i just rewatched the torchwood s2 finale for the first time probably since it aired. and i have many thoughts. it is my only 5* rated episode of torchwood. impeccable.
spoilers abound:
so to preface, going in i remembered a few things about the episode - owen & tosh die, jack is buried underground for millenia, and jack's brother is the 'villain' here. i also, broadly, knew it impacted cardiff generally.
but my word i had forgotten so much. starting off strong with forgetting how much 'captain' john had in this episode. i spent until he took jack back to 27AD utterly confused because i couldn't get a read on his tone. he was off, but i couldnt work out why - until he says he's being coerced. and then it clocked. it was so well done, giving him things his character would do - but taking away the glee and enjoyment of causing mayhem his character would usually have. perfect. i adore that they wrote it in that he truly loves jack - i think he really does, and just is too messed up to be able to express that in a healthy way - and that doing all this was so hurtful for him. jack telling him to do what gray said & start burying jack was so good. he would have sacrificed himself for jack and he did a great job with expressing nonverbally in that scene.
always love seeing andy. he had some good lines this episode. actually, so did rhys - 'have you never been in a scrum? push!' (paraphrasing) was perfect & so in character.
i had forgotten jack gets unburied in 1901 & frozen - so i was waiting with baited breath to see what the banging noise was as well. i did think it was jack, but i wasn't sure how he'd escaped. it didn't help that i was thinking of jack being freed in children of earth - where ianto puts his coat round him - and expecting that in this episode, thinking it was after they uproot him (so to speak).
tosh & owen's deaths... it sounds weird but they were perfect deaths for them. if they had to kill off a character*, i think killing owen would lose a lot of the sadness - he's already had that grief cycle - but keeping him alive to grieve tosh would be cruel, tbh. killing just tosh... it doesnt have the gravitas. her death was so tied to owen's and their speech together was so important that i don't think theres any real weight to her just being shot by gray. the fact he stopped her from having any real option to save owen and doomed her in the process makes it much more than just being shot 'in the line of duty'. i am so pleased that they let the team find her before she died - jack saved her from UNIT and then she died in his arms smiling... it just feels perfectly cyclical. the only thing i was.. meh about was her video, but that isn't really an issue. their deaths weren't just for shock value, they built up to it - foreshadowed it from the start & gave them the space they deserved and the conversations they deserved to have - which made it even better deaths for them.
*i don't think they could have killed off anyone else - ianto was tied to jack in their relationship, gwen is the 'heart' of torchwood, and jack is obviously not an option. owen and tosh were tied to each other, but not to the others in a way that would impact further plot beyond 'isnt it sad they died'.
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i am ending my torchwood rewatch here. i am not in the mood to watch children of earth - i don't want to watch ianto die in a way which really was just for shock value, and i don't broadly enjoy children being harmed. the less said about miracle day the better, but suffice to say i didn't get past episode one when it came out, and i am not interested in a torchwood tv series without ianto.
actually i was talking earlier about why i think they're so distinct from each other and why i don't like anything past s2 (and why others like just s3, or whatever) and i think it's down to how they're presented/what they're based on.
s1&2 are sort of rompy, sort of serious but lowbrow entertainment tv. they're here for a monster of the week vibe where they develop the team's characters/personalities. it's focus is on aliens, with an undercurrent of "wow humans suck".
s3/Coe they went for hardhitting political commentary. yes, the main context is aliens, but the focus and commentary is on how the government responds to it. how they choose terrible things because they can handwave away who is being impacted by it - its not their kind of people, it can be the 'useless' children that go away. the aliens are secondary to the real villain, and the torchwood team is more of a tool than a main character. it's an overcurrent (lol) of "wow humans suck". (see also: shock value death).
s4 went for ‘american tv thriller’. i think had they made it an offshoot, torchwood: america rather than torchwood s4, it might've been less jarring. but no, they took the show and made it... american. my lack of interest in watching past episode one (the helicopter on the beach scene with gwen & baby in the house, if you're curious) was only added to by the fact that i don't have any real strong connection to gwen, and only a mild one to jack as characters. i mainly watched CoE for more ianto content.
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so i return to the world of torchwood in big finish. and now i can read through my torchwood magazine collection & not be spoiling anything. excellent.










