Torchwood 1.9: Random Shoes
Dec. 14th, 2006 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayGot to watch the video of this one last night, so time for a bit of discussion.
I feel the need for lunch right now. Definitely having one of those mornings.
I liked the episode. I haven't been reading any of the commentary on it yet, but I got the feeling from hints that a lot of people didn't, but I did. It reminded me a lot of Love and Monsters and I was one of the rare ones who thoroughly enjoyed that episode, too, so maybe it's not surprising that I enjoyed this one.
Eugene was the kind of character that you didn't precisely adore (not as much as I adored Elton, anyway) but I got caught up in his story. He was a bit of a loser and hadn't adjusted to the his father leaving when he was a kid, but he was almost right with some of his beliefs. Reality didn't match up to what he wanted and needed from life, so he buried himself in the idea of something else out there to cope. Ironically, he was almost right about aliens (although rather prone to being taken in by con men, too, as evidenced by most of his 'collection').
I thought at first that the story was going to be about his friends killing him for the eye, greed over-coming reason. I'm glad that it wasn't because that would have been a rather anti-climax and far too much about the horrors of humanity, which I thought was done (for the season, at least) already in Countrycide.
I watched part of the episode a couple of days ago, but had to stop ten minutes before the end (sometimes other people like to use the TV, apparently...). I left it mid-way through Eugene meeting his friends at the cafe. At that point, I was half-expecting the snotty one (can't remember his name - wasn't Gary) to have pushed him into the road. I couldn't decide how the episode would end, but I had two possible scenarios in mind:
1. Whatever Eugene was now, he would remain that way for eternity having to watch his family and friends grow old and die. That was the less than cheerful one.
2. Eugene would be saved in some manner, possibly becoming real again, and Torchwood would have saved the day.
The first option was based on the idea that Torchwood doesn't always success, following on from Small Worlds. The second option was a best case scenario. I couldn't decide which I preferred, although I was kind of hoping that Eugene would get some kind of good end.
The way that the episode actually went from that point made me surprisingly happy. It gave Eugene closure, helped him to see what his life had been, and gave him hope for how things would go. The Eugene-voice over was had some interesting conclusions about his life and what he'd learnt from re-visiting everything. It's the kind of thing most people don't get to do.
There wasn't a huge amount of team Torchwood in this episode, which may have been why people don't like it. They were there, but the episode was about Eugene and told from his POV. There wasn't any development on the relationship between Gwen and Owen (I have a feeling that next week's episode may be tackling that a bit) and absolutely no follow-up to last week's stopwatch scene. That does give fanfic writers another week's grace for inventing and filling those gaps, though :-) Given the tone and way the episode was written, having any kind of follow-up or private conversation on Jack and Ianto's relationship (I'm obviously still watching through slash goggles there) would have been out of place - it's not something that Eugene would have seen because he was following Gwen throughout and it wouldn't fit their characters for Jack and Ianto to mention it in front of the others.
I'm trying to write this review at the same time as handling half a dozen other things, so my thoughts keep getting interrupted!
One question that I did have was where is Rhys? Every time we've seen Gwen at home, he's been there. I'm a little unsatisfied about not having an explanation for the lack of Rhys given that, so far as we're aware, Gwen is having an affair with Owen rather than breaking up with Rhys for him. Hmmm.
Given that I've only got one little niggle, which may be resolved by the events next week, I'm pretty happy with this episode. The writing was subtler than many of the previous episodes and I enjoyed the exploration of a different POV and idea. Of course, I do also like Love and Monsters :-)
Eugene was the kind of character that you didn't precisely adore (not as much as I adored Elton, anyway) but I got caught up in his story. He was a bit of a loser and hadn't adjusted to the his father leaving when he was a kid, but he was almost right with some of his beliefs. Reality didn't match up to what he wanted and needed from life, so he buried himself in the idea of something else out there to cope. Ironically, he was almost right about aliens (although rather prone to being taken in by con men, too, as evidenced by most of his 'collection').
I thought at first that the story was going to be about his friends killing him for the eye, greed over-coming reason. I'm glad that it wasn't because that would have been a rather anti-climax and far too much about the horrors of humanity, which I thought was done (for the season, at least) already in Countrycide.
I watched part of the episode a couple of days ago, but had to stop ten minutes before the end (sometimes other people like to use the TV, apparently...). I left it mid-way through Eugene meeting his friends at the cafe. At that point, I was half-expecting the snotty one (can't remember his name - wasn't Gary) to have pushed him into the road. I couldn't decide how the episode would end, but I had two possible scenarios in mind:
1. Whatever Eugene was now, he would remain that way for eternity having to watch his family and friends grow old and die. That was the less than cheerful one.
2. Eugene would be saved in some manner, possibly becoming real again, and Torchwood would have saved the day.
The first option was based on the idea that Torchwood doesn't always success, following on from Small Worlds. The second option was a best case scenario. I couldn't decide which I preferred, although I was kind of hoping that Eugene would get some kind of good end.
The way that the episode actually went from that point made me surprisingly happy. It gave Eugene closure, helped him to see what his life had been, and gave him hope for how things would go. The Eugene-voice over was had some interesting conclusions about his life and what he'd learnt from re-visiting everything. It's the kind of thing most people don't get to do.
There wasn't a huge amount of team Torchwood in this episode, which may have been why people don't like it. They were there, but the episode was about Eugene and told from his POV. There wasn't any development on the relationship between Gwen and Owen (I have a feeling that next week's episode may be tackling that a bit) and absolutely no follow-up to last week's stopwatch scene. That does give fanfic writers another week's grace for inventing and filling those gaps, though :-) Given the tone and way the episode was written, having any kind of follow-up or private conversation on Jack and Ianto's relationship (I'm obviously still watching through slash goggles there) would have been out of place - it's not something that Eugene would have seen because he was following Gwen throughout and it wouldn't fit their characters for Jack and Ianto to mention it in front of the others.
I'm trying to write this review at the same time as handling half a dozen other things, so my thoughts keep getting interrupted!
One question that I did have was where is Rhys? Every time we've seen Gwen at home, he's been there. I'm a little unsatisfied about not having an explanation for the lack of Rhys given that, so far as we're aware, Gwen is having an affair with Owen rather than breaking up with Rhys for him. Hmmm.
Given that I've only got one little niggle, which may be resolved by the events next week, I'm pretty happy with this episode. The writing was subtler than many of the previous episodes and I enjoyed the exploration of a different POV and idea. Of course, I do also like Love and Monsters :-)
I feel the need for lunch right now. Definitely having one of those mornings.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-14 07:34 pm (UTC)I'm so glad it's not just me.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 02:07 pm (UTC)