Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Suzie bearing random shoes out of time.

TORCHWOOD: Random Shoes (With a few comments on other episodes)

I’ve been absent from these pages for a few weeks as I’ve been toying with having a life to the extent of not even watching Torchwood.  I did, however, record each episode and so a while back I sat down to watch three episodes in a fairly short space of time.

Needless to say, my head hurts.

I’ll do a quick appraisal of the first two episodes I watched and then delve slightly deeper in the latest one.

Greeks Bearing Gifts – Yawn.  Really, that’s all I have to say about it.  Dull beyond redemption.

They Keep Killing Suzie – And so they should.  There was a good story in there somewhere, but as usual the heavy handed, hammered-home story telling ruined it.  Oh and we learn that there’s something in the dark coming for Jack!  Oooohhh!!  Big Whoop!!

I really wish that I could care, but I still feel no sense of camaraderie with any of these people and have no emotional investment in their fate.  I haven’t really missed watching this every week.  I’ll keep going out of some, probably misplaced, sense of optimism that things will get better but really not anticipating any kind of last minute reprieve.

Oooohhh!!  Big Whoop!!

One thing that back to back viewings have highlighted is the fact the John Barrowman has a very limited acting range.  When he’s doing ‘charming rouge’ he’s absolutely spot on – Hence why he was so good in Doctor Who, but actually expecting him to emote or do drama seems to be asking too much of the poor lad.  I caught his turn on the Royal Variety Performance (It was on after something else I’d watched and I didn’t turn off quickly enough.  Honest) and there’s no doubting that he can sing, but even the business he threw in there was embarrassingly wooden.  I do wonder if the whole show would have been any better if they hadn’t tried to tie it in with the crossover character from the parent show and actually cast a tried and tested actor rather than a song and dance man with a good line in flirting.

Anyway, onto the show.  Random Shoes.  Like most of the titles I choose it only bore the slightest relevance to what followed.

I actually found this story to be quite interesting.  Obviously I’m only judging this on the Torchwood scale of interesting which runs from “Can’t keep my eyes open for this dross” all the way up to “Hmmm, I can see what they were trying to do there.”  So as I say, it was quite interesting.

The narrative being told from the dead mans point of view was a good idea, as was starting with the death and working backwards trying to piece together what had happened.  That was like real detective work that was.  I also liked the fact that they didn’t have all the answers and that it wasn’t a case of Captain One Note saying “Oh yes, this is a blah-de-blah.  I shagged one once you know” and knowing straight away what to do.  Admittedly he knew what the “eye” was but other than that he was as lost as the rest of them.

There were a lot of things that I enjoyed about this episode, but that isn’t to say that I don’t have a few questions.

The Torchwood scale of interesting

As with other stories, it’s not exactly clear why the Jack Pack were called out in the first place.  It was a random hit and run where the victim is only identified as being a Torchwood groupie after they see him.  He had nothing ‘other’ on his person that would cause the local constabulary to call in the *ahem* experts.  Perhaps they were out for another day trip, maybe to the zoo this time, when they happened across the scene.

Did anybody else think it was at least a little unusual, if not downright dodgy, that the teacher would give the young Eugene a special present from his rock collection?  They’re alone in the classroom and the poor lad’s feeling down because he couldn’t remember his twelve times table or whatever the problem was, so the teacher says, “Have a look at my rocks.  Pretty aren’t they?  Would you like to touch one?”  Okay, I may be paraphrasing, but not by much.

I know it’s meant to be one of those “It’s alien, just go with it” but I don’t understand quite how the eye managed to do what it did.  If I remember it correctly, the eye allowed the user to look back over ones life to take stock and see how things really happened.

This isn’t what happened.  Eugene was killed and somehow his spirit/essence/soul/conscience was kept on the earthly plane by something that his body had swallowed.  And then instead of gaining tremendous insight into his “life” he has no memory of anything until Gwen has already uncovered it.  So, by following that rational, if Gwen had done as she was told and left the whole thing alone then he would forever be wandering the world with no idea why he was dead or what had happened to his body.

And whilst we’re on the subject, how did he mange to become corporeal at just the right time, why didn’t he stay that way, why did he vanish up into the sky afterwards and why was Gwen just so darn upset when she’d spent the entire time before his death just ignoring him?

It’s not like her investigation uncovered any dramatic revelations about the lad, is it?  Okay he was quite sweet and a bit of a dreamer.  Willing to help young ladies out of a fix by taking them to the other side of the world, but there wasn’t really that much to make Gwen give up her other two men in his favour.  Even if he wasn’t dead.

I did enjoy Random Shoes, although I don’t understand why he took the foot photos, but like so much of the series it made very little sense.  Still, not much more to go now.

I’m finding it harder and harder to keep going with the show

I’m afraid that another long period of time has passed (It was humbug time of year again) so I have fallen even further behind with my viewings.  As I type, The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures are premiering on BBC1.  I recording it so watch out for my review sometime in February!  I can almost guarantee that I'm going to like more than I do Torchwood.

I have now managed to watch Out of Time.  The review of which I can quite quickly add to the end of this one.  Who Cares?  Nothing happened!  Still no damn aliens and the Jack Pack continue to be self-centred, dishonest and overall boring.

I’m finding it harder and harder to keep going with the show.  There’s just no character development, no interest and no point to any of it.

Anyway, Happy New Year all.  Despite some of the subject matter, I’ve had a blast writing on here and will continue to do so throughout 2007.  Best wishes to every one of you.

Quantum Peep Show

Torchwood: Random Shoes

In the bleeding edge area of physics, known as AI (that's Appreciation Index), only the work of Werner Karl Heisenberg has been recognized by the Nobel Foundation, winning the Golden Cigar of Lew in 1967 for his work on the Uncertainty Principal.

"You'll require a hyper-collider of circumference not less than 60 miles."

The crux of the Uncertainty Principal is this: taking a pair of observables of a single particle, increasing the accuracy in measurement of one increases the uncertainty in the measurement of the other. This is usually applied to the position and momentum of a particle.

Now. Scale that up and apply it to a television series (to do this you'll require a hyper-collider of circumference not less than 60 miles - you might need to ask an adult to help you with this). Here's one I prepared earlier. Let's call it Torchwood. The Torchwood is a complex series of concepts that when viewed from distance appears to be positioned somewhere towards the adult-themed drama series end of the spectrum (exhibiting the so-called "pink-shift" effect). And yet pinning its genre down to a specific measurement merely renders all other observations redundant. Similarly, measurements of character interactions merely confuses the matter further as you are then unable to determine what sort of entity it is.

"Smash the glass on the emergency Blake's 7 wall cabinet."

For all the good it'll do you you might as well just introduce a random factor and just go with that as a good enough guess as to what the hell all this is about. Star Trek circumvented this effect by utilizing Heisenberg Compensators (in addition to a well structured situation in which to tell coherent stories - but that's not for here). Created by Gene "Eugene" Roddenberry, the Compensators permitted the television series to evolve free of complicated and inconvenient theoretical physics and allowed for the free flow of technobabble.

Of course, placing factors such as Eugene and Heisenberg in close proximity to the Torchwood television series will only result in one of two outcomes, 1) an episode called Jack's Brain or 2) a weak rip off of an out of time episode where culture shock ensues for a group of people from a different time. Should either of these be detected then please smash the glass on the emergency Blake's 7 Wall Cabinet with the hammer provided. Otherwise the entire fabric of the Universe will be consumed by Happy Eater matter.

"Put succinctly, it's your fault that it's shite."

None of this should be confused by the observer effect - which states that by merely observing something you change its nature. Should the Torchwood entity be viewed by precisely no-one, instead of millions of suckers, then we could safely suggest that it was a constantly ground breaking, bang up televisual feast of such eye-popping quality that you'd never understand how good it was if you saw it. But we can't. Because the effect that millions of viewers has on the show has rendered its nature completely different to that intended.

Put succinctly, it's your fault - yes, you - that it's shite. Apart from Random Shoes. Which was actually quite good.

Take that Schrödinger!

The Torchwood Bumper Book of Date Rape Techniques has this to say about Random Shoes: Actually, the TBBoDRT has taken a week off to be replaced by an article from Holy Moly's December 1 mailout...

There was panic on the set of 'Torchwood' when a vital prop went missing. The prop, essential to continuity, was a large glass eye, which will form part of a recurring plotline. Cue much rushing around and frenzied searching by all and sundry.

Eventually it was discovered by... John Barrowman who squealed, "I've found it!" Once he had everyone's attention he pulled down his trousers and bent over, revealing his brown eye and another... brownish eye, which he gently popped from its puckered mounting.

Martyr of the day was the props man who had to scrub the greasy eye before the other actors would go near it.

All Dorks Go To Heaven

Torchwood: Random Shoes

Quick word in your shell-like, Russel...

Next time, do you think you silly sods could decide on the official episode title before it's too late for the Radio Times to print it? It's not the first time you've faffed about like this; The Trouble With Lisa became Cyberwoman, there was the whole They Keep Killing malarky from last week, and you still don't know yet whether the season closer will be called End Of Days or Apocalypse. I know it's not such a big deal, but give over; all the episodes were in the can ages ago and it makes your show production look even more haphazard and confused than it already is.

There are two obvious approaches to writing a Torchwood episode about an intangible spirit. One is the black comedy route, as would befit a show with a risk-taking, hard-nosed adult edge. Suppose you have a ghost who doesn't immediately realise he's dead and refuses to leave the mortal plane, under investigation from a group headed by a guy who has shrugged off death so many times he doesn't even think about it any more. One is quite naturally going to bitterly resent the other. Paint the clash between the two with a broad cynical brush, with Gwen in the middle as the hapless medium, and you have instant comedy gold.

The other is the sub-Sixth Sense ripoff with some trite, maudlin Ghost / Truly Madly Deeply saccharine sentimental bollocks thrown in.

RTD apparently had a large hand in the scripting of this episode. Which do you think he's more likely to go down? If, like me, you naturally assumed the second, you're... WRONG! YES! WRONG! COMPLETE AND UTTERLY WRONG! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!... Well, mostly wrong. OK, sort of incorrect. You know. Marginally. Just a teeny-weeny bit. In a good way.

Oh fuck it, I don't even know what I'm trying to say any more. The point is, Random Shoes is ABSOLUTELY SODDING BEAUTIFUL. Five minutes after the end of the episode, I literally cried. And me a tee-totaller! The shame!

"It's about Gwen's invisible dead stalker - how could it not have a macabre streak? Darin Morgan would have been proud"

He is a canny one though, is our Russel. He knows full well that unless it completely falls over its own feet, an episode like this is otherwise completely critic-proof, because its 'success' relies entirely on an empathy bond with the individual viewer, rather than any opinionated notions of 'quality' - or lack of - that we moaning minnies have been attributing to the show these past two months. And while Random Eugene's Invisible Shoes could very easy have sunk into nothing but utter mush, it's also black comedy because.... oh come ON! It's about Gwen's invisible dead stalker - how could it not have a macabre streak? Darin Morgan would have been proud.

Still, it's one thing to affectionately nudge the ribs of the fandom of a show created in 1963 and still very much alive despite all previous attempts to kill it off for ever. It's quite another to do the same with a show that's what, nine episodes old? Russel, are you trying to look like this generation's TV Blofeld by greenlighting this? If your team hadn't made such a cracking good job of it, it would have looked like vain self-obsession to the power of God. 28 seasons? Bollocks to that, I want my adoration NOW.

Everybone and their blind one-legged dog, of course, has compared Random Shoes with Love & Monsters, whether for the sheer geekiness, the 'risks' it takes with an established formula (and I've been pouring scorn on that one on this blog for most of the past eight weeks), or the pathos and soul in cherishing what you have instead of pining for what you miss; that you can't have your dreams made real without the risk of losing everything else that makes life special to you, or revealing them to be a total lie. I can't say I really felt the pathos in Love & Monsters because the whole thing for me was too much of a self-indulgent joke for the benefit of Peter Kay and the other established cast members. Random Shoes on the other hand, is more genuine, more ordinary, the way it should be when things happen to people because that's just the way life is. Instead of trying to reach for the fantastic and bring it down to Earth, Eugene's story is one of almost-regular folks touched and changed by something most are not even aware is so special.

"28 seasons? Bollocks to that, I want my adoration NOW"

Wasn't it great as well that despite being played straighter than Love & Monsters, Random Shoes has far more laugh-out-loud-funny moments? I mean, how intrinsically hilarious is the idea of selling an alien artifact on eBay, followed by the bittersweet topping of succeeding, only to be thwarted again by your own mates? I practically pissed myself at how Eugene was able to place his own name on everything he saw in the base except the Doctor's hand - the one thing that we were able to recognise. "Oh wow. A hand. In..... a jar." Owen's 'Disney moment' cynicism for once provoked a grin instead of making me want to smash him in the face. Eugene fainting at his own autopsy? Very obvious. Been done. Still funny. Good job too how they cut it short without drawing your attention to the fact, since if Owen had been arsed into doing it properly, the eye would have been found in no time at all.

And maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought that uplifting 'redemption' ending was perfect, where Eugene finally gets to fulfill a purpose becoming shooting off into the void. There's no real storytelling logic, but it just felt right - Gwen is so happy to see Eugene that she doesn't even go "wait, WTF"? Instead it's "Eugene! No! Don't go and leave me with this ugly bastard!" Snigger. Meanwhile the rest of the team watch on with faces that say 'we're not even going to bother asking anymore'. And so what if most of them were sidelined this episode? It's not like they don't do that most weeks anyway.

"'Eugene! No! Don't go and leave me with this ugly bastard!'"

Random Shoes isn't the first good episode, but it's the first one where I felt confident that the production team really knew what they wanted to acheive, and went for it. Dalek_Sex's opinion is that the show hasn't found its concrete-clad feet before now because it never thought to look for them to begin with; so sure was the pilot of its own false remit that afterwards the programme careered all over the place believing to fulfill all the criteria, but ending up instead being none of them. Forget the staggering conceit of searching for world-shattering menace each week in the back streets of Cardiff, though obviously it should be there somewhere or there wouldn't be much point. The Big Brother voyeurism of the cast constantly climbing into each other's pants like kids on monkey bars is going to be old hat by the time series two rolls around, so that can go too. The show certainly doesn't need the whole 'Secret Squirrel' take on Torchwood itself either, when this disparate bunch comes across far more like an independent team of troubleshooters rather than a shadowy covert-ops group. Nope; what Torchwood appears to do best, if Random Shoes and the teaser for Out Of Time is anything to go by, is just to take the ordinary, and make it extraordinary; when it stops pretending to be 'real' science-fiction rather than a set of stories, and says, 'this is the way our world happens to work, so accept it for what it is'. Would The Ghost Machine have felt so pointless if it hadn't already been battered into submission by the show shouting ZOMG ALIENZZZZ at us for 100 minutes the previous week? Would Small Worlds have felt like an episode of the wrong show entirely? I very much doubt it.

"Life is full of disappointments", says our Euge, recalling the way Forrest Gump likened it to a box of chocolates. Invisirandomitable Shoegene would, I guess, be one of those slightly cloying strawberry creme ones from a Christmas tin of Roses, the well-meaning loser that's normally either eaten first to get it out of the way or else left to the very bottom. If that's a bit sweet for your own tastebuds, well, you've got the whole rest of the tinful to choose from. Pick something with more nuts in instead. Miserable bugger.

Eugene! The screens!

The Humper Book Of Sexually Torchwooded Diseases has this to say about Whatever The Hell It's Called: the original funeral song, had they got clearance rights, would have been 'How Sweet To Be An Idiot' by Neil Innes.

You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

I believe I've found the perfect receipe for enjoying Torchwood:

Take half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin, some Indian Tonic Water (Schweppes if you've got it), a sliver of lime (never lemon), a handful of crushed ice and BINGO! - you'll be weeping tears of joy tinged with bittersweet sadness as Mary Sue, sorry Eugene, drifts into the ether along with your brain cells.

Trust me, it works a treat.

Whether Random Shoes hits the spot whilst sober is entirely debatable but I don't really care and I'm not going to spoil anything by trying. However, I do have this nagging suspicion that I'm willing myself into liking this show, mainly so Adam Stone doesn't have to feel completely alone, but also because I'm sick and tired of being such a sourpuss. The main problem is there are plenty of shows out there that knock Torchwood into a cocked hat (BSG, Heroes, Hollyoaks in the City to name but three) so when an episode turns up that actually manages to move me in a thoroughly positive way I'm going to grab onto it for dear life.

The trouble is I now have to attempt to write a review of an episode that I can barely remember anything about...

OK, so it's a bit like Love and Monsters. That's no bad thing. I loved that episode for much the same reasons, namely that it took some risks with the established formula, and that meant no shagging, swearing, lesbianism, or people screaming at each other as they waved their guns in the air. Eugene seemed like a thoroughly nice bloke, and while it beggars belief why he'd be a Torchwood fan (interestingly he was a loner and didn't have a community of TW lovers to fall back on - as if!) his life was achingly sad. Not because he was a "geek" but because he was surrounded by complete and utter tossers. Parts of it reminded me of Magnolia, albeit shot on a shaky camcorder, especially the scene where Eugene bottles it at the quiz, and I loved how the titular shoes were actually entirely random, too. Meaningless. Arbitrary. Pointless. But sometimes life's just like that, isn't it?

Sweet, poignant, original, brave and occasionally very witty, Random Shoes only dropped the ball right at the very end when Eugene became corporeal. That felt a little off to me, even if it did bring a smile to my alcohol addled face. How much more appropriate would it have been if he had simply faded away...

Just like this sad excuse for a review -

The Amazing Adventures of Eugene Jones

Torchwood: Random Shoes

I'm going to sound like a broken record again I'm afraid, but what the hell, I loved Sunday's episode of Torchwood. True it was very similar to Love & Monsters (which I also loved, and having watched it again on Sunday I have to say that it was the best written, directed and acted episode of the second series aside The Girl in the Fireplace) but that isn't a bad thing. If you are going to rip something off then you should at least rip-off something good, that's what I say.

True the bit about somebody dying and persisting on hanging around afterwards is hardly original either (it wasn't original when they made Randall & Hopkirk nearly forty years ago now) but what is original nowadays? At the end of the day I thoroughly enjoyed the episode, and that is good enough for me.

One of the things I really like about Torchwood is how it is always different and each episode is nothing like the previous episode. Surely that can only be a good thing because if it was the same each episode wouldn't it get rather boring and stale.

After all isn't that the reason why we all love Doctor Who so much because each episode and story is different from the previous one? Or is only Doctor Who that is allowed to do that and everything else just a pallid imitation compared to the brilliance that is Doctor Who? Personally I think the latter but then again what do I know? I'm the odd bloke who likes Torchwood/the heretic who doesn't think David Tennant is the best Doctor ever (*delete where applicable).

It could be said that while this episode is in a similar vein to Love & Monsters this episode did actually have one of the regular characters involved in the plot from beginning to end (unlike L&M), but sidelined the rest. I didn't even miss Jack, Ianto, Owen or Tosh in the episode at all to be honest.

This was a good episode for Eve Myles who really shone is this episode as the heart of Torchwood and the only one who seemed to care about what had happened to Eugene. I suppose it did seem a bit odd that Torchwood got involved in something that was just a straightforward hit and run. I know that Eugene was a Torchwood chaser so that was where the link was but at first that did seem to jar a little, but only for a little while, as in the end it didn't really matter. I never thought that Torchwood was meant to be that realistic anyway, the same way in which Doctor Who isn't meant to be realistic. The characters may be more realistic in Torchwood but the situations certainly aren't. I mean how can a science-fiction show be realistic anyway?

I thought the alien eye was a nice little touch, as that was the start of the road that led him to Torchwood and to his eventual demise, in part due to the greed of his friends. Quite what the point of the alien eye was in the end though was debatable but it did allow for a nice little subplot where he went and sold it on Ebay.

Paul Chequer who played Eugene was rather good I thought. I have never seen him in anything before but he made a good account of himself in this episode. He was a believable character I would say: a bit of a loner interested in science-fiction and the like, hangs around with a couple of close mates (or so he thought), not very memorable or popular by his peers. Sounds a bit like myself (and quite possible a lot of other Doctor Who fans even if they won't to it) but like Elton in Love & Monsters, he was just an ordinary guy who just happened to be a little geeky (unlike Elton though), and you genuinely felt empathy for him especially in the scenes in the funeral where hardly anyone turned up, and how he seemed to go unnoticed in his place of work apart from by a handful of people (well not even a handful).

The funeral scene did go on for a little longer than it needed to and perhaps the choice of Danny Boy wasn't the best of choices, but it was at a funeral so I can forgive that. I didn't think much of his so called mates. At least one of them actually missed him and felt bad about what they had done after he had died, the other one, from the video shop, didn't seem to care, all he wanted was the alien eye. I mean who need enemies when you have friends like his?

I thought that Eugene's infatuation with Gwen was rather sweet and the look on his face at the end when she kissed him was priceless. I mean he didn't mind being dead after that did he? I mean she was his great, unobtainable love, the one person he could never get, as it were. Gwen certainly seems to be a little bit psychic doesn't she? I mean when Eugene said out loud that they could phone Gary, Gwen scrolled down to his name on Eugene's phone.

I doubt that she just picked out that name at random, unless it was just a massive coincidence. Probably not as later on in the car when Gwen went to see Eugene's father she virtually answered Eugene. Then there is the bit when Gwen in is in her bedroom and Eugene says that he loves here. There was an intimation that she may have heard that comment as well.

This will only add to the rumours that Gwen is indeed a descendant of Gwyneth from The Unquiet Dead and make even more Who fans insist that they have to watch Torchwood, because if they don't they somehow won't understand what is going on in the parent series. Quite how that works I am not sure but I am digressing from the episode here.

I did wonder why the episode was called Random Shoes (I thought for a brief moment that the episode was going to be about Gwen going shopping in Cardiff town centre for random shoes), as the original title of Invisible Eugene did seem more relevant to the episode as it played out, but now I like the title, it doesn't really make sense, but I like it nonetheless.

This episode may have not been to everyone's taste but I liked it and thought it was a very effective episode and was a nice and different insight into the world of Torchwood. Gwen may have been a little bit blasé about the real world since she had joined Torchwood but when things like this happen to ordinary people it brings her back down to Earth again and she is able to remember what it was like to just be an ordinary person back in the day before she first got involved with Torchwood. She is truly the heart of the organisation and this episode really showcased that side of her character.

Not the best episode of the series so far, but another good example of modern television, Random Shoes was, in my opinion, just as effective as Love & Monsters was at showing a different side to the characters we have known for the past eight weeks.

"Life's full of disappointments…"

Yes, yes it is.  Every Sunday at 10pm on BBC Three (or as it appeared tonight briefly Children's BBC).  I really must I?  Can't I just say 'What Sean said' and move on?  This isn't going to be half as entertaining or perceptive.  I've just spent the past week writing this critique for my own blog for various reasons describing the main thing wrong with Torchwood and here's an episode that generally ignores my criticisms and creates a whole bunch of others.  I should hate it on that basis, but that wouldn't be fair so it looks like I'll have to make up a special list for this one.  It's eleven o'clock at night, I should be thinking about going to bed or running another episode of Spaced which I'm watching once again.  Have you seen the end of the paintball episode lately?  It's like a forward homage to the Doctor Who episode Fear Her with 'There's a storm coming' and a crane shot and everything.  Or are they both Terminator references?

I mean what the hell was that?  Do the production team not think that we're not sitting at home thinking - 'Hold on - this is a bit like Love & Monsters…' or 'Is he a ghost?  Out of phase with the rest of reality?  A non-corporeal clone?  What?' or 'Is she in wrap or idle whilst she talking to Gwen - isn't she thinking about her weekly stats - what kind of a call centre is this?' or 'Jesus Christ that's a horrific music cue… what a winy voice … is this supposed to be a joke' or 'That's the original A For Andromeda.  Don't pan away, I'm watching that!' or 'Will that man please stop singing?  This funeral scene has gone on far enough … what it's still going?  How many bloody verses are there in 'Danny Boy' and apart from anything else what the hell is he doing singing it in Wales?' or the many thousands of other niggles that flopped through my brain as I tried desperately and should have been engaging with the story.

'That's the original A For Andromeda.  Don't pan away, I'm watching that!'

Eugene seemed a nice enough bloke, but his plight wasn't enough of a mystery to stretch out over twenty-five minutes let alone double that time.  The episode seemed to be copying the structure of Citizen Kane which followed the steps from childhood forward to death in order to reveal a mystery -- it's about how a man lived being revealed in flashbacks and whatnot.  Here it felt like the montage sequence from The Ghost Machine slowed down across a a whole episode but instead of the main character discovering information such as Eugene's early childhood it was shown to the audience first.  Which meant that when it was revealed to Gwen later it lacked dramatic impact.

It just seems very wrong to me that on such a regular basis, that the so-called regular characters are given so little to do.  Ianto's back to saying little about anything and Tosh is simply asking questions.  They're supposed to be main characters and yet they're being sidelined - it's Classic Star Trek all over again.  The trouble with this episode was that it wasn't Gwen's story it was Eugene's with the maths 'genius' using her to discover what happened because he pushed her forward - too often she would walk into a scene and be seen listening as characters described another bit of the plot.  This wasn't really detecting because she wasn't allowed to put the clues together herself -- Eugene was motivating her, revealing of his memories the final moments being his success.  Eve Myles was sidelined in her own show.

There wasn't anything actually wrong with the story, but surely it's the kind of thing you trot out in season three when you've established all the characters and you want either give them a week off or you're double banking and have some fun with them.  Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Lower Decks is a prime example, as junior officers became the focus and we got to see the regulars from their perspective.  Here, Eugene basically followed Gwen around because he lurrrved her and didn't really regard any of the others.  During The Hub visit, he seemed more interested in The Doctor's hand (we get the joke already) than anyone else in the hub which seemed a waste.

Eugene was also a bit talky though, given to half quoting everything from Douglas Adams through to Ferris Bueller's Day Off via Monty Python's Galaxy Song, all very poetic, probably thematic, but slowed what little drama there was even more.  Unlike Love & Monsters, however, it never felt like the ramblings of a half normal person, seeming more like it had been brought in because the story was being adapted from a novel and the screenwriter was too afraid not include the author's winning material.  I'd also argue that the fact that Eugene was both describing events in both the past and present tense confused the point of view still further.

Paul Chequer  is a talented actor and even though the character felt like a rehash of his character in As If, even with the Hitler quiff, he still managed to be sympathetic and appealing despite that wordiness.  Once again, Eve Myles somehow managed to make Gwen seem like a normal, appealing figure even if her job on this occasion was to largely sit there and listen.  The performances across board in this episode were good if not excellent amongst the guest cast although this has always been a problem with the series - the regulars are just less vivid and unloved in the face of the populace of South Wales.

The special effects too were very nice all of the wizzing around the solar system and galaxy, presumably representing Eugene's imagination, giving the episode a scale others have lacked.  It was just a shame that they couldn't stretch to more than one moment in which he actually put his hand through someone.  He was still walking around at normal speed with doors, such as the ones in the hub, waiting for him to walk through.  This quirk could have been worked into the episode - perhaps providing Gwen with proof of her feeling that someone was about but instead it looked like an inconsistency waiting for a nitpicker like me to point it out.

"The show seems determined to reduce every character to a plot point or cypher.  Are they allergic to giving the characters convincing private lives?"

Other oddities -- have Gwen and Owen split up is that what all the arguing is supposed to imply?  Why just imply it, why not just say it?  And why the hell after all the lovely scenes earlier in the series haven't we seen a proper break-up scene for Gwen and her boyfriend?  The show seems determined to reduce every character to a plot point or cypher.  Are they allergic to giving the characters convincing private lives?  Most of the problems with this episode could have been solved with a reduction of the influence of Eugene's character and the introduction of a B-plot about Jack or Tosh or even Ianto.

Marks were gained for the use of 'Starman' instead of 'Life on Mars', but what the hell was that thing during the autopsy sequence in The Hub?  (and as a side note if they had cut him open wouldn't they have found the eye?)  Well I know what it is thanks to Outpost Gallifrey - 'Hope There's Someone' by Antony and The Johnsons and in a different context I might have liked it, but here it just ruined the mood and was completely out of context.  Love & Monsters had a coherent musical structure but this was just a mish-mash.

"as that poor actor graveled his way through even more of Danny Boy I was screaming at the screen for him to stop"

But taking the episode as it stands though, it simply wasn't as touching as it should have been even with all of that music layered in, for the reasons already listed and that bloody funeral scene at the end.  You really have to have worked hard in the body of a drama to earn something like that and they didn't and as that poor actor graveled his way through even more of Danny Boy I was screaming at the screen for him to stop when I know I should be crying and didn't matter how much sob music was layered in afterwards, they'd lost me again.

Next week:  It's more Star Trek plots as TNG's The Neutral Zone and Voyager's The 37ers are given a run around.  Once again, we're left wondering what the premise of this show is actually meant to be.

Things To Do In Cardiff When You're Dead

This is starting to feel like kicking a corpse, but here goes.

Not content with pretty much taking everything it can get away with from the Joss Whedon oeuvre, Torchwood is now employing look-alikes of Buffy and Angel cast-members in a vain attempt to instil some quality into this ailing excuse for a show. This week: Seth Green pops up as Torchwood’s very own stalker, whose hit and run death is apparently deemed so important as to warrant Gwen’s entire involvement for the whole episode. While the rest of the Jack pack presumably do something much more important; like check what other Who aliens Ianto has smuggled into the cellar, perhaps.

the episode almost brought back unpleasant memories of potter’s wheels and Righteous Brothers from the early nineties

Yes, Eugene Jones - geeky dreamer and the bastard half-brother of ‘Love & Monsters’ Elton Pope; which is somewhat appropriate seeing as Random Shoes (terrible title, by the way) cannibalises Season Two’s controversial look at fandom and the single man to produce something which is similar only in remit. Gosh, aren’t all these sci-fi nuts a bunch of tossers, eh; what with their lowly jobs and ridiculous dreams of actually being important to someone other than their dried-up old mothers? Where L&M had charm, heart and a truth which most Who fans would willingly admit to clinging to, ‘Random Shoes’ instead tried to sympathise for a character who thought Torchwood were cool - tricky in itself - and then went on to wring our every emotion in an attempt to make us feel all warm inside. Except it didn’t. In fact, when Eugene kept spouting anal facts about life's minutiae in some half-arsed polemic about the poignancy of existence, it was all I could do to stop myself from laughing out loud. Never has a cushion been chewed so vehemently without the stimulus of an anal probe.

Newcomer writer - and yes, this one’s as bad as last week’s - Jacqueta May certainly seems to have watched Ghost more times than is healthy; as the opening shots of Eugene wandering around intact while his corpse lies all bloody and messy on the roadside (not to mention the ‘white-light’ ending) almost brought back unpleasant memories of potter’s wheels and Righteous Brothers from the early nineties. And is it just me, or is that whole ‘backwards story-telling’ device so beloved of post-Tarantino scribes getting just a bit old hat now? Not to mention the obligatory use of rock and pop classics on the soundtrack in order to denote an achingly clever (sic.), post-modern self-awareness of the subject matter of which the piece is a scathing examination of (Jesus, I think I just came over all John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado for a minute then. Hope they send me the cleaning bill…)

Never has a cushion been chewed so vehemently without the stimulus of an anal probe

And please, please can someone tell me if Torchwood is on some sort of percentage for every R ‘n’ B ballad that it shoe-horns into each episode like the obligatory salad you get with pub meals? There is in fact a wonderfully post-modern moment in this episode - for all my nay-saying - and it comes when Owen is viewing one of Eugene’s unreturned DVDs. Seems that even one of the show’s stars has finally taken the ‘sod this for a game of soldiers’ route and stuck the classic A for Andromeda on instead. Perhaps next week Jack will discover a box-set of Angel and realise how his character has been reduced to a tired Xerox of his Season One self instead…

Yes, I’m probably being harsh - as I’m reliably informed that self-intoxication by certain beverages not only makes this episode tolerable but indeed enjoyable - but we really have seen all this shtick done before and much, much better. Investigating a man’s death by examining how he lived his life? Pretty much every cop show going. The loveable, geeky everyman who just dreams of a world beyond the humdrum and manages to save the day and make a connection with the show’s bit of glam before being abandoned to his fate? Well, Marc Warren et al pretty much bagged that one last June. There’s nothing particularly wrong with 'Random Shoes', but there’s nothing particularly right with it either. Like something you’d buy from the Innovations catalogue, or one of those bodily organs which thanks to evolution no longer plays any significant part, you’re left wondering - just as the fourth Doctor once did - as to what it’s for?!?

Perhaps next week Jack will discover a box-set of Angel and realise how his character has been reduced to a tired Xerox of his Season One self instead…

And it’s hard to raise any interest in a piece of drama in which the main tension comes from two blokes ripping off a supposed mate as to the value of some e-bay trinket. As with most Torchwood episodes you’re left feeling that this is all going somewhere, only for the resolution to leave you feeling as flat as the proverbial pancake. So what if Eugene’s naïve dream of life beyond the stars turns out to be real, when all it achieves for him is the sight of his estranged, grieving parents and a completely non-sensical ability to save pretty Welsh girls from a similar fate. Hardly a life - or indeed, death - lesson that I’ll ever want to learn.

Coming across like a Richard Curtis film squeezed through the emotional wroughtness of the RTD mincer, 'Random Shoes' is a far too late attempt to instil Torchwood with a bit of heart. And if this is the result, bring back the OTT swearing and horny aliens tout-de-suite!

But what do I know? Adam Stone probably loved it…

(The Torchwood Book of How-To-Rip-Off-Every-Genre-Show-Going Facts has this to say about Random Shoes: the six minutes during which this episode displayed the CBBC logo was a deliberate attempt to inveigle our youth into this corrupt, God-less excuse for a television show. The bastards.)