Torchwood: Episode 5: The Verdict

[eithne]

Firstly, is anyone still watching? LOL!!!

Okay, I thought it was a brilliant episode - similiar to The Empty Child and to the third episode of this, but far braver and far scarier. Here we had paedophiles, as well as dark creatures killing little old women and brainwashing innocent children. And the darkness did work.

We also learned a lot about Jack. He's been on Earth since at least 1909 - interesting.

Overall a dark episode, and surprisingly scary.

[pipkin]

im still watching and still enjoying

[sootycat]

Quite good I thought. Those fairy things were evil looking.

I have to say I am enjoying this series more than I thought I would.

[RitaLittlewood]

How did he get to earth 1909 when he was stuck on that space station in the future?

Patsy

[eithne]

I was thinking about that and then remembered that Jack is actually from the future, and his spaceship was destroyed in the first series of DW I think. So maybe before he turned up in WW2 London (to fight for the Allies and fall in love with the little old lady who was young and pretty back then) he had spent a while in 1909.

I'd say that the evil fairies will be back before the series ends, as it was left pretty open at the end of the episode I thought with the little girl's stepfather being choked to death and with her leaving with them. The BBC were obviously scared of the consequences of showing the two young bullies being killed, but didn't mind the old woman being choked (simply for taking photos of the fairies) Surely the bullies had done way more harm to the fairy-child than the old woman had done to the fairies IMO, but two children being killed just wouldn't happen on the BBC I suppose.

[RitaLittlewood]

It was. Then he ended up travelling with the Doctor and Rose.

Jim Shelley of the Mirror isn't impressed:

YOU JUST WOOD NOT BELIEVE IT..
21 November 2006
FIVE episodes in, and it's still hard to understand who Torchwood is meant to appeal to.

Going out at 9pm on BBC2, Russell T Davies's spin-off is too late for the younger Doctor Who fans - the only viewers who might have the imagination to accept most of the frankly corny action on offer, or believe in a secret anti-alien organisation operating out of Cardiff.

At the same time, so far Torchwood's been too tame and zany for adult fans of seriously scary sci-fi - programmes such as Lost and The X-Files.

Last week's episode, for example, was about fairies. Captain Jack believed that all fairies were "bad" - an OK idea, except that the band of scary fairies he was up against looked like a dance troupe from Brighton.

Given that the bad fairies were targeting paedophiles and people bullying children, it was hard to side with him anyway.

Captain Jack's team are basically mediocre teenage pin-ups - seemingly cast for their resemblance to Charlotte Church, Johnny Vaughan and Mickey Miller from EastEnders.

A BIGGER problem is John Barrowman whose face is so bland and plastic he looks more like John Inverdale than an enigmatic, time-travelling alien-catcher.

Barrowman obviously thinks he's the new Tom Cruise but in Captain Jack's white T-shirt, braces, and RAF greatcoat looks more like the singer from a naff mid-80s band trying to be Echo & The Bunnymen. ("Torchwood" sounds like the title of A Flock of Seagulls' CD.)

Captain Jack's history is too schmaltzy, the humour too wacky, and Gwen, his Billie Piper-esque assistant neither as interesting nor as sexy as she should be. Other minor irritations include the stupid pterodactyl flying round Torchwood HQ and so many shots of Cardiff's ring-road system you'd think it was a Florentine sunset. The meaningless sci-fi babble that is perfect for Doctor Who simply doesn't work for a more adult audience.

"The 21st century is when everything changes," Jack blusters. "And you've got to be ready."

His boast that Torchwood is "separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations" makes it sound like a Nazi militia.

In order to justify its scheduling after the watershed, instead of any seriously scary aliens, Davies has gone for lots of gay snogging and a bit of inter-alien bestiality (yawn.).

The show is also irritatingly inconsistent. In the first episode, for example, the members of Torchwood had a range of tricks such as the ability to make themselves invisible and a glove that could bring the dead back to life. This was strangely missing when the nasty fairies claimed Jack's beloved Estelle last week. Bizarrely, the story ended with Jack handing over a child the fairies regarded as "chosen".

This meant the child's mother was forced to witness the loss of her only child and her fiance (death by fairies). Some hero! "What else could I do?" Jack whined. I dunno, you thought. Use a special screwdriver or something?!

BY the way, younger Doctor Who fans would be advised to miss this week's episode (which will be shown tomorrow on BBC2), which doesn't really have any creatures that look like aliens at all.

Instead it's a gratuitously unpleasant, violent storyline - Wolf Creek, a variation on horror movies such as The Hill Have Eyes.

I can't help thinking there's something inappropriate about a Doctor Who spin-off where one character asks another, "When was the last time you came so hard, you forgot where you were?"

It's further proof that Davies just couldn't decide what sort of show Torchwood was meant to be.

Funnily enough, when one of the team goes missing, the name they call out - "Tosh! Tosh! Tosh!" - is exactly the word I would use to describe it.

[eileengrimshaw]

I enjoyed episode 5 a lot, it was nice to see P J Hammond writing an episode & he said in Declassified that it was the first time in years that he's written sci-fi.

I thought that the little girl was good & it was nice to see a previous lover of Jack's. Bit shocked at the ending though with Gwen proving to be an unfaithful slapper. Naughty, naughty!!!

[RitaLittlewood]

Did it say what the last thing he wrote was? I hope it wasn't Sapphire & Steel.

Patsy