fandom top 5's, pt. 1

[rm]

Top five things that would be different about Torchwood if [I] were the showrunner.

1. Solid chronology. I know that's insane in the Whoniverse, but I think Torchwood always suffered a lot from us never knowing when any event happened in relation to any other event. I've really just come to the conclusion that CoE takes place maybe a week after The Dead Line -- it's the only thing that makes sense, but I hate that we're all always left grasping around for these things. I know it rains a lot in Cardiff, but what fucking season is it?

2. More would have happened with "Ianto is a lying liar who lies" sooner. Cyberwoman was great, and letting that just sit for a while is smart. But we don't have hints of Ianto's dishonesties again except in: Fragments and From Out of the Rain, which actually just looked like a research error when it aired. We also get a sense Ianto might be a lying liar who lies because of the two different birthdays that exist for him, if you include tie-in material canon. I also always felt that the "master tailor" line felt wrong in my gut; I'm not sure why, maybe I've spent enough time on both sides of that equation that it just hit my antenna funny. But then, we never really get the confirmation of Ianto is lying liar who lies until the Debenham's moment. It's brilliant and completely re-opens the character for us. But I would have made sure it was seeded better and used it as a more significant plot point, especially since it's interesting that Ianto, the lying liar who lies, is also the only one who can bring the truth to the fore in Adam. I thought the show really wasted its possibilities on this front.

3. Play up Jack's alienness. Jack's first language isn't 20th century English, and his culture is not an earth culture. Sure he's been here a long time, and knows how to assimilate for all sorts of reasons, but we have Jack use all these awkward idioms ("the worst creatures you can imagine") and there are all these cracks about Jack's manners, and it would have been so easy with a line or two here and there, with an extra shot or two in any of the episodes that reference Boeshane, to really get the Jack is alien. I think reducing Jack being different down to either his sexuality or his immortality short-changes the character and the complexity of what Torchwood could be.

4. Have Euros Lyn direct everything. Really. He got much more nuanced performances out of Barrowman than anyone else who directs for Torchwood, and he was able to keep GDL's considerable skills focused and on target. His choices with sound and space were, I think, fantastic, and I wonder a lot about what he could have done for us in all those "monster of the week episodes."

5. Non-sexual love. This isn't about toning down the sex in Torchwood at all. This about the fact that the show is, in my opinion, at its finest in Jack's interaction with that guy that comes through the Rift on the plane. That serious, adult drama there in the conversation Jack has with him in the bar -- man to man, and more moving for Jack being queer and for it not being about that -- I would have really love to see that sort of love and affection explored in other places, including between the team (Tosh, we hardly knew you!) and being vocalized. Our culture is very "just friends" but often some of the hardest relationships are those that involve love without the expectation and recognition that comes with sex and family.

6. Yes, there's a six. I get a six, because six shouldn't even have to be on the list, but woah, less with the offensive South Asian portrayals/castings/plotlines. Torchwood is faily faily faily here, and that would not be happening if I ran the world or the show.


Top five peeves re. Deathly Hallows?

1. SNAKE BUBBLE TO THE HEAD. Really, it's not just that. It's that JKR took a narrative about outcasts and then made the popular kids into outcasts instead and threw out all the marvelous grey that was Snape's character by just making him a creepy stalker that couldn't get laid.

2. It wasn't ready for prime-time. It needed a tighter edit.

3. Remus. Tonks. Off-screen demise. WHUT?

4. Draco. Another chance for complexity in just a sentence or two thrown away.

5. One of the best moments in the book revolves around Kreacher, who explains that he did not die because his master told him not to. It's horrifying. It's brilliant (weirdly, I hate the house elves, and they get all the best moments in Deathly Hallows), but it's sort of thrown away in a mid-book bury and the people hearing the story don't even react to that part of it. There's no nice way to say this, but I felt like Book 7, in a series that's all about love, kinda proved everyone is actually a bigot, and not in a useful, teaching moment way.



Top Five Vehicles

Seriously? I don't even drive. This is hard work.

1. The Tardis.

2. An old-skool BSG Viper. Fuck yeah!

3. Okay, my favorite show when I was like eight, was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I don't remember what his ship was called, and I don't care, but it's going on this list, right here, right now.

4. That lovely little plane that comes through the Rift in Out of Time. Sweet.

5. The big triangular battleships in Star Wars (I am a bad geek, I don't know my terminology). There's a shot in one of the films in the first trilogy with two or three of them passing each other real close, like, it was was always breathtaking, so breathtaking to me.

Comments

[spybarbie.livejournal.com]

I think that the biggest tragedy in the Harry Potter series is that JKR crafted all of this brilliant characters and then let many of them go to waste - namely, one Severus Snape.

Kreacher? I hadn't noticed that so far, I think I'm going to have to go take a look at that part now because that, right there, is fascinatingly creepy.

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

Re: 'what fucking season is it?' ... it's the UK. You really cannot tell by looking. We don't have "sun in summer, snow in winter" seasons here. Cityscapes don't have a lot of trees so it's hard to tell that way, and costume designers are focused more on a look than dressing for weather. Seriously, unless you can feel the temperature it is outside or see trees anywhere, you cannot tell what season it is in the UK (except maybe Scotland, where it still actually snows more than once a year) by looking. They could maybe have fit it into the dialogue, but I guess they figured 'a time of year when kids are in school' was enough.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Mostly, I just want relational time -- one of the problems with Torchwood is we never see impact from events that transpire -- well, if we knew it was 3 months since the last episode or whatever -- it would help a lot.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I was going to say it's Wales- its the cold, rainy season. Actually, this last week has been unrelentingly sunny up here in Chester. Are you British, then?

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Hee! There’s a TW fanfic that makes the lack of seasons in Wales a plot point — Ianto gets caught in a time warp and doesn’t realize that he’s been missing for several months, because the weather feels the same as when he left.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

3. Play up Jack's alienness. Jack's first language isn't 20th century English, and his culture is not an earth culture.

You know that moment in Day Two when Jack is chained to the wall and yelling, “Face me like a man”? The part of my brain that wasn’t busy admiring the view was thinking, You, sir, have spent too much in the twentieth century. Because come on, “Face me like a man” — as opposed to what, a woman? FAIL. What happened to my enlightened fifty-first-century guy?

The big triangular battleships in Star Wars

I’m guessing you mean the Star Destroyers. I always wanted an X-wing, myself. Or the Millennium Falcon — variable artificial gravity orientation FTW!

Confession time: I have not yet read Deathly Hallows (don’t worry, I’m already pretty much spoiled for the megillah), and now I don’t know that I’m going to enjoy it very much

[snakeling]

You, sir, have spent too much in the twentieth century.
Dude, the wife comment, in his conversation with Hart? Not on, not on. And I could believe that Jack has assimilated, given that he's lived in linear time from 1869 on, but the fact that it didn't throw Hart leads me to believe that the 51st century is less enlightened than we're supposed to believe it is.

[svollga.livejournal.com]

Torchwood #4 - yes, yes, thousand times yes! Visual is my main channel of perception, and CoE, as well as everything he did in DW, forces me to watch-watch-watch, never looking away.

Jack being alien - it's an interesting point. On one hand, the language thing goes somehow unnoticed (even in fanfiction, Ianto is always talking Welsh in bed, why Jack never says a word in his native tongue?) On the other hand, I think Jack integrated most of the Earth culture during 140 years he was living throught it. He's more Earthian now that Boeshanian, I suppose. Thought I'd love to see some hints of 51-st century culture, not only 'sexual freedom' one.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

One of the things I liked about Tom baker's Who is that he'd be waffling on and being charming and then he'd do or say something just slightly off reminding one that as human as Time lords look and act, they aren't. I'd have liked a little more of that in Jack.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Euros doing the Space Whale episode would have been really interesting.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that Rowling didn't let her characters live up to their full potential, and that Draco, Severus and Kreacher were among them. She spent far too much time analyzing and developing the "heroes" of the story, whether they were Dumbledore or Harry and his gang. She could have focused a lot more on the supposedly "evil" or "creepy" characters and shown that not all of their actions were selfish or malicious, that sometimes even good people can do bad things or vice versa, and not for simple reasons.

I think Severus is far more complex than a sociopath with unrequited love issues. That Rowling dumbed him down so much was insulting to his character, and I never bought the whole idea about his joining the Death Eaters just because they were nice to him, or making moral decisions based on his selfish feelings for Lily. Snape is smarter than that, and capable of far more complex emotion, as Rowling used to show her readers in past books.

I found myself wishing that Snape and Harry had had a chance to talk before Rowling killed the guy off. I'm not sure what they would have said, but I'm sure it would have been far more interesting and significant than Snape's pensieve. And as for Draco, the fact that he faded into the background almost immediately after the focus on him throughout book six was ridiculous. He could have been a lynchpin in the story, and could have shaped a much better plot in book seven.

Oh, yeah, and the "off-screen" kill of Remus and Tonks reminded me all to much of the fact that when Sirius died in book five, I didn't even notice until TWO CHAPTERS LATER. Rowling did a great job with Fred's death scene, but she has a habit of not giving enough importance to death scenes involving characters Harry cares just as much about.

[snakeling]

I didn't even notice until TWO CHAPTERS LATER
I thought I was the only one! I was reading Remus's conversation with Harry, and went, wait, what? I had to reread the curtain chapter, and there it was. Maybe it's the reason why I never was as devastated as other people about Sirius's death, because it had been such a non-event at first (and I never was a Sirius fan, too).

[wordswoman.livejournal.com]

Kreacher always brought to mind for me a child raised by KKK members--seething with hatred and bigotry that's as natural for him as knowing fairytales is for a normal kid.

[piratefanatic.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd ever have come up with that description, but wow. Yeah. Exactly.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Wow, it says something about what an exasparating book Deathly Hallows was that her treatment of Slytherin (one student panicked because of *Voldemort*- that's it, everybody out of the pool!) didn't make the top 5 (and mind you, I agree with all your choices. Fully listing Book 7's irritations would be... Book 8.)

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

, less with the offensive South Asian portrayals/castings/plotlines. Torchwood is faily faily faily here, and that would not be happening if I ran the world or the show.

What's this one about?

[rm.livejournal.com]

For a country with a visible and significant South Asian minority, it seems a little fucked up that the only South Asians on Torchwood are invariably villains (Suzie, Rupesh, the random guy in CoE helping get kids onto buses -- I think there are more, but I've forgotten the others). India and Pakistan both feature in sub-plots in the show and in tie-in materials in really unnecessary negative ways as well.

[exbentley]

This may just be a typo, but... Isn't it "the worst creatures you can imagine"? And I sort of thought Boeshane was a place in 51st Century Earth; 3000 years means brighter sun, different plantlife, different names & culture. The world could change a lot in 3000 years.

I love that the TARDIS tops your list.

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's a typo. thanks, I'll fix.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about chronology, and CoE is particularly difficult, as it seems like it was set in September 2009, which is also the best date for Lost Souls, and there was obviously a lot of time between them.

I've really just come to the conclusion that CoE takes place maybe a week after The Dead Line -- it's the only thing that makes sense

How did you work this out? Also, do you have any thoughts on when The Sin Eaters is set? I had the feeling that that was pretty close to CoE as well, since we have a reference to Rhys's new car.

Non-sexual love. This isn't about toning down the sex in Torchwood at all. This about the fact that the show is, in my opinion, at its finest in Jack's interaction with that guy that comes through the Rift on the plane. That serious, adult drama there in the conversation Jack has with him in the bar -- man to man, and more moving for Jack being queer and for it not being about that

Yes, so much this. The way that Jack and John Ellis interact is just beautiful. I wish they'd kept the deleted scene after John gets off the bus, having failed to produce the fare in the correct currency.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've not worked out the CoE/DeadLine timing at all, other than, the only way I can explain Ianto's "omg COUPLE" thing is if CoE happens right after The Dead Line -- so he's dealing with the fact that Jack's heard all that stuff he said, and everything seems fine, but like... does Jack not care, does Jack not take it seriously, does Jack love him? I can see The Dead Line (and also the events of the Sin Eaters, which I agree, also has to take place close by) being what sends Ianto into this whole "wait, for real? we're together?" thing. It's the only thing that makes sense to me emotionally.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Play up Jack's alienness YES! Or, at the very least have Jack use an outdated reference now an again. Language is strange. 99% of the time I speak American English, but sometimes I reach for a word and out comes Spanish. Or cut up my toast into quarters and call it soldier points.

And while I like his alienness, I also get frustrated with distant Jack is portrayed at times. He's lived in Cardiff off-and-on for 160 years. And at least part of that time would have been spent at ground level and sober.

It's hard to mix the two in the right proportions. The best sort of mindset I could think of was as a first generation immigrant ( or refugee ) who's lived in his new home for twenty years. Like a Hmong soldier that ended up in Wisconsin.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

Remus. Tonks. Off-screen demise. WHUT?

Thank you! The first time I read it I came out of my room crying, "They killed my werewolf! I didn't even get to see it!"

Broke my heart. Although it did help to lend to the scope of the battle and the numbness that overtakes Harry. It was a very Whedonesque kill-anyone-no-one-is-safe kind of trope.

I still hated it though.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

COE is set in September (there is a date on a newspaper at one point) and in fact Ianto died on the 11th - nobody knows if that was intentional or just the outcome of some random decision by a props man. It looks as if it was filmed earlier in the summer so that is a bit off-putting. I guess in that case an actual date trumps appearances.

If I remember correctly, then judging from the state of the vegetation, the end of S2 was in about late Sept, early October - so at least a year before.

Of course Britain has perfectly definable seasons, it's only people who never set foot outside a town who are oblivious to them.


Euros Lyn is a BBC1 director, they couldn't have had him for the previous series. This sort of thing is why a move to BBC2 and then BBC1 improved the series - it meant they had access to the better writers, directors etc.


Jack isn't an alien, he's a human. At most this makes him a long term immigrant, but given how long he's been in Cardiff even that is pushing it. The accent is more than enough to mark him as 'outsider' (I know that presumably doesn't register for you, but it does for us).

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I did a long analysis on a previous post of rm's as to why Ianto couldn't possibly have died on the 11th (the short version is that the newspaper evidence has "Wednesday September 2009" twice on consecutive days, but Days 1 and 5 have to be schooldays from internal plot evidence, so if Ianto dies on Day 4 in September 2009 it simply can't be the 11th).

[berry-k.livejournal.com]

That lovely little plane from Out of Time? It's a de Havilland DH.89 "Dragon Rapide". Very pretty indeed. They built just over 200 of them between 1934 and the start of WWII. The one used in Torchwood was a DH.89a, with modified wingtips and improved flaps, built in 1946.

(Private pilot here; it's one of my geekeries.)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I agree with you regarding Jack's Alieness, which makes a very nice analogy with the Doctor and the differences between them, imo, especially the way they react to their "Companions".

Ianto "Liar, Liar, Pant on Fire" Jones should have been more developed, it would have been nice to see some more of his estrangement from his family... I dunno, there was so much more to see with him.

Your #1 point regarding Deathly Hollows made me really hate the "message" JKR was trying to convey. Bah.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I really felt she was just going through the motions with Deathly Hallows. The prose was often very wooden and there wasn't much interest or nuance in it. It felt like she just wanted to finish it so she could finally stop writing them.

[timelady.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with she really ought to have built Draco up more in the final book. I mean, there were so many things I really thought should have been addressed or resolved and they just weren't. I mean, for Draco and Harry to have that fued going on through all of the books, there should have been a final confrontation and there really wasn't (instead she just continued it on to the next generation). Or she could have had Draco actually go fully bad and completely join the dark side. Or she could have had him sort out his priorities and decide that almost killing Dumbledore and letting the Death Eaters ransack Hogwarts just wasn't the side he should be on. (I was also slightly hoping for him having a change of heart and taking up with Hermione, since there were slight hints in the early books, but I figured that didn't have a good chance of happening).

Personally, I would have added KITT the black talking car from the original Knight Rider to the list of vehicles. Oh! and maybe the Batmobile! Personally I would have gone with an X-Wing from Star Wars since those big battleships are a bit hard to manuever. The Enterprise! How could I miss that!

[timelady.livejournal.com]

Back to that list of favorite vehicles... the train that could travel through space in Galaxy Express 999.

[timelady.livejournal.com]

thought of another to add to that list... the traveling bed with the enchanted knob from Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

[tommx.livejournal.com]

Regarding vehicles.

With you on every single one of them. On #4, the plane would be rockin' but having it flown by a hot pilot from the 50's would be even more rockin'.

jack's alieness...

[sarantha.livejournal.com]

Technically speaking, Jack isn't alien. I just watched the Empty Child (first Who appearance of Captain Jack) again and the Doctor says outright that he's a future human. Otherwise, I agree with the comment; I want to learn more about the face of Bo. :)

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

4. That lovely little plane that comes through the Rift in Out of Time.

You can get a flight in one of those:

http://www.classicflight.com/theAircraft