Illustrated thoughts on Torchwood (2x10 only)

[kaliha]

Roll up! Roll up!

For the creepy travelling show!

Creepy Ringmaster is creepy!

But look at his lovely pointy moustache. You just don't get evil villian moustaches like that on TV nowadays.

Jack hears the music on the wind

And is dragged into memories of what doesn't look like happy days. I wonder if he often hears hurdy gurdy music?

Poor old Tosh, being left behind to man the fort, but I suppose someone has to draw the short straw and work the night shift. She's probably the only one of them who can work all the surveillence software.

Guys on film!

Now how on earth did creepy!Ringmaster manage to get himself onto a completely different film? I can understand him being filmed on other film, but how is he merging with completely different film stock? it's not even as if it's been edited together.

Jack learns that saying "Can you hear that music?" is not going to go down well

Well, at least Tosh has probably suspected Jack has gone mad a long time ago.

The road is not for walking on!!!

Dave Prowse would give them a proper bollocking for that (ask yer mums). Walking down the middle of the road in terrible weather, it's an episode of Casualty waiting to happen. Road safety is obviously not high on the priorities of the Torchwood trainee induction, hmmmm. And do none of them own an umbrella? Or are none of them able to afford a taxi? (I wonder how well paid it is to fight crime and safe the world from alien invasion? I hope it's not comission-based else them and UNIT would be in trouble.)

Oh it's meant to look cool? Oh right.

Jack's annoyed that Ianto's off having a social life without him

so inexplicably goes after him. (Unless it was mentioned why Jack needed to get to him to quickly and I just missed it).

Ianto suffers from a geekgasm

being faced with all the old fashioned projectors, the memories of ladys in cute little uniforms selling ice creams in the break between the trailers and the films. Having an interval in the middle of the film, it's all quite sweet really. It's nice to see that Ianto does have interests outside of cyborg girlfriends, work and Jack. It really is.

It's strange, loads of people will put Ianto as thair favourite character in polls and stuff but we really know nothing about him beyond the fact he worked for Torchwood 1, went out with Lisa, likes stopwatches, writes emo poetry in his head (and probably in his little paper diary) and makes a mean cup of coffee.

We know more about Mr Secretive Harkness than we do about Ianto.

It's the expressions on their faces that really get me.

Especially Gwen's vaguely pissed off look.

Jack was in the freakshow

I wonder how he was marketed? I can't make out the sign behind him, he was like the original Jackass boy, throwing himself off cliffs and buildings and walking away with (most of) his limbs intact.

Althogh shooting himself in the head should at least make him temporarily dead at least. But lookit him, still laughing and joking without a care in the world. Unless his was using Derren Brown's special roulette bullets he should really be on the floor with ladies swooning in shock around him before he jumps and goes "TA DA! I'm all betterer now!"

Ianto sees dead people

Even shadows are scary in Torchwood. Fact.

Switch it off and then switch it back on again.

The mysterious goings on crash the Hubs computers. Much to Tosh's annoyance.

Jack and Ianto enjoy a night out at the cinema

But it's hardly what you'd call romantic and there's no popcorn.

They put on their Scooby Gang hats and go investi-ma-gating

They discover that some is amiss. And also stand on a box to make this week's guest character feel particularly Hobbit-like. Meanies.

Dryyyyyyyy

Really, having all the lidquid sucked out of you is not what you expect to happen whilst waiting for the 23 to come.

Scary!Ringmaster decides to suck the life out of some more people

He probably had tabard envy which is why he went after the poor shopkeep. In fact, it's probably a good thing for the people of Cardiff that it was a hirrible night of weather. All that rain probably actually saved lives.

Team Torchwood - sexing up corridors with swishy coats

I bet the nursing staff get really annoyed when they see this lot turn up, because trouble is always one step behind and then they turn up with their grapes and bottles of lucozade people start suffering from a nasty case of death.

Friday night is film night in the Hub

This week: Forrest Gump - because they could all do with learning about living through adversity. Again there's no popcorn. What a shocking state of affairs.

get out of the way Jack!

Right. I have a bit of a query here. In the script Jack says "Oh I knew those two" pointing out the acrobats. Then when they show the shots of the Night Travellers waving (complete with the same acrobats i nthe troupe) Jack mentions that he's never worked withthe Night Travellers, no one he knew had. So how can he know those acrobats then. I know it's a little plot niggle, bit it's something that really should have been picked up. If they knew they couldn't afford or didn't have the time to shoot a different troup of travellers then they could have amended the script slightly.

Jack needs Ianto for "his local knowledge"

So that's what he's calling it nowadays then.

Jack comes clean

So just who was Jack working for when he was investigating the Night Travellers? We can assume from what he told Ianto it wasn't Torchwood and UNIT didn't exist in the early Twentieth Century. He was already post-Bad Wolfed so it couldn't have been the Time Agency and I presume that it was before he ended up in the army and fighting evil faeries.

He was a busy boy whilst waiting for the Doctor to turn up.

It's the Sea in the middle of Cardiff!

Possibly the Severn Bore went the wrong way? It's weird how this was mentioned but not followed up on. Was it something to do with the magic mermaid girl (who was a rubbish mermaid, waving your arms around whilst doing no actual swimming is not being a mermaid).

Pernsive Ianto is pensive

(which I keep writing penseive. Proof that fandom has ruined me for anything else)

It's rather depressing to see a Lido in such a delapidated state

You'd think, with the hot summers we're getting now that Lido's would become more popular again, but know they end up all decaying like this one. It's really sad. Although all the sparkly candle lights are quite lovely.

You can hear the sea...

...which sounds like the screams of lost souls. Oh wait, that's because it is.

Jack gets suspicious about Ianto's past

because how many people can honestly say they know where they're local asylum is. I wonder if we'll come back to this in a future episode/book/comic or if it'll be forgotten. It's probably knowledge for a completely unexciting reason and is just part of Ianto's impressive local knowledge.

He has old eyes and they prove that he doesn't belong anywhere

Yes, thanks for stating the obvious. You're going to make Jack all emo and we don't want a return to those days.

I'm getting freaked out

because there's nothing more disturbing (to me) than people staring blankly at a wall. I completely blame The Blair Witch Project for that.

What a lovely old bandstand type thing.



It's a shout out for Church Stretton and Hunstanton

See, they do know of other places, it's not just Cardiff and London. And really how many people would bring up tiny towns like those in your average conversation.

Our guest character lives in a very strange 'flat'

How many people do you know that live in a corrugated iron shack at the back of a warehouse. Why wasn't the script amended to fit the location. See, it's little things like that that really throw me out of the story. Woes.

And why does his have a seventies green bathroon suite in there>

It's all becoming very random.

Argh!

I hate it went the camera pans across to focus on someone just standing in a corner. That I completely and utterly blame on Ghostwatch - which completed scarred me for life.

Jack gives out his number to everyone

he's such a tart

Why is it that it's always the nice people who get hurt in this

Life's unfair isn't it?

Owen proves again why it's a good idea to have a dead person on the team

Fight off Death, be unmolested by a shape shifter and now not have his breath sucked out of him, because he can't breathe! (Let's no, then, go into how he is able to talk without any breathe to run over his vocal cords, it'll just make our heads hurty and that's no fun.

Run Ianto, Run!



I did like the death effects

The way they dissolved like a burning piece of film was rather cool, although if their images were exposed to light surely they should have just turned into a dark shadow. I admit this looks much, much cooler.

Safe hands Ianto

shows off his innate Rugby ball catching skills.

Question: How many member of Torchwood does it take to put the stopper on a bottle?

Answer: Three.

Jack's happy that they managed to save even one person

Ianto and Gwen don't see it that way. I suppose this makes up a bit for losing the little girl in the faerie episode last year.

Ianto cries

a million fangirls (and boys) rush to give him a hug and a nice cup of coffee.

Insert smutty comment about Jack bending over his desk right here

I'm sure you lot can do a much better job than me.

What a brilliant car boot sale!

I've been to many a car boot in my time but I've never seen anyone sell reels of old 35mm film. Knock-off DVDs yes, but never proper film. That kid's dad has picked up a missing Second Doctor film for 50p too.

Jack's hearing things again

It's never going to be over. I wonder if we'll see the Ringmaster and his friends again?

In Conclusion
Very, very creepy in places, but it felt more like a series one episode than a series two ep and as such it is suffering from the comparisons. A lot of the plot was either clunky or underused or just weirdly out of place (like the sea in the middle of Cardiff). Which is a shame.

Let down a bit by some of the supporting cast and some plot inconsistances which saddens me quite a bit because I love PJ Hammond's writing and I expected this to be much much better than it actually was.

A saddened 6/10

Comments

[eumelkeks.livejournal.com]

LOL, funny as usual. Especially the part about how many Torchwood members it takes to put a stopper on a bottle.

I'd rate this episode higher though because, even with all the plot holes and inconsistencies, this was one of the very few episodes I could watch a second time without fast-forwarding all the time. I can watch this episode for the plot, while other episodes are only saved by a few good scenes with character interaction and dialogue.

[sal101010.livejournal.com]

I was bored! Not very impressed.

Actually, your write-up is better than the ep as you've put in witty comments!

[aryas_zehral]

Let's no, then, go into how he is able to talk without any breathe to run over his vocal cords, it'll just make our heads hurty and that's no fun.

The whole Owen Is Dead thing confuses me not just from the breathing/talking thing but also from the can't heal so how come Jack thinks it's a good idea for him to do fieldwork or how does he get energy into his muscles to walk/stand/movie without anything functioning. Tis stupid. I'm hoping they find a way to reverse it soon, even in some really lame way, because it's just a stupid idea.

I'm not sure what I think of this ep. I liked that we found out a little bit more about Ianto (very, very little) but I found the bad guys irritating and not creepy at all. We'll see how I feel about it after I watch it again tonight. :)