Things I've learned so far from watching actual episodes of S1 Torchwood

[very_improbable]

Soldier What if you were ordered to?
Ian Can't imagine it.
Soldier Imagine it.
Ian (Imagines it.)
Soldier In the line of duty.
For your country.
Wales.
Ian (Imagines harder.)


In the liberated no-boundaries far future that Jack comes from, everyone is bisexual but trannies are still comical freaks.

Sacrificing a school-age child to evil fairies is the right thing to do, as long as the fairies tell you they're going to go away once they get their hands on her.

(Conversely: It appears Jack Harkness can plausibly bar evil fairies from staking their claim on said little girl by means of, basically, standing there and informing them he's not going to let them take her away.) (Not that this is necessarily as nonsensical as it might appear. I would venture to say that this is the sort of thing one can pretty much do, narrative-wise, if one is e.g. Captain Jack or John Constantine or Number Six [the one from The Prisoner].)

I hope that the Welsh-ness of this show will continue to have a (pop-)cultural impact not just "at home" but also on international TV viewers who often don't really understand that there are bits of the UK that aren't London. Speaking particularly as a resident of Bits of America That Aren't Los Angeles or Manhattan, I find it very much worth celebrating.

John Barrowman's American accent, however honestly come by, will never sound quite right when delivering British-penned TV dialogue.

The one with the evil alien lesbian could have been improved in various ways (including making some sort of interesting tactical use of the mind-reading powers in that climactic standoff), but at least it passed the Bechdel Test.

These people are really bad at being classified operatives. They are supposed to be classified in some way, right?

They don't actually make out with each other as much as I was expecting them to.

Comments

[swallowedbysky.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah.

I sort of figure that they're so bad at what they do on purpose. If everyone knows what Torchwood claims to do, and it's so utterly stupid and ridiculous that no one actually believes that they do what they do.

That, or we're expected again to believe that Everyone Else Is Stupid.

[tree_and_leaf]

These people are really bad at being classified operatives. They are supposed to be classified in some way, right?

Yeah. They're supposed to be more secret than GCHQ, MI5, MI6, etc (admittedly I know where the headquarters of two out of three of those are, but that's not the point...)

Hell, even the old UNIT was better at being unobtrusive. Admittedly they did this by behaving pretty much exactly like a regular British army unit, but actually, that's not that bad a tactic. I suspect that Jack has at some point heard and been impressed by sentiments along the line of 'the safest place to hide is under the light' - but he's slightly missed the point!

I mean, really. That bloody SUV. Ordering pizza in the organization name.

[tree_and_leaf]

Although JB's Britishisms don't bother me - for one thing, his character isn't really American, he's just pretending to be, and for another, he's spent an awful long time in the UK...

[kumquatweekend.livejournal.com]

Although I love this show with the intensity of a thousand suns, I do need to spend large chunks of individual episodes alternately rolling my eyes, hiding my face behind a pillow, and singing "la la la" with fingers in my ears.

Most of those chunks occur when John Barrowman is talking.

I never said it was a good show, did I? But yay! You're watching it! Hurrah!