Children of Earth.
Jul. 18th, 2009 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckWe finished watching Torchwood's Children of Earth last night and here's my verdict:
This was actually genuinely dark stuff with serious messages thrown in about domestic and international politics and (British) society. The media, too, but that was more to show its ineffectiveness of informing the people. For some reason, the parts of the story that were rooted in reality, i.e. the meetings, the civil servant and politician characters were to me the most interesting bits. Most chilling because so very believable: How to select the 10% of the children to hand over to the 456. Most tragic: Frobisher's murder suicide of his family.
The Torchwood team?
I've still got my problems with John Barrowman - he's too much of a showman for me to be believable in the quiet moments but this was his best work. He had me nearly convinced in the last episode.
I watched this unspoiled, but from the shockwaves I felt all over livejournal and because it just needs to happen to raise the stakes, I knew that someone would have to die. The foreshadowing, (being narrowly saved in the first ep, asking Captain Jack what does it feel like to be blown up? and all that talk about Jack seeing him die) made it pretty clear that it had to be Ianto. So his death was (ETA a very important word: not) unexpected for me and it didn't have the desired impact. Maybe because the immortal/mortal doomed love thing has been done to death? Excuse the pun. Maybe because the mechanics were showing, so to speak, because it was so predictable. Or maybe I'm just cold-hearted.
Gwen is Gwen and I like her, flaws and all. Her recruiting agent spiel for Torchwood with Rupesh (bad idea) and Lois (good idea) was kind of wonderful - much later, when she nearly breaks down in the car we do get to hear the opposite with her talking about how her beloved job has ruined her life; it's got a huge downside, too. Hell, we get to see the downside of being human. The cruelty in the world sucks and we're so often powerless.
All in all, while the relationship stuff between the members of the Torchwood team didn't always work for me, the scenes about their families were much better. I liked that. Ianto and his sister's family and all that. But again, the sacrifice of Jack's grandson was something I saw coming from miles away. Why did they have to dress him in a red anorak? I usually dislike it when people harp on about how they are so clever and knew the murderer after reading two pages of the book, but like I said earlier, the mechanics behind the plot were sort of showing in several places. And that took me right out of the story. An injury to one is an injury to all, but then it's all reversed for the greater good. And yes, it's a huge burden for our Captain Jack, but hey, better than the alternative of handing over ten percent of the world's children, right? Compared to Frobisher's ultimately pointless killing of his family, Jack's use of his son at least served a purpose. And unlike Frobisher, he has to go on living.
On a fairly unrelated note, I must profess my love for the actress portraying Lois Habiba. She was great.
Here ends my long Torchwood ramble.
This was actually genuinely dark stuff with serious messages thrown in about domestic and international politics and (British) society. The media, too, but that was more to show its ineffectiveness of informing the people. For some reason, the parts of the story that were rooted in reality, i.e. the meetings, the civil servant and politician characters were to me the most interesting bits. Most chilling because so very believable: How to select the 10% of the children to hand over to the 456. Most tragic: Frobisher's murder suicide of his family.
The Torchwood team?
I've still got my problems with John Barrowman - he's too much of a showman for me to be believable in the quiet moments but this was his best work. He had me nearly convinced in the last episode.
I watched this unspoiled, but from the shockwaves I felt all over livejournal and because it just needs to happen to raise the stakes, I knew that someone would have to die. The foreshadowing, (being narrowly saved in the first ep, asking Captain Jack what does it feel like to be blown up? and all that talk about Jack seeing him die) made it pretty clear that it had to be Ianto. So his death was (ETA a very important word: not) unexpected for me and it didn't have the desired impact. Maybe because the immortal/mortal doomed love thing has been done to death? Excuse the pun. Maybe because the mechanics were showing, so to speak, because it was so predictable. Or maybe I'm just cold-hearted.
Gwen is Gwen and I like her, flaws and all. Her recruiting agent spiel for Torchwood with Rupesh (bad idea) and Lois (good idea) was kind of wonderful - much later, when she nearly breaks down in the car we do get to hear the opposite with her talking about how her beloved job has ruined her life; it's got a huge downside, too. Hell, we get to see the downside of being human. The cruelty in the world sucks and we're so often powerless.
All in all, while the relationship stuff between the members of the Torchwood team didn't always work for me, the scenes about their families were much better. I liked that. Ianto and his sister's family and all that. But again, the sacrifice of Jack's grandson was something I saw coming from miles away. Why did they have to dress him in a red anorak? I usually dislike it when people harp on about how they are so clever and knew the murderer after reading two pages of the book, but like I said earlier, the mechanics behind the plot were sort of showing in several places. And that took me right out of the story. An injury to one is an injury to all, but then it's all reversed for the greater good. And yes, it's a huge burden for our Captain Jack, but hey, better than the alternative of handing over ten percent of the world's children, right? Compared to Frobisher's ultimately pointless killing of his family, Jack's use of his son at least served a purpose. And unlike Frobisher, he has to go on living.
On a fairly unrelated note, I must profess my love for the actress portraying Lois Habiba. She was great.
Here ends my long Torchwood ramble.
