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
(Anonymous) 2009-07-23 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)It's funny you know, how your own life experiences affect what you're prepared to swallow. I was watching TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH and I managed to accept as believable:
A man who cannot die.
Aliens in undetectable spaceships.
Mind control that allowed them to make every child on Earth stand, speak and point in unison but not apparently make them march to pick-up points.
The same aliens using human children as symbiotes and sources of good-time drugs while they live in an atmosphere no human could tolerate for a second.
But I balked at the assurances that the Senior Civil Servant gave that he could get 350,000 children away from their parents and to the aforementioned pickup points within twenty four hours, no problem Prime Minister.
'This man,' I thought, 'has never tried to move even a single child anywhere they didn't want to go and has probably been lied to by all his subordinates for the last ten years.... '
'Let's see, the fact that the children have just called out 10% of the number of children in each nation has been spotted by the media (and I bet someone in the know leaked it)... There's no way he can have enough elite, super-obedient troops to get that number of children moving and the regular Army-Oh isn't immune to mutiny: especially if any of their own kids get caught up in the sweep.'
'And the Civil Service will either loose the instructions or go home early: grand thing flexitime. This feels very like the point in one of my carefully crafted RPG scenarios when the players turn to me and say 'You what?' and proceed to pull down the whole unlikely edifice...'
And that was the point where it all fell to pieces for me as my disbelief suspenders snapped. Cap'n Jack facing down the Ambassador without much of a plan or a single operative brain cell flowed past me and I did not even twitch. I did laugh at the line about the School League Tables though...
And then the Army moving in like a bunch of invincible robots: in real life half of them will misread their orders or the maps and about twenty five percent will find some reason why they aren't allowed to go on child kidnapping expeditions for health and safety reasons. The authors clearly have an exaggerated estimate of the power and competence of government. They should suffer as I do in the lower bowels of the State and that will teach them.
Oh, and why can't a man who has just lied to the entire nation manage to lie to his subordinate and tell him, yes, yes, of course your children will be perfectly safe. I wouldn't dream of using them in a pointless and Machiavellean scheme to preserve my political career...
I object to my emotions being manipulated as blatantly as this series does. I object even more when the authors have to pull psychologically ridiculous moments like this because they can't be bothered to write an extra two minutes into the plot when the Big Civil Servant discovers he's being betrayed.
(Portions of this review have appeared in ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS).
And the quote about a hat out of a rabbit comes from THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST by Heinlein. Hilda to Lazarus Long.
Michael Cule