Well I wonder what this episode could be about? A supposedily heart wrenching tale of love, loss and betrayal; and the best title they can come up with is “Cyberwoman”. Ahhh the boundless poetry that beats in the heart of an Englishman- SORRY!!!!!!! “Welshman”.
In my experience it takes about 3 drafts to get a script into a shape where other people can usefully comment on it. Until then the mechanics of the structure and plotting are still to raw and the characters and dialogue too sketchy. Now once handed over to your producer and/or script editor, they read it, hopefully like it, and then they kick the living shit out of it.
They take your carefully crafted screenplay, strip it apart, reveal the short cuts and cheats you hoped you could get away with and effectively force you to go and do it again- but this time better. They questions characters motivations, actions, reactions. The logic of even the smallest event is looked at from all angles, in an attempt to gauge how it affects the narrative as a whole. Is the audience getting enough information, too much perhaps- in the wrong order? Or if in the worst case scenario, your screenplay sucks- what if anything can be done to save it?
Their views should be respected and listened to because they’re on your side and they have the script’s best interests at heart.
They can be nice and lie through their teeth, gush effusively about the masterpiece you’ve crafted- trouble is if your unedited script makes it to screen, it’ll only be ripped to pieces by critics or bloggers such as ourselves, by which point it’s too late. On the other hand if you’re RTD everyone will love it because it’s obviously “Brilliant!” by dint of you having written it and we have to sit through ill-plotted monkey dribble like “New Earth”.
The main problem is seems to me in Torchwood or Who is their over-reliance on "character" to the detriment of the story!
Repeatedly we have “character” scenes that are so over whelming, so big, so dominating- all action around them has to effectively stop until people have had their “moment”.
Doomsday’s scene as Jackie and Peter come face to face is a prime example. The Cybermen and the Daleks are enthusiastically blowing seven grades of shit out of the Torchwood staff, the building and each other. Our brave heroes find the only empty corridor in the building and decide with the world about to end and no paper bags to hand, a five minute reunion scene would work fine just about now!
YOU CANNOT STOP THE PLOT FOR THIS STUFF!
Shift the scene to a more logical point when death isn’t quite so omnipresent! At least have the Cyberman and or Daleks trying to cut their way through a door!
Screenplays are all about story. Not character! Not dialogue! You populate your story with characters who are defined and revealed by their actions and dialogue. But all are subservient to the story.
So however good the scene where Ianto faced down Lisa had been, acted, directed, written, it was always going to suck because the way the characters got to that point is retarded to a level rarely reached in modern TV. (Mickey’s amazing ability to hack into a military grade computer system, using a one word password, and then firing a missile comes close).
The script proves the writers don’t understand the first thing about real characters. Ianto’s betrayal is inexcusable. There is no way he would be allowed to carry on at Torchwood. This is the equivalent a member of the Spooks team letting his al-Qaeda girlfriend into MI5 head quarters. Two corpses and a bit of shouting later he gets to keep is job- I think not!
Mike Yates betrayed the Doctor and Brigadier for far better reasons and the writers at least had the courage to follow through the logical consequences. They even brought him back a few stories later in a modified form. And this was in those cave-man days of the 70s, when the writers were- well just shit I guess you could say and wouldn’t have thought of things like character arcs.
I crave plot, dramatic not just emotional tension. I crave logic to be applied actually.
And why does no one shoot the Cyberwoman in her un-converted head or is that just not cricket?
And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Jack have a fucking blow torch in his hand! Why can’t he use that to destroy the human part of the cyborg? “Man in a Suitcase” managed an impressive full body burn back in the 60s (an episode guest starring Donald Sutherland as I remember) a nasty grisly death, but this is ‘adult’ sci-fi so why not?
Suppose the burn didn’t kill her and oh I don’t know- she used the handy pool of water to put out the flames- see where I’m going? She staggers out all charred and a little gooey- ten times as scary and no kiddes to worry about since is is after all- an adult show, so bring it on!
Yeah but that would all be too simple. We’d probably have to loose the genius brain swap climax and the Cyberbabe/pterodactyl punch-up.
Russell and co laughed for three weeks at the thought of the cute cyberchick taking on the pterodactyl - hmmmm they really need to get out more! Comments like this keep appearing again and again in Confidential and whatever the Torchwood equivalent is. Stick a few writers and a bottle of wine in a room together and you will get ideas like this. Like oh I don’t know wouldn’t it be cool if the Daleks and the Cybermen turned up in a story together- how ace would that be!!!! (sorry wrong blog again)
This is supposed to be Sci-Fi where I always thought you needed to have some logical rationale for why things happen. Otherwise where does it stop? Attacked by a cyberwoman, shall we shoot her, shall we burn her with the blow torch, no set the pterodactyl on her! Obvious solution when you think about it. You might as well drown her in jelly. Sure that one would keep the writers giggling for a while, but its just as shit an idea.
Just because something looks cool, or made everyone laugh is not a reason to include it in the script. However Russell I do think that hidden in another alcove of the Hub should be an emergency inflatable Margaret Thatcher droid, just in case the team comes under attack by some alien who just happens to habitually pee his pants at the sign of a large latex former Prime Ministers. You could call it the Maggy-Tron.
Now we’ve had We(evils) so what could we call our aliens that’d sound cool- ahhh the V(nasties), O’rribles- ahhh see what I did there- I’m soooo funny!
In all seriousness, this is not TV that will last or gain a loyal following. The lighting is horrible, the scripts paper thin, the dialogue- hmm sort of involved Jack stating the bleeding obvious:
“Run away fast.” “We need guns lots of them” “Keep running” “We can’t let her get out of here” “Did I mention my running plan?”
It’s a bizarre childish misfire by writers who don’t understand the genre they’ve chosen to work in. They think they’re a hell of a lot smarter than they are, when each week another ten inch nail is hammered relentlessly into the coffin. They don’t seem to be able to grasp the very basics of plotting! In real life one thing happens after another. In screenplays, one thing happens because of another!
Hitchcock towards the end of his career as he craved artistic recognition, (basically he wanted an Oscar before he croaked) started making up psychological or sociological bull-shit to try and give what were still effectively suspense thrillers deeper meanings.
Assembled journalists listen eagerly as he told them how the blasé attitude to life shown by the Tipi Hedran character in the Birds’ was a reflection of societies in general. News to the screenwriter Evan Hunter who thought he was working on a screwball comedy which simply took an unexpected side step into the horror genre!
I quote Evan Hunter:
“This was utter rot, a supreme showman’s con. When we were shaping the screenplay, there was no talk at all about symbolism….”
“Characters in screwball comedy have no depth. They merely represent conflicting attitudes. We were trying to tell a story lighter than air. As far as I was concerned, everything that preceded the first gull hitting Melanie on the head was pure gossamer”
Now I’m not saying that Torchwood or Who’s characters should be mere cyphers, but their emotional turmoil should not be the spine stories are hung from! It should be a reflection or a result of well plotted stories!!!!!
At the same time as he was attempting to convince people of the “importance” of the films he was now making, Hitchcock was busy poo pooing Evan Hunter’s concerns about some no unsubstantial holes in the logic of the story they’d crafted together.
“Don’t worry it all goes too fast for them Evan” was Hitchcock’s reply.
BS Mr. Hitchcock.