I’ve seen various Doctor Who threads pop up here and there in Cafe Society before, so I figure that there has to be a good number of you who also watch the spin-off, Torchwood. At least I hope there is, as I just started watching the show and there’s one question I can’t wait to have answered by watching the show.
Yesterday I got the first disc for the first series of Torchwood and watched it. I loved it, but the character of Dr. Owen Harper really troubled me. In the first episode, he’s shown using some sort of alien spray to, essentially, date rape a man and a woman. It’s pretty much treated like a throw away joke and has no impact on the plot, other than being an example of the Torchwood agents going against policy and taking alien devices for their own uses.
I can deal with moral ambiguity, but it’ll disturb me if the fact that there is ambiguity is ignored. Is there ever any in character acknowledgment of how grotesque his behavior is?
I don’t believe any other characters find out about it. It’s also just a one-shot deal, IIRC, but there will be other sexual stuff going on. It’s how the show was trying to distance itself from the rest of the Whoniverse that first season.
Over the course of the first two series (all that’s aired in the US to date), while there is no specific addressing of that incident, Owen does undergo some emotional growth and change and comes to realize that he’s not really a very nice person.
Doesn’t necessarily stop him from acting like a dick with legs, though.
IIRC, Jack held a come-to-Jesus (although since we’re talking about Jack, it was probably more of a cum-to-Jesus) meeting with the staff in which they all turned in their various pilfered alien tech. Each of them as near as I could tell saw what the others had, so if they knew what the spray did then they could certainly have inferred what Owen was doing with it.
Lute Skywatcher, yeah, I’d heard about the frank approach to sexuality in the series before I started. Even if I hadn’t, I think the second episode with the male-orgasm-eating-alien would have clued me in. :eek:
Thanks, Otto. That’s about what I was wondering. He seemed skeevy and I wasn’t sure if he was meant to be skeevy, or simply a “wacky horndog.”
ETA: Since I just watched that episode and have it fresh in my mind, yup, Jack did. The others could probably have guessed if they were aware of what the spray did.
It’s been a while since I saw that episode, but I think a lot of people overreacted. It’s not a mind-control spray, is it? It’s just a pheromone that makes you extremely horny for the person wearing it. But it doesn’t force anyone to have sex. Lot’s of people make me horny, but I manage to resist doing anything about it. Is a woman date raping me if I’m only attracted to her because of her wonder bra (or the perfume she’s wearing)?
ETA: It is extremely skeevy, and it’s meant to be. Owen is a pervy, amoral asshole, not just a “wacky horndog,” no doubt about it. But I don’t think he was a rapist.
For that matter, Jack also has genetically modified pheremones that make him extremely attractive to everyone he’s around. (It’s mentioned in a later episode.) In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s where the spray came from. Is he date raping everyone he sleeps with? I don’t think he can turn it off.
Owen’s antics in that episode did send up an outcry of “date rape” throughout the internet. But the first time I saw it–without having been spoiled–my impressions were:
This was the first time Owen had tried the stuff.
He sprayed the boyfriend just to distract the guy–so he could flee in the cab.
Probably, the couple woke up the next morning feeling really odd.
Some time later, the guy saw Owen in a bar & punched his lights out. Although he wasn’t really sure why*
I continued watching Torchwood. The first season was uneven but had some pretty good episodes. And the second season was better.
Not that you really need an excuse to punch out Owen…
You spray the other person, not yourself. Whatever the compound was, it had the effect of lowering inhibitions. That in and of itself makes it no different from alcohol or any number of other mind-altering substances. If Owen, instead of spraying pheremone, had instead somehow secretly administered ethanol or GHB into his victims without their permission, how would that be different? It may have lowered them to the point of the victim’s being possibly unable to consent. If that was the case, then Owen was no different from the guy who roofies his date.
Uh-uh. You spray yourself. On the street, while being threatened by the boyfriend, Owen clearly sprays himself while saying “Much easier.” It wouldn’t make much sense to have to spray someone else- in the Age Of Mace, too many folks would turn and run before you could get a good spritz out.
This article has a good bit (about halfway down) from the creators on what they were going for in that scene, and how they were surprised it was interpreted the way it was.
Well, the OP’s question has been answered already, but I’m chiming in to add my voice to the chorus singing “Owen is a Douchebag of the Lowest Caliber!”
But he is human, and by the end of Series 2 you will at least understand him, if not actively liking him.
Glad to hear someone else is watching TW; it grew on me really quickly and is now #2 on my Top Shows EVAR list. [Chanting] One of us! One of us! [/Chanting]
What makes Owen’s frogface aspect more annoying is, every time there’s a dirty scene in an episode I catch, it seems to involve HIM…
In a cast that includes Captain Jack, Ianto, and Tosh, it’s always Owen getting down. >_> (Occasionally Gwen, too, but she was with Owen the one time I saw her in that situation…)
My brother and I were calling Owen Pervy McFishLips. I looked up his name before posting this, though I hoped that perhaps my special name for him would have been clear enough.
