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"A man who can't die has nothing to fear."
On my way into work this morning I passed a bunch of rather summery-looking men wearing brightly coloured blazers (with buttonholes, no less) and straw boaters. Wahey, the Ashes, huh. LOL
So. Torchwood. Wow, so this is a show that is not afraid to cull almost its entire main cast - that's three out of five main characters in the space of five episodes!
More than a few folk on my flist are pretty devastated right now, I guess. :(
Ianto's death felt like it was being signposted throughout the episode, mind - never more so than in that final phone call to his sister, but at other times, as well. And we have to remember that this show was never about the epic gay love of Jack and Ianto, which means that the show is not destroyed by this loss. That relationship was a side note, a facet of the group dynamic that developed over time. And this was a new storyline development that, I guess, served the purposes of the show and this story, driving home Jack's loneliness - in parallel to the Doctor - that he must always carry on, doomed to live forever, constantly watching the people he has grown to love dying around him.
Plus, killing off a main character really emphasises the scale of the crisis. If even the leads can die, what hope does anyone else have?
Plus, RTD is a self-proclaimed Joss Whedon fan, and if there's one thing Joss Whedon loves to do, it's kill off (or otherwise destroy) characters who are in a loving and committed relationship. It's all about the tragedy - heavens forfend any character be allowed to be happy! Jack and Ianto were in a good place all through this mini-series, Ianto's insecurity aside. With hindsight, maybe it was inevitable that it wouldn't be allowed to last.
I kinda thought Ianto would get his heart broken, Jack being as cold as he is, and the disparity between them. But RTD took it a step further and killed him instead. :(
I must confess, the death scene didn't really affect me. I'm really not a fan of melodramatic long-drawn-out deathbed scenes. So I mostly sat there feeling cross that Jack wasn't as obviously affected by the virus as Ianto, when it should kill him too, even if he wasn't going to stay dead. It was later, when Gwen went to the makeshift morgue and sat weeping silently beside Ianto while Jack quietly woke up behind her, that was when it hit me, and I must confess again: I did cry a little.
Also, I had become very fond of Clem, so even though he had served his purpose as a character and such deadwood needed to be shed for the finale tonight, I was very sad when he died. :(
The whole debate around whether or not to sacrifice 10% of the planet's children and which children to select was chillingly intriguing and felt scarily real, like...I could totally believe that government ministers and civil servants would be so ruthlessly pragmatic - ordinary people can be so very evil, all in the name of doing their job. Especially when they started talking in terms of 'units' instead of children, that sent a shiver down my spine. So now we know why Ianto's sister Rhiannon and her family were depicted as coming from such a gutter estate - so we'd have someone to care about and root for when they come to take the children, especially after Ianto's desperate phone call home to warn them.
School league tables as a basis for child sacrifice. Scary stuff!
Also? You know, it was good to see Team Torchwood so very much back on form: charging in all guns blazing, bullying their way into pole position in the negotiations, so convinced they could succeed where all else failed, but ultimately succeeding only in making everything that much worse. That's very much their traditional style! But the point of that was the contrast: they may not have actually achieved anything, but at least they were standing up for what they believe in rather than facilitating human sacrifice.
Raises interesting ethical questions over the right and wrong way to handle such a doomsday scenario.
Jack had finally allowed himself to love again after slowly but surely closing off his heart over the decades that have passed since he became immortal - he might not have allowed Ianto all the way in, that was clear, to Ianto himself most of all, but he definitely loved him. And now he has lost, yet again. "A man who can't die has nothing to fear," said his daughter, and that might be the best description of Jack of all. Nothing to fear and nothing to lose - other than the entire population of the world!
Roll on the finale.
In other news, I clicked on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marishna's link to her cap-and-picspam post only, to my horror, to be immediately confronted by spoilers for the Harper's Island finale, which she has somehow already seen and discussed in the same post. Horrors! I closed my eyes quick. Not quick enough, alas, but I'm trying to forget what I read. I want to enjoy those final two episodes unspoiled, thanks all the same!
So. Torchwood. Wow, so this is a show that is not afraid to cull almost its entire main cast - that's three out of five main characters in the space of five episodes!
More than a few folk on my flist are pretty devastated right now, I guess. :(
Ianto's death felt like it was being signposted throughout the episode, mind - never more so than in that final phone call to his sister, but at other times, as well. And we have to remember that this show was never about the epic gay love of Jack and Ianto, which means that the show is not destroyed by this loss. That relationship was a side note, a facet of the group dynamic that developed over time. And this was a new storyline development that, I guess, served the purposes of the show and this story, driving home Jack's loneliness - in parallel to the Doctor - that he must always carry on, doomed to live forever, constantly watching the people he has grown to love dying around him.
Plus, killing off a main character really emphasises the scale of the crisis. If even the leads can die, what hope does anyone else have?
Plus, RTD is a self-proclaimed Joss Whedon fan, and if there's one thing Joss Whedon loves to do, it's kill off (or otherwise destroy) characters who are in a loving and committed relationship. It's all about the tragedy - heavens forfend any character be allowed to be happy! Jack and Ianto were in a good place all through this mini-series, Ianto's insecurity aside. With hindsight, maybe it was inevitable that it wouldn't be allowed to last.
I kinda thought Ianto would get his heart broken, Jack being as cold as he is, and the disparity between them. But RTD took it a step further and killed him instead. :(
I must confess, the death scene didn't really affect me. I'm really not a fan of melodramatic long-drawn-out deathbed scenes. So I mostly sat there feeling cross that Jack wasn't as obviously affected by the virus as Ianto, when it should kill him too, even if he wasn't going to stay dead. It was later, when Gwen went to the makeshift morgue and sat weeping silently beside Ianto while Jack quietly woke up behind her, that was when it hit me, and I must confess again: I did cry a little.
Also, I had become very fond of Clem, so even though he had served his purpose as a character and such deadwood needed to be shed for the finale tonight, I was very sad when he died. :(
The whole debate around whether or not to sacrifice 10% of the planet's children and which children to select was chillingly intriguing and felt scarily real, like...I could totally believe that government ministers and civil servants would be so ruthlessly pragmatic - ordinary people can be so very evil, all in the name of doing their job. Especially when they started talking in terms of 'units' instead of children, that sent a shiver down my spine. So now we know why Ianto's sister Rhiannon and her family were depicted as coming from such a gutter estate - so we'd have someone to care about and root for when they come to take the children, especially after Ianto's desperate phone call home to warn them.
School league tables as a basis for child sacrifice. Scary stuff!
Also? You know, it was good to see Team Torchwood so very much back on form: charging in all guns blazing, bullying their way into pole position in the negotiations, so convinced they could succeed where all else failed, but ultimately succeeding only in making everything that much worse. That's very much their traditional style! But the point of that was the contrast: they may not have actually achieved anything, but at least they were standing up for what they believe in rather than facilitating human sacrifice.
Raises interesting ethical questions over the right and wrong way to handle such a doomsday scenario.
Jack had finally allowed himself to love again after slowly but surely closing off his heart over the decades that have passed since he became immortal - he might not have allowed Ianto all the way in, that was clear, to Ianto himself most of all, but he definitely loved him. And now he has lost, yet again. "A man who can't die has nothing to fear," said his daughter, and that might be the best description of Jack of all. Nothing to fear and nothing to lose - other than the entire population of the world!
Roll on the finale.
In other news, I clicked on
marishna's link to her cap-and-picspam post only, to my horror, to be immediately confronted by spoilers for the Harper's Island finale, which she has somehow already seen and discussed in the same post. Horrors! I closed my eyes quick. Not quick enough, alas, but I'm trying to forget what I read. I want to enjoy those final two episodes unspoiled, thanks all the same!