My First SFX Weekender

There were many things I loved about the weekend I spent in Prestatyn, flying the Angry Robot table at the SFX Weekender. There were also a couple of things that were mindlessly irritating, and one thing that was fairly disgusting. This is not how I wanted to begin my account of the weekend. How I was going to begin it until about 15mins before calling it a night on Saturday, was like this:

‘If you’ve not danced in the same room as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Captain Picard, Tron, and Bananaman, you haven’t lived.’

What changed that was really the last straw of something I’d been trying to grin and bear the whole weekend. I’m talking about the semi-naked women. No, not the slave-Leias – those ladies do that because they want to fulfil their own fantasies, and I respect that, especially when they’re braving the gold bikini on the coast of Wales in February – I’m talking about the women hired by SFX as entertainment, where the entertainment consisted of walking around in little but a thin film of silver spandex, on stilts, trailing men with cameras. I’d heard the complaints about them last year, and was appalled that nothing had been done to even out the score.

Let me be absolutely clear on this: I’m not appalled by the women – they’re doing a job and I imagine they’re extroverted types who are drawn to the work; neither am I appalled by the concept of employing people to dress up in risqué SF and fantasy costumes to entertain the punters. What I’m complaining about is the complete lack of equality. It sends a completely different message to employ only young women to walk around wearing very little with the deliberate purpose of titillating men in a purely objectifying fashion. (They may well have been titillating some of the women too, but I don’t think that was the aim.) It’s clear by such a decision that the organisers neither considered that heterosexual women might want a bit of harmless titillation, too, nor how discomforting it would be for the female attendees to have to endure the constant leering of their male companions without any similar outlet to balance it out.

It was deeply discomforting to have to listen to the constant comments whenever they were around; deeply disappointing that nothing similar had been laid on for me. But I tried to set it aside. I assumed it would be done after the trading room closed and the evening events began. Yet there I was, partying with the Lukes and the Leias, the Picards and the Uhuras, feeling like this was the closest I would ever get to a genuine alien disco, and there were superheroes there too, and I saw them: the same women from the daytime-posing, now dancing on stage wearing nothing but tiny black straps and lightbulbs over their crotches and breasts, reducing them to giant glowing versions of their sexual characteristics.

Instant buzz kill.

I wasn’t the only woman who felt this way. And the thing is this: no one would have minded if there were some semi-naked chaps strutting around for the het ladies and gay fellas to enjoy as well. It’s much less objectifying if the sexual desires of the other genders and sexual preferences are being recognised, too. It was a real shame that something so easy to rectify should sour what had been working out to be one of the best discos of my life.

So, yeah, there was that.

The other problems were fairly endurable. The accommodation was terrible. If buildings had personalities, Pontins would be a little old woman whose grandchildren never visit and who can’t really look after herself anymore, but refuses to have a carer in to help. Most of the windows in our ‘chalet’ didn’t close properly, and one was hanging off its hinges. There was no mirror. The heaters were ineffectual, and the beds were singularly uncomfortable. Oh, and we had no hot water for the first day, so I endured the coldest shower of my life.

But I didn’t come to Pontins for a luxury holiday experience; I came to hang out with awesome people dressed in awesome clothes talking about awesome geeky things. At the end of the day the poor accommodation instilled a sort of camaraderie: ‘Yours doesn’t have a mirror? Ours doesn’t have a microwave! And have you seen our sofa bed?!’ I can’t say I ever want to experience that sort of accommodation again, but for a weekend it was endurable.

My experience of the various panels was limited, due to my duties on the stall, but that’s OK, I come to conventions to socialise, for the most part, anyway. The panels I did get to see were fantastic. I especially enjoyed the Q & A with Eve Myles. Anyone who’s read my reviews of Torchwood: Miracle Day will know that I’m recently converted to Eve Myles fandom. I thought she was absolutely fantastic in TMD, both as an actor and as a realistic female action hero. It was wonderful, then, to discover that she was such a wonderful, open, entertaining speaker, as well. I enjoyed both her stories of Torchwood (including certain amusing and bizarre stories concerning John Barrowman’s ‘little Barrowman’) and her accounts of her own life. I admire a woman who is pleased by the concept of wine in pint glasses and endless buffets. She’s gained status as a sex symbol without ever being tempted to destroy her beauty by starving herself to abnormal thinness. Every moment of her Q & A was an absolute treat.

I also have to say how much I enjoyed the Kitschies, awards presented by the very fine people at Pornokitsch for ‘the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works of genre literature’. I can’t help but approve of an award ceremony where the winners receive handmade stuffed tentacles and Kraken rum as prizes, as well as monetary rewards. It’s great to see progressive and intelligent genre fiction rewarded, and I’ve noted several of the nominees and winners to chase down and sample myself. You can read more about them, and this year’s winners, at: http://www.thekitschies.com/ . I kind of felt that A Monster Calls deserved the Inky Tentacle for its cover art, but as it won the Red Tentacle for most progressive, intelligent, and entertaining novel I suppose it’s only fair that the Inky went to someone else.

There was a special pleasure, too, to singing along to ‘Once More with Feeling’, the Buffy musical episode, with several hundred other people, at least 50% of whom knew all the words. There’s no doubt that this was a convention for fans, and as such it had a joy and exuberance not quite like any other I’ve been to. The costumes were fantastic. There were Daleks and Aliens and stilt-walking transformers. One of my favourites had to be the wookie, which I first saw being greeted by a tenth Doctor. The wookie called out to the Doctor in wookie, and the Doctor responded in kind (of course, the Doctor would speak wookie), and then they hugged. I also heard tell of a dalek saying to someone who held the door open for it ‘You will be the last to be exterminated’. All in all it was as warm and open and kind as you would hope a bunch of geeks would be when they’re all just enjoying the openness and company of others as prepared to celebrate geek culture as themselves.

My only regret is that I didn’t have anything resembling a true costume myself. I would have loved to join the ranks of the superheroes and aliens. All the same, until my buzz was killed, there was really nothing quite like the costumed disco. I’ve rarely enjoyed dancing quite so much.

And I can’t talk about the weekend without saying how great it was to catch up with people. Conventions are a great way to cross the Internet divide, and I’ve never known so many people coming to the same event. I met up with old buddies like Ros Dando and Natalie Burford, who I know from college; and Dave Moore, who I know from LARPing. I met people I’d previously talked to only on Twitter, like the fabulous Emma Newman and Jenni Hill, with whom I worked on Genre for Japan, but never actually met in the flesh until yesterday. And I caught up with people I’d had the good fortune to natter with at EasterCon last year, as well, such as Anne Lyle, Amanda Rutter, Andrew ‘MyGodItsRaining’ Reid, and Emma Jane Davies, to name but a few. I only wish I could have caught up with everyone I knew who was there, but without wifi to get in touch with people it was impossible to find everyone amongst the thousands of attendees.

Plus, it was a great weekend for the Angry Robot team as well. We sold out of nearly everything and did our best business ever at any con. Loads of authors did signings, including my Twitter mate Adam Christopher (author of Empire State) and my old writing group buddy Dave Tallerman, whose debut novel, Giant Theif, was launched on Thursday. We sold out every copy of each of their books from the stock we had with us, and you can’t ask much better than that.

Thanks again to the Angry Robot team for enabling my convention going. If I’m asked to fly the Angry Robot table again next year I shall definitely accept (although I hope we’re able to get different accommodation, and that the event’s organisers will join us in the 21st century regarding sex and gender).

The Serene Wombles

Today marks one year since my very first post on this here writing and review site. And what a year it has been! Me with the reviewing, you with the sometimes reading my reviews. Not to mention the occasional paid writing success, the publication of my labour of love analysing the end of The Dark Tower, the completion of my novella, and so many other things. For the first couple of months this blog averaged six views a day, now it averages sixty-two, and around 1,800 views a month. It’s still an itty-bitty blog spewing into the ether, but it’s reassuring to know that some of you found something interesting in what I had to say.

Anyway, in celebration of ISotHM’s birthday, I’ve decided to cap off the year by handing out some meaningless awards: The Serene Wombles!*.

Eligibility for a Serene Womble in conferred by being the subject of a review in the past year. There may have been better or more worthy things that came out this year, but if I didn’t find them relevant to my interests, or if I simply didn’t have the time to review them, they won’t be eligible for a Serene Womble. I make no pretense that these awards are significant or important in any way, but I enjoy having the opportunity to praise and draw attention to things I have loved.

The Serene Wombles are divided into two categories, those that apply to recent releases, and special Time Travelling Wombles for the most awesome things in my Reviewing Through the Time Machine posts. The division between the former and the latter may at times seem arbitrary – why should a film that came out in 2009 count as a recent release, whilst a TV Show that ended in 2009 requires a time machine? It’ll always be a judgement call, and the judgement will have been made on a case-by-case basis at the time of reviewing. Sometimes I use a time machine for my reviews because I want to review something that came out in 1939, sometimes because I want to review something more recent that’s out of print, or because it’s a TV show that’s been cancelled. A show that was cancelled in 2009 therefore seems different to me than a film that was in the cinema in 2009, but may have only recently reached my eyes. At the end of the day, these are not the Oscars, they’re the highlights from a blog, and are therefore subject to my whim.

Let’s get started!

The Serene Womble for Best Film: Captain America: The First Avenger
Eligible Films: Moon, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Possession, Captain America: The First Avenger
There was some stiff and not so stiff competition in this category, but nevertheless, a clear winner. Moon was aesthetically pleasing, but a bit slow, and short on female characters and ethnic minorities. X-men: First Class was exciting and joyful, but deeply problematic in its representation of women and non-white people. Captain America was a fast-paced joy from start to finish that dealt expertly with its subject matter turning out something nuanced and impressive from a premise that could have been uncomfortably ‘all-American’ and patriotic. I’m very happy to award the first Serene Womble for Best Film to the First Avenger.

The Serene Womble for Best TV Show Game of Thrones
Eligible TV Shows: Misfits, Dirk Gently, Outcasts, Being Human (US), 10 O’clock Live, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Torchwood: Miracle Day.
Will this be a surprise or not? I don’t know. I’ve done a lot of squeeing and cheerleading for several TV shows over the past year. If I wanted to split this into fiction and non-fiction I’d be able to reward 10 O’clock Live the way I want to, but then it would be the only one in its category. If you’d asked me half a year ago, I’d have said Misfits without a doubt. It’s very close, and I’d love to reward Misfits for its originality and indie-quirkiness. If I were judging on its first series it would have won hands down. I didn’t feel the second series was quite as strong throughout, though, and whilst I still loved it, A Game of Thrones wins in terms of groundbreaking TV for this year, bringing epic fantasy to hugely successful, internationally acclaimed television in a way I don’t think has been done before. Perhaps the closest previous offering would have been BBC miniseries such as Gormenghast and the 1980s Chronicles of Narnia, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen epic fantasy produced on such an international scale that was as sexual and violent and true to its source material. It also offered roles like that of Tyrion Lannister to the superb Peter Dinklage, allowing him to shine in a way that’s rarely possible in the sort of roles usually offered to actors with dwarfism. It was stonkingly well-cast all round as well as being a visually stunning and gripping adaptation of a beloved fantasy series.

The Serene Womble for Best Actor Eve Myles for her portrayal of Gwen Cooper in Torchwood: Miracle Day
Eligible actors: too many to mention. This category is open to any actor in any recent production that I’ve reviewed in the past year – film, TV, radio, podcast, whatever. I’ve also made the decision not to distinguish on gender. It’s not something I really understand in this day an age. It’s not like sport, where physical differences might mean that men won over women disproportionately often. All that matters for this category is the acting. Having said that, maybe Eve Myles will be a controversial choice. You all know I supported Peter Dinklage for his Emmy, and his contribution to Game of Thrones certainly added to its win for TV show, but Eve Myles wins hands down, for me. I was blown away by her acting in Torchwood: Miracle Day. Any previous series of Torchwood? No, she wouldn’t have had a chance. I never really liked Gwen, before, but Eve Myles brought it this series, and she deserves recognition for a consistently shining performance on all different levels.

The Serene Womble for Best Novel Jumper, by Steven Gould
Eligible novels: A Dance with Dragons, by George R R Martin; Witch Week, by Diana Wynne Jones; Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones; Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones; The Dragon Keeper, by Robin Hobb; Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones; Jumper, by Steven Gould; Reflex, by Steven Gould; Jumper: Griffin’s Story, by Steven Gould; I, Zombie, by Al Ewing.
This was probably the hardest category to judge. So many entries, so many good books. It was particularly complicated by the whole Time Machine issue – unlike film and TV books can remain ‘current’ for a long time, and, for the most part, I only put them in the Time Machine category if they’re out of print (at least in the UK, where I live) or otherwise over-looked. So new books like I, Zombie are up against classics like Hexwood. This was further complicated because I reviewed some books before I introduced the Reviewing Through the Time Machine category of posting, and, what’s more, I reviewed a whole bunch of Steven Gould books in one post, two of which are out of print where I live, but three of which aren’t. Helm and Wild Side I had to order second-hand as ex-library books from the US, whereas Jumper, Reflex, and Jumper: Griffin’s Story I bought new. Give me some slack, I’d only been doing this blog 20 days by that point. Anyway, I decided to resolve this by saying that the three Steven Goulds I bought new belong in the ‘recent’ category, whilst the others will go in the Time Machine one. Once I decided this, my life became much easier.

I, Zombie was astoundingly original and tickled me, personally, but it has an odd break in the middle where it almost becomes another book and starts following a character much less appealing than the main character. Very close to winning, but not quite. Hexwood is a classic and one of my all time favourites – a got-to comfort book. It’s more cohesive than I, Zombie, and just as original, in its own way, but it’s also of a very similar mould to a lot of other Diana Wynne Jones books, with the strong female character who falls in love with a broken-yet-powerful charismatic and enigmatic man. In all honesty I would have felt I’d slighted one or the other if I’d had to choose between them. Jumper, on the other hand, is simply excellent. Tight and fast-paced, but full of interesting and engaging characters. This is the best superhero novel I’ve ever read, and much more interesting and original than most superhero plots full-stop. If only the film had been closer to the book! It’s got everything, as well as hitting some of my particular happy buttons, such as an expert handling of secret-identity angst.

The Serene Womble for Best Podcast The History of Philosophy Without any Gaps

Eligible podcasts: The History of Philosophy Without any Gaps and Marco and the Red Granny
Only two entries in this one. I’ve mentioned more podcasts in passing, but these were the only two I reviewed. I was torn. I sort of felt like I should choose Marco and the Red Granny simply because it is an SF story, and the general purpose of this blog is to review SF/F/Spec Fic. But I also review stuff if I love it really hard, and The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is well worth your time. Ultimately, I felt that although the ideas are bright and original, the pacing for Marco and the Red Granny was uneven and the central character a little difficult to engage with. I still think it’s a great podcast and think Hub are awesome for experimenting with the field of podcasting for longer fiction, but The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps won out. Hard to compare two podcasts of such different genres, but the latter is polished, entertaining, and informative.

Peter Adamson has a smooth and engaging podcasting voice. He’s also an expert in his field, and he brings in other experts to supplement his accounts and offer alternate view points. This podcast is pitched at just the right level – accessible for the interested layman but also informative for the experienced philosopher or historian. I’ve taught Ancient Philosophy, and I felt it really filled out my existing knowledge. This is great easy listening for the lady or gent on the go, looking for a bit of ear candy on the way to work, or down the allotment. You’ll drift in and out of an ancient world, feeling soothed and entertained, and you’ll actually come away having learnt something, as well. Of course, it’s not the same as reading the texts themselves, but I’m sure you’re all aware that there are more books worthy of your attention than anyone could read in lifetime. Let Peter Adamson do some of the work for you.

The Time Traveling Wombles

The Time Traveling Womble for Best Film Mr Smith Goes to Washington
(Embedding has been disabled for this clip, but you can go watch it here. Please note that this is the climax of the film, and as such both very famous and spoilerific. It contains nothing I didn’t know before watching the film for the first time, but if you want to avoid spoilers this is the clip I linked to in my original review.)

Eligible Films: Silent Running, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Bell, Book, and Candle
In a year when politics and big business has been prominently in the news, where a lot of people have felt the rich have been squeezing the poor, where democracy has sprung from revolution and here in the UK we debated and voted on voting reform, Mr Smith Goes to Washington held a particular relevance. 1939 to 2011, the issues are still the same. I was watching it in my bedroom with tears rolling down my face. I’d seen it before and known the plot long before I saw it, but it didn’t matter. ‘Filibuster’ is nearly synonymous with the above scene, to me. Maybe it doesn’t have quite the same familiarity with non-US audiences – I have a slight trans-Atlantic background, and it can make it difficult for me to judge these things – but people everywhere should watch this film. If they remade it now, it wouldn’t be as good, but if they released it now, it would still be relevant. Sometimes a classic seems ponderous and clichéd when viewed through modern eyes, but this one isn’t weighed down with its worthiness. It’s funny and moving and electrifying. It’s also quietly feminist in a way a few modern films could learn from. Clarissa Saunders is an icon to be envied – probably the brightest, most savvy person in Washington, embittered by politics, but still willing to hope when prodded by Mr Smith’s naïve enthusiasm. And this is 1939, folks!

Make time for this film. If there’s only one film I recommend that you go and watch, make it this one. It will reward you.

The Time Traveling Womble for Best Actor James Stewart
Eligible actors: again, too many. Anyone who acted in any of the productions I reviewed through my time machine. Jean Arthur and Lee Pace are honourable mentions, as are Kristin Chenoweth and Kim Novak, but there was really no contest. When Jimmy Stewart brings his game to town he’s incandescent, and there’s no denying that he’s on fire in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. And I’m not just talking about the filibuster scenes where he’s all sweaty and hoarse, for which he supposedly swabbed his throat with mercury. I’m talking about the quiet naïvety and straight played simplicity that makes his earlier scenes a delight as well. Well done, Jimmy. Not that you need praise from the likes of me to go with your Oscars and 80 odd years of critical acclaim. I hope that we’re still singing your praises long after I’m gone, too. A stunning performance, simply stunning. Can’t think of when I last went to the cinema and saw a performance like that.

The Time Traveling Womble for Best TV Show Pushing Daisies
Eligible TV Shows: Pushing Daisies
OK, so it was the only one in its category, but it still would have won. I did have plans to review other TV Shows, but time got away from me. My description from the review is still true: ‘The most beautiful, funny, poignant, stylish, and original television show ever to get axed.’ I still ache inside over the fact that there were only two seasons, and both were only half as long as a proper season, due to the writers’ strike and the cancellation. If I had one credit to spend on giving one cancelled TV Show the time it deserved… well, I don’t know, it would be a very tough competition between this and Firefly. It’s that level of originality and quality. If you haven’t seen it, do so, now!

(Incidentally, Brian Fuller is still my top choice to make a Chrestomanci TV series. Lee Pace would make an ace Chrestomanci/Christopher Chant. Just think about it – a quirky show with magic and style, Lee Pace in exquisitely cut formal wear. Brian Fuller, hear my prayer…)

The Time Traveling Womble for Best Novel The Wolf Within
Eligible novels: Helm, by Steven Gould; Wild Side by Steven Gould; The Silver City, by Pamela Belle; The Wolf Within, by Pamela Belle.
One of my favourite novels. This book is just awesome for the secret identity angst, pushing all my buttons. It just goes to show that it isn’t always a mistake to jump into the middle of a trilogy. This is the second book of the Silver City trilogy, but, although I enjoyed the first book, the second is a tighter, more swiftly paced, more deeply characterised novel. The first couple of chapters are a little awkward, but once it gets going this is a book that grabs you and won’t let go. Credit should also be given for the range of different cultures, mix of races, and positive depictions of women and gay characters. In all cases the characters are fully rounded and not simply there to make for diversity. If only there were more books like this.

And last, but by no means least:

The People’s Choice Award Torchwood: Miracle Day
Perhaps the most arbitrary of all the awards, this is the one you voted for with your feet. The selection for this award is based solely on the review post with the single largest number of hits. Until a few days ago it was Doctor Who, ‘A Good Man Goes to War’. I assumed it still would be until I checked just now. That post is still the one with the largest number of hits in a single day (210), but Torchwood: Miracle Day, has hedged into the lead with (at time of posting) 446 hits to 434.

What does this signify? Who knows. Attention could mean love or hate, although I imagine I would have received more trolling if it were hate. Would the number of hits for all my ADwD posts add up to more if I put them together? Maybe, but let’s not forget that this was just the first post out of several for Torchwood as well, and I’m not sure it would be right to pit multiple posts against single reviews. You might suppose that this is also unfair on my more recent posts, having had more time to garner hits, but given that this beats my most popular Misfits post from last autumn by 162, I think it legitimately says something regarding what you guys enjoyed reading about.

Thanks again for staying with me through the year and helping me build this blog into something worth both my while and yours. It’s been fun!

*I use ‘womble’ here in the sense that derives from gaming speak, i.e. a combat womble is a character maxed for combat skills – they might have strength, dexterity, and constitution at 18, but wisdom and intelligence scores of 6. I therefore figure that someone who had maxed for happiness would be a serenity womble. No copyright infringement is intended for The Wombles, which are cute, rubbish collecting rodents.

Torchwood: Mircale Day – Finale

(Index to previous Torchwood reviews here.)

I feel like I’m the only person on the Internet who’s going to say this, but I thought this was non-stop bad-ass awesome. I simply don’t comprehend the level of vitriol this season has sparked, but I more than respect people’s right to feel disappointed when a show doesn’t meet what they wanted from it, so I’m not interested in debating the matter. Such different readings of the same piece can only come from wildly differing starting points that are never going to agree the foundations for a discussion, and even if they did they’d keep tripping each other up when it turned out some other assumption was being made that was not initially acknowledged. Whilst I have never said that this season was perfect (it’s still Torchwood, and it would almost be a betrayal of the programme’s premise if they stopped throwing so many things in the pot that inevitably some would be spewed up as awesome and some painful) so many things have been heart-stoppingly brilliant I can only feel it’s a shame that it doesn’t seem that they will be recognised, from the reception I’ve seen on the net. It’s for this reason I couldn’t bring myself to blog about it last night, and was in two minds about finding the energy for doing it today. But, fuck it, just looking at an image like that to the above is enough to get the excitement juices flowing again.

Plot

Having located the Blessing on both sides of the world, Jack, Gwen, and Oswald head for the one in Shanghai whilst Rex and Esther head for the one in Buenos Airies. Rex decides the time has come to call in the CIA, which proves to be a monumental mistake, as they still have a mole, Charlotte. Charlotte shows her 1ee7 traitor skillz by arranging for a suicide bomber to be on the truck of CIA dudes sent to help Rex and Esther invade their Blessing end. He blows up the truck with all the CIA dudes on it, along with a briefcase full of what seems to be all of Jack’s blood that they have on that side of the world. Meanwhile, Gwen sets off to track the Blessing her own and finds it out the back of an old Chinese shop (?) or restaurant (?). Anyway, there’s an old Chinese lady who’s all ‘Noooo, go not into the Evil Alleyway, can you not feel the bad juju?’ and Gwen’s all ‘Got no choice, old Chinese lady, got a world to save. Can I buy my way into this Evil Alley?’ and the old Chinese lady’s like ‘Yeah, sure, OK. But I DID warn you. No idea why I keep my business here when I hate this alley so much, but apparently I make good money out of letting people enter it for dosh’.

So, Gwen goes into the alley and backs straight-the-fuck out. Yeah, that’s one Evil Alley. And the old Chinese lady’s like ‘I told you. Can I get you some tea?’ and Gwen’s like ‘Fuck it, I don’t know how you’re not in the pay of the Families living so close to the Blessing and all, but I’m too freaked to worry about this being poisoned’. (It’s not poisoned, it’s just that I was assuming the old lady was a Families spy, and she totally wasn’t. Maybe they don’t need to protect the Blessing that well – it’s clearly fucking scary.)

Gwen calls Jack and Oswald to get their bottoms in gear and come down to the alley whilst Rex and Esther are busy pretending to be dead and invading the Blessing on the other side of the world. Back in the CIA Q Shapiro is finally all ‘WTF? Who is my fucking mole?!’ and releases a trace that identifies Charlotte – sadly, not before she can plant a bomb and run away.

Torchwood enters the Blessing from both sides and ends up in a stand-off. In Shanghai they strap bombs to Oswald as a threat to combat the fact that they are extremely outnumbered by people with guns. In Buenos Aires Rex and Esther are captured. The Families try laughing in their faces, as they’re not afraid of death, and the blood of a mortal man needs to go into the Blessing from both sides at once, and Rex and Esther’s supply got blown up. But it turns out that they transfused all Jack’s blood into Rex as a precaution. Rex and Jack get shot at the same time and their blood pours into the Blessing, but not before Esther gets fatally wounded. The Miracle ends and all the category ones die, including Gwen’s dad. Jack and Rex die, but some combination of Jack’s blood and proximity to the Blessing means that they regenerate. Gwen, Jack, and Jilly escape, as does Rex, but Esther is dead, Dave, totally dead.

Some days later, we see a slightly dishevelled looking Jilly waiting on a bench in the hope of seeing her Family contact again. Amazingly, it works, and he reveals that this was just the first run of the Famillies’ plan. They have a Plan B… and they want her in on it.

Torchwood, Esther’s family, and the remaining CIA agents (including Charlotte von Evil) go to her funeral. Data from the exploded CIA trace is recovered just in time to reveal Charlotte’s betrayal as she runs from the funeral. Rex gives chase and is shot and killed. In a (not that shocking) twist, Rex comes alive again, Jack-style. And we are left hanging with the question – what will this mean for Torchwood’s future?

My thoughts

Was it perfect? No, but so much of it was awesome that I don’t care. It was fast paced and dramatic and everyone was playing top form on the acting (except maybe Bill Pullman, who continues to struggle with the nuances the role requires). I don’t know whether I like that the mystery of the Blessing was never solved or not. It raises the very interesting question of the limits of our knowledge in a way that SF shows, and especially Doctor Who and its spin-offs, usually avoid like the plague in the name of making their characters seem cool by spouting techno-babble. Similarly, audiences expect perfect resolutions, and I enjoy it when that’s upset a bit. On the other hand, with so much hanging on this, and with so much excellent, carefully thought out consequences for Miracle Day itself, it feels like a bit of a cop-out. I’m torn. As an epistemologist I’m fascinated by the tension between the human desire to know and the threat of scepticism – the possibility that some things may simply be unknowable. It terrifies me and frustrates me, and draws me to fight it, and I like that the unknown is being displayed in an SF show for our confrontation, and not then immediately fathomed. The Blessing is the ‘nothingness’, the ‘gap’, the ‘unknown’, and Jack cannot explain it. But it’s also an implausible hole going straight through the Earth and everyone’s surprisingly at ease with their inability to explain it.

I also have dual feelings about the Blessing being a thing that reflects your own idea of yourself back at you. It is an interesting idea, but it was more interesting when I first saw it on the Red Dwarf episode, ‘The Inquisitor’, where the crew are each judged by themselves and sentenced accordingly. Doubtless it had been done before that, as well, but for me that’s the classic iconic instance. When Jilly points out that it maybe wasn’t a good idea to bring Oswald in covered in explosives and then show him his soul, it’s an interesting moment, but whilst Oswald’s declaration that he’s ‘used to sin’ works as a resolution of the issue and allows the plot to continue, I would have liked a little more from the interesting questions raised about his possible guilt throughout the season. Everyone finds a way to be at ease with what they see, and it sort of takes the bite out of that aspect of the Blessing.

I’m also not sure how I feel about Gwen’s comment to Jilly as they fight, about ‘how much lipstick can you wear?!’. On the one hand, I’d sort of felt that way myself – there is far, far too much pressure for women to wear make-up constantly, especially as a mark of looking ‘professional’ or ‘taking care of yourself’. I regularly receive derogatory comments of this nature for not wearing make-up, or pressure to wear it more often on the occasions that I do – like I’m finally behaving and people want to reward my good behaviour with positive ‘encouraing’ comments, rather than genuine compliments. It’s always ‘wow – what a difference’ or ‘you should do that more often’ or ‘I don’t understand why some women don’t make more of an effort when you see the difference when they do’. It’s not like I’m a slob when I’m not wearing lipstick. I like that Gwen has looked 100% stylish throughout without ever having to look ‘made-up’. On the other hand, it’s a perfectly legitimate choice for a woman to want to adopt the sort of look that Jilly employs. It’s an expression of herself and how she wants to be perceived. And having one woman bashing another for their choice of lifestyle and expression of self in a way that was entirely besides the point to the action and that focuses on appearance is kind of not cool.

Similarly, I sort of wanted Jilly to come out of it fighting in the sense of still preserving her sense fo style and showing her survivor teeth in forging a new life without the Families. Having her run off after them like a dog, adopting the nude-make-up look endorsed by Gwen, was not at all what I would have imagined she would do. When people make those back-handed compliments about me it makes me want to wear make-up less, in defiance. If someone knocks Jilly’s choice in this area I expect a corresponding defiance in affirming her self-expression.

On the other hand, given that she’s been walking around in full on scarlet being unashamedly morally dubious, I pretty much expected her to be made to die for such behaviour at the end in accordance with TV rules. But she didn’t, and hearing how she had to fight her way out of Shanghai, selling her jewellery and clawing her way back home does speak somewhat to her spirit.

In some ways it’s a shame that we’re keeping Rex over Esther, who was by far the more interesting character, showing more growth across the season. It’s a shame to see the shy girl get killed off once she’s grown into strength. On the other hand, it would have been equally bad to kill off the black guy, and we’ve had plenty of other strong women, some of whom did survive. Whilst I can’t help but feel that having two immortals around will make Jack’s condition much less interesting, it is really cool to have a black person fulfilling this role. Doctor Who and its spin-offs have enough of the whole immortal, powerful, know-it all, wealthy white male who always saves the day, thing. This is not the sort of role that would usually go to a person of colour. Whilst I think a more powerful statement might have come to giving this to Esther, as she had more of a growth story, and I feel like women have an even harder time getting cast in such roles, it’s not the Issue Olympics, and I can’t deny that there are far more white women on telly than black men.

And never let us forget the awesomeness that is Gwen. Gwen and freakin’ Eve Myles. Absolutely flawlessly stonking from start to finish, whether she’s kicking butt or despairing or having quiet moments with her husband – every second of her screen-time was wonderful, and I want to make the BAFTA-or-similar call-out again. Also for the writers. With the exception of a couple of really rocky episodes early on, and a somewhat awkward tendency to highlight Jack’s homosexuality at the expense of his omnisexuality, this has been a tour de force. It’s been a long time since I saw original science fiction like this on British TV. I hoped that Outcasts would form the back-bone of a resurgence in original SF drama on British tellies, but I can’t deny that it did not fulfil my expectations. Torchwood: Miracle Day on the other hand has been full to bursting with original ideas fully explored. I thought I was someone who thought about apocalypse SF a lot. I thought I was a person who explored the boundaries of immortality in fiction. Torchwood: Miracle Day has taken me through so many different things I never thought of. Wonderful.

I also want to praise the political science. Absolutely on the fucking pulse. And given that this will not have been written to coincide with current events, praise should be given to the writers for reading the times and projecting what would strike a chord. Even in the last few episodes where the tightened focus on the main plot reduced screen-time for the global consequences of Miracle Day, a few comments here and there have kept the economic and political issues in sight. The attitude of the Families, anticipating the financial breakdown but predicting with confidence that a new world will surface to their satisfaction. Sure it will hit the poor hard, literally killing them off, but won’t that just make the world a better place anyway? Can’t help but feel the thrumming accord with austerity measures to cut the deficit. Especially as balance is maintained. The Famillies are unquestionably evil, the governmental measures are undoubtedly harsh and disturbing, and yet, floating in the background, raised especially by the health workers in the camps, is the question: what else could they do? Maybe the answer is ‘Something not quite this extreme, surely’, but there’s no doubt that it’s simply naive to think they could have gotten away with doing anything that wouldn’t hurt a lot of people.

All in all I have to say that despite its rocky moments, this season of Torchwood has been the most original, most strongly acted and scripted, most gripping and exciting. I know that puts me in the minority, especially as I’m praising it over Children of Earth, and that’s widely excepted by even most Torchwod-sceptics as being Good. Oh well. I can only report on how I saw it, and I feel there are a lot of things that deserve praising somewhere, even if it’s only on this blog.

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 9

Wow, that was really something.

Plot:

Time has passed. The UK has gone into what the news are calling the Great Depression. Despite continued protest, the camps have been reopened. Gwen has ceased open defiance in favour of clandestine raids on pharmacies for drugs people are now too scared to go to the doctors to access. She and Rhys are living with her mother in Wales, protecting her father, who is alive, but unconscious, hiding in her basement. But she’s under surveillance and subject to regular checks, suspected of harbouring her father, who is known to be missing.

Esther and Jack are in hiding Scotland. Apparently Jack survived his wound, and Esther is regularly harvesting his blood, trying to figure out how he’s linked to the Miracle.

Rex has a lead – the Families are untraceable, but he finds a short story that seems loosely based on what happened to Jack in the meatlocker. The writer’s younger brother was killed, and the murder weapon, covered in his blood – his DNA – has escaped the Families’ record scrubbing. Unfortunately, Charlotte persuades Rex to use analysts under Family influence, and manages to stub Rex’s lead.

Jilly has been working in her new position under the Families, but it isn’t all she imagined, until, that is, she gets a summons to Shanghai, to see The Blessing for herself.

Meanwhile, Oswald has tracked Gwen down as a person who has access to Jack. He wants protection in exchange for information. Information about who Jilly is working for. Only it turns out that ‘Harry Bosno’ is a code world for a certain sort of spin, and not a man at all. Nonetheless, Oswald’s information isn’t entirely useless. They track the Families by working out what exactly Jilly has been spinning, and why. They find the Families have interests in both Shanghai and Buenos Aires… which happen to be on exact opposite sides of the world.

As Jilly is visiting The Blessing in Shanghai, Gwen’s father is discovered and taken from her house. She vows revenge and seeks to take the fight to the Famillies in Shanghai.

Once there, it is revealed that Jack’s wound is not fully healed, and actually getting worse. And Oswald notices that the blood is being drawn off in a particular direction – towards The Blessing.

How awesome was it?

Very awesome. Originality and talent have come together in these last few episodes, but never more so than now. If only the fat could have been trimmed from some of the earlier episodes this would have been an indisputably awesome piece of television. As it stands, this is certainly the most original and imaginative science fiction I have seen in a very long time on the small screen, maybe ever. No arguing that it cannot claim the sort of polished across-the-board high standards of the early seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica, but it must be confessed that BSG was not this original in science fiction terms. This episode in particular contained the realisation of so many interesting ideas that my little plot summary can’t even hope to do them justice.

The actors are also all on top of their game. Mekhi Phifer has been disappointing throughout, but ensconced solidly in a CIA world of flashy tech, performing subtle inferences, and having tense, charismatic conversations with the wonderful John De Lancie, he’s right at home.

Similarly, Bill Pullman has struggled throughout to bring the complexity of Oswald’s character to screen. He’s been caught up playing ‘creepy’, struggling with the more human aspects the script wants to inject. Tied-up and beaten and surrounded by people none of whom are prepared to pretend he’s anything but a monster, Pullman seems to have been freed from the responsibility of making clear to he audience that Paedophiles Are Bad. With this safely clear, Pullman brings a personality to the role and confronts us with the uncomfortable reality of Oswald’s intelligence and skill as an online predator.

Meanwhile, Jilly’s reaction to The Blessing, in the context of the revealtion that it can send you mad if you have something to hide, is enigmatic, terrifying, and wonerful. I really, really hope they explain it, but it’s a nice end point. What exactly was she right about? She seems both satisfied and upset. It’s been clear from day one that there must be something in Jilly’s past that’s broken, something that reforged her into the sort of woman who could deal with the job that was required of her, caring for Oswald Danes.

Gwen continues to be nothing but sheer pleasure on the screen. If she doesn’t at least get a BAFTA for this, Eve Myles will have been robbed. Can I start a campaign? The scene of her beating on Oswald without hesitation in response to finding him holding her baby is a thing of beauty. As is Rhys’s intervention. I love that Torchwood has quietly reversed the gender roles between Rhys and Gwen without in any sense emasculating Rhys. There’s no question of his status as a large, hulking, physically intimidating man as he turns back to Oswald and issues his own threat. The fact that he has not been trained to fight and chooses to refrain from violence makes him a good man, and not weak. I can think of several large-yet-loveable men that Rhys reminds me of strikingly – the sort of men that we almost never see on screen, except for when someone needs to be unlucky in love. I’m loving his representation.

Yet at the same time Rex dismisses Rhys’s comments (even though they are relevant) as those of ‘the husband’ in the way another programme might have dismissed Gwen as ‘the wife’. Rex does this because Gwen is the known entity to him – proven useful – and it’s in Rex’s character to be somewhat over-directed, focusing on the elements he perceives most likely to be successful. What’s really nice is that he’s still wrong to dismiss Rhys on the basis that he’s the primary carer for their child whilst his wife takes on the world. Gwen’s presentation as a strong woman is not reduced to an over-simplified role-reversal that still roots value in the stereo-typically male role.

It’s not without its flaws. The Blessing turning out to be something that looks like nothing so much as a giant rock pudenda, giving life to some, but threatening to suck the world inside it to destruction… almost certainly not intentional, but very unfortunate, and someone should have noticed. I’m also annoyed by the ridiculousness of the ‘hole straight through the Earth’ phenomenon. I really hope they give a nice bit of technobabble to explain that. Can’t help but feel if something like this had existed in the Earth all this time, it would have had even more alien visits than it has under the Doctor’s supervision.

But with so much yet to play out, and with the admirable rigour and imagination with which the consequences of Miracle Day have been unfolded, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief until next week. Looks like it’s going to be good.

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 8

(Index to all Torchwood posts here.)

Talk about pay off!

Plot

Torchwood are taken by Kira Nerys Angelo’s granddaughter, Olivia Colasanto, to his swanky mansion. Angelo’s managed to extend his life by eating right and ‘keeping his temperature down’ or something, but he couldn’t halt aging. He’s an old, old man, and not even conscious. Apparently he has nothing to do with Miracle Day, but he does know the people who are involved. Three families – those of the three men we saw ‘buying’ Jack in the meat locker: Ablemarch, Costerdane, and Frines. As I speculated, they didn’t have Jack, but they did collect his blood (although Jack is convinced his blood is normal). Angelo’s been watching Jack for years – apparently Olivia didn’t get Gwen to kidnap Jack to kill him, but to keep him safe (Gwen and me both think this is a bloody crazy way to go about it). With the names, Torchwood hopes to find the Families, but there’s no trace of those names anywhere (incidentally, I looked, this is not true of our world).

As this is resolved, the CIA arrives – Rex has engineered to make a ‘slip-up’, letting them know where Torchwood is. Brian Friedkin (Wayne Knight) charges in and Rex catches him admitting he’s working for the Families on the lens cam. Allen Shapiro (John De Lancie) is the man in charge, he arrests Friedkin and ships both him and Olivia off to the ‘safe house’… or he would have done, if Friedkin hadn’t triggered a bomb once he was in the car (apparently the Families have his family). Much verbal sparring occurs between Shapiro and Torchwood -i t was a thing of beauty to watch! But alas, Gwen loses this round and winds up getting packed off to the UK.

While Jack is paying his respects to Angelo, though, Angelo unexpectedly dies. It turns out that Angelo has obtained a ‘null field’, which can cancel out the morphic field that caused Miracle Day, and placed it under his bed. Naturally, the CIA are very interested in this thing, but Jack refuses to tell them what it is, knowing its potential uses. He persuades Rex and Esther to help him escape with the ‘Alpha’ panel. (There’s some hint that the null field requires both this panel and Jack’s DNA to make it work, but it’s not clear.)

Meanwhile, things aren’t going so well for Oswald Danes. Oswald requests a prostitute: an adult one. He wants to change. But she freaks out when he wants to talk rather than just engage in something more mechanical. She reveals that there has been talk of classifying Oswald ‘category 0’ – i.e. a bad enough criminal to burn alive with the category 1s. Oswald confronts Jilly about this and she admits it, revealing her personal disgust with him. He hits her and she responds in kind, fighting him off. She chases him from her room, promising revenge. A man from the Families then shows up to praise her and shoot her assistant, who was a CIA spy.

Back with the CIA, we learn that Charlotte Wills, Esther’s friend, is a Family spy, although Torchwood doesn’t know it yet. Jack et al make their move, but Jack is shot and Esther is seen helping him escape. She has to go with him, and the episode closes with her driving through the desert, not knowing what to do next, as Jack lies dying in the seat behind her.

So how was it?

Stonking. Let’s start with the awesome SF alumni that has passed through Torchwood: Miracle Day. In order:

Wayne Knight – Brian Friedkin (Torchwood)/Denis Nerdy (Jurassic Park)

Dichen Lachman – Lyn Peterfield (Torchwood)/Sierra (Dollhouse)

Nana Visitor – Olivia Colasanto (Torchwood) Kira Nerys (Star Trek)

John De Lancie – Allen Shapiro (Torchwood) Q (Star Trek)

And I gotta say: John De Lancie was the icing on the cake. Him and Nana Visitor facing off against each other was electrifying. I am in full geeksquee mode, my friends.

Apart from that, though, I have to say that the episode generally held together exceptionally well. Good dramatic tension throughout. I even enjoyed the Oswald/Jilly plot. The moment with the prostitute was very nicely handled. Bill Pullman is still struggling a bit not to make Oswald a caricature, but the script is doing very nicely in handling something extremely complicated and controversial. The category ‘0’ element could feel gimmicky or obvious, but the way it’s introduced, presaged by an under-breath comment by Jilly about not having to deal with Oswald much longer, worked for it. It’s melding in with carefully developed layering of character. Jilly is so much about image and polishedness, the hints to the under-surface and what she really feels, yet is prepared to ignore to get the job done, have always been so fleetingly handled that they did not impair her immaculate veneer. But there’s always the hanging question: ‘If she really feels that way, why is she doing this? What’s under that surface that makes this possible?’ And here we get another hint – she does have her limits, she’s clearly disgusted at the thought of getting Oswald a child, but prepared to do it – unprompted, she asks ‘how old?’, and clearly doesn’t believe him when he says he wants a woman. But when we find out that she knows there’s only so much longer she has to do this we see just a crack further into her psyche. Somehow the timeframe allows her to excuse it to herself… yet that’s not much of an excuse. She genuinely seems prepared to procure an under-age girl for him.

Oswald is also proving interesting. We see that he unquestionably does have a violent rage – in particular, that he expects women to be cowed by it, as though he has a right to expect them to bend to his will, and any knock to that sense of entitlement nearly drives him over the edge. Yet he, too, has been restraining himself. He does not attack the prostitute. That the anger and entitlement is there is evident, and, however much he may want to change, those attitudes emerge in his inability to refrain from the body-language and tone of intimidation. But Jilly, he cannot restrain himself from. Her calm assumption of safety in his presence has been impressive throughout. Despite being beautiful and coiffed within an inch of her life, Jilly walks at all times in Oswald’s presence as though it is simply taken for granted that her beauty is not for him. In every moment where she refuses to behave in a way that acknowledges his threat she robs him of power. It’s quietly awe-inspiring, especially when contrasted with the behaviour of the prostitute, who is firm in her client-boundaries, but cannot conceal how uncomfortable and afraid interacting with him as a human being makes her feel. Where at first Jilly felt like a cookie-cutter evil corporate redhead, I now think she’s a bit of a feminist icon – not least because her moral ambiguity as a character is not compromised for the sake of showing her strength as a woman. She manages to control and display her beauty without, at any time, using it to manipulate her charge with sexual power.

Not that this doesn’t have an effect. Jilly’s attitude has clearly created an interest and frustration in Oswald, as evidenced in his preference for a red-headed prostitute as well as the way he cracks and responds violently when he learns that she has known he was to be categorised ‘0’ – a sort of betrayal, although she’s correct that he should have seen it coming. The thing is, Jilly has in no way provoked him with her sexuality – she has never used it to try and control him, she has not ‘led him on’. Even when he breaks and attacks her she responds not by cowering, but with rage. She fights back – first physically, and then with words, as he flees both her and his own aggression. Her veneer is bloodied, but it does not break her – she is not cowed, she reveals the strength that accompanies the emotion she usually keeps so carefully contained.

In other words, she responds in the way a male character would, without ever once having to present as ‘unfemale’. Reread as male actions: the aggressor attacks and he responds with violence, giving as good as he gets; having fought the monster off he voices his rage at his foe’s fleeing back, promising revenge. Even the fight is good: it is neither a hand-bags-at-dawn cat-fight, nor a super-polished when-exactly-did-she-learn-a-martial-art stunt-artist showdown. She neither has to be Harmony flailing comically at an equally skill-less Xander, nor a Buffy empowered with physical abilities beyond the ken of normal women. Don’t get me wrong – she doesn’t have the physical strength or skill to hold off a sustained attack from a man the size of Oswald, but she doesn’t have to. The mere fact of her unrestrained resistance is enough – as the prostitute says: he’s not used to women who fight back.

So anyway – you remember when I said I didn’t think I could ever be interested in these two? Well, yeah.

The rest of the plot is also well-handled. I love the contest of force-of-personality. I love that Angelo has not stayed young, and Jack doesn’t care. I love Jack using the null-field to have a private conversation with Esther and Rex, thrumming with tension because we know that at any moment someone could notice that their mouths are moving and there’s no noise coming out. I love that Jack could say ‘You have to get me out of here’ without losing his machismo. Very rare that a male character gets to say that without seeming impossibly weak, but in this situation it’s a must not only because Jack is mortal, but also because his being there is a danger to others as well, because he can be exploited. He is both expressing his vulnerability and his wish to protect. Nicely done.

And in the background the world is in an economic melt-down that’s eerily familiar.

People often tell me that they find immortal characters boring – that they would neither want to read, nor write about them, nor would they want to play them in an RPG. I love that Torchwood: Miracle Day has taken this much maligned trope and proved that it is anything but dull. Just takes a bit of imagination, that’s all, and these writers certainly have that.

Speculations

This episode was also great for the hints and speculations. Couldn’t miss hearing the Master’s drums in the beeps of the machines registering Angelo’s death. But, of course, they’re not really the Master’s drums, they’re the sound he heard in the time vortex. Then there’s the fact that the badies are called the ‘Families’. ‘Family of Blood’, anyone? They were looking for immortality, also. And we saw in the trailer for next week further talk about feeling like something there but being unable to see it, which makes me think ‘Silence’ again, but it’s not really their MO. I dunno if the writers are just playing with us or if any of this connects. I’m sure we’d have heard about it if the Master were coming back, but the sound of those drums is certainly a very Time Lordish thing.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 7

(Index to all Torchwood posts here.)

So, let’s talk Torchwood.

Plot: (standard spoiler warning)

Last episode ended on an adrenaline high as Gwen learned that her husband, mother, and baby are being held hostage in exchange for Jack. This episode is the fallout. When it comes to Jack vs her child, there’s no contest. Gwen kidnaps Jack, and most of the episode consists of a flip back and forth between Gwen and Jack, and events from Jack’s past that we assume must be relevant to his current status as ransom.

In 1927, Jack meets a young immigrant, Angelo Colesanto, as both try to enter New York illegally at Ellis Island. Jack’s on a mission for Torchwood, but he likes Angelo’s style. Getting Angelo out of jail, they get an apartment together. As the moody lighting and sad music has keyed us up to suspect, Angelo turns out to be gay and attracted to Jack. Jack, of course, is attracted to everyone, so they go to bed and have moody sad sex. Jack decides to let Angelo into his life and gets him involved in his Torchwood mission. They get into trouble with the police, and Jack gets shot and killed. Angelo believes him to be dead, until he gets out of prison and sees Jack on the other side.

Angelo is understandably freaked, but seems willing to accept Jack’s peculiar undying status. In truth, though, it’s a bit much, and Angelo’s conflicted Catholic upbringing takes over, leading him to think Jack must be the devil, tricking him into sin. He kills Jack again, and Jack resurrects in front of the distraught Angelo and their landlady. The secret is out, and everyone has to see it: the man who dies and comes back to life. Jack is strung up in a meat locker and killed over and over again. The landlady and her family and friends regard this as a miracle, but their zealous response seems more fueled by blood lust. At some point three sharply dressed men come to see him and seem to agree on a deal to purchase him together. Fortunately, Angelo can’t take the violence and frees Jack, but Jack can no longer trust him, and leaves him behind.

Meanwhile, in the present, Gwen and Jack see a little bit of each others’ steel – Gwen will kill Jack if it protects her family, and Jack will do whatever it takes to survive. Fortunately for them both, Esther has finally levelled, having killed the Big Bad of the previous episode. She notices the extremely obvious fact that Gwen is spooked and thinks to check the cached messages on Gwen’s contact lenses. She then works her awesome computer skillz to save the day.

But not before they get to meet the people who wanted Jack, and they tell them the name of the person who wants to see him… Angelo Colesanto.

So…?

In many ways, this was excellent, in some ways it was disappointing. The main difficulty is that everyone else on screen is acting the crap out of John Barrowman (Jack). Eve Myles (Gwen) has been consistently strong all season, and the tension between her and Jack is a test of wills where she’s undoubtedly the winner. With the history they have, Barrowman performs passibly well, but the main storyline of the episode – in the past – requires a level of nuance and passion that he struggles to rise to. It’s an interesting and engaging tale that demanded a level of subtlety that Barrowman’s big bold style just doesn’t sit well with.

All season they’ve been front-loading Jack’s homosexuality at the expense of his omnisexuality. It felt like the writers needed to make sure that new viewers understood that Jack likes men over Jack’s the biggest flirt in all the worlds. The writing this week (ignoring the unlikely good fortune of the first guy he meets in New York being a gay guy who fancies him) lurched back to a treatment that was much more sympathetic and deep. Daniele Favilli (Angelo) rises to the occasion, but it’s just not Barowman’s style.

Oh well, can’t have everything. The conclusion of the storyline in 1927 New York is startling and awe-inspiring. The scene in the meat locker – music, writing, concept – is powerful and probably deserves awards. Eve Myles also deserves something for her absolutely stunning performance that is never less than spot-on. I love the writers for giving her such lines, and I love them for making her the sort of badass that is such because she knows to properly tie up a man who’s bigger and stronger than her, to think with her head to do what her heart requires. You may recall me mentioning the conversation I had with a friend who was concerned that Gwen’s separation from her daughter would not be treated with sufficient depth. Well, they’ve done more this season for strong mothers who genuinely care for their children than any other show I can think of.

And now all I can do is wait for next week and SPECULATE. I’ve gotten over my The-Silence-Are-Behind-It theory. I think it may even be true that no aliens are involved. Can’t help but notice that Angelo must be a very old man by 2011. I also recall an old woman taking a sample of Jack’s blood as a sort of relic. And let’s face it, Jack may have escaped, but he’ll have left a lot of his blood behind in that meat locker. Wanna bet that those three gentlemen made the best of what was left? And let’s not forget that this all started with a mass-release of Torchwood files that called Jack back to Earth. Angelo knew about Torchwood and Jack’s wristband. Knew he’d be in the future. Is this all just an elaborate booty-call?

Who knows? But we’re starting to see the pieces of the bigger picture. Hurrah.

Oh, and as a special GEEKGASM aside, did you recognise this lady at the end:

That’s FREAKIN’ Nana Visitor, whom you may also know as KIRA NERYS of Deep Space 9:

Torchwood is rocking the sci-fi alumni! Keep up the good work!

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 6

(Index to all Torchwood posts here.)

I know I owe you guys some RAWR action, but I’ve only read one and a half chapters, and, in comparison to the chapter I’m stuck on, Torchwood is kicking A Dance with Dragons‘ behind. (Oh yes, I said it. It is chapter and episode specific, though.)

Plot

So, at the end of last week (and do I need to say ‘big honking spoilers ahoy!’?) Vera Juarez gets burnt alive, making Rex very, very angry. Because he was such a happy chap before. But rather than starting straight back at his rage, we start with a new character, Stuart Owens (Ernie Hudson), someone inside of PhiCore, someone who doesn’t know the Secret, but who is starting to get damn curious about something. He orders a dude in Hong Kong to go investigate something. The dude looks like a tough guy, but whatever he sees is enough to make himself tell Stuart that he saw nothing, before throwing himself off a building. Closest thing to death in this brave new world – a jump off a tall enough building is said to bring brain death.

Cut back to Rex taking video of the modules and what happened to Vera and saying about how he’s going to expose it all. Meanwhile, Esther doesn’t know Vera’s dead yet. Her shift is just ending, but she’s worried about Vera because she won’t answer the phone, so she bluffs her way into staying on. In the meantime the camp-boss, Colin Maloney (Marc Vann), is going mega-paranoid in response to his guilt and puts the camp in lockdown.

At the same time in Wales Gwen is trying to get her father out and facing a bureaucracy both cowardly and desperate. In LA, Jack uses the creepiest come-on ever to persuade the mistress of Stuart Owens to help him get to the guy. Presenting her with emails that show Stuart to be a bit of a dickhead her persuades her that it will be revenge. But Jack finds Stuart surprisingly co-operative. Stuart can’t tell him much, but his reasons for that are interesting in themselves. Whoever has been stockpiling the drugs has been doing this for a long time using a lot of different systems. The real evil is hidden behind a wall of bureaucracy. The only true piece of information Stuart can provide is a single, enigmatic word: the ‘Blessing’.

Back at the camp, things are going crazy. They locate Rex and the camp boss goes to ‘question’ him. Esther does a passable job of nearly saving the day, but ultimately it’s the Maloney’s reluctant side-kick, Ralph (Fred Koehler) who cracks and decides the killing has to stop… by ‘killing’Colin Maloney.

The story wraps up as Gwen and Rhys save her father and Gwen blows the camp in Wales to Hell, capturing it on tape and sending a message to the world. A message that does not receive the resounding response they expected.

How was it?

It was stonking. Torchwood is well and truly back on form, despite killing off one of my favourite characters. The pace was fast throughout, without sacrificing the moral complexity that is starting to make this genuinely interesting. Although I’m still finding Mekhi Phifer’s performance somewhat weak, everyone else is bringing it.

They’re doing surprisingly well with the well-worn theme of how appalling it can sometimes be to just ‘follow orders’ – perhaps because they look really closely at the good reasons that might sometimes lead people to do bad things. I particularly loved Gwen’s railing against the doctor who refuses to reclassify her dad as category two, despite apparently being aware of what it means to be category one. I liked it because you could sense that the doctor was also angry – she wasn’t just following orders, she knew there was a crisis the extent of which Gwen is unable to comprehend because she is too emotionally involved in the very personal effect it has on her family. Not saying the doctor’s right, but they do a passable job of presenting her point of view without belabouring it. I especially like Gwen’s closing remarks to her, as she pulls back from her almost hysterical rage to a quieter, more terrible one. The reference to ‘not calling yourself a doctor anymore’ [sic] is call back to the Doctor’s comments in ‘The Beast Below’ and its maybe a little heavy-handed, but the final ‘shame on you’ is beautifully understated.

Relatedly, Ralph’s comeback to start saying ‘no’ is an effective counter-point to the doctor’s resignation. You can say ‘no’, but it doesn’t come cheap. He’s killed a man, and his youth-like appearance underscores the loss-of-innocence theme. Nothing is easy. Esther also has a loss-of innocence moment. They set this character up badly. In the first episode I took her for a badass, and have been wrong-footed ever since by the apparent ret-con of wimpishness that allowed Rex to take the lead from the CIA side. I’ve still got problems with that, but her arc over the last couple of episodes has been nice enough to help me ease into this other conception of her. I suspect she’s meant to be the one who gets ‘forged’ by her experiences this season, and who will come out hard on the other side. I can live with that. Not everybody should be a badass. Especially as Gwen is well and truly holding up her end.

They say that cool guys don’t look back at explosions. Maybe that’s so, but Real Badasses don’t look back at explosions whilst they’re driving away from them on their badass motorbikes. Where did Gwen get a motorbike from? Don’t care. How exactly does blowing up a module help all those people not get burned alive… care slightly more about that one, but I’m going with ‘she was blowing up the power supply or something – shut up it looked GOOD’.

She was a complete idiot to then go through an airport having completed an act of terrorism, but hey. It made for a nice contrast moment to see her in her casual, vulnerable, ordinary mum-gear as someone types directly onto her eyeballs that they have her child. Very powerful, very nice.

The political and media reaction to the message Gwen records is also very well observed. Any other year you might have been tempted to think otherwise – to think that governments would be shamed when faced with their complicity in mass murder and would act immediately. It’s by no means clear that they won’t react in the end, but it’s naive to think that governments can’t be dwarfed out of their morals by catastrophes, or that they won’t stick to ideals in the face of wide-spread public disapproval. Consider the slow reaction to the Arab Spring. Consider the stalemate over the US debt rating, or the backlash after the English riots. Consider the human rights abuses that have been widely ignored for years, simply because they are an inconvenience, but also because we have neither the resources nor knowledge to find solutions to all the world’s problems.

I’m impressed by this series of Torchwood. Granted, it’s been pretty rocky in places, but when it’s good, it’s really good. And despite still being ludicrous and fun in some ways, it’s actually dealing with some pretty significant and up-to-the-minute issues. Rock on!

And now for some WILD SPECULATION

So, who’s behind all this, then? Sounds like maybe not PhiCore after all. The Crazy!Theory side of my brain is screaming out for a Doctor Who tie-in. Like, maybe the Big Bad is all shadowy because it’s the Silence, which has found subtler ways to get its revenge on humanity. Maybe it’s all a big plot to draw the Doctor in after all. I don’t think so, though. It’s clearly closely tied to Jack in some way, anyway, as underlined by the Jack-flashback in the trailer for next week. Is someone using Jack as a battery for this whole Miracle Day thing? Might other people actually want to kill Jack to save the rest of humanity from the horrors of immortality? I just don’t have enough clues yet, but if you’ve spotted something I’ve missed, feel free to speculate away in the comments.

American viewers, though, please note: I am a Brit lass and I often don’t get to watch this until Friday – nearly a whole week behind you guys. Please don’t spoil me for next week!

Index: Torchwood

Review of the latest ep to follow soon, I promise. I’m just trying to make things a bit more organised around here. This here is an index of all Torchwood posts. Enjoy!

Torchwood: Miracle Day
(Please note that all of my TMD reviews are pretty spoiler heavy.)

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

I’ve added a special page to provide links to any and all index pages I produce in the title bar below the banner at the top of the blog.

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 5

(Index to all Torchwood posts here.)

Now that’s more like it.

Plot:

Governments around the world agree on emergency measures to place people in three different categories: three, two, and one… alive, ill, and dead. Categories two and one are shipped off to camps for containment and treatment in the face of rampant disease in the hospitals, Gwen’s father amongst them. Dr Vera Juarez sets her doubts aside and joins the Torchwood team in disgust at the actions of the governments of the world. Living people are being categorised as dead, disposable, objects.

Torchwood discovers that hidden ‘modules’ are a part of the camps around the world, and they infiltrate two camps – one in the States and one in the UK. Gwen tries to free her father, but the stress of the escape triggers a heart-attack, relegating him to category one. Rex infiltrates the State-side camp as a patient, whilst Vera uses her position on the medical panels to pose as an inspector and Esther enters as clerical staff.

Meanwhile, Jack tries to appeal to Oswald’s conscience to persuade him to use his media attention to expose PhiCor.

How was it different?

Suddenly Torchwood seems like biting political commentary. Healthcare being turned over to big business under the radar. Political freedoms being curtailed in response to a crisis. ‘A new age of care and compassion’ sounds very much like the sort of thing our current Prime Minister might say whilst categorising groups of people cleanly away so that they can be disposed of.

And yet the cutting undercurrent of this is that it is a genuinely desperate situation. It’s entirely understandable that people would agree to any plausible solution that sought to bring to control a situation rapidly becoming apocalyptically chaotic. It’s telling that the writers tacitly recognise the remarkably terrorist aspects to Torchwood’s activities. They’re operating outside and against governments to infiltrate and sabotage in the cause of freedom. It’s a surprisingly balanced and intriguing view that encourages us to weigh up the options and the sides and identify with aspects of disparate groups. I’m even warming to the presentation of Oswald Danes in his uniquely challenging fight for survival. He’s still a repulsive figure, but they’re starting to move him into a depth he lacked at the beginning, and I approve. I suspect we’re setting up this human complexity against a complete othering of an Alien Evil, but it’s still an unusually nuanced take.

I haven’t talked about it much, but Miracle Day has also been delightfully and understatedly inter-racial throughout. Yes, there’s a predominance of white main cast members, but we also see multiple black, Asian, and Latino people. I’ve mentioned before that the treatment of women is pretty good – there are lots of them, and the frequently kick ass, but they’re also vulnerable and believable in turn. Esther’s character’s had a rough ride, but Gwen and Juarez are consistently both interesting and strong. Perhaps the most peculiar thing, for Torchwood is that one of the least comfortable aspects of the show is its treatment of homosexuality, which seems to have been reduced to Jack making bad jokes to make Rex uncomfortable. It’s forced and unnatural and a little uncomfortable to watch.

Quite apart from the themes, though, this episode was fast paced, tense, and believable in a way the previous two episodes weren’t. Someone spoiled the ending for me by Googling key terms that brought them to my blog, if you would believe it, but it was still shocking and rather impressively horrible. Everything feels like it’s coming together, and I’m eager to watch the next episode next week. Hurrah!

Torchwood: Miracle Day, Episode 4

(Index to all Torchwood posts here.)

It continues.

Plot:

So, Torchwood and friends are on the run and trying to dig up info on PhiCorp, the Über Eval drug company that may have orchestrated Miracle Day. They’re doing pretty well on the info front, but they’re doing lousy at the lying low. Esther actually drops by her sister’s and reports her to social services as an unfit mother. Gwen wanders around in the bright sunshine on her phone calling Rhys. And, having chastised Esther and Gwen, Rex shoots off to have an angsty-lack-of-reconciliation with his dad (and steal some of the painkillers his dad happens to be stock-piling). Unsurprisingly, they pick up a suspicious dude with a telephoto lens.

Torchwood learn how to break into a PhiCorp databank by obtaining the fingerprints, vocal patterns, and retinal image of a top scientist. Their tail does the same, in less humane ways, and lies in wait for them.

Meanwhile, a new News Star is on the rise, as Tea Party darling Ellis Hartley Monroe steals the limelight from Oswald Danes with her ‘Dead is Dead’ campaign, arguing that those who have died-but-not-died should not have equal rights to the properly ‘living’. At the same time, hospitals are persuaded to shove their emergency cases off to one side in a woefully under-equipped ‘plague-ship’ style hospital. Oswald steals the stage back by entering the disease-ridden building, making a speech, and holding a baby.

How was it?

I don’t know. I want to be more blown away by it than I am. I think the biggest problem is that, having started the series with an ass-kicking bang, Torchwood and friends are continuing to be disappointingly rubbish. I know it’s what keeps the plot going, but I can’t help but feel like there ought to be a Better Way. Also, much as I like seeing mental illness explored, there seems to be a conveniently unlikely amount of close-relatives-with-extreme-paranoia running around. It’s not entirely clear to me exactly what sort of mental illness these people suffer from, and at the moment it just all seems like a push towards heightened melodrama that’s hardly needed in the context of everything else that’s going down. It makes any discussion connected with these things feel like a throw-away-convenience.

Some elements of the plot are still working quite well, but I sort of feel uncomfortably unbalanced between something hard-hitting and clever and something surface level and pulpish. Where the opening couple of episodes really got the mix of old Torchwood fun and Children of Earth grimness right, it’s feeling more like an uncomfortable see-saw to me at the moment.

I don’t know how I feel about the Oswald Danes plot. It’s either brilliant or awful. I don’t like it. I’m deeply, deeply uncomfortable with how easily people seem to be swayed into forgiving him and even worshiping him. They had a child molester hold a baby for Christ’s sake! I know we’re meant to be all ‘isn’t public opinion fickle’, but I’m not convinced it is as fickle on issues like this as is being portrayed. People really, really don’t like child molesters. Yes, one or two people stand up and say it’s sick and they see through him, but I’m fairly convinced there would be a lot more. People would have snatched that baby right out of his arms once they realised who he was, charisma or no charisma. And, frankly, despite how much I usually adore him as an actor, I’m just not finding Bill Pullman’s performance that compelling.

What is interesting is his relationship with his PR lady. I liked the reveal that she is thoroughly disgusted by him, but she’s doing her job anyway. There are a couple of really nice moments, like when Vera tells Jilly that the media circus and Jilly’s excitement about it is disgusting, and Jilly delightedly responds ‘I know’ – a very nice piece of acting from Laura Ambrose. I also really loved the moment in Oswald’s hotel room as he crouches quietly by his mini-bar, cracking bottle after bottle just to hear the carbonated hiss we presume he’s been denied all these years. But overall, I’m just not sure. Mostly I feel like I’m being poked to talk about Oswald’s story because ‘gosh it’s so edgy’, but instead it feels overblown and implausible in a way that cheapens the edge. I am torn on this one, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for the sort of story that’s good because it sets your emotions and intuitions at war. This is no Dexter. Rather, sometimes it verges on something genuinely interesting, whilst at other times its crass and unbelievable.

In a similar way, bringing in a Tea Party Sarah-Palin-alike figure is in some ways quite daring and a nice piece of dry wit. But she’s introduced and thrown away in one episode, fitting in with my feeling that there are a lot of interesting ideas here, but they’re just being thrown in for colour rather than being really explored.

Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if the Torchwood focused stories were stronger. Credit must be given for Eve Myles’s consistently strong performance and the continuing believable emotion she brings to her familial relationships. However, the plot with her father being shipped away was so obvious it just bored me, rather than heightening the tension.

Still, I remain interested in seeing where it goes. The Jack plot is really intriguing, and I thought the bit where the hitman won’t kill him because he’s the last mortal man is a nice touch even if it’s also a fudge to explain why we get to keep our leading man when really he ought to have been killed. Keep it up, Torchwood, I’m still with you, but I’d like to see just a little bit more competence resurfacing soon.