Touching Wood

+++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

(But hey - aren't they all?)

So. Onto pastures new.

Torchwood has moved to the US of A. It has eschewed the bright lights and broad vowels of Cardiff and gone for the clipped and curled accents of, er, somewhere in America.

And this is the problem. They may have said exactly where in America the action is taking place but if they did I didn't take it in. And neither can I figure it out for myself by trying to eyeball any landmarks in the establishing shots. It appears to be somewhere in "TV America". That mythical place that seemed to come into being sometime over the 50's and 60's and then solidified into a place in the hearts and minds of kids the world over in the 70's and 80's.

TV America is how the rest of the world believes America to be. Michael Knight lives next door to B.A Baracus. Charlie's Angels sell Avon products to Jody from The Fall Guy.

It isn't real.

And this is why I am having a hard time getting my head around the current series of Torchwood. The plot is interesting. The ideas are good. The action is glossy, slick and movie quality. Clearly a lot of moolah has been spent on the show. £10,000,000 from what I've read. Though possibly that's in dollars rather than pounds. There's been some heavy-ish investment from an American TV channel / producer. A cash injection that would make even Captain Jack's eyes water.

And this, I suspect, explains everything.

The show is angling itself toward the American market. It has transformed itself into an American-ready chicken. Notice I didn't say turkey. Because it isn't that bad.

It's just the American thing... Don't get me wrong, I like America. I loved all those American action shows as a kid; they fed my young imagination. But it doesn't work with Torchwood. It doesn't work for me.

It feels too glossy. Too generic. Too Eighties pastiche. Rather than emulating modern American action shows it feels like they're emulating American action shows from 20 years ago. It clashes and it grinds. And not in a good way.

The American actors give it their all. They're reliable; they're competent. It's damning them with faint praise but it's true. Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper acts them all off the screen. Maybe it's the quirky Welsh thing? Maybe she seems more believable simply through familiarity? But I don't think so. Her acting and her emotional responses are streets ahead of everybody else. A couple of weeks ago she did a scene at the bedside of her on-screen father. He was ill in hospital. Her performance was brilliant. Real, gritty, restrained and yet emotionally full at the same time.

Everybody else behaves like a cartoon character in comparison. It's like the American contingent are just going through the motions. Possibly seeing their outing on Torchwood as merely a way to be noticed by one of the bigger TV channels, who knows?

John Barrowman too is pretty good but his character feels like it has been emotionally dumbed down. There's no range or even much scope for range at the moment. Maybe that will change as the series progresses? I hope so.

In the meantime I will stick with it. The plot has enough hooks in it that I want to see what happens next. This isn't a bad piece of TV.

It's just that after the previous Torchwood outing it feels like they've lost something. A little heart. A little soul.

I suspect there is a little demon running around somewhere thinking that's it's got itself a good deal.

And that's fine, believe me - as long as we, the viewers, are not ultimately short-changed.

On Fire

+++ APOLOGIES +++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

So. Torchwood.

The Doctor Who spin-off returned for a third outing last week in a lavish new 5 part story that was broadcast every day, Monday through to Friday.

I was, I admit, dubious.

Series one and two of Torchwood were disappointing. Like a chocolate cake that just wasn’t quite chocolaty enough (the diet coke of sci-fi). Good ideas were there – but were spread to thin. The acting was good but the scripts were frequently weak. The stories built up nicely and then were abruptly deflated as Russell T Davies pulled yet another lame solution out of an all too convenient hat.

Deus ex machina done as cliché.

It was too lightweight. Which was a shame as Torchwood had promised much in the early days. Something meaty. Something more adult than the family oriented Doctor Who… but it seemed to fall at the second fence.

In various interviews writer Russell T has admitted he had neither the time nor the ideas to fully realize series two. It showed. The series was patchy and frustrating. So often nearly there… but never quite.

And here they were for series 3 – promoted to BBC1 no less. Somebody high up at the Beeb obviously had faith in them.

In my opinion that faith was at last validated.

Torchwood: Children Of Earth was as close to a sci-fi masterpiece as I’ve seen on terrestrial telly for a long time. Fantastic script, a plot that set the nerves jangling and disturbed the emotions and a proper gut wrenching finale that, while inevitable, left you gasping. It was harsh. Very harsh. But a good harsh.

I’m not going to spoil the plot for those of you who haven’t yet seen it yet (I’m aware that Torchwood makes it out to the US and NZ among other places) but the storyline dealt with some very difficult subject matter. Parenthood, our children and our desire (and our failure) to protect them. Self serving politicians. Child abuse. The rich / poor class divide. Bigotry… and for once Russell T didn’t pull his punches. He followed the dark path to it’s horrible conclusion rather than bottling out at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t pretty.

But it was truthful.

One particular scene where UK politicians decide the grisly fate of millions of children reminded me of the meeting the Nazi’s had to formulate their “final solution”. An entirely deliberate reference point, I’m sure, and of course it added a ring of truth to the entire premise: such a meeting taking place wouldn’t be that outlandish. It’s happened before. In living memory. Civilization is a very thin veneer plastered over a bubbling magma of waiting anarchy.

And as history shows it doesn’t take a lot to puncture the crust.

It made for uncomfortable viewing. Maybe having children myself over-sensitized me? But the idea of the state not just interfering with my children but claiming ownership of them for its own ends really upset me. Again Russell T was tapping into very real, very relevent fears – how much personal autonomy can anyone really have in a nanny state that is always looking over our shoulders for our own good? Who does the family unit really belong to? How far would you go to protect your kids? What if following the parental instinct to protect your kids at all costs became treasonous?

Dark, dark ideas. Which is exactly what I want from sci-fi. It should be far fetched, futuristic, in turns utopic and dystopic. But most of all it should be relevent to the here and now.

It is interesting to note that John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) was not at all enamoured of the decision to reduce Torchwood to a single five-parter. He’s been very public in announcing his displeasure, feeling that the show has been punished in some way, deliberately constrained.

Well I can recall a tutor of mine telling me that true creativity comes out of constraint, out of limitation. It is a good thing. It should be embraced.

I think Torchwood series three is the proof of the pudding. Rather than a run-of-the-mill 12 part series that misses as much as it hits, we had An Event. We had something that has sadly disappeared with the advent of cable TV and iPlayers and “watch whenever you want to” telly. We had something that millions of people watched at the same time and talked about the next day in anticipation of the next part. It was a good move by the BBC. A clever move. It reminded me of the time in the mid eighties when ITV lost the rights to broadcast the Olympics and so instead bought a US mini series called “V”. It was a ratings success. Everybody sick of the wall-to-wall Olympic coverage on the BBC tuned in to it. Everybody tuned in together. It became an event.

I don’t know where Torchwood will go after this. My hope is that we will see more five parters like this. I’d rather see five lavish, top notch, intelligent, adult episodes per year than a 12 episode series that constantly flounders beneath its own padding.

Last week Torchwood finally delivered.

First class.

I’d like to place another order please.

Go To Hell

ITV do bad sci-fi.

This wasn't always the case. I have very fond memories of Sapphire & Steel as a kid but I'll be the first to admit that my powers of discernment were a little erratic when I was 10 years old (I also rated Chorlton & The Wheelies among my favourite shows).

But in later years ITV has consistently failed to produce / buy-in a decent sci-fi show. God knows they've tried. For example, in recent years we've had the God-awful Primeval. That show tried so hard to attain the level of "sci-fi cool" it was too painful to watch.

And now - broadcasting for the first time last night - we have Demons.

I'm sad to say that it suffers from the same malaise as Primeval. Stilted, amateurish scripts, transparent plotlines, sketchy characterization and a too heavy reliance on CGI effects and rubber latex (as in face make-up rather than anything kinky in the bedroom - alas).

It's a pity. It has some winning ingredients: Philip Glenister; that sexy doc girlie from Survivors (Zoe Tapper). And, er, that's about it.

But really that should be enough. Glenister is just cool per se. He holds the screen like a Hadron Collider magnet. And Tapper just oozes a rampant snoggability that promises to set the screen alight.

So why doesn't it work?

It doesn't work because the writer's at ITV are plainly clueless in the art of using an asset to its full potential. They lumber Glenister with a "rilly stoopid" American accent. Glenister is a fine actor but he ain't no Chicago street punk. And for some reason they've decided that Tapper's character should be blind - which means most of her dark, smouldering looks are directed at various inanimate objects such as vases, pillars and Ikea bookcases. What an effing waste!

But worse still is the sad, creatively bankrupt adherence to a sci-fi formula that ITV have yet to realize doesn't work: young pretty boy in the male lead and young pretty girl as his counterpart (and "will-they-won't-they" love interest). The trouble with pretty young-things (especially when they're virtually unknown) is that it is damned hard to care a gold-plated fart about them. I spent much of the show hoping they'd both get dragged down to Hell and demoned up like Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Alas it was not to be.

The entire episode felt like it was a first draft (or an idea from one of those annoyingly funny Orange cinema adverts)... It was clumsy. It was cynical. It just doesn't work.

The BBC are far more subtle in their approach to sci-fi drama. Whatever misgivings one may have about Doctor Who or Torchwood I have to admit that they're casting has been consistently good and they're not afraid to cast against type and allow actors to surprise us with their range. ITV, however, consistently play it safe and what we get is a wishy-washy, story-by-numbers, spooky horror story that is kid friendly but hopelessly mediocre if you're an adult.

And as for the demons... geez, they're not scary at all. They're grotesque, yes, but in a comical Carnivalesque sense. There's no sense of unholiness or otherworldliness about them. I like my demons to be genuinely unsettling - think Clive Barker or Aleister Crowley. Not people daubed in weird latex and plastic that appears to have been transported through time from the 1970's.

Which brings me back to Sapphire & Steel.

Was it really any good? Or have ITV always sucked at sci-fi?

Master Baker

Look folks it was a choice between wittering on yet again about my lack of sleep or reviewing last night’s episode of Torchwood so I chose the latter... there ain’t nothing else going on but the rent. And for those of you that are wishing that I’d plumped for the former just bear in mind that a picture of me, unshaven, bleary eyed and dishevelled wouldn’t look half as good on the page as the one above.

Not that I’m sure I particularly like Gwen. I’m trying to but there’s just something intrinsically annoying about her. She’s... what’s the word...? Gobby. Mouthy. Loud. She belongs in a sitcom. Something suitably broad and tea-time-safe featuring a long suffering wife (played by Gwen) and an accident prone, perennially skint husband who blunders through life hopping from scrape to scrape. The chortles, I’m sure, would come thick and fast.

Much as they did in last night’s episode of Torchwood. After the previous 2 heavy weight outings pondering on the nature of death and undeadness the TW team played it for laughs in this week’s episode. Gwen finally got spliced to Rhys but only after overcoming a catalogue of disasters that could have been lifted straight out of an episode of Red Dwarf.

1) She gets impregnated by an alien who does the deed by biting her wrist (hey for some people I know that’s foreplay) and injecting her bloodstream with his off-world baby sauce. Kappow. Gwen is instantly 9 months pregnant and is ready to drop the sprog at any moment.

2) Rhys takes it like a man – i.e. looks totally confused and raises his voice a lot – and decides he’ll marry gravid Gwen anyway. After all he’d managed to do up his tie that morning and Gwen had scrubbed up rather nicely in her wedding dress (nice dimples, wink wink).

3) Gwen is being hunted by the alien’s mother who wants to literally rip the alien baby out of her stomach horror-film stylee and get it straight into RADA. The alien, by the way, is a shape changer and can impersonate absolutely anyone. Anyone on the entire planet... So it inexplicably chooses to look like Rhys’s mother played by none other than Nerys Hughes.

4) Del Boy and Rodney gatecrash the wedding dressed as Batman and Robin. No hold on wait, that was Jack and Ianto, sorry, getting my sitcoms confused.

To be honest it was all good clean fun. A mood lightener after the previously bleak story lines. Well, I say “clean” but one of Rhys’s mates did get eaten mid BJ by the alien mother (who I hasten to add didn’t look like Nerys Hughes at that point – this is a sitcom remember not a horror). Apparently she didn’t bite off more than she could chew... though she was possibly wondering why it wasn’t on a stick.

Which is more than can be said for poor Rhys. What kind of life is he going to have married to a woman who could arrive home at any given moment with an extraterrestrial bun in her oven? Up the duff with ET’s love child! In the family way with a Klingon kiddie!

Mind you, to be honest, Gwen’s swollen belly seemed to pass Rhys by – he couldn’t get his eyes further south than her impressively valleyed bosom. I’m sure at one point he was humming I’ll keep a welcome in the hillside...

I don’t think it’ll be too long before Gobby Gwen gets knocked up again.

Danse Macabre

A double apology:

Firstly, apologies to those of you whose blogs I have yet to pay a visit to. I’m now halfway through my university essay and once that is out of the way normal service will resume once more. Until then my time for doing pleasurable things seems to be mightily restricted so sorry if I seem to be ignoring people.

And secondly apologies to those of you who view Torchwood as an ugly pimple on the otherwise unblemished face of modern sci-fi... because here’s yet another episode review...

Last night’s story was intriguing. Very intriguing. And not just because the writers had for once inverted their usual modus operandi. Instead of characterization playing second fiddle to gimmicky BBC effects, last night we had the effects relegated to a small sideshow while the emotional development of some of the characters took centre stage.

Maybe some sci-fi puritans will see this as a bad move: yet another sci-fi show degenerating into soft soap and sentimentality but personally I think this is a step in the right direction for Torchwood. It’s hard to care about a team of people who are so ineffably cold and wooden – it’s nice to see some warmth and human emotion being injected into them.

Ironically of course the character who is being humanized the most is Owen – and he’s about as cold and wooden as you’re likely to get on account of the fact that, both technically and medically, he’s dead. Dead as a doornail in fact. Nevertheless he’s walking around and doing his job regardless (I know how he feels). He’s the original dead man walking.

For once though the writers are doing a decent job of investigating the ramification of this “living death”. Owen’s painful attempts to come to terms with the fact that he’s unable to eat, drink, make love, heal, feel pain or indeed feel anything at all is being sensitively handled. The shot of him screaming underwater – unable to drown himself – was suitably discomforting and said far more than any stream of platitudinous dialogue.

Of course the science bit is rather ropey. Owen was unable to give mouth to mouth to Richard Briers (mind you, why would you want to?*) because he didn’t actually breathe air himself. Fine. But then how is it that Owen can talk? Surely you require breath for that? And if Owen has no blood why isn’t he desiccating or at least rustling a bit when he moves?

But I’m picking hairs.

Burn Gorman is playing a blinder. His death has given his character depth and a new dimension. It has undercut his arrogance and aloofness and left a raw, sympathetic human being in his place. If only they can do the same for Captain Jack who’s “keep everybody at arms length” approach (even when he’s bedding them) is fast getting on my tits.

However, it’s difficult to see where they’ll now go with Owen’s character. He has a measure of indestructibility as he cannot feel pain but this is tempered by the fact that he cannot heal. Any breaks or injuries will be permanent. One strike and he’s out. A broken doll with a mind (hey, back into Stephen Hawking territory).

Maybe Owen ought to jump ship and join another Captain Jack who has had experience of dealing with the living dead? Head off to sunnier climes where he can ogle Kiera Knightly struggling to fill a corset and not worry that his death-bed BO is putting off his work colleagues as they nibble upon their M&S sandwiches...?

I can just see Owen weighing anchor on the Black Pearl...


*OK. OK. Maybe he's worth saving because of Roobarb & Custard... but that's all.

Run Forest Run

Innumerable shocks in the BBC's Torchwood last night.

Shock One: Owen is dead, then undead, then brings Death himself into the world who turned out to be a weird cloudy skeletal thing. Personally I was hoping for Grim from the Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy, but never mind...

Shock Two: Toshiko finally tells Owen that she loves him. But only after he's dead. What can I say? The woman likes a good stiff. Ironically though, being dead, Owen has no blood to move around his body. He can't get it up. He's about as much use as... as... well, Ianto actually.

Shock Three: Owen regurgitates gallons of beer like something out of The Exorcist or Bottom: Guest House Paradiso. Comedy effect of the night bar one...

But the biggest shock of all was realizing this:

Captain Jack Harkness runs like Forest bleeding Gump!

Geez, I always suspected that his mother was Sally Fields.

A Streetlamp Sputters

It’s probably naught but delusion and arrogance on my part but I am convinced that the writers of Torchwood are paying attention to me.

Can it only be last week that I called for a nice, sensitive soul mate for Toshiko – somebody who would revitalize and titillate her feng shui, respond to her dazzling intellect and persuade her to wear lower cut tops and mini skirts?

Ok. So Adam ‘the memory fiend’ was hardly nice or sensitive (though convincing Ianto that he was a serial rapist and murderer possibly makes him a comedian) but he did deliver on the lower cut tops and the shorter skirts. For this alone he has my undying thanks.

The Radio Times blurb for this episode promised that Toshiko would be transformed into a “sexually voracious” vamp.

Oh good-oh!

But what did we get? A tiny bit of spooning on the bed and a bit of moist lipped pouting. Oh and Toshiko’s oft hidden bosom thrust provocatively into Owen’s face. That’s hardly what I call “sexually voracious”.

But I suppose this is the BBC. So what did I expect?

Hence I was a bit disappointed on that score. Sigh... two paces forward and one pace back, etc... but a plunging neckline is still better than a smack in the kisser with a dead alien blowfish.

As for the story. At last! Some decent sci-fi! I was gobsmacked. The script was good, the acting top notch and the plot was actually really well handled and emotive. And they packed an awful lot into one hour.

Most of all though, I felt actual sympathy for all the characters. This is a Torchwood first. A character driven storyline rather than one reliant on BBC standard special effects and second rate Americanisms! Wow! Torchwood in top-notch British drama shock!

Karen and I watched the entire episode in silence and when it was over just turned to each other and said, “That was good.”

Stuff the Baftas, that’s an accolade worth having.

Meat Feast

I wasn’t going to write about Torchwood today, saving myself instead for the Gene Hunt-esque glories of Ashes To Ashes tonight but last night’s episode just sparked off far too many thoughts for me to leave it alone.

Firstly, the plot revolved around a huge alien that some nasty men were carving up alive as a source of cheap meat. No matter how much they sliced off, the thing just kept regenerating and growing bigger and bigger.

Now that’s what I call a real cash cow.

Anyway the alien looked like a cross between a huge meatloaf with eyes and a giant sock puppet from Playschool circa 1975. I half expected it to have coat button eyes. Even more curious, Captain Jack seemed to empathise with it in a closed-eyes, hands held out, hippy kind of way.

I’m not sure what the writer’s were trying to suggest with Jack’s latent ability to identify with a humungous piece of meat but hey...

Also the entire Torchwood team ended up in the back of a meat van (curiously un-refrigerated) at one point. Again, I found myself wondering if this was at all significant or symbolic...

And Gwen.

Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. Bless her freckly gap-toothed cutie-pie face. She did a lot of impassioned reasoning with her boyfriend, Rhys, last night. Lots of fists clenched tightly and slapped rhythmically against her admittedly impressive bosom.

It reminded me of someone and it took me until the end of the episode before I finally twigged who it was.

Bonnie Tyler.

I’m not joking. Acquire a clip of Gwen with her little fists hammering against her own chest furniture and stick “It’s A Heartache” behind it and I swear to God you will not be able to discern the difference between the pair of them. Gwen and Bonnie that is.

And finally... Ianto is doing his best to turn into Patrick Macnee and Tosh is chasing Owen. No no no to the latter. Owen is patently wrong for Tosh. She needs a sensitive soul who can revitalize and titillate her feng shui, respond to her dazzling intellect and persuade her to wear lower cut tops and mini skirts.

Oh and possibly thigh-length boots (stiletto heels optional).

Owen is too rough and, dare I say it, too tiresomely chauvinistic. And he has a mouth like Morph from Take Hart. Hardly suitable boyfriend material for a delicate Asian wallflower.

Other than that did I enjoy it, I hear you ask...

Curiously yes. Oddly emotive and decently weighty.

One big annoyance though: Gwen’s boyfriend, Rhys. What is she doing with him? The guy is a buffoon. A plonker of the first order. He sees an alien himself but then refuses to believe Gwen when she reveals that she sees them on a daily basis. Gah! The man is a huge, lumbering, brain-stem free, meat-head.

The nasty men should have been carving him up instead...

Another slice, anyone?

Ketchup

This is going to be a very messy post I’m afraid.

I seem to have been all over the place of late, constantly trying to catch up on my life and not at all succeeding. I owe far too many people emails. I have little projects around the house which I’m no nearer to completing than I was over the Christmas break. My novel, although not at all falling by the wayside, is languishing slightly under the cold shoulder of relative neglect... I’m still plugging away at it but my progress has been slow over the last few weeks. I just haven’t been able to spend enough time getting back into it after the New Year hiatus. Not that it’s doing too badly: 102,100 words and counting... just counting extremely slowly.

I can’t deny it; my energy and inspiration levels have dropped significantly since the New Year.

I’m sure it’s just a seasonal thing but I do find under achievement very frustrating... even though the old plate is actually pretty full at the moment. Karen’s mum is still in hospital though Karen hasn’t visited her for a week or two due to illness – she and Tom and myself have all been afflicted with the post-Christmas lurgy that’s been doing the rounds. Plus Tom is having periodic bouts of teething and is currently recovering from the mother of all nappy rashes. None of which is conducive to sticking a baby into a car seat for 4 hours to drive up and down the country to visit someone who doesn’t even appreciate it.

Sorry. I was going to give the anger thing a rest.

University continues well though, even there, I can tell that I’m slowly reaching the end of my tether. Another 12 months and it’ll all be over and I’ll be indescribably glad. The constant outlay of money and energy is wearing me thin. Doing a part-time degree has been great in many respects – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise – but 10 years slogging back and forth is way, way too much. I’m happy to commit to long-hauls but even I have a limit.

The web site business also continues apace. A constant background hum of extra work and toil sloshed onto my plate. It’s time consuming, tiring and frequently tedious but it does bring in much needed extra money. And God knows I need it – I’ve got Karen’s birthday fast approaching this month plus Valentine’s Day on top. My budget is as shot as a suicide bomber in Dimona. Sorry. Bad taste. But topical. And really I’m finding that difficult at the moment.

And TV at the moment – usually my hardy standby in terms of blog-worthy material – is ineffably flat. Sure there’s Torchwood and there’s Lark Rise To Cranford. And Ashes To Ashes starts this week... but it’s not impinging on me like it used to. I have no real enthusiasm for new stuff at the moment and it’s frightening. About the only thing that’s excited Karen and me with regards the telly is working out how to use the Catch Up TV feature on our Virgin box. But this just means we’re watching “old” stuff out of sync with the rest of the country. Lost in our own private TV schedule.

All in all I feel like some kind of weird psychological hibernation process is occurring in my brain. Like I’m not fully engaging with the world around me. Like I’m a record being played at the wrong speed. Mind you as long as it’s not Whitesnake I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Mainly though I’m just annoyed with myself. Annoyed because on the whole I have very little to complain about so why am I so full of moans? Other people are having a much rougher time. I’m just feeling a bit blurgh. And that hardly makes for a decent blog post.

A Load Of Tosh

Actually, despite the title, this is going to be a favourable review of last night’s episode of Torchwood...

At last we were presented with a story that had depth, emotional content and decent social commentary. It also made far better use of Toshiko than her usual sidelined role of pretty-but-not-pretty-enough-Asian-geek-girl-in-the-background.

I have to confess that Toshiko has grown on me. Out of the all Torchwoodies she’s my favourite by far. Gwen I’m still ambivalent about: nice hair, nice eyes, but annoying trailer park attitude. Toshiko is quietly intelligent and the most morally upright member of the team.

And yes, she’s another brunette but that has no bearing on my opinion at all. Honestly.

Anyway yesterday’s episode revolved around a shell-shocked soldier removed from 1918 and cryogenically frozen by Torchwood in order for him to be reinserted back into his own time and so close up an immense rift in time that was forecast to destroy the world in 2008.

But let’s not get bogged down with the science.

This poor guy had been awoken / thawed out once a year since 1918 (and then refrozen) to give him a breath of fresh air, a walk in the park and to make sure that “everything still worked”.

I have to say that Toshiko was very thorough in checking that all his parts were still in working order. Having been his guardian on his previous “awake days” she’d fallen head over heels in love with him...

Geez, but Tosh needs to get out more! 4 dates in 4 years and she’s smitten?!? I’m not saying she’s easy but...

Sorry, ignore my ingrained and in-growing cynicism. It was actually a very touching relationship between the two of them, aided somewhat by Toshiko’s inherent shyness and social ineptitude and the young soldier, Tommy’s, fragile and wonder-filled state at being removed from the conflict of WWI and being allowed glimpses of the world that slowly formed in its aftermath.

And the fact he called Tosh a “daft lass”.

Hey, you may scoff but it got Tosh into bed and young Tommy showed what he was made of by going over the top with his bayonet fixed. Or something like that.

The clash between 1918 and the present also allowed the writer’s to critique the modern world – nothing too astounding or earth shattering here and nothing that hasn’t been done before but it was all expressed rather nicely and personably. As Tommy says: they fought the war to end all wars and then 3 weeks later (from his perspective) there was another one. What was the point of it all?

Cue sad and weary bout of naval gazing.

Of course it had to end. Badly for Tommy and Tosh but well for the rest of us. Tommy had to go back to 1918 when the time rift threatened to pull reality and the whole dang future down into the pan... unfortunately, according to the records from 1918 it was plain that Tommy’s condition, like so many struck down with shell-shock at the time, was hardly met with kindness and understanding by the army top brass. A few weeks after his discharge from hospital he was sent back to the front, suffered a relapse and was summarily executed for cowardice.

Thank you for saving the world and any last requests?

Bang bang.

Hey but at least he’d got a chance to smoke a last cigarette post coitus with Tosh.

That’s not too bad a way to go and in terms of the “big push”... at least the earth moved for them both.

Jacking Off

The new series of Torchwood lit the blue touch-paper last night and flared up for another run on the BBC.

Straight away we were presented with a rather well mannered, well spoken, red blowfish driving a snazzy sports car around the windy streets of Cardiff. He didn’t exceed the speed limit, used the brake in plenty of time and seemed intent on following the Highway Code. He was even urbane enough to let an old lady cross the road in front of him. All this before he shot some poor innocent home owner in the gut and taunted the Torchwood crew members for their namby-pamby prevarication. The Torchwood team admittedly looked at a loss as to how to react without their AWOL leader, Captain Jack Sparrow, sorry, Captain Jack Harkness around to tell them what to do... But all was not lost. Suddenly Jack reappeared and shot the blowfish in the head in a scene reminiscent of The Fifth Element. “So, does anybody else want to negotiate?”

Welcome to series 2 of Torchwood.

A rather uncomplicated plot then unfolded involving Captain John, one of Jack’s old flames, played by whatsisface who played Spike from Buffy looking for some radio-active canisters inexplicably secreted around various Cardiff locations... a plot that was rather silly and shallow but was nonetheless rather entertaining. It served no other purpose than to re-introduce or, perhaps, try to reinvent the Torchwood regulars... attempts are being made I believe to render them “more likeable”. It’s early days yet to say if that is working or not but the major players are all interestingly interconnected in a bubbling web of sexual tension, lust, sarcasm and camaraderie that is certainly full of potential and could bode well for future episodes.

Basically Torchwood is Doctor Who with lashings of sex and attitude. The only members of the team who seem to buck this trend are Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato... the former is far too wet and limp to be a believable love interest for Captain Jack H and Toshiko is well, Velma from Scooby-Doo.

However, I like Toshiko and am hoping the writers will develop her character further in this second outing of the show and give it a bit more of an edge. The potential is certainly there given her brief lesbian liaison in Series 1...

And then there’s Gwen. It’s taken me a long time to make my mind up about Gwen. It’s the annoying voice and the gap-tooth. Is she a fox or isn’t she? She’s got va-va-voom in spades but there’s something of the fishwife about her too. Or should I say “tidy wife”? The will-they-won’t-they tension between her and Jack is more annoying than an entertaining tease. I wish they’d just get on with it and move on. It’s hardly of the same calibre as Mulder and Scully. It doesn’t warrant this long, contrived abstemious delay. Get ‘em out, whop ‘em about and then show us some more aliens.

That would be a show.

But much as I enjoy this tour of sexed up sci-fi, shouldn’t there be more to Torchwood than just adult content? Shouldn’t there be more to it than all this inter-species spooning and inter-office bed-hopping? Doesn’t there need to be?

Good sci-fi needs to press a few intellectual buttons among the hi-tech barrage of flashy effects and glistening cleavage. Otherwise it runs the risk of being all gimmick and no content. And that is bad.

Torchwood has potential. It has legs. But it needs to think about the direction it’s walking towards. Sex and violence – shallow hooks as they are – are admittedly nearly always behind a great story. But there needs to be depth too. There needs to be philosophy and a message. There needs to be content.

After all, isn’t great sex supposed to originate in the mind?

Hot Stuff

Yet more lesbian snogging in Torchwood last night. This time it was the turn of Toshiko to get her tongue-twisted by a formidably blonde, blue-eyed, bouncy breasted alien who had the gruesome habit of ripping out the hearts of men who annoyed her. Evidently men were a major turn off for this particular intergalactic filly. Even Captain Jack himself didn’t manage to get a bite of her cosmic cherry - the closest he came to it was being told he smelt different (damn flash Americans with their damn flash aftershave) and being allowed to keep his heart in situ.

There’s so much girl-on-girl action in this show that I’m amazed it’s not been snapped up by one of the many adult TV channels and leads me to wonder if the cast were advised that they’d have to snog absolutely anything with a pulse and/or face and/or orifice as part of their normal acting remit.

All of which is effing great as it drags sci-fi out of the cold, boring realm of geek-dom and into the far more exciting arena of risqué sexual practices and futuristic porno. Which is exactly where it belongs in my book.

Ironically the only character in the show not getting any action at the moment is Jack himself.

Jack himself? Hmm. I’m sure there’s a bad joke in there somewhere...

Touching Wood

The BBC's new version of the Robin Hood legend is still - like a lucky wolf at a "Win A Farmyard Animal Competition" – getting my goat. The only difference now is: I know I am not alone. Emails from various friends have confirmed that there is indeed something very wrong with the state of Nottinghamshire as portrayed by the Beeb film making department...

The chief complaints appear to be thus:

1) Where is Friar Tuck? Reports that he was dropped from the legend for fear of offending the obese and the religious are quite frankly un-tucking-believable!
2) Why is Guy Of Gisbourne wearing a coat half-inched from a Spandau Ballet video?
3) Why does the Sheriff frequently appear in public without a hat – surely this was not done by those who held high office in the Middle Ages?
4) Why were Robin and Much wearing vests with perfectly stitched round collars in a recent episode – since when did Ye Olde Burton’s open up a store in Loxley?
5) What’s with all this talk of “torture camps that turn men against their home country” – was there a Ye Olde Guantanamo Bay in the Holy Land?
6) Why is Robin sporting a re-curve bow that I’m pretty sure wasn’t invented until much later by the Mongols (correct me if I’m wrong)?

And lastly:

7) why oh why have they made Robin a pacifist?!?

The Normans were absolutely hated by the English – and in principle we still hate them now. We WANT Robin to shoot them! Shoot all of them! Horribly and violently!

Sigh... Much as I applaud the notion of pacifism I have to say it makes for a pretty naff hero. What next? Robin and his men form a dispossessed Saxons action group – English Serfs Against Norman Rule – and hold a rally and rag-rug making event in Nottingham Market Square to raise money for their cause?

All of this is a great shame because the acting is pretty damn good and it’s plain that a lot of money has been invested in the show. I could even forgive the anachronistic costumes if only the script writing wasn’t so pants. The people who thought up this post modern, self reflexive version of Robin Hood should be hung, drawn and quartered at their earliest inconvenience... for murder. They’ve killed Robin Hood with Political Correctness.

"Robin Hood! Robin Hood! He re-appropriated from the commercially buoyant and redistributed to the financially disadvantaged whilst adhering to his Zen Buddhist pacifist beliefs..." I’d like to see someone put that into a song.

Torchwood, on the other hand, is a triumph for the BBC. Decent sci-fi on terrestrial TV at last. Aliens, a bisexual hero and girl-on-girl snogging in the first two episodes! Wow. Best of all was a scene featuring an errant security guard beating one off the wrist whilst watching a couple shag on his CCTV screen. Torchwood? Touchwood more like!

Good old Russell T Davis. The Beeb should have got him to script Robin Hood... having Marian work in a Mediaeval Pole Dancing Club might have improved my opinion of the show...

Lame

Got the grumps today.

More trouble with Pocketropolis.com – or rather more trouble with the web host. Basically it’s been off-line since Monday which, for a sad, neurotic, perfectionist writer like me is akin to having both my hands chopped off, my tongue ripped out and my brain lobotomized. Yes, I know that for many of you the latter would be deemed a worthwhile improvement to my character...

And due to a pathetic bottom-rung ladder accident at work I’ve been limping around like Brian Blessed in Long John Silver (only without the booming voice and voluminous beard) since last week. The doctor’s diagnosis was “a badly sprained foot” and recommended copious amounts of Ibuprofen and the application of heat to the injured part, however, all attempts to purchase a foot microwave on eBay have proved fruitless.

Consolation: the BBC’s new sci-fi series Torchwood is excellent. So much better than the continually disappointing Robin Hood....

But more on that later...