appears, though it could be too soon to tell since where only one episode into the season (but it’s Steve Moffat, I trust him), but I think I’m not going to be tempted to drink cyanide out of sheer depression brought on by the episodes this year in Doctor Who. The verdict is still out on Torchwood of course. If BBC brings it back for a new season and IF I decide to watch it (I may boycott it because of RTD still directing it) I’m hoping for less angst. I’ll probably hold off till after the whole season is done so I’ll know if it’s worth the pain of getting involved with the characters again.
So there’s my small review of what I thought and a tiny bit of outlook on what could be a very good season for Steve Moffat’s Doctor Who.
ttfn
p.s.
In the end, I’ll always have a soft spot for David Tennant’s portrayal of The Doctor, just as I still have a soft spot for Tom Baker’s version. However, I think it’s time to retire him and his anger and sadness and time for a new version to step up, so strangely enough…it’s good to see him go.
