Non-review

I would review this weeks Torchwood, only I put it on and sort of didn’t watch it.

Much as I enjoyed seeing people camping on TV, it just didn’t grab, me. And excessive gore is not my thing either.

Still it was a good twist to have a story where it turns out that it wasn’t any of Torchwood’s business after all.

An Improvement

I enjoyed Torchwood this week, written by Sapphire & Steel creator PJ Hammond.

Very nasty, but not nearly as silly as previous weeks. People still have trouble with the falibility of the team, and the lack of morality.

Next week is written by the showrunner Chris Chibnall again, who so far has contributed the worst of the 5 episodes so far.

Hey! That’s a bit silly.

No one, but no one will understand the reference, but I’ll carry on.

I’m still following Torchwood, usually delayed on the PVR even though it’s on six out of seven days a week.

Last night’s was a bit of a daft base under siege runaround, set almost entirely in the hub. Torchwood is a post-watershed “adult” programme. By adult it means only suitable for over 18′s not any suggestion of intelectual depth, although the emotion is still there from its parent.

The plot was basically, and this isn’t a spoiler, sexy female cyborg looks sexy and creates havoc. As seen in the trailers cybergirl is shown throughout incompete and minus her outer armour in a cheap attempt to show some flesh. The costume even has high heels.

Many criticising the show seem to be expecting “adult” to mean the sort of Sci-fi that would not be out of place on BBC4. Torchwood is very much BBC3, the BBC station for 18-25 year olds, and I’m not convinced I’m part of its demographic. Still it’s fun and even if I stop watching I would defend the right of its target audience to be entertained.

“The most dangerous thing about Torchwood is Torchwood”

Well it’s two episodes in and what do I think?

I’ve enjoyed Torchwood inside, but am not sure whether this is me being a fan of Doctor Who, Russell T Davies or this sort of thing, or whether it is genuinely any good. What does strike me is how silly many of the criticisms are.

Torchwood is a different programme to Doctor Who. It is unashamedly niche, post watershed sci-fi. Where pre-watershed the swearwords would be edited out and replaced with “Flippin Hell” and the like, it doesn’t happen with torchwood. Many have said the swearing was shoe horned in, but I would say I barely noticed it.

There has been a fuss from parents who have “suddenly” learned (despite it being made clear way back that this would be niche and post watershed), that it’s unsuitable for their children, and grumbling that they’re having to tell their who mad offspring that they’re not allowed to watch it. These are the sort of parents who want others to say “no” so they don’t have to.
The BBC aren’t telling parents what to do either, they’re clearly letting them know what it is and letting them decide, however this didn’t stop some loon at the Express going on about how the BBC was encouraging parents to let kids watch sex and violence. [1]
Torchwood in this respect is the show for the people who’ve grown up with Who and then complain the new programmes aim too much at the kiddies. It’s not more Doctor Who to fill the gap between seasons.

Likewise there has been a great fuss over the fact that Torchwood employees are not angelic cartoon heroes, but actually a bit dodgy. Torchwood blatantly don’t care about the world beyond their narrow clean up and cannibalise role, they’re not even as goody too shoed as The Doctor. Sato is quite uncaring and amoral, valuing the challenge above anything, and Owen, according to some interpretations, nearly commits date rape in episode 1 and is shown to have a violent streak in episode 3. Ianto seems to be a human sonic screwdriver, there to deliver witty lines, but also to explain why they’re not spending two thirds of every episode doing boring stuff. Jack is a driven man, the Doctor and Rose’s good influence is wearing thin, and the obvious façade is cracking. He doesn’t care that his team are dishonest, so long as they obey the ground rules and the job gets done.

So yes they’re dodgy characters, but thing is so what, this is post watershed, they don’t have to be role models for the kids. The rules don’t apply and if they did there is no rule that says the central characters of Sci Fi must be whiter than white. It is signposted that this is a dangerous crowd Gwen is getting involved with, so these actions are not condoning or endorsing any form of immoral behaviour. The question is: Is she going to be their moral compass or become as corrupt as they are?

The Jury is out over Torchwood in my house, however if I do criticise it, it will be over what it is, not how it fails to be what it’s not supposed to be.

[1] Thanks to nutterwatch