Isn't that always the way?

[trinityvixen]

So, I finally got to see Torchwood: Children of Earth. If this is how they work it when they're not doing full seasons, then, shit, yo, never let them write 13-episode seasons again. It was easily the most compelling Torchwood ever. They tackled big issues, and they--gosh!--dealt with them. Not in that "everyone is forgiven 'cause everyone messes up" way either, which was most shocking of all. I really enjoyed it...

...up until Day Three when I, looking for icons for a totally unrelated fandom, got spoiled for MAJOR PLOT DEVELOPMENTS by someone not putting a spoiler warning on their icon dump and I saw spoiler icons for the series. THANKS A LOT, ICON MAKER.

Seriously, I managed to go a few weeks without being spoiled through vigilance and courtesy of those who'd seen and did everything in their power to give away nothing. The second I let my guard down, boom, spoiled. SIGH.

I did still enjoy the series. I liked how weighty it felt and how it even made me sympathize with some fairly evil folk here and there. (Except that one lady. No spoilers to say that, just, yeah, if you've seen it, you know who I mean.) Over at ivy03's post, I mentioned how very Who it seemed at parts--where perfectly ordinary people got to be amazing, and I really liked that counter-balance to the people who were inherently extraordinary or just powerful who were complete dicks a lot of the time.

I think ivy03 gets into it in more and better detail than I'll ever manage, so go read and comment on her post if you like. (Spoilers, naturally.) The one thing someone brought up that I held onto so I could address it after I'd seen it all was this question raised over at io9: Was Children of Earth homophobic? (Spoilers!)

My short answer is no, but that doesn't mean they didn't slip up a bit. What I mean is, I don't have any issue with them killing a "gay" character. I raise my eyebrow more at the fact that said character's homosexual relationship was constantly teased or derided throughout the miniseries. I like that Ianto was basically not really gay just in love with a guy. That's fairly progressive, to say nothing of how romantic (in the schmoopy and classical sense) it is--the idea that you can overlook your own biological instinct if love is involved. I mean, that's powerful stuff that our heteronormative society can't hardly accept--that you could have romantic feelings for someone of a gender you're not normally attracted to. And that that's okay! That you can go ahead and have that relationship and not really be gay if you really aren't. Love conquers all! There's no evidence this "gay" character really is, was, or ever would have been gay. Not even bi. He just loved one guy enough not to care.

But he did care, and that's where the show went off target. Having Ianto's sister tease him about dating a man was kinda adorable, if only because at the time and later it became clear that she really did it out of love herself (we always tease our siblings, no matter their choices) and because she was desperate to know more about the life he never shared with her. Subsequent engagements on the subject were less kind. I could have done without Clement's "queer" comment entirely. That was just ugly. They lampshade it with Ianto saying it's not the 1960s any more, and that kind of talk speaks to ignorance, but still. That didn't need to be there. That it was played for humor makes it harder to divine the butt of the joke, but I'm certain it was Ianto, given how he's the bristly, fussy type who positively exploded at the comment. (The straight man who loses it is almost always the victim of the humor.) But it could have gone both ways, just as love-conquers-all is my read on what could also be read as they-took-away-a-gay-character-and-just-made-him-conditionally-gay with the whole Jack/Ianto thing.

I have other thoughts on the abuses of power and the ugliness of the ethical choices, but they've been covered by most other people. I might get around to posting them, I might not.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that when a series is not regarded as the creators want it to be, they monkey around with changing characterization. (This has been the problem with Heroes since season one.) So it's not that they're writing for an audience they don't have, more that they might be trying for an audience they think dislikes things they've done (which is still there). I wonder if that isn't the case for Torchwood, and if they haven't, by accident, pleased the wrong sort of group--i.e. they managed to draw back in some of the distanced, skeptical folk (me) and alienate a lot of the harder-core, fandom-supported folk (you).

It's an interesting point about serials vs. miniseries, however, I'd say they did better by character in this than they'd done in a long while. You got a better sense of the lives of the characters that were left than had previously been seen because they were operating in their private spaces and not just at Torchwood. I mean, the phrase "and who is he when he's at home" comes to mind. That's the point--we never really see. We know Jack's been around forever, but the emotional fallout of that was so much better demonstrated by centering on his daughter than in all the flashbacks to the past that ever we saw. Because that's where we see the human and the magical at the same time. It's a relatable moment. Ditto with Ianto. Gwen relying on Andy and Rhys to ground her has been done, but they've rarely been allowed to shine so bright. I think this miniseries got in a lot of character, all things considered. The problem is that some of that just didn't jibe with previous characterization. I'm just willing to give it a pass because the show hasn't been extremely faithful in all of that anyway.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

There were quite lovely character bits, yes. But there are also lovely character bits in The Birds. Then everyone gets pecked to death. I'm not talking about the attention paid to fleshing out the characters so much as the character arcs. In order to tell the story they wanted to tell, they had to kill one character futilely (a non-heroic death was the point, though I still object to it on easy-to-avoid grounds), drive another to despair, and have the last one have a life-altering event, her pregnancy (I do think Gwen's pregnancy is integral to the theme here). All of those things had to happen for the story to work. And as such, all of the characters are ground up to serve it. I'm not advocating a toys-back-in-the-toybox approach to serial tv, but characters need to be put on arcs that allow them to stick around. (And, I always hope, not become despicable fuckwits. Many shows have fallen from my graces because the character arcs written to generate continued drama make the characters into asstards. I'm looking at you ER.)

Interesting that you brought up Heroes, because I was actually thinking about that. I think all serial tv shows have to exist on a spectrum in between a Star Trek TNG, where the characters end the episode in the same place they began it (most of the time), and a mini-series where characters depart the field when their role is done. Heroes is firmly on the mini-series side. The characters in season one have to change so much for the story to work that their stories should have ended after that season (as they were meant to). It was trying to force the characters to stick around after they've been on such a journey that was the essential problem with everything in Heroes after that. Heroes should have been a stand-alone mini-series. As should CoE. If there is a series four of Torchwood, and if they try to force the show back into an episodic format without just entirely replacing the cast, I think you're going to have essentially the same problems Heroes has.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't think that the characters were all that decimated. Jack was finally as dark as we've been repeatedly told he was. Ianto's never been characterized enough to be assassinated. And Gwen was still pretty much Gwen. I don't think that any of them were yanked out of any character arc.

Heroes is firmly on the mini-series side.
I suppose that's one way of saying that they completely rewrote characters when they couldn't justify them existing past their obvious sell-by dates. But yeah, if Torchwood comes back, I have a hard time imagining that you can put Jack in any position of authority. I'd also have a hard time accepting Gwen, for all her now-unchallenged seniority, given that she still thinks that Jack can be saved, can still make up for what he did. Fuck that noise, no he cannot. She's as questionable as he if she believes in that kind of redemption. Or, rather, I should say that it would take a major miracle for the show to be written so well as to redeem Jack that I am loath to see them try because I know they'll fail.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I agree that the character arcs for Jack and Gwen are consistent. (Ianto didn't get an arc so much as instant death, though.) But that's not the point. The point is not one of them is usable for an episodic series anymore. Which I tend to see as a problem. For an episodic series.

Gwen does think that Jack hangs the stars, but at the end of CoE, it's questionable if she knows exactly what happened. She may not.