Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Chaps With Wings There

Torchwood: Small Worlds

Things are getting strange, I'm starting to worry
This could be a case for Mulder and Scully

And indeed it was. You had Spooky Jack and Gwen the sceptic with Catatonia's Welsh lilt and a plot stuck together with bits left over from The X-Files. And Angel. And The Outer Limits. Freak weather conditions from The Claws Of Axos. Police drama a la T** B***. Dark secrets from Harry Potter. For at the third or fourth time this series, they threw half a dozen other recognizable programmes into a blender, and hoped the resulting concoction would still be palatable. Hidden agendas. Failed romances. Mysterious past lives. Heavy-handed moral subtext. ENOUGH already!

What Torchwood really needs - or needed, it's probably far too late now - is to ditch Eric Saward's evil Kamelion twin and bring in a proper nuts-and-bolts script editor; someone who knows that events shouldn't happen just to be 'cool' or to advance the plot, one who will stand up to Russel and say "no, this jumble of different concepts isn't going to work", and put a red marker pen through all the extraneous twaddle. Imagine the writers' brief for a series where the premise is just so overcomplicated and so wrong that every episode has to be The Five Doctors. I'm pretty sure we're looking at it now. Where's Terrence Dicks when you need him?

"Imagine the writers' brief for a series where every episode has to be The Five Doctors. I'm pretty sure we're looking at it now"

There is quite a lot to like in this episode, but it's mainly in dribs and drabs instead of as a satisfyingly whole. PJ Hammond gave it his best shot, and I'm loathe to place any blame directly at his feet, but you can see how the need to tie so many elements together proved too much even for him. The bulk of Small Worlds is perfectly acceptable within its own episode microcosm, but put it anywhere near the rest of Torchwood's own 'continuity' and it INSTANTLY falls to bits. Let's face it, unless there's a later episode with Ianto's head on a spike with a basketball net in his mouth, logcal running order is never going to be restored ever.

I can also see Hammond watching the finished programme and tutting at the numerous little things that would have gelled so much better had the production team taken a little extra care to visualise them properly. For instance, why did the fairies kill everyone on the boxcar except Jack? Unless they somehow know already he's immortal, there's no reason for them not to be completely indiscriminate, and it would have been so easy to have Jack spit out a few rose petals and let that carry the whole scene. What exactly were the fairies' motives anyway? Unless I read the confusing explanations wrong, they're all the souls of dead children, so why go through the whole 'Chosen One' rigmarole in the first place? Why did they wantonly kill off Jack's aged love-interest, if it wasn't simply to foreclose the intriguing mystery subplot once it had done its job, in EXACTLY the same way The Ghost Machine did? Was it to protect the fairies' sanctity? Then why reveal themselves when gatecrashing the party? (And wasn't that completely unnecessary anyway? They were far more sinister as indistinct shadows; first rule of horror, sudden death is scarier when you can't see it. Knock it off with the whole 'Back off! We've got a CGI station and we're not afraid to use it!' attitude, and spend that money overcoming the ridiculous limitations the show enforces on itself.) And what happens to all the witnesses, once Torchwood has buggered off and left them without staying to clear the mess up? I could go on and on and ON.

And that ending. Hnnngh. If it were a Twilight Zone episode, or some other anthology series, I'd have said it was brilliant; particularly for that pure Hammond final shot that confirmed they were never going to win, because the evidence proved that the timeline was preset and events had already happened. As a Torchwood ending, where the supposedly high stakes are repeatedly thrust in your face every week, it absolutely wound me up. It was Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, where the big twist you'd lead yourself to believe turned out not to be a twist after all, and the dark mystery had been played out absolutely straight. With all the piecemeal knowledge Jack decides to divulge bit by bit over the course of the episode, I half-expected some mythical Seventh Doctor Macguffin to be pulled out of a hat at the last moment; but oops, nope, can't deal with it, sorry. It was all a MASSIVE chicken-shit fakeout. Why did Jack feel the need to keep shtum and jeapordise the team's chances even more? Why not just tell everyone in advance that they're a bit fucked instead of messing with their heads for fifty minutes? Besides the obvious reason of not having a show then, I mean. If I were Gwen I'd be doing far more than just glowering at the end - he might not be able to die, but I bet Jack could still feel the bruises from a bloody good collective kicking.

"The only source they haven't yet liberally pilfered from is Douglas Adams, and somewhere Oolon Colluphid is penning a new book entitled 'Well That About Wraps It Up For Torchwood'"

Torchwood 3 really is a Mickey Mouse outfit, isn't it? We empathize with Mulder and Scully when they fall from grace, as every failure takes them one step closer to the ultimate truth. I'm just not getting that with Torchwood. Why are we watching this bunch of complete losers? Five weeks in and there's still no reason to like any of them when they repeatedly accomplish nothing, and half the shit they bring upon themselves. We don't want our heroes to predictably win every week, but we expect them to at least try. Cowardice might be more realistic human behaviour but it makes for spectacularly bad telly. Where's the conflict and drama if your group cops out at the first sign of real foreshadowed trouble with over half the series still to go?

I sat through four episodes of Doctor Who Weakly to get this far and really wanted Small Worlds to turn the whole shebang around. But despite penning undoubtedly the best instalment of the series thus far (turning a deaf ear to the 'not much contest' line from the Greek chorus), if the man who gave us Sapphire & Steel can't elevate Torchwood beyond a thematic and structural mess with his trademark brand of extra-dimensional weirdness, I don't honestly see what hope is left for it, unless someone is prepared to take the bold step of turning it into genuine black comedy. That would be brilliant. As it is, the only source they haven't yet liberally pilfered from is Douglas Adams, and somewhere Oolon Colluphid is penning a new book entitled 'Well That About Wraps It Up For Torchwood'.

Next week: Not Cardiff. Gabriel Woolf just skated down the road.

The Bumper Book Of Persistent Torchwood Stains has this to say about Small Worlds: The forthcoming CD of Murray Gold's Torchwood music includes the tracks 'I Saw Remembrance Of The Daleks Once', 'ZOMGWTFDRAMA', and 'Emote, Damn You'.

Jack and Gwen Have Been Assigned

It may, or may not, surprise you to find out that I really enjoyed Small Worlds. In fact I have enjoyed every episode so far this series even the much maligned Cyberwoman. What I do like about the series is the fact that each episode has been very different from other episodes, and it looks like next weeks episode is going to be completely different again.

What this episode is more like than anything else is a Sapphire and Steel episode, which is not that surprising given that the episode is written by Peter J (PJ) Hammond who has spent the last god knows how many years writing for series like Midsomer Murders (where I also believe that Kevin Clarke spends his time nowadays). He does seem very at home writing these kinds of stories and there were certainly elements present in this episode that he had used before in his Sapphire and Steel episodes such as the use of nursery rhymes and spooky children.

The ending of this episode is certainly the most this episode is like a Sapphire and Steel episode as if you remember in Adventure Two Steel had to sacrifice the life of one of the characters in order to solve the problem and save time or the world. In that episode it was the kindly Ghost Hunter Tully and in this episode it is the rather spooky, Jasmine.

Now this ending is certainly not going to appeal to Doctor Who fans who love the fact the Doctor will generally always save the day and not let anybody die in the process but like in the Sapphire and Steel episode in this case it was about the only way that Jack could see to end the problem. Its not likely to endear the character of Jack to Doctor Who fans or to his fellow Torchwood crew, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

At the end of the day the little girl didn’t go kicking and screaming with the fairies did she, she seems perfectly happy to go off with them and even said to Gwen that she would rather go with them that stay with her mother. You have to feel sorry for her mother though, who, in the space of a few moments lost both her partner and her daughter.

This just goes to show that this is not a series like Doctor Who and there are not always happy endings. You could argue that the ending was happy for the little girl as if you see in the last scene when discovers her on the picture of the little girl with the fairies and she is smiling.

Doesn’t that make what happened a little easier to swallow? Probably not but Gwen is certainly discovering that she has entered a much darker, murkier world than she is used too, especially after seeing her house trashed. It does make you wonder what effect this will have on the team, as Jack does seem to confide in Gwen more than he does with any of the other members of the team.

In this episode we learn quite a lot about Captain Jack and how he does in fact live in the hub, how he doesn’t sleep, how he once had a lost love and how he was also seen in 1909. My girlfriend certainly enjoyed the first scenes of a topless Jack lying in bed anyway (as no doubt did some of the OG contigent!)

The scenes in 1909 are certainly going to get a lot of people wondering when those scenes take place. It seems pretty obvious to me that these all happened before he met the Doctor and Rose in The Empty Child. How long he was in war-torn England is debatable but we all know why he appeared to be posted abroad after the war. Well I suppose you can call travelling around time and space in a police box being posting abroad. It also makes you wonder how long Jack has been on Earth since returning there from the Game Station.

I am wondering if he does know that the Doctor has regenerated, I mean I assume he was on Earth and part of Torchwood during the events in Doomdsay or the Battle of Canary Wharf as it is known in Torchwood circles. I am sure that it will get explained in later episodes but I would imagine that Jack has been back on Earth for a couple of years at least. I mean he seems to have been a member of Torchwood for a while at least due to the fact that he is the leader of the team.

For all we know he may have been on Earth during the events of series 1 before he actually appeared in the series for the first time. You could say the same about Tosh. When we first met her in Doctor Who was she already a member of Torchwood and was she undercover as a pathologist, since she has not displayed much interest in that sort of thing in the series so far. It certainly does make me wonder.

We also meet a very spooky little girl whose name co-incidentally is the same name as the girl who played a very similar character in Rememberence of the Daleks. I very much doubt there is anything more at work there than just a mere co-incidence, as was the mention of the Mara by Jack. I know that a lot of fans punched the air with joy when that name was heard but I doubt that it has anything to do with the Mara of Doctor Who, certainly PJ Hammond may have been aware of those episodes but Mara means different things in different cultures and I would say that Hammond was using a different meaning of the word Mara here.

I must admit I liked the direction, especially the scenes shot from the fairies point of view with that nice green tint. I hope that we see Alice Troughton helming a few episodes of Doctor Who sometime in the future. The scenes of the paedophile character, literally coughing up roses, was very disturbing and could have come straight out of a Sapphire and Steel episode.

Captain Jack gets to have his Doctorish speech with Gwen as they leave Estelle’s house. He does seem to getting more and more Doctorish by the episode, or perhaps that is deliberate, making him like the Doctor, so that fans of Who don’t feel shortchanged by this spin-off. If that were the case then he has failed it would seem. In this episode neither Owen, Tosh or Ianto have a great deal to do. When will Tosh have something to do? Come on guys give her something to do!

The CGI work was good and was all the more effective for being barely used, the suggestion of the fairies flying around people by the direction, camera work and photography was conveyed effectively enough.

Was it me or did the music keep going Harry Potter on us? There were moments when I expected Michael Gambon to turn up as Albus Dumbeldore. This is not a criticism as I thought the music was very effective in this episode, as was the use of the poem by W.B Yeats and the use of nursery rhymes.

As far as I am concerned Torchwood is going from strength to strength and I really do hope that it carries on beyond its first 13 episodes.

Photographing Fairies

Sorry for the delay - what with the Dimensions Convention, arduous train trips home and the lack of Sky+ I only caught this week’s episode of Torchwood on the BBC2 repeat tonight. Well, actually I did start to watch it at Neil’s caravan on Sunday; but after two very long days (being abused on stage by a former Doctor really takes it out of you), more laughter than it seems possible to squeeze into 48 hours and far too many G ‘n’ Ts, then I fell asleep. Awaking only at Neil’s prodding and cries of ‘Wake up, Sean, it’s the Mara!’ Blimey, for a minute there I thought he’d given up on the whole shebang and stuck ‘Kinda’ on the video instead…

And my verdict? Well, I liked it. Yes, liked it. It’s certainly not perfect - and in certain other shows which will remain nameless (okay, BSG) it would have been little more than filler in a far meatier sandwich - but considering some of the dull and / or ridiculous garbage that’s been served up these past few weeks, then this was a definite improvement. And had more ‘adult’ drama than any half-arsed concoction of horny aliens, S&M Cyber-chicks or language out of a copy of Viz could ever provide.

more ‘adult’ drama than any half-arsed concoction of horny aliens, S&M Cyber-chicks or language out of a copy of Viz could ever provide.

But then you never really expected a writer of P(eter) J. Hammond’s pedigree to pander to lowest common denominator titillation TV, did you? The one-time Sapphire and Steel scribe brings a real air of menace and mystery to ‘Small Worlds’ that has simply been absent in Torchwood up to this point. And his characteristically supernatural spin on events here allows the drama to arise naturally rather than be forced down your throat - euphemism fully intended - like one or two other episodes I could mention. There’s some very adult issues on show here - not least of which paedophilia and domestic abuse - and it’s to Hammond’s credit that these themes are analysed without the need to bang us over the heads with their importance (other Torchwood scribes, take note). Also the direction by Alice (no relation) Troughton and some of the episode’s imagery - especially the victims who suffocate on a throat-full of flower petals - is both very effective and very disturbing by turn.

The performances are likewise of a higher than usual standard - Adrienne O‘Sullivan’s Estelle being particularly touching as Jack’s doomed love of six decades past - but are still too often being spoilt by a case of over-egging the mix. With John Barrowman himself being most guilty of this, giving emotion that’s more suited to some of his West End roles rather than the far more subtle techniques required of television acting. And being an episode which features an unearthly child at the centre of its dramatic arc, it’s unfortunate to once again find the curse of adolescent angst striking when a more nuanced performer would have given the final product much more of a kick.

Worse though is that this is still a far too derivative show for something which purports to be telling fresh new stories in a mature way. From the obvious Silence of the Lambs steal (Gwen plucking petals out of a victim’s throat almost frame-for-frame with Agent Starling’s moth discovery) to the way the malignant fairies hover Reaper-like above their victims (with even an accompanying ‘Father’s Day’ style POV to ram the homage home) Torchwood seems to be living by the maxim ‘talent borrows, genius steals’; though it’s not even close to fulfilling that promise (at least, not yet). Even the flashbacks to Jack and his platoon’s horrific demise are a thinly-veiled attempt to emulate Buffy and Angel’s similarly stylised attempts to instil background in their protagonists. But then aping Whedon’s oeuvre has almost become second nature to anything carrying the RTD stamp, so why should I even be surprised anyway?

Torchwood seems to be living by the maxim ‘talent borrows, genius steals’; though it’s not even close to fulfilling that promise

Part revenge-fantasy for abused children, part examination of the whole fairy-photographing phenomena that even the likes of Conan-Doyle gave credence to, ‘Small Worlds’ is - despite its numerous faults - a breath of fresh air for a show which had started to look stale and beyond parody after just four episodes. For once there is no overt machismo or ridiculously OTT sexuality to sink any redeeming features the episode has; leaving instead an intelligent tale (mostly) well told. If Team Torchwood manage to maintain this upswing in dramatic credibility, then this show might just hit paydirt before too long. And after ‘Cyberwoman’, did any of us really believe in the possibility of that?

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Torchwood’ Facts has this to say about Small Worlds: Christopher Bailey received royalties of 50p for this episode)

Jack Harkness: There can be only one.

Firstly, I must say that I did enjoy this episode.  Really, I did.  But there still hasn’t been an episode where I could go all out and say "Hell, yeah!"  Probably because I’m not American, but also because there’s always either something missing that I wanted, something added that I could have done without or it was just crap.

Whilst I realise that a review full of praise would be a) short and b) quite dull to read, I still think that it would be nice to put pen to paper (should that be finger to keyboard these days?) and actually be nice once in a while.  But until that happens, I’ll just have to content myself with the nit picking and the bitching.

Did I miss the opening ‘This is who we are’ speech in previous weeks, or is it something new?  It reminded me of the far classier opening monologue from Quantum Leap.  And paraphrasing a pun from the much under-rated Hudson Hawk, the quick cuts and loud rock music made me think that Torchwood are less CIA than they are MTVIA.

So, onto the story proper and we learn that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden and that Jack’s having nightmares despite not ever sleeping.  It’s a fairly safe bet that these two events are going to be linked.

Less CIA than they are MTVIA.

I suppose it was interesting to get a little back-story on Jack and to see him stretch his acting range beyond the flirt or shout technique.  It just raised an awful lot more questions for me though.  Perhaps they will be answered at some point later on but for the moment I’m at a loss.

Is Jack some kind of Highlander wannabe now? He can’t die (I imagine cutting his head off might slow him down at least) and we’re now getting flashbacks of him in earlier times.  Does he age at all these days?  Was he in fact flung from the far future into the distant past where he’s been waiting this past 100 years for the Doctor to pop up and help him either die or get better?

How does he keep getting jobs in the military?  If memory servers, Jack hails from the 51st or 52nd Century and yet he had no problem finding responsible employment in sensitive areas.  I’d have thought that his National Insurance number at least would raise a few eyebrows.

I want to know how Estelle didn’t recognise him.  I know there were probably years between the last time she saw his ‘father’ and when Jack turned up, but she had photos of him on her sideboard.  They must have been clear enough because Gwen made the connection straight away.  He would have spoken the same, looked the same and was even dressed the in the same military great coat (including nifty holster).  If he loved her that much, wouldn’t he have told her the truth?  I mean he wanders around telling random police constables all about himself, but the true love of his life?  Nah, why bother?  I’ll just tell her that my dad hooked up with some other woman and had kids with her instead.

"I hooked up with this bottle blonde with huge teeth and some northern bloke with big ears."

Look at it from Estelle’s point of view.  She pledges her life to this charming American who swears that they’ll be together until they die.  He then wanders off to fight a war and when it’s over, they’ve both survived and does he come back to her?  Nope.  He shacks up with somebody else, has at least one child who then looks her up years later to rub her nose in it.

Bit of a gitty thing to do really.  It would have been much better to tell her the truth.  "I was going to come back to you, but I had to take a bomb into deep space.  Then I hooked up with this bottle blonde with huge teeth and some northern bloke with big ears.  You know how hard it is to get away in situations like that."

The man is such an enigma these days.  Okay, I know when we met him, there were a couple of years missing from his life that he couldn’t remember, but that may have just been a really bad hangover.  Just lately, though, I’ve been getting the impression that we’re not going to have much continuity from the Doctor Who Jack Harkness to the Torchwood one.  I might be wrong of course.  But right now, I doubt it.

We got to see more of the car this week, too.  Obviously they were concerned the flashy lights and large black, obvious people-carrying tank may not be high profile enough for a secret organisation and so they decided to not only engrave the name ‘Torchwood’ on the bonnet but also spray paint it in yellow on the roof!  What's next week - The Torchwood open day?  Bring the kiddies to have their photo taken with a Weevil!  Secret Organisation people!  Look it up.

(Oh and you may have noticed that I have no idea about cars - There’s probably a specific name for the bit of car over the wheel arch that isn’t really the bonnet but I have idea what it would be.  I was just impressed I knew the phrase ‘Wheel arch’.  Actually ‘bonnet’ was pretty good for me.)

I felt that this week’s episode was nicely serious and grown-up without the forced smut or pointless bad language.  For example, it dealt with the paedophile aspect without histrionics or resorting to the stereotypical image of an over weight unshaven man with lank greasy hair and thick glasses.  I feel that does deserve a mention - It would have been so easy to just go for the lazy 'obvious baddy' option but the villain is always far more scary for his apparent normality and the fear that he could be anywhere without looking at all suspicious.

"Take her.  She’s a brat anyway."

It was also interesting to see them not come out of it with the usual smug 'aren’t we great' attitude.  Dissension in the ranks (which manifested itself as the Jack Pack not talking to the man - Did I say grown up?) when Jack had to make the decision to do nothing and let the fairy folk win.  Shades of Star Treks ‘Needs of the many’ philosophy.  It was a harsh decision, but was it the right one?

It’s not like they’d even made any attempt to stop the attacks before just giving in.  They spent the whole 50 minutes rushing round Cardiff, checking the weather forecast and volunteering for Help the Aged.  Even when they did track down the fairies, not one of the Jack Pack tried shooting them, fighting them or even zapping them with a proton pack.  It would have been better to see somebody try some kind of alternative strategy to just saying, "Take her.  She’s a brat anyway."

On the other hand, the young girl, Jasmine if memory serves, wanted to go with them and the badly CG’d fairies would continue killing and harassing people until they got what they wanted.  Admittedly, the mother might be a little put out that her daughter had skipped off into the woods, never to return, but other than that it solved a lot of problems.

I guess when you’re the head of an elite alien hunting task force, these are the kind of tough decisions you need to make.  Can they really call themselves alien hunters?  So far the only actual aliens they encountered were a sex hungry gas cloud and a leather-clad sewer dweller.  Even this week’s ‘enemy’ were creatures from before time or before mankind stood upright or whenever they came from.  But they were Earth creatures - Not alien.

Okay, there’s alien technology, but collecting bric-a-brac isn’t exactly the same as hunting, is it?  Still there are another eight shows to go, so perhaps we’ll meet them little green men soon enough.

Jar Jar Binks was more convincing than that.

And finally (You’ll be glad to know) I did like the little twist when Gwen zoomed in to the face of one of the Cottingly Fairies to show young Jasmines face.  It showed that she is happy and raises the question about the Fairies at the bottom of the garden all over again.

Naturally, I hunted down a copy of the picture for myself and immediately thought "Was Conan-Doyle on some serious medication at the time?"  I know he was a keen believer in the supernatural, but he really should have exercised some kind of restraint or asked to meet them or something.  I mean, Jar Jar Binks was more convincing than that.  You can practically see the brush strokes.  He wrote great books, but must have been incredibly gullible.

Still, back to the show, it was a nice little twist.  I enjoyed the show.

Next week looks like a Dog Soldiers rip off, so maybe the Torchwood werewolf makes a comeback.  Might be interesting.  I’m still going to record it though.  The shows not yet good enough that I’m going to miss out on sleep for it.

To Shanshu in Cardiff, boyo!

Oh, COME ON! That was just a botched episode of Angel, wasn't it? The "aliens" of the week were demons! The lead of ambiguguous background has an american accent is incredibly old, even though he hasn't aged. Oh, and he can't die buy normal methods. The flashbacks were exactly the same as the sort Angel had, the only difference being the sepia tint. Why not just call Torchwood "Jack Investigations" and have done with it?

Now all we need is a prophecy saying that when Jack helps to stop the apocalypse, his mortality will be restored.

Other burning point: Where are all these people from? We're meant to be in Cardiff, yet everyone seems to be english!

One thing I've mentioned before is a complete lack of any coherent explanation of anything. Nothing gets explained, there isn't even any attempt to explain some things! I'll explain as I go along.

What on earth does the episode name mean anyway?

The fairies are quite well done. The CGI is a little off, but it's a hell of a lot better than it could have been. Although why do they suddenly appear at the party? They're invisible all the way through, then they appear when it becomes dramatic? Here is a point where an explanation would have been easy. The Jack Pack are arriving anyway, so why didn't they say that Jack had some sort of device which made them become visible? Any explanation would have done!

Jack's old love was quite well brought into the story, but then she died having done absolutely nothing! Why did the fairies kill her anyway? What was the reason behind that? Instead, she should have been either brought in in an earlier episode, or killed off later. As it was, she was pretty meaningless, and all we gained was a cheesy line delivered in a horrible way: "We swore we'd be together til we died." at a disruptive moment. If she was in a bit more it wouldn't be a last minute comment.

The pedophile was a little overdone. It wouldn't have taken much too make it obvious what he was after, in fact it was pretty clear as soon as he started following the girl. The petal thing was a bit gruesome. It was his mouth covered in slobber that weirded me out.

The little girl. So much creepier than the Fear Her girl, although still not great.

The writing was all over the place, and while there were some good bits, it still felt a bit off.

The good side of this, however, was the directing, which seemed to hit the nail on the head. If only it had a better script, which would have given it the boost required to be brilliant directing.

I had suspected that Cyberwoman had been moved to be the day before The Invasion was released, which was a problem in that it made Ianto look overlooked before anyone else had really been looked at (Does that make sense? Read my last week's review, it's clearer there.). There aren't any sly comments about Ianto, there isn't any tension between him and Jack. He even makes a cheeky comment! Hardly the reaction of someone on reprimand grieving. Also, his being in the office when he shouldn't have would have worked better as a build up to the revelation that he's keeping his girlfriend in the basement. If this is after, wouldn't Jack be suspicious again? And Ianto seems so timid that I can't imagine he'd have the bottle to be there when he shouldn't after the "My girlfriend's in a pizza girl!" bonanza.

Finally, the ending. What on earth happened there? I can understand Jack giving the girl up to the fairies, but what the hell was he talking about? "A dead world, is that what you want?" "What good is that to you? There will be no more chosen ones!" What on earth did that mean? What on earth was he trying to say?

To sum up, what we have here in Sci Fi terms is a botched episode of Angel. In Doctor Who terms, an adult Fear Her, albeit slightly more enjoyable than the original. In lamen's terms, a mess.

5/10.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up of Made-Up Ptorchwood Facts has this to say about Small Worlds: When PJ Hammond was first asked by RTD to do a story about fairies- No, even I can't say that one, lest he reads it in a fanzine and hunts me down.

Kinda Surprise

Another dispiriting fifty minutes in the company of Torchwood.  I mean I've been largely positive about the series up until now, but this was a mess, and everything you could fear that show might descend into being.  I really, really left tonight's episode afraid for the safety of Season Three of Doctor Who.  They're different series, to be sure, but the same production team were happy to see tonight's drama broadcast as is despite the litany of problems.  Why is it for every very cool moment, there's some bit of dialogue, or acting, or direction that makes you want to throw a pillow at the screen?

The positives first.  Captain Jack's mystery is developing nicely and the revelation that he was knocking around on the planet in the very early 190os was a nice surprise and beautifully ambiguous in relation to whether those scenes happened before or after The Doctor Dances.  The flashback scene was shot well too, and it wasn't made completely clear whose side he was on in the war.  My impression is that they didn't and that in fact he was romancing the old fairy woman before he went traveling in the Tardis and looked her up when he reappeared on Earth just recently.  Otherwise we're in Highlander/Angel/Eighth Doctor Earth-arc territory, which wouldn't be such a bad thing as confusing -- were two of them knocking around during World War Two?  The touching scenes between Jack and his old girlfriend helped to fill out this background -- he obviously loved her very much.

It was a good premise too, building upon the famous hoax pictures, fairies being some elemental shadows looking for children to join with them.  In fact one of the highlights were the exposition scenes in which those photos were debunked again and the nature of the beasts was revealed even if 'evil since the dawn of time' seems a bit incongruous in a series that was supposed to be priding itself on its reliance on the gritty urban landscape and crap which haunts those street.   You can see the actual pictures and the camera that took them at the National Museum for Film, Television and Photography in Bradford and the facts mentioned here were completely correct.  For all of his cleverness, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was seduced by the children's story.  The eventual monsters were very pretty, perfectly painterly like those fairies, almost the product of some late Victorian painted picture book.

Shame it was dogged by some extraordinarily listless storytelling and poor structuring.  As with The Ghost Machine, the teaser was good and the first few scenes in which Jack looked up an old friend were sweet (although would Gwen really have been that rude in the talk about the fairies with all the eye-rolling?  Surely that's more like Owen behaviour?  This inconsistency of character from episode to episode is really irritating)  The chase through through Cardiff Market and the flower petals were pleasingly gruesome (even if that imagery wasn't satisfactorily explained). 

Beyond that once and again, we were treated to the girl being threatened, the timeless ones using the weather to defend her, Torchwood noticing the weather fluctuation and then chasing it up.  It was a bit like watching an episode of Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners in stately homes on a coach trip.  This isn't necessarily just a problem with Mr. P J Hammond's work.  All of the episodes have suffered from this repetition of action in one form or another, almost as though no one can get a grip of those extra five minutes which have been added to Doctor Who's usual running time.  They've also suffered from moments of threat going on far too long, the cutting back, over and over to something which has already been established, like the kids in peril in the wind, or the spooky monsters looking at our heroes from above.  This stylistic holdover from the parent series and seems out of place in the 'adult' world.

It was a bit like watching an episode of Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners in stately homes on a coach trip.

Time which could better be spent charting Jack's passage through history or providing Tosh with some character development outside of an upcoming episode that will no doubt include all of her character development or giving the characters a believable social life was instead used in the company of a vast range of characters that were no doubt supposed to be normal but were instead, well, boring.  The strategy of the series is no doubt for largely than life characters to brush up against the realistic, but that's no reason for the so-called 'real people' to have nothing in the way of interesting characterisation, or anything to make you actually care if they lived or died.  Compare and contrast the sinister lump of a step-father here with any of Gwen's colleagues from the first episode and there are some massive inconsistencies at play.  Normal doesn't have to mean dull.  Look at Spooks.

In this vein, were we supposed to care for Jasmine, the little girl?  The Chosen One (and really, people, you're invoking Buffyology here?) needed to either be a sweetheart, someone the audience could really get behind, or The Omen's Damien in a dress.  She was neither, and although the opening near abduction scene was winceful and said lump probably deserved to die for hitting the poor lamb, she was largely left standing around grinning as the elementals snuffed out her enemies.  The resolution was troubling too -- Jack essentially advocated that offering up the odd small child for sacrifice was perfectly fair if it kept the 'aliens' at bay.  Err, right.  And you're expecting us to like Captain Jack after this?  I mean his story doesn't really resolve itself.  Perhaps if they'd spinned it into something related to him trying and failing to be The Doctor but ... oh no ... this is all we've got time for ...

[This article about episode structure in Firefly describes what I think the Torchwood team are trying to accomplish.]

On the subject of characters, a continuing annoyance is the non-reappearance of Gwen's police partner from the first episode.  By making the police's participation irrelevant, they've lost one of the characters who could have been a secret weapon throughout -- he was the source of the oft quoted CSI: Kebab joke and his good humour would have provided much needed levity, particularly in a story like this.  Why not make him the person who picked up the mad childcatcher at Cardiff Market?  Recurring characters are a good thing.

But this was an episode filled with mini-irritations.  The close-up of the name of the street in which the Chosen One lives as though this was supposed to be a big important plot point.  The over reliance on that music cue which ends loudly and abruptly to signal 'ooh sinister'.  The caption on the flashback even though Jack's voiceover was actually telling us the time and place.  Oh and Jack holding back vital information about the enemy they were fighting to create false tension and fake climaxes when he reveals some piece of information, even though most of it was probably jibberish.  UNIT syndrome strikes the van too -- they're a secret organisation (outside the government etc) so we'll have the name of it carved in the side -- did anyone else find it's sliding appearance into shot retina searingly irritating?  And hey, why not the Mara?  What's to say the Krotons didn't have a hand in it also?

[Well alright that reference was nice, and PJ might not have included it as a direct Doctor Who reference, but you can imagine Russell squealing with glee when he read it).

It takes me no pleasure in writing this, since obviously everyone involved had the best of intentions and it makes me look like the judges who lambasted Carol Smilie on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday (I mean do they want Emma Bunton to win or what?)  The cast were doing their best with the material and some of the direction was OK.  But there are ongoing issues with the series, a kind of unsurety of tone and writing which is making it very difficult to watch, amplifying the faults rather than the successes.  Fundamentally, the question must be -- was it scary?  And unfortunately on this occasion, I'm sorry, no it wasn't.  At least not in the way that was intended.