avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2009-07-11 07:01 pm
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2009-07-11 07:01 pm
Still more on Torchwood (bear with me; exorcism is a long and painful process)
Okay, now that the tumult and the shouting has died down a bit I'm starting to see people saying how good this Torchwood was.
And that's fine. Really, if you enjoyed it and thought it was good, more power to you. Skip merrily on and ignore me for a moment, because I'm going to go into some details
Here's a storyline.
"Once upon a time there was a big rock going to crash into the earth and everybody was going to die and there was nothing anybody could do and it was all really really sad and then somebody found an even bigger rock and threw it at the big rock and the big rock went away. The End."
This is the kind of story I wrote at the age of seven. Well, actually, I think I was a bit more capable than that even then. This is the kind of story Russell T Davies writes *all the time*. I can't swear to it that he starts writing with no idea how he's going to finish (he's said as much, but then he lies all the time as well), but that's certainly how it feels when he pulls another stupid rabbit out of his stupid hat at the last minute. And while, for a dilettante like myself or a natural genius like the Countess, this is perfectly okay, for a writer who is being paid to entertain millions it is lazy and it is sloppy and it is unprofessional.
If you plan your story, then you know what your antagonist's fatal weakness is going to be from the outset and you drop clues. They don't have to be immediately understandable--one of the best feelings in the world is looking back on a story and seeing how all the pieces fit into place and show the way forward from where you are--but they have to be there. It's called playing fair with the audience and it's a mark of respect.
We knew very little about the 456. We knew that they could transmit through children, but not how or why. There was never at any point, till halfway through the last episode, any suggestion that it might be possible to send a signal the other way, let alone how or why. It would, I would think, have necessitated the 456's equipment or whatever being set up for receiving as well as transmitting, and why would they bother to do that? How would the government, or Torchwood, know that they possessed any technology that could achieve it, let alone have it all together in one place and in working order at the right time and in the right place?
Plotting: zero out of ten.
Add to this the fact that the gratuitous emotional manipulation to an insanely excessive degree was present in full force, that the final two episodes were so completely opposed to fun that at the moment they were broadcast an equal amount of fun spontaneously annihilated itself, and that he pressed the damn stupid reset button at the end despite the fact that he had just made it excruciatingly clear that no way was western civilisation coming out the other end of this whole...
...and I can't help wondering what the people who think this Torchwood was good, who talk about "compelling writing" and "coherent plotting" and "he actually pulled it off this time"...what they were actually watching.
But whatever it was, I'm glad they enjoyed it.
And that's fine. Really, if you enjoyed it and thought it was good, more power to you. Skip merrily on and ignore me for a moment, because I'm going to go into some details
Here's a storyline.
"Once upon a time there was a big rock going to crash into the earth and everybody was going to die and there was nothing anybody could do and it was all really really sad and then somebody found an even bigger rock and threw it at the big rock and the big rock went away. The End."
This is the kind of story I wrote at the age of seven. Well, actually, I think I was a bit more capable than that even then. This is the kind of story Russell T Davies writes *all the time*. I can't swear to it that he starts writing with no idea how he's going to finish (he's said as much, but then he lies all the time as well), but that's certainly how it feels when he pulls another stupid rabbit out of his stupid hat at the last minute. And while, for a dilettante like myself or a natural genius like the Countess, this is perfectly okay, for a writer who is being paid to entertain millions it is lazy and it is sloppy and it is unprofessional.
If you plan your story, then you know what your antagonist's fatal weakness is going to be from the outset and you drop clues. They don't have to be immediately understandable--one of the best feelings in the world is looking back on a story and seeing how all the pieces fit into place and show the way forward from where you are--but they have to be there. It's called playing fair with the audience and it's a mark of respect.
We knew very little about the 456. We knew that they could transmit through children, but not how or why. There was never at any point, till halfway through the last episode, any suggestion that it might be possible to send a signal the other way, let alone how or why. It would, I would think, have necessitated the 456's equipment or whatever being set up for receiving as well as transmitting, and why would they bother to do that? How would the government, or Torchwood, know that they possessed any technology that could achieve it, let alone have it all together in one place and in working order at the right time and in the right place?
Plotting: zero out of ten.
Add to this the fact that the gratuitous emotional manipulation to an insanely excessive degree was present in full force, that the final two episodes were so completely opposed to fun that at the moment they were broadcast an equal amount of fun spontaneously annihilated itself, and that he pressed the damn stupid reset button at the end despite the fact that he had just made it excruciatingly clear that no way was western civilisation coming out the other end of this whole...
...and I can't help wondering what the people who think this Torchwood was good, who talk about "compelling writing" and "coherent plotting" and "he actually pulled it off this time"...what they were actually watching.
But whatever it was, I'm glad they enjoyed it.
no subject
On that we agree.
If it's the culture of Upper Boat, then it seems very likely that he's the one who largely shaped it. Which explains why other writers on these shows, even better ones than RTD, have been guilty of the same failings. The ending of "Silence In The Library"/whatever it was was a similar fudge.
As for unpicking the scary questions, I'm not convinced. The comments I have seen that touched on that have mostly been about how scheming and evil the politicians were, how the military can be a tool of oppression, and so on and so forth, and realWho did all that back when it was essential family viewing. We don't need a telly programme to tell us those things these days. They're so clichéd their essential truth is all but obscured.
Quatermass? Well, maybe, but the one with John Mills (the one to which, if any, this was an oh Marge, or to be less polite, of which it was--structurally--a ripoff) showed me, when I watched it originally, that the Quatermass productions had been successful in spite of themselves. Kneale's standpoint was similar to Lovecraft's, that humanity was a pathetic puppet of vast indifferent forces beyond its understanding. This was never a philosophy likely to find much favour with people in general, and as with Lovecraft, the audience at large enjoyed the Quatermass stories and let the philosophy go, which puts the onus back on the storytelling. That last Quatermass, in which the defeatism and the negativity were most blatantly displayed, was I think the least successful in storytelling terms, and its failings were the failings of Children of Earth.
no subject