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Children of Earth: My verdict
This will probably be an incoherent list of thoughts about CoE, just to get it out of my system so I can move on.
OBSERVATION THE FIRST:
IF I WERE COMPLETELY CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO SEASON FOUR, I'D PROBABLY BE A LOT HAPPIER ABOUT SEASON THREE. A lot of people praising it into the heavens are calling it a swansong and saying their teary goodbyes to Torchwood, and I think a lot of the people who aren't doing that, aren't doing that because they think they've been set up for GWEN COOPER: EARTH DEFENDER. Look, the thing is, I, like many others, am a cynical person. And I don't hate Gwen, and I don't think she interferes with Jack/Ianto (which I never really shipped anyway, I think Ianto could do better), I thought she was kickarse and good in series three and I didn't think she was all that bad in series two either. But there was a story Russell wanted to tell. In order to tell it, Ianto Jones had to die. He had to die because having a man by his side who had such an unwavering faith in Jack's goodness would have rendered Jack incapable of making the sacrifice he had to make. He didn't have to die for any other reason, there was no plot-related reason as to why Ianto was in that room, without protection, there was one, authorial, reason Ianto was in that room, and that is because Russell wanted Ianto to die. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a rather cheap and nasty thing called refrigeration. A death that has no reason apart from that of spurring the hero into action. Chick, or Ianto, gets killed by alien virus, tortured hero finally stops being angsty and tortured, takes his finger out of his arse and does what needs to be done. Completely pointless, except for the part where it was pivotal and crucial to the total destruction of the character of Captain Jack Harkness. So, yeah. In a way, I understand that, a really cheap way to get to the ultimate goal. It's just that, the more you think about that, the more difficult it becomes to understand why Russell T. Davies felt the character of Captain Jack Harkness needed to be demolished so totally and utterly. I can understand wanting to tell this reasonably well-crafted, undoubtedly critically acclaimed, dark, depressing tale. But why butcher THESE characters to do it?
A funny thing happened in Day Five. (Apart from the funny funny joke about dead Ianto being GAY, lol.) The story reached a point where I no langer cared about any of it, and even as I was watching, I started to step out of the tale (which had been ENGROSSING, from day one up until Frobisher shot himself in day five) and wonder what the hell was going on. Where was this going? Why is Russell going here? What is he trying to tell us? Why is he destroying this character? I literally fell out of the story about 15 minutes before the end, which is why I posted that LOLOLOL reaction about Jack flying away, because I just didn't understand what the hell was going on anymore. Ianto's dead. Jack is broken. Gwen has lost faith in humanity's goodness. Not enough to not want to put a child on this earth, but only by the narrowest of margins. Why? And, even while I was watching that cynical part of my brain said Oh. I get it now. There IS a series four and it's that Rose Tyler: Earth Defender thing that Russell's always wanted to make, but with Gwen Cooper, and in order to be allowed to make it, he had to A)get the ratings B)at Moffat's request, sever the ties to Who by getting rid of Jack and C)get rid of teh ghey. Now, of course, that's not true. Right? But that's what my brain was thinking even as I was still watching the story play out. I ceased being able to be affected by the story and became obsessed with the actions behind it and the question of WHY the story was being told. And apart from that cynical reasoning, I can't really think of any other reason. Maybe there's another reason in there somewhere. I don't know. All I know is, before the story had ended, my brain was already saying FAIL FAIL FAIL.
IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!!
Man... that was good, wasn't it? Remember how Russell touted this relationship between Jack and Ianto around as being groundbreaking and boundary pushing and wow, we're trying to give people a whole new groovy and relaxed outlook on sexuality? Lol. That was funny, wasn't it? How many SHINY NEW VIEWERS did series three get, guys? People who had never seen this show before? What did we teach these FEW MILLION people? Ianto WAS A GHEY. For those of you who didn't get it from the "bender" and "gayboy" jibes (which meant "We love you anyways you daft git", and were thoroughly well-written, absolutely necessary in terms of character and the establishing of how much Ianto's family loves him), we've upped you a "QUEER!" and a "WAS HE GAY?" for good measure. We've rewritten him as a standard-by-the-book-dramatic-gay, he's unsure of himself, he comes out, he gets insulted, he's suddenly doing all those things the gheys in soap operas do (Man, I remember a time when Ianto said "and I don't care" What the fuck happened to that guy?). And then we kill him, obviously, because the gay must die. It's a lovely, lovely message for those shiny new viewers of yours, Russell, and it's one I hope you get called on again and again and again until the day you die. Fuckwit.
There are several aspects to this "love story" that are disturbing to an uncomforatble degree, one of which is better articulated by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xtricks here, read the whole thing, and it's that "men don't say they love someone - not unless one or the other is dying," and, as commenter lawsontl says in the comments of that post "The "love story" we were hyped up on by Euros and RTD, it was bait and switch. Jack/Ianto getting their last chance at intimacy blocked in a joking scene about beans is not a love story. Being shown that they still have trouble communicating with each other, right to the very second Ianto is dying in Jack's arms - that's not a love story... it takes Ianto dying for Jack to realize how deep his feelings really are. That is brutal; for him, for Ianto, and for fans of the show. Moreover, I think it's blatantly wrong. Jack's over 200 years old... He may be a bit of a cad, he may choose to avoid emotional entanglements for good reasons, but he's got to know feelings when he has them." Yeah. That. Like I said, my brain's been slow to process this pile of fail, so I'm just gonna quote other people atcha. Sorry.
If that weren't bad enough, then there's the retcon of Ianto Jones. Debenhams and broken legs and everything it implies. Daddy issues. Hero worship. Those cynics who railed on Ianto for being ALL ABOUT JACK were right all along. Thanks, Russell. You couldn't even let us cling onto the idea that maybe Ianto was his own man. You had to twist the knife there. Which brings me to...
THE DEATH AND DEATH OF IANTO JONES OR LOL WHY ARE WE SO UPSET?
Ianto Jones died of authorial intent. That's not a pleasant thing for any fan of Ianto Jones to have to experience, but his death was, given the direction his tale was headed in, something of an inevitability. And after the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, it was something fandom could have probably accepted and lived with, in spite of its pointlessness. And we were upset, yes. Why? Well, the thing about Ianto Jones was that we were never really told that much about him. We never really knew very much about Ianto Jones. We speculated and discussed what made him tick and what was going on behind those suits and that coffee fetish of his, we guessed at his family life and his romantic past, we wrote fic and meta and, in my case, made elaborate picspams about the size of his metaphorical cock. Ianto Jones, given the amount and size of the holes in his canonical character, became, for those that loved him, a guy we invented in our heads. That's what fandom, hardcore fandom, does. We fill in the gaps. We make the character our own, and the opportunity had never been so readily available as it was in Ianto Jones, l33t manwhorespy of mystery. We knew next to nothing, so we made him up. And that's why it hit us so hard when he died the first time. It was like someone had gone into our brain and found the Ianto file we'd so meticulously been piecing together for two years, taken it out, ripped up all the little bits of paper and scattered them around the floor. That's two years' work, dude, what did you have to go and do that for? That hurts, it really does, and that's why Ianto fans were hurting so bad. But... we'd have got over it. Eventually. But then a funny thing happened to Ianto Jones in Day Five. He died again. And that was just... cruel. Death by Debenhams. WE NEVER KNEW IANTO JONES. He was a liar, he was ashamed (ashamed of that wonderful, wonderful family you've just made us care so much about), everything you knew about him was wrong. Why does that make people so mad? Because it's gratuitous. It's as gratuitous as bringing up his sexual orientation AGAIN, even AFTER his death. And again, it's one of those things that makes you step out of the tale and think WHY? Why do this to our memory of this guy? Because as far as the plot goes, as far as the story goes, there's no reason for it. Let the guy rest in peace. But no, the author decides to give us one more snippet that upsets our whole view of the man and all we can do, we, the people who put all that work in, is take that as the final FUCK YOU to our Ianto file. All that stuff in those scraps of paper, all that shit we were hoping to maybe tape back together and make legible again? Pissed on. Not your file to make, dudes. My toy. Always has been. It's no wonder some people have gone batshit angry towards RTD and the team. Which brings me to...
OH LOL THE HILARIOUS INTARWEBS N00BNESS OF JAMES MORAN
Yeah, okay, don't be batshit towards James Moran, guys, because that's not cool, but on the other hand, seriously, James Moran? Don't flounce of the internets when you can't take the heat. It's pathetic. There's a mousie on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
who_anon who sums up the James Moran situation better than I ever could (this post has mostly turned into a collection of links to people who sum things up better than I can, sorry.) here:
Moran was more than happy to ride the Janto fandom bandwagon to boost his own profile wrt Torchwood. The Captain's Blog on the BBCA website, for example, was by his own assertion intended to flesh out the relationship far beyond what was happening onscreen. He did it in an intensely shippy way, esp. in having Jack express a romantic and emotional interest in Ianto, more than a sexual one.
And the fans lapped it up. And he's been gleefully lapping up their appreciation ever since, right down to playing along with the pseudo-RPS malarkey Twitterfen were making up, to decide which of him and Joe Lidster was the bigger Janto fan.
And he was a direct active member of the creative team that just shat on that happy relationship.
It doesn't matter what lofty authorial intent/serving higher plot demands BS he wants to spout now: Moran helped that fanbase to choose their pet puppy, joined in with them fussing and petting it, and then helped the nice men take it outside and wring its neck in the backyard while the fans all watched.
I may not agree with the way some of them are expressing their anger and upset, but I sure as fuck understand why so many of them feel like Moran personally betrayed them in this.
So, yeah, that. Whoever you are, anon, word. So what does James Moran do? He flounces off the internet. He says ne NEVER tried to mislead ANYONE, EVER. Now, see, the thing is, James, you were part of that team. This would be the same creative team that brought us these promotional pictures
with the bigMFgun that never was. And if you, James Moran, are now completely refusing to even slightly hold your hands up and say "Yeah, okay, we may have done a tiny bit of a bait and switch on you there," then you're lying. You, who wrote COCKBLOCKED BY BEANS, a scene in which our hero, Jack Harkness, can't even bring himself to JUST BE FORTHRIGHT, and say to Rhys "Hey, dude, could you leave me and Ianto alone for a bit? We've been through hell and we could do with a cuddle. I'm sure you understand." He can't even do that for this man he allegedly cares about, yet you have the gall to call this a "love story." And no, no author deserves to be personally attacked for what they've written, of course not. But you fuck with people's heads and expectations, you're going to get some flak. And if you can't deal with that flak, then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of trying to make an audience care about the characters you create.
That's it. That's all I have to say about Children of Earth. I've reached the point where I don't want to think about it or write about it ever again. I tried to find some beauty in it and I tried to find some hope, I tried to find an uplifting theme, something about Ianto having come from that 10%, but every time I thought about it, I just ended up back at pointless death, hopelessness and despair. And while I understand that that's a tale that needs telling sometimes, I didn't want my big gay cracky pterodactyl show to be used to tell it. I'm upset that it was, and I think I have every right to be upset. If you enjoyed it, good for you, I'm glad somebody did. I didn't, and I reject it. It never happened, dudes. That's my final word on the subject.
OBSERVATION THE FIRST:
IF I WERE COMPLETELY CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO SEASON FOUR, I'D PROBABLY BE A LOT HAPPIER ABOUT SEASON THREE. A lot of people praising it into the heavens are calling it a swansong and saying their teary goodbyes to Torchwood, and I think a lot of the people who aren't doing that, aren't doing that because they think they've been set up for GWEN COOPER: EARTH DEFENDER. Look, the thing is, I, like many others, am a cynical person. And I don't hate Gwen, and I don't think she interferes with Jack/Ianto (which I never really shipped anyway, I think Ianto could do better), I thought she was kickarse and good in series three and I didn't think she was all that bad in series two either. But there was a story Russell wanted to tell. In order to tell it, Ianto Jones had to die. He had to die because having a man by his side who had such an unwavering faith in Jack's goodness would have rendered Jack incapable of making the sacrifice he had to make. He didn't have to die for any other reason, there was no plot-related reason as to why Ianto was in that room, without protection, there was one, authorial, reason Ianto was in that room, and that is because Russell wanted Ianto to die. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a rather cheap and nasty thing called refrigeration. A death that has no reason apart from that of spurring the hero into action. Chick, or Ianto, gets killed by alien virus, tortured hero finally stops being angsty and tortured, takes his finger out of his arse and does what needs to be done. Completely pointless, except for the part where it was pivotal and crucial to the total destruction of the character of Captain Jack Harkness. So, yeah. In a way, I understand that, a really cheap way to get to the ultimate goal. It's just that, the more you think about that, the more difficult it becomes to understand why Russell T. Davies felt the character of Captain Jack Harkness needed to be demolished so totally and utterly. I can understand wanting to tell this reasonably well-crafted, undoubtedly critically acclaimed, dark, depressing tale. But why butcher THESE characters to do it?
A funny thing happened in Day Five. (Apart from the funny funny joke about dead Ianto being GAY, lol.) The story reached a point where I no langer cared about any of it, and even as I was watching, I started to step out of the tale (which had been ENGROSSING, from day one up until Frobisher shot himself in day five) and wonder what the hell was going on. Where was this going? Why is Russell going here? What is he trying to tell us? Why is he destroying this character? I literally fell out of the story about 15 minutes before the end, which is why I posted that LOLOLOL reaction about Jack flying away, because I just didn't understand what the hell was going on anymore. Ianto's dead. Jack is broken. Gwen has lost faith in humanity's goodness. Not enough to not want to put a child on this earth, but only by the narrowest of margins. Why? And, even while I was watching that cynical part of my brain said Oh. I get it now. There IS a series four and it's that Rose Tyler: Earth Defender thing that Russell's always wanted to make, but with Gwen Cooper, and in order to be allowed to make it, he had to A)get the ratings B)at Moffat's request, sever the ties to Who by getting rid of Jack and C)get rid of teh ghey. Now, of course, that's not true. Right? But that's what my brain was thinking even as I was still watching the story play out. I ceased being able to be affected by the story and became obsessed with the actions behind it and the question of WHY the story was being told. And apart from that cynical reasoning, I can't really think of any other reason. Maybe there's another reason in there somewhere. I don't know. All I know is, before the story had ended, my brain was already saying FAIL FAIL FAIL.
IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!!
Man... that was good, wasn't it? Remember how Russell touted this relationship between Jack and Ianto around as being groundbreaking and boundary pushing and wow, we're trying to give people a whole new groovy and relaxed outlook on sexuality? Lol. That was funny, wasn't it? How many SHINY NEW VIEWERS did series three get, guys? People who had never seen this show before? What did we teach these FEW MILLION people? Ianto WAS A GHEY. For those of you who didn't get it from the "bender" and "gayboy" jibes (which meant "We love you anyways you daft git", and were thoroughly well-written, absolutely necessary in terms of character and the establishing of how much Ianto's family loves him), we've upped you a "QUEER!" and a "WAS HE GAY?" for good measure. We've rewritten him as a standard-by-the-book-dramatic-gay, he's unsure of himself, he comes out, he gets insulted, he's suddenly doing all those things the gheys in soap operas do (Man, I remember a time when Ianto said "and I don't care" What the fuck happened to that guy?). And then we kill him, obviously, because the gay must die. It's a lovely, lovely message for those shiny new viewers of yours, Russell, and it's one I hope you get called on again and again and again until the day you die. Fuckwit.
There are several aspects to this "love story" that are disturbing to an uncomforatble degree, one of which is better articulated by
xtricks here, read the whole thing, and it's that "men don't say they love someone - not unless one or the other is dying," and, as commenter lawsontl says in the comments of that post "The "love story" we were hyped up on by Euros and RTD, it was bait and switch. Jack/Ianto getting their last chance at intimacy blocked in a joking scene about beans is not a love story. Being shown that they still have trouble communicating with each other, right to the very second Ianto is dying in Jack's arms - that's not a love story... it takes Ianto dying for Jack to realize how deep his feelings really are. That is brutal; for him, for Ianto, and for fans of the show. Moreover, I think it's blatantly wrong. Jack's over 200 years old... He may be a bit of a cad, he may choose to avoid emotional entanglements for good reasons, but he's got to know feelings when he has them." Yeah. That. Like I said, my brain's been slow to process this pile of fail, so I'm just gonna quote other people atcha. Sorry.If that weren't bad enough, then there's the retcon of Ianto Jones. Debenhams and broken legs and everything it implies. Daddy issues. Hero worship. Those cynics who railed on Ianto for being ALL ABOUT JACK were right all along. Thanks, Russell. You couldn't even let us cling onto the idea that maybe Ianto was his own man. You had to twist the knife there. Which brings me to...
THE DEATH AND DEATH OF IANTO JONES OR LOL WHY ARE WE SO UPSET?
Ianto Jones died of authorial intent. That's not a pleasant thing for any fan of Ianto Jones to have to experience, but his death was, given the direction his tale was headed in, something of an inevitability. And after the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, it was something fandom could have probably accepted and lived with, in spite of its pointlessness. And we were upset, yes. Why? Well, the thing about Ianto Jones was that we were never really told that much about him. We never really knew very much about Ianto Jones. We speculated and discussed what made him tick and what was going on behind those suits and that coffee fetish of his, we guessed at his family life and his romantic past, we wrote fic and meta and, in my case, made elaborate picspams about the size of his metaphorical cock. Ianto Jones, given the amount and size of the holes in his canonical character, became, for those that loved him, a guy we invented in our heads. That's what fandom, hardcore fandom, does. We fill in the gaps. We make the character our own, and the opportunity had never been so readily available as it was in Ianto Jones, l33t manwhorespy of mystery. We knew next to nothing, so we made him up. And that's why it hit us so hard when he died the first time. It was like someone had gone into our brain and found the Ianto file we'd so meticulously been piecing together for two years, taken it out, ripped up all the little bits of paper and scattered them around the floor. That's two years' work, dude, what did you have to go and do that for? That hurts, it really does, and that's why Ianto fans were hurting so bad. But... we'd have got over it. Eventually. But then a funny thing happened to Ianto Jones in Day Five. He died again. And that was just... cruel. Death by Debenhams. WE NEVER KNEW IANTO JONES. He was a liar, he was ashamed (ashamed of that wonderful, wonderful family you've just made us care so much about), everything you knew about him was wrong. Why does that make people so mad? Because it's gratuitous. It's as gratuitous as bringing up his sexual orientation AGAIN, even AFTER his death. And again, it's one of those things that makes you step out of the tale and think WHY? Why do this to our memory of this guy? Because as far as the plot goes, as far as the story goes, there's no reason for it. Let the guy rest in peace. But no, the author decides to give us one more snippet that upsets our whole view of the man and all we can do, we, the people who put all that work in, is take that as the final FUCK YOU to our Ianto file. All that stuff in those scraps of paper, all that shit we were hoping to maybe tape back together and make legible again? Pissed on. Not your file to make, dudes. My toy. Always has been. It's no wonder some people have gone batshit angry towards RTD and the team. Which brings me to...
OH LOL THE HILARIOUS INTARWEBS N00BNESS OF JAMES MORAN
Yeah, okay, don't be batshit towards James Moran, guys, because that's not cool, but on the other hand, seriously, James Moran? Don't flounce of the internets when you can't take the heat. It's pathetic. There's a mousie on
who_anon who sums up the James Moran situation better than I ever could (this post has mostly turned into a collection of links to people who sum things up better than I can, sorry.) here:Moran was more than happy to ride the Janto fandom bandwagon to boost his own profile wrt Torchwood. The Captain's Blog on the BBCA website, for example, was by his own assertion intended to flesh out the relationship far beyond what was happening onscreen. He did it in an intensely shippy way, esp. in having Jack express a romantic and emotional interest in Ianto, more than a sexual one.
And the fans lapped it up. And he's been gleefully lapping up their appreciation ever since, right down to playing along with the pseudo-RPS malarkey Twitterfen were making up, to decide which of him and Joe Lidster was the bigger Janto fan.
And he was a direct active member of the creative team that just shat on that happy relationship.
It doesn't matter what lofty authorial intent/serving higher plot demands BS he wants to spout now: Moran helped that fanbase to choose their pet puppy, joined in with them fussing and petting it, and then helped the nice men take it outside and wring its neck in the backyard while the fans all watched.
I may not agree with the way some of them are expressing their anger and upset, but I sure as fuck understand why so many of them feel like Moran personally betrayed them in this.
So, yeah, that. Whoever you are, anon, word. So what does James Moran do? He flounces off the internet. He says ne NEVER tried to mislead ANYONE, EVER. Now, see, the thing is, James, you were part of that team. This would be the same creative team that brought us these promotional pictures
with the bigMFgun that never was. And if you, James Moran, are now completely refusing to even slightly hold your hands up and say "Yeah, okay, we may have done a tiny bit of a bait and switch on you there," then you're lying. You, who wrote COCKBLOCKED BY BEANS, a scene in which our hero, Jack Harkness, can't even bring himself to JUST BE FORTHRIGHT, and say to Rhys "Hey, dude, could you leave me and Ianto alone for a bit? We've been through hell and we could do with a cuddle. I'm sure you understand." He can't even do that for this man he allegedly cares about, yet you have the gall to call this a "love story." And no, no author deserves to be personally attacked for what they've written, of course not. But you fuck with people's heads and expectations, you're going to get some flak. And if you can't deal with that flak, then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of trying to make an audience care about the characters you create.
That's it. That's all I have to say about Children of Earth. I've reached the point where I don't want to think about it or write about it ever again. I tried to find some beauty in it and I tried to find some hope, I tried to find an uplifting theme, something about Ianto having come from that 10%, but every time I thought about it, I just ended up back at pointless death, hopelessness and despair. And while I understand that that's a tale that needs telling sometimes, I didn't want my big gay cracky pterodactyl show to be used to tell it. I'm upset that it was, and I think I have every right to be upset. If you enjoyed it, good for you, I'm glad somebody did. I didn't, and I reject it. It never happened, dudes. That's my final word on the subject.
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