I’m still waiting for the BBC to put the HD broadcast of episode 4 on it’s iPlayer. They usually have it up the moment a show finishes, it’s starting to piss me off…
I had the Blu-Ray of this series on pre-order at Amazon, and I just canceled it minutes after watching the final episode.
I don’t think I can ever, ever, ever watch this again.
That was probably the most brilliant, horrific, devastating, amazing, and tragically beautiful five hours of television I have ever seen, and that this point, I don’t ever want to see it again.
I want to go upstairs and watch my son sleep for the rest of the night to remind myself that this isn’t real.
[spoiler]I don’t know how they can come back from that, but I don’t know how they can’t come back from that. I need redemption for Jack. Not because I think the viewers need to see Jack redeemed, but because Jack is such a layered, intricate character…he deserves some sort of closure. The idea of Jack roaming the universe, lost in his own devastation and grief…he deserves more.
I still can’t believe Ianto. And Eve Myles has gained my respect with each season, but now I find myself fully in love with her and Gwen.
But I just don’t know…how does the show recover from this sort of story? They’ll never, ever top it, writing-wise.[/spoiler]
Fuck yeah. Sadly she had only one life to give for her country.
This. I feel a strong urge to cuddle up with my girlfriend and think of fluffy bunnies.
Wow.
Me too. I was amazed that the Frobisher didn’t ram a pen into the PM’s eye.
and then went home and killed them and himself. No way I’d let anyone take my family regardless of the consequences
It was a harrowing ending though. That’s one of the things that make the BBC great is that they are not afraid to have people die off or have morally ambiguous endings. While there was a deus ex machina it was redeemed by the sacrifice and emotional trauma attached to it and thus avoided falling into the Star Trek ending trap.
As someone else said, it doesn’t look like it will be back for another series. I also felt sorry for Lois, she seemed to get a poor deal at the end. I was hoping she would be a regular in Torchwood, but that seems unlikely plus she’s probably out of her original job unless she blackmails the PM.
Well, I don’t believe Torchwood is going to be back, but I can’t wait to see the new Doctor Who now. The next Doctor will be coming into a new, very dystopian world now.
My thought the entire week was that Lois was definitely being groomed as the next Torchwood regular. With Jack, Gwen, Lois, Mickey, and Martha, you’ve got five. Although, I’d be happy without Mickey and Martha, and perhaps instead the special agent who was with Jack’s daughter through most of the last few episodes - as much as I disliked her to start, she earned a very grudging respect from me.
I am still absolutely stunned over the brilliance of the week, and how beautiful it was in every way as a television show. I’m still in shock over WHAT was written, how well it was written, how magnificently it was acted, and how much it hurts to even think about what took place in those 5 hours, even though it was fictional. Because even though it WAS fictional, I think it was a huge scary reminder that atrocities happen every day in this world, and something on this magnitude may not be just a page in a script one day. That’s why I don’t ever think I could see this again. Even my husband, who never, ever cries at TV shows, was sobbing right along with me. I’ve only seen him cry a few times since we’ve been married - when our son was born, when his grandmother died, and a few weeks ago, when we learned that our cat has a brain tumor and we probably only have a few months left with him. I have never seen him cry at any sort of TV show or movie.
This is why I find myself appreciating British television more than US TV most of the time. I can’t see any US show trying such a heavy story like this.
I enjoyed it, but I kept thinking about the ‘middle-man’ theme. That led me to a.
make clones or some sort of artifical womb thingy and avoid dealing with humans
or b.
Just take over the freaking planet and make earth a breeding factory, releasing a deadly virius seemed stupid. What drug dealer destroys his crop?
All of which would eliminate the need of dealing the middle men of humanity.
Yep, awesome. Closest thing to a classic sci-fi premise that either Torchwood or Dr. Who (since the re-launch) has ever done. Echoes of Clark’s “Childhood’s End” and Lewis Padgett’s “Mimsy Were The Borogroves”. Certainly the most adult and serious TV Science Fiction I’ve seen in years.
So, essentially, Gwen is Torchwood now? Only she’s also a mom? Hmm… I don’t think I like that idea. I would certainly miss the show, but I think it might be beter to end on a really high note, than to try to go back to the sort-of-silly monster-of-the-week episodes of the last season.
thwartme
[quote=“thwartme, post:49, topic:502433”]
/QUOTE]
Re your spoiler
Gwen, Martha and Mickey are the only on-screen Torchwood employees/friends left I think, and Rhys I suppose. There’s “a strange man who lives in Glasgow” who runs another Torchwood station but who knows about that. I’d imagine PC Andy might get a gig, and it’d be great if Ianto’s brother-in-law gets involved. “I hear you’re taking it up the arse now Ianto!”
OK, fine, I’ll watch it. I’m going to stop reading this thread now, so I withdraw my objection to open spoilers. Thanks for your cooperation, all.
Holy shit that was bleak. For me that is right up there with the best of Doctor Who. And that’s saying something considering how patchy this show tends to be a lot of the time. Great story, very well executed and they really weren’t afraid to go down some pretty disturbing routes.
[spoiler]Even though I figured Frobisher would do what he did after his chat with the PM I found the murder suicide to be the darkest thing I’ve seen on TV in a long long time. Even Jack killing his own grandson didn’t top it.
So will there be another series? And what will it be like? No Ianto. I didn’t really mind them killing off Tosh or Owen as I didn’t think they were great characters. I kind of liked a 3 man Torchwood, but how can they continue on now? Will Jack even come back? So many questions.
This format has really suited Torchwood. They gave the story room to breathe and were able to bring in great one off characters that we’ll remember. It would be a shame to go back to the old 13 episode season where the quality dips the way it used to.[/spoiler]
Torchwood: Series 4 - “ready to go”
That was some brutal TV and I was impressed with Barrowman’s performance, I did not think he had it in him. I think the show benefited from the the loss Mr. sharp jaw and Dr. McInsecure. Without them the show could concentrate on the relationships we actually care about, Jack and Ianto and Gwen and Rhys. The romantic scenes between Jack and Ianto felt very natural and not part of some attention grabbing “Hey look we’re gay!” scene Russel Davies is so fond of. Also, no unnecessary sex scenes for edginess sake.
The one thing that bugged me was that the American general took over the transporting of children operation without objection. I can understand that he had the authority to take command of the diplomatic affairs regarding the aliens, but to give orders to British troops regarding internal affairs was weird. I guess the PM let him so he could weasel out of the mess later.
Something just occurred to me. The reason the alien was puking, banging against the windows and generally acting erratically was because it was suffering from withdrawal. The kid that was attached to it was no longer giving a big enough fix.
Terrible show IMO. Should have been called “Thames House” instead of Torchwood. We saw less screen time for the Torchwoodies v. baddies than we did for the entire same-sex relationship subplot.
Bleh. RTD faked the drama by putting children in danger. Rather than making us care about people, we had to project the care we had for our own children onto the characters on the screen.
Terribly weak IMO. Frobisher should have used that gun on the prime minister instead of his own family.
I’m also shocked we didn’t see anyone propose that as a planet we die together rather than every country turning into Nazi Germany in one fell swoop. Hello? Any writers there? Especially once we found out that the children were the drug.
So let me get this straight–we hand over the drug you want or you’ll eradicate the drug? Muh?
Or maybe that was normal metabolic behavior. We really weren’t shown enough about them to know.
[quote=“Struan, post:50, topic:502433”]
Well, there was also evil leather chick. Did we ever even get a name from her? Torchwood was always light on firepower. There’s no way she would have gone up to the 13th floor without a few bombs to at least blow the bulletproof glass.
Anyways, some of the most depressing (bleak, used above, is the perfect word) TV ever.
And who says that’s what they were going to do? For all we know the next creepy child message from the 456 would have involved the kids holding their breath until all the ones with smaller lung capacity dropped dead. It’s just extortion.
“Give me $500 or I burn your house to the ground.”
“If you burn my house to the ground I’ll never give you $500.”
-Joe
No spoiler code in this post.
I’ve realised that the main reason this show was so good was that it was extremely effective emotionally. That was partly because it used children, and partly because it was very realistic and actually fairly low-key (the way Frobisher killed his family, for example).
If, for some reason, you’re not emotionally affected by that, then maybe you won’t think this show was that good. Maybe you won’t be impressed by the excellent acting (especially from Peter Capaldi playing Frobisher) or excellent direction (little things like the voice of the 456 and the way it repeated at Torchwood).
However, it would be nice if those criticising the show paid a bit more attention to it. It was ‘hand over 10% of the children or we’ll kill *every single person on Earth,’ which they then demonstrated by quickly and eaily killing several hundred people in a way that we could never defend ourself against.
So, no, I’m not surprised nobody said ‘let’s have everyone die together rather than ten percent of one generation.’ Why would that be better?
There was hardly any time spent on the relationship subplot. Do you think it should have been cut out altogether?
It’s not like it was just tacked on for this miniseries. It’s been part of the show since…end of the first season?
Not acknowledging it would have been like cutting Rhys and not bothering to even make mention of him. It was there, they didn’t need to dwell on it. Now on with the story.
-Joe
The 456 arrived in Thames House on a pillar of fire and said that was how they were going to transport the children.
Why didn’t they just do that anyway?