All aboard the FAILUPPERBOAT...

[tencrush]

rivier posted some scans from Torchwood magazine, and I'm reposting two here. And then I shall be whinging and complaining about RTD. And for once it shall have NOTHING whatsoever to do with Jack/Ianto. Though there is another picture of Ianto with a gun. I can't resist those. Oh, and a gratuitous arse shot.

ONWARDS!

Ah. Yes. A quick whovian aside first, I LOVE Moffat. Just generally, I think he's great. What's that got to do with anything, whelk? Well... I've got kids and we watch Who, and I can tell you from experience that there are only two episodes of Who that my 4-year-old son finds frightening, and they are The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink. See, the thing about genuinely scaring people is that you need the audience to identify with something. Statues, actual real people with gas masks fused to their faces, that sort of thing. Once you have a recognisable point of connection, something REAL and imaginable, you have a point at which you can start actually putting the willies up your audience. For my son, it's now statues and getting things stuck to your face. For me, it's clowns, I freaking hate clowns. But you know the sort of thing I mean. Anyway, that trick of actually managing to scare people is quite hard to pull off and the fact that it's been done in Who, which is a show aimed at a family/youngish audience is fairly impressive.

Which brings us to Torchwood, Who's allegedly older and wiser cousin. Torchwood, funnily enough, has never really managed it. Scare people, that is. It's never really managed to keep up an engaging/frightening/exciting story arc, and it's never really managed to create any sort of threat or menace within individual episodes either. (I like Cyberwoman, I think it works as an episode, dramatically speaking. But crucially, I think that episode only worked for me because at the time I'd seen the Who episodes that preceded it. I think if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to engage with Ianto on the level that made that episode work for me. I wouldn't have been able to see him as that guy who works in that big weirdy office and sneaks off to make out with his girlfriend, and without that connection I don't really know what I would have made of that episode. I wonder sometimes if the people who hate Cyberwoman had seen AOG/Doomsday or if a significant portion of those people had not, or at least saw it after the fact.) Torchwood has always, to me, seemed to disregard finesse and subtlety in the storytelling, dramatic buildup and consistent characterisation in favour of in-your-face FORESHADOWING HAMMERS and HERE-IS-TEH-PLOT-style exposition. Which, for the allegedly more adult show, is something that's always bothered me. We're not that stupid, right? We've got brains, we can think and we can process subtle character-based stories, we signed on for the darker, more adult sci-fi show, right? We don't need four hours of running around shooting things only to reveal a big massive animatronic snot monster at the end, right?

Ummm. Yeah.

(CLICK TO EMBIGGEN, it's quite a huge scan, though not quite as huge as the original.)


Now, as much as I was disappointed to hear that TW S3 was going to consist of only 5 episodes, it did make me hopeful in the same way that that Whovian "3 special specials!!" thing made me hopeful (and we know how that's panning out, dudes), and I thought we might get something actually engaging and exciting out of it, and not, say, an expensive but run-of-the-mill mid-season episode with Added Flying Bus. In a way, I'm glad I've read this spoiler, because in actual fact I was getting quite excited about Children of Earth and now I can sit back and do that more realistic thing of curling my toes with dread at the thought of the big slimy muppet that awaits me.

I hate it that when Russell says "It's going to be MASSIVE!!" what he actually means is that there'll be a BIG CGI MONSTER or a BUS IN THE SAND. I want it to mean "You're going to LOVE it! It'll be a feat of storytelling genius, with twists and turns and character development and excitement and emotion that you will never forget and will want to watch again and again." I fucking hate that.

On the plus side, we're getting gun-totin' Ianto.



I like the face. It's kind of like the face I pulled when I read the other scan. "What? Guns and SNOT? Is that it? Fuck."

At least I've lowered my expectations a bit, so I'm bound to be pleasantly surprised, right? RIGHT???

Comments

[margotleadbett.livejournal.com]

It's making me think of 1980s ITV children's programme Gilbert's Fridge. Which was absolutely classic telly, but also had a really snotty alien.

[santousha.livejournal.com]

I'm very unhappy with the spoilers and where I think they are heading with the new episodes. But I am restraining myself to not pass judgment till the episodes have aired. And that is bloody hard.
I want to believe that when RTD talks about how brilliant and epic the story arc will be, that it indeed will be something epic, instead of another StolenEarth-Journey'sEnd-LastoftheTimelords-type of thing that always ends up letting me down.
He has his moments of brilliance, but when he tries too hard to make things big and epic, he usually utterly fails.

But this is me trying to be optimistic :/

[radiant-pip.livejournal.com]

Is that a new tie? Or am I just usually easily distracted about everything else going on in a Ianto-holding-gun pic? Umm...

Wait, sorry, topic. Snot monster. Could be worse. Could be a Pizza the Hutt monster with the toppings slipping off.

[bobbishaw.livejournal.com]

yes but it wouldn't really be torchwood unless they ruined it with a massive snot monster now would it?

p.s. a friend of mine has seen eps 1-3 and they are meant to be very good indeed - no doubt to be totally ruined by snotty but thats RTD for you :)

[venusinchains.livejournal.com]

The Big Reveal Of The Monster is almost always a let-down. I'm just hoping for a decent build up of tension while the aliens are still off screen. (I mean, it couldn't possibly be worse than Abaddon, right? 0_o Though I am getting a bit nervous that a really silly alien could make any Grand Sacrifice on Ianto's part look trivial. :-/ )

Slime Creatures From Outer Space!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I sure hope they don't come in here - I just shampooed the rug!

Ianto: boyish and lost, but heavily armed. Ah.

[tigercheetah.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean when you say that the simplest of things - like statues - can be more scary than any CGI snot-monster. Blink is still one of very few Doctor Who episodes that genuinely managed to scare me.

Love that arse shot!