Meta: Golden Age- An exercise in fabulous
In the run up to series 3, the BBC released 3 Torchwood radio plays. The first one, Asylum, was.... underwhelming. However, I had great hope for Golden Age, as it was written by James Goss, the man who wrote the tie-in novel Almost Perfect. For those of you who haven't read Almost Perfect, just trust me when I say it was full of so much fabulous that when you're done reading the book, you find you've somehow become covered in glitter. So, naturally, your expectations of fabulous for anything that he writes should be high.
James Goss, I would like to take this moment to formally let you know that following my listening to Golden Age, I have decided that you are one of the most fierce people who ever lived, and that you and I should go dancing at the gay clubs together, possibly shoe shopping on the weekends. In short, sir, I am in big gay love with you.
Here's the synopsis of Golden Age as given by the BBC website:
The Torchwood team are led to Delhi on the trail of a dangerous energy field. As the field grows, they witness the simultaneous disappearance of hundreds of people. Jack discovers that the field centres on an old colonial mansion, Torchwood India.
Shocked to find that Torchwood India is still going strong after he shut it down himself over 80 years ago, he is even more surprised to find that its members, including his old flame the Duchess, haven't aged a day.
Needless to say, with THAT summary, I had pretty high expectations. And the actual radio play met and exceeded almost every expectation of fabulous that I had.
THE WRITING OF JAMES GOSS: CREATING FABULOUS
Setting:
In radio plays, it's amusing how they have to insert lines of the characters describing their surroundings since we don't have the visual:
Gwen: Is this really a Torchwood base? It looks like a five-star hotel!
Ianto: *in awe* Lots more marble than Torchwood Cardiff.
Gwen: Oh, it's even got a tiger's head on the wall.
HAHAHAHA!
Marble, tiger's head on wall, gin and whiskey being offered to the Torchwood characters in the early morning while old men play croquet on an impeccably manicured front lawn. Fabulous setting? Check, check, and CHECK.
Characters:
The duchess is Jack's old flame. Let's look at how she enters the scene.
Jack: The duchess? Is she still alive?
Ianto: Who's the duchess?
Jack: An old friend. She must be at least a hundred.
Ianto: Not early twenties and carrying a blunderbuss?
Gwen: GET DOWN!
*GUN SHOT OF FABULOUS*Duchess: Captain Jack Harkness. You're back.
The duchess...enters the play... with a BLUNDERBUSS... and starts trying to kill Jack. I. Just. It's. There are no words.
And then!
Duchess: Well, how do you do? Charmed. I'm Elanor, Duchess of Melrose. Call me Nellie. Do.
Ianto: *obviously disgruntled/jealous* Pleased to meet you.
Gwen: Hello. I love your ball gown.
So, just to recap, the duchess enters the scene wearing a BALL GOWN and starts shooting at Jack with a blunderbuss. Later on, she dictates where everyone must sit and what everyone must drink (which is mostly alcoholic beverages) and when Ianto asks for a coffee she bitchily gives him a lemonade (The Importance of Being Ernest, anyone?).
If there is anything more fabulous than that, I don't know what it is.
My friend Patrick did some leg-work and found a photo of Jasmine Hyde, the actress who voices the duchess. This is how I will forever picture the duchess in my head, because it is far too fabulous not to:
There she sits with her rum and coke on a hot summer morning. Fierce.
Additionally, if you didn't know how fabulous a blunderbuss is, THIS is how fabulous a blunderbuss is:
God, I love James Goss.
Fabulous characters? EPIC CHECK OF YES!
Jack/Ianto-love/Angsty things:
Here, I must admit I was a BIT disappointed. While there were obvious moments where Ianto was jealous and they did give the head-nod to Jack and Ianto being in a relationship of some sort, there wasn't any real Jack/Ianto confrontation or interaction throughout this whole thing. I await the massive amounts of fanfic this radio play should inspire to fill in the gap. Hell, maybe I'll even write some of my own.
There WAS a wonderfully angsty moment where the duchess asks Jack about Ianto, though:
Duchess: Where have you been all this time? Surely not Torchwood...
Jack: Cardiff.
Duchess: Cardiff, yes, of course. Mm. And what a lot of aliens must choose that as their first port of call.
Jack: Oh, you'd be surprised. We've got a rift.
Duchess: Oh, if only we had one of those, I'm positively jealous.
Jack: Of the rift?
Duchess: Perhaps. Mr. Jones, he's very good-looking is he your ah-
Jack: *abruptly* Assistant.
Duchess: No doubt.
TWIST THE KNIFE IN MY CHEST, WHY DON'T YOU, JACK! Grah! I want to punch him in the face sometimes. I can just imagine Ianto off somewhere else in the building suddenly doubling over in pain. Gwen says, "Are you alright?" to which Ianto answers, "I don't know. I'm having a very bad day and I'm not sure why. It's kind of like that time that Jack and Tosh got trapped in WWII. I had the same stomach-ache then."
IANTO IS SUCH A WOOBIE and COMPLETELY UNDERAPPRECIATED! I don't understand how Jack can be such a jerk-face. I'd LIKE to believe that Jack is telling the duchess Ianto is his assistant so that Ianto won't be singled out in a crazy jealous rampage (she DID try to shoot Jack after all) or to protect Ianto from any sort of evil attention a la Peter Parker and MJ of the Spiderman chronicles, but at this point in the plot Jack is happily shuffling down memory lane with the duchess and probably doesn't see her as a real threat to Ianto. So Jack is probably just being... Jack. *sigh* Honestly, at this point it's COMMIT OR GET OUT, YOU TOOL! Quit stringing the poor kid along. Srsly.
So Jack/Ianto love? Sadly, I won't grant it a check because it didn't give me any sort of real interaction between the two. However, angsty woobie-ness? Giant check. Hell yes.
Other random stereotypical and fabulous things I was expecting of a radio play set in India:
Elephants? Check, check.
Atrocious Indian accent from a bumbling convenient store-owner type character? CHECK.
Reference to Buddhism? Check.
Gandhi? Check.
Overall, it was a win.
James Goss, I would like to take this moment to formally let you know that following my listening to Golden Age, I have decided that you are one of the most fierce people who ever lived, and that you and I should go dancing at the gay clubs together, possibly shoe shopping on the weekends. In short, sir, I am in big gay love with you.
Here's the synopsis of Golden Age as given by the BBC website:
The Torchwood team are led to Delhi on the trail of a dangerous energy field. As the field grows, they witness the simultaneous disappearance of hundreds of people. Jack discovers that the field centres on an old colonial mansion, Torchwood India.
Shocked to find that Torchwood India is still going strong after he shut it down himself over 80 years ago, he is even more surprised to find that its members, including his old flame the Duchess, haven't aged a day.
Needless to say, with THAT summary, I had pretty high expectations. And the actual radio play met and exceeded almost every expectation of fabulous that I had.
THE WRITING OF JAMES GOSS: CREATING FABULOUS
Setting:
In radio plays, it's amusing how they have to insert lines of the characters describing their surroundings since we don't have the visual:
Gwen: Is this really a Torchwood base? It looks like a five-star hotel!
Ianto: *in awe* Lots more marble than Torchwood Cardiff.
Gwen: Oh, it's even got a tiger's head on the wall.
HAHAHAHA!
Marble, tiger's head on wall, gin and whiskey being offered to the Torchwood characters in the early morning while old men play croquet on an impeccably manicured front lawn. Fabulous setting? Check, check, and CHECK.
Characters:
The duchess is Jack's old flame. Let's look at how she enters the scene.
Jack: The duchess? Is she still alive?
Ianto: Who's the duchess?
Jack: An old friend. She must be at least a hundred.
Ianto: Not early twenties and carrying a blunderbuss?
Gwen: GET DOWN!
*GUN SHOT OF FABULOUS*Duchess: Captain Jack Harkness. You're back.
The duchess...enters the play... with a BLUNDERBUSS... and starts trying to kill Jack. I. Just. It's. There are no words.
And then!
Duchess: Well, how do you do? Charmed. I'm Elanor, Duchess of Melrose. Call me Nellie. Do.
Ianto: *obviously disgruntled/jealous* Pleased to meet you.
Gwen: Hello. I love your ball gown.
So, just to recap, the duchess enters the scene wearing a BALL GOWN and starts shooting at Jack with a blunderbuss. Later on, she dictates where everyone must sit and what everyone must drink (which is mostly alcoholic beverages) and when Ianto asks for a coffee she bitchily gives him a lemonade (The Importance of Being Ernest, anyone?).
If there is anything more fabulous than that, I don't know what it is.
My friend Patrick did some leg-work and found a photo of Jasmine Hyde, the actress who voices the duchess. This is how I will forever picture the duchess in my head, because it is far too fabulous not to:
There she sits with her rum and coke on a hot summer morning. Fierce.
Additionally, if you didn't know how fabulous a blunderbuss is, THIS is how fabulous a blunderbuss is:
God, I love James Goss.
Fabulous characters? EPIC CHECK OF YES!
Jack/Ianto-love/Angsty things:
Here, I must admit I was a BIT disappointed. While there were obvious moments where Ianto was jealous and they did give the head-nod to Jack and Ianto being in a relationship of some sort, there wasn't any real Jack/Ianto confrontation or interaction throughout this whole thing. I await the massive amounts of fanfic this radio play should inspire to fill in the gap. Hell, maybe I'll even write some of my own.
There WAS a wonderfully angsty moment where the duchess asks Jack about Ianto, though:
Duchess: Where have you been all this time? Surely not Torchwood...
Jack: Cardiff.
Duchess: Cardiff, yes, of course. Mm. And what a lot of aliens must choose that as their first port of call.
Jack: Oh, you'd be surprised. We've got a rift.
Duchess: Oh, if only we had one of those, I'm positively jealous.
Jack: Of the rift?
Duchess: Perhaps. Mr. Jones, he's very good-looking is he your ah-
Jack: *abruptly* Assistant.
Duchess: No doubt.
TWIST THE KNIFE IN MY CHEST, WHY DON'T YOU, JACK! Grah! I want to punch him in the face sometimes. I can just imagine Ianto off somewhere else in the building suddenly doubling over in pain. Gwen says, "Are you alright?" to which Ianto answers, "I don't know. I'm having a very bad day and I'm not sure why. It's kind of like that time that Jack and Tosh got trapped in WWII. I had the same stomach-ache then."
IANTO IS SUCH A WOOBIE and COMPLETELY UNDERAPPRECIATED! I don't understand how Jack can be such a jerk-face. I'd LIKE to believe that Jack is telling the duchess Ianto is his assistant so that Ianto won't be singled out in a crazy jealous rampage (she DID try to shoot Jack after all) or to protect Ianto from any sort of evil attention a la Peter Parker and MJ of the Spiderman chronicles, but at this point in the plot Jack is happily shuffling down memory lane with the duchess and probably doesn't see her as a real threat to Ianto. So Jack is probably just being... Jack. *sigh* Honestly, at this point it's COMMIT OR GET OUT, YOU TOOL! Quit stringing the poor kid along. Srsly.
So Jack/Ianto love? Sadly, I won't grant it a check because it didn't give me any sort of real interaction between the two. However, angsty woobie-ness? Giant check. Hell yes.
Other random stereotypical and fabulous things I was expecting of a radio play set in India:
Elephants? Check, check.
Atrocious Indian accent from a bumbling convenient store-owner type character? CHECK.
Reference to Buddhism? Check.
Gandhi? Check.
Overall, it was a win.