tencrush | Thoughts

The reason I didn't post earlier about the Golden Age was because I HATED IT. I thought it was awful on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin. Well, no, I do, it was mostly the Duchess. I hated the woman, her acting was stunted, her voice annoyed me, the whole idea of her and her blunderbuss just rubbed me up the wrong way. As did the story, it didn't engage me in any way. I've said before I have a lot of trouble with radio plays, I find them very hard to get into and this one, I just had no idea what was going on, why it was going on or indeed why I should care. As a result, I don't really have any idea what happened, and I think I may have missed a few vital plot points, or at least misunderstood some of the technobabble surrounding why they were setting up broadband or whatever it was they were doing. It all turned out okay in the end, and there was a lot of running away and shouting and such, and the thing about radio plays is that I can't quite get into any of this actual action business. As soon as there's running and car chases and things blowing up, I just veer between losing the plot alltogether and laughing myself senseless. The major problem I had with this one was the amount of visualspeak that was required to set the scene. That whole thing of "we're in India, it's a 1920's style gentleman's club with loads of marble and there's a chick with a blunderbuss", all of these things require the characters to turn into Basil Exposition and very quickly it feels like you're listening to a schoolteacher. When it comes to scene-setting on the radio, I find that it's best to not be too ambitious. So yeah, this one didn't work for me at all. 1 out of 10. On the plus side, Ianto was l33t haXX0r.

And the there was The Dead Line. Which was utterly brilliant. And now of course you'll be thinking yeah, Whelk, you liked the Jack/Ianto stuff, and yes, admittedly, I did, but leaving that aside, it was still brilliant. The retro phone as an evil device was probably the best made-for-radio bad guy ever thought up, and the story just took place. All this bollocks about precisely where the story took place and what the buildings or the people looked like was waved away, leaving room for the actual story to actually happen. Personally, I think this kind of clue-gathering, mystery solving tale is much better suited to the radio than all that running around blowing things up business, but maybe that's just me. Also, the denouement made me laugh, in as much as it was Ianto (do we actually NEED a new Tosh, dudes?) technobabbling some sort of EMP-related solution, the details of which were SO UNCLEAR that it became kind of hilarious. It could have involved various machines and loads of wiring and flashing lights, or it could have just been him tapping away on his PDA, we just don't know. And that's my point about this play, it didn't really matter.

As an aside, I've waited a while to post about this one, because I'm having a hard time working out if I enjoyed this one so much because Jack was out of action. I didn't think JB had improved much, radiowise, since Lost Souls, so after two plays I was quite glad to be rid of him. So, yeah. I don't really know how much of it was that.

Then of course there was the Jack/Ianto stuff. Yeah. I have to say, I thought GDL's speech was utterly brilliantly delivered. Ianto knows what he's getting himself into (I've waited so long for someone to tell me that Ianto's not the lovesick idiot some make him out to be, and I'm glad that in the end it was Ianto himself.) but fuck it, he'll take it. I've never really wanted it to be any more or less than that, so... yeah. Result.

rexluscus said this on my friendslist a bit earlier, and it's about Romeo and Juliet:
... while both of them are passionately in love, only Juliet understands what that really involves. Romeo is still wrapped up in his ego, but Juliet understands that being in love means a profound loss of control, an ecstatic dissolving of selfhood, which she embraces but Romeo never quite gets to. Anyway, Jack and Ianto aren't Romeo and Juliet, but it seems that their dynamic is a bit similar insofar as Jack is and will always be all about Jack even when he does fall in love, whereas Ianto, despite his hesitancy to say it out loud, has abandoned himself to being in love. And he can do this because he's mortal; Jack can't because he's not. So while Ianto is the woobie in the equation, Jack is the more tragic character.
This kind of sums it up for me, it's certainly put better than I could ever put it. And while on the one hand it does make Ianto the woobie in the equation, it also makes Ianto one hell of a realistic, pragmatic and hugely brave man. Which is a pretty okay outcome from where I'm standing.

IS IT MONDAY YET???????

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You are right about the play being much improved by not having too much of JB and his shite voice skills.
Ianto's speech affected me so much that I woke up crying in the middle of the night thinking about it. Though, the heat and my heavy dinner may have had something to do with it, too! Seriously, his choked up voice at certain parts -- I think I am going to start crying again!
See you in hell next week!

I really didn't like The Golden Age either, I think the only part I did like was Ianto and Gwen trying to get out of wherever they'd been trapped, but I still don't really get what happened...

The Jack/Ianto stuff in The Dead Line was great. I feel ashamed to admit that Ianto's speech actually made me cry, it was so well done and so perfectly Ianto. And Jack merely repeating back a line at the end was very Jack. I think Jack does very well lying in a coma and not saying anything...

Yeah, I was hugely glad to hear what I had already suspected, which was that Ianto knows exactly how this is all going to end, and he wants it anyway. He's kinda deep like that.

I thought the Duchess was a bit one-dimensional, not enough about her to run a club in that time and for Jack to notice her.

Gareth's delivery was perfect and I echo your admiration of Ianto entirely. Jack/JB missing, good/bad, I don't know, he's frustrating I do know that.

"There's next to no activity in Jack's brain!"
"No change there then." oh the lulz

Clearly, the phone monster was killed using ANTIMATTER.

lol, ILU

Interesting comments! I liked "The Golden Age" well enough, but thought "The Dead Line" was better on a lot of counts - though I can't agree about the absence of Barrowman, I loved the use they made of him, and the wonderful Ianto monologue.

or at least misunderstood some of the technobabble surrounding why they were setting up broadband

bwahaha - that made me laugh

and yes, i think the fact that jack was silent in a coma for most of it is what made it much MUCH better than the others

also the inclusion of rhys, even if he got knocked on the head, he was still awesome

Agree with most of what you've said on Golden Age, although I did like the Duchess, thought she was impressively insane. But I did spend a lot of time thinking, hooks? nets? shadows? WTF? Must be tempting when writing a radio play to make it the kind of thing that'd be too expensive to film for TV - doesn't mean they should do it though! I did enjoy the radio-only knife-throwing gag in Asylum though.
Dead Line was great, nice to have a well-adjusted, successful ex of Jack's making an appearance for a change. I liked Ianto's Big Speech and the slightly awkward, understated last scene between the two of them. It worked well that Jack chose the blip in time thing to refute, out of everything Ianto had said. Bring on Monday!

I completely agree about both counts. The Golden Age had too much shit crammed in it to make much sense and the actress/character of the Duchess was more annoying than anything. She started off ok, then spiraled into batshit crazy ex that everyone hates.

It might've been good as an episode, b/c more time would have been given to the plot instead of describing the scene.

The comparison to R&J, at first, made me cringe, but... she's completely right. Like Juliet, Ianto walks into this relationship knowing that it will cost him dearly, but it's a price he is willing to pay. Every day. So much less the woobie and so much more the emotionally strong man I like to see him be.

I just finished listening to the radio plays (US)and I agree that Golden Age was a total train wreck. There really wasn't any point to it; the story itself was ridiculous and it certainly didn't move the whole Torchwood mythology forward.

I actually liked Asylum and The Dead Line. As mentioned in your previous post, one of the disturbing things is the way Torchwood deals with harmless aliens coming through the rift. Some of the fan fiction has dealt with this and has mostly had Jack acting in much more humane manner than the show implies. And the idea of controlling the rift does lead to some interesting possibilities for future shows if they are made.

Ianto's speech in The Dead Line was still a little too Emo for me, but at least it acknowledged that he's a big boy and knows exactly what he's gotten himself into.

I'm sure by the time we get to see the series in the US, we'll all know who lives/dies etc. (Ok, I will, because there is no way I'm going to be able to keep away from the blogs for the next two weeks).

Thoughts

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Radio Plays