Torchwood 1.8: They Keep Killing Suzie
Dec. 7th, 2006 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayThere was no Internet yesterday, which was rather tragic and made for an even longer day than usual. But normal service has been resumed, so I can post about last night's Torchwood :-) I will do a Greeks Bearing Gifts post, but last night's was rather shiny so I've been distracted...
I will talk about the rest of the episode because it was very good, but the shiny squee is mainly about that final scene. I'm sure everyone who watched it knows which scene I'm talking about :-)
Now, unless you're a really, really dedicated Jack/Someone Else shipper and can squint really, really hard, I find it difficult to read that conversation about the stopwatch as in any way innocent. How did they manage to make the scene that hot when Jack and Ianto were five feet from each other? It was one of those moments when fade to black, leave it to my imagination was hotter than a lot of the more explicit things on TV. Possibly because it worked on my imagination rather than showing every grunt, but that was a very fine piece of acting and writing.
Except now I want to see the fic that fills in a few gaps and I know that Torchwood fandom just hasn't got the quality writing yet to match that :-(
I am in no way squeeing about getting *that* scene for a pairing that I've been supporting since episode one :-)))
I'd be interested to hear how other people are reading it, but my interpretation is that nothing had been actively going on between Ianto and Jack before this scene. Partly this is being taken from Jack's expression and tone (which I read as "does he actually mean what I think he means?") and partly from the lack of other hints in previous episodes. I've noticed that they've been getting more comfortable in each other's space, but it wasn't the kind of comfort that people who are sleeping together have. It was more the comfortable, but slightly hesitant, dancing around each other kind of thing - working out boundaries and just pushing slightly at the edges, not sure whether it's going to be too much.
The scene seemed right for them, no big declarations or discussion (yet...) and I liked it very much. Some of the more, er, flowery fanfic writers out there could definitely learn a thing or two :-) Just hoping that my happy squee will not be getting shattered any time soon...
For the rest of the episode, I was very happy. After some wobbly early episodes, Torchwood seems to be hitting its stride - I haven't had anything to complain about (apart from the odd *ick shudder* moment) since episode 5. The episode didn't quite go where I expected at any point, which made it interesting.
I did giggle at their arrival at the murder victims' house - um, posing much? Having the policewoman call them on it was a nice touch.
One of the (many) things that made me happy was that this episode followed up on Suzie. From the episode title I knew that it would be relating back to her in some way, but the way they did it made their apparent forgetting of her existence more believable and understandable. I liked Toshiko's comments about Suzie having taken some of the enjoyment out of the job for her, making it slightly shameful by her actions.
The idea that Suzie was planning for her death, making sure that there was a get-out clause was very good. My only tiny niggle (and it's really a small one, with so much goodness happening elsewhere in the episode) was that I want to know how she could guarantee that someone would actually be able to use the glove to revive her. After all, the others had already demonstrated that they couldn't get it to work so how did she know that someone else would have been around who could use it when the rest of her plan started working?
I didn't expect Suzie to kill her father - I'd been most of the way convinced that she became obssessed by the glove because she was trying to find a way to save him. It certainly wiped away a lot of the sympathy that I had for her. Maybe the glove did send her rather crazy, but I think there was a tendency that way long before she started using the glove. It probably just helped to nudge her over the edge.
Other than my minor quibble about the glove, I thought the plot worked really well and kept going off in different directions from where I thought it would. It was certainly a strong story and filled in some of the gaps about the various members of Torchwood. I know that we are still ending up with the 'Gwen as the only compassionate hero' thing going on, but certain areas of her character development have been interesting. The shine has been tarnished slightly over the weeks and she's starting to realise exactly what is out there, but also what can be in the human mind as well.
The idea of Suzie's injuries being transfered to Gwen as she got stronger was interesting and I'm excusing any questions on the physics on the basis that it was an alien artefact.
Going back to that final conversation, when they weren't dicussing the uses of stopwatches there was some interesting stuff in there. Jack's comment about running out of space - how many bodies do they have and how many of those bodies are former Torchwood staff? Is Suzie the first one to go crazy that way? Does anyone actually live long enough to need to retire from Torchwood (except Jack, obviously)?
Altogether, it was a satisfying episode with some very squee-worthy moments and a good story. I'll have a review for Greeks Bearing Gifts, which I also enjoyed a lot, up soon. I'm feeling very bouncy and happy about TW right now :-)
I will talk about the rest of the episode because it was very good, but the shiny squee is mainly about that final scene. I'm sure everyone who watched it knows which scene I'm talking about :-)
Now, unless you're a really, really dedicated Jack/Someone Else shipper and can squint really, really hard, I find it difficult to read that conversation about the stopwatch as in any way innocent. How did they manage to make the scene that hot when Jack and Ianto were five feet from each other? It was one of those moments when fade to black, leave it to my imagination was hotter than a lot of the more explicit things on TV. Possibly because it worked on my imagination rather than showing every grunt, but that was a very fine piece of acting and writing.
Except now I want to see the fic that fills in a few gaps and I know that Torchwood fandom just hasn't got the quality writing yet to match that :-(
I am in no way squeeing about getting *that* scene for a pairing that I've been supporting since episode one :-)))
I'd be interested to hear how other people are reading it, but my interpretation is that nothing had been actively going on between Ianto and Jack before this scene. Partly this is being taken from Jack's expression and tone (which I read as "does he actually mean what I think he means?") and partly from the lack of other hints in previous episodes. I've noticed that they've been getting more comfortable in each other's space, but it wasn't the kind of comfort that people who are sleeping together have. It was more the comfortable, but slightly hesitant, dancing around each other kind of thing - working out boundaries and just pushing slightly at the edges, not sure whether it's going to be too much.
The scene seemed right for them, no big declarations or discussion (yet...) and I liked it very much. Some of the more, er, flowery fanfic writers out there could definitely learn a thing or two :-) Just hoping that my happy squee will not be getting shattered any time soon...
For the rest of the episode, I was very happy. After some wobbly early episodes, Torchwood seems to be hitting its stride - I haven't had anything to complain about (apart from the odd *ick shudder* moment) since episode 5. The episode didn't quite go where I expected at any point, which made it interesting.
I did giggle at their arrival at the murder victims' house - um, posing much? Having the policewoman call them on it was a nice touch.
One of the (many) things that made me happy was that this episode followed up on Suzie. From the episode title I knew that it would be relating back to her in some way, but the way they did it made their apparent forgetting of her existence more believable and understandable. I liked Toshiko's comments about Suzie having taken some of the enjoyment out of the job for her, making it slightly shameful by her actions.
The idea that Suzie was planning for her death, making sure that there was a get-out clause was very good. My only tiny niggle (and it's really a small one, with so much goodness happening elsewhere in the episode) was that I want to know how she could guarantee that someone would actually be able to use the glove to revive her. After all, the others had already demonstrated that they couldn't get it to work so how did she know that someone else would have been around who could use it when the rest of her plan started working?
I didn't expect Suzie to kill her father - I'd been most of the way convinced that she became obssessed by the glove because she was trying to find a way to save him. It certainly wiped away a lot of the sympathy that I had for her. Maybe the glove did send her rather crazy, but I think there was a tendency that way long before she started using the glove. It probably just helped to nudge her over the edge.
Other than my minor quibble about the glove, I thought the plot worked really well and kept going off in different directions from where I thought it would. It was certainly a strong story and filled in some of the gaps about the various members of Torchwood. I know that we are still ending up with the 'Gwen as the only compassionate hero' thing going on, but certain areas of her character development have been interesting. The shine has been tarnished slightly over the weeks and she's starting to realise exactly what is out there, but also what can be in the human mind as well.
The idea of Suzie's injuries being transfered to Gwen as she got stronger was interesting and I'm excusing any questions on the physics on the basis that it was an alien artefact.
Going back to that final conversation, when they weren't dicussing the uses of stopwatches there was some interesting stuff in there. Jack's comment about running out of space - how many bodies do they have and how many of those bodies are former Torchwood staff? Is Suzie the first one to go crazy that way? Does anyone actually live long enough to need to retire from Torchwood (except Jack, obviously)?
Altogether, it was a satisfying episode with some very squee-worthy moments and a good story. I'll have a review for Greeks Bearing Gifts, which I also enjoyed a lot, up soon. I'm feeling very bouncy and happy about TW right now :-)
