Review: Torchwood S2 07 Dead Man Walking

[crabby_lioness]

Why do so many wonderful character moments have to be trapped inside such a wretched plot?

About halfway through my husband said, "I hope they're going somewhere with to this.  It's nice and creepy."  When it was all over I asked him what he thought about it.  "It was different."

"Yeah, but was it creepy-with-a-point or creepy-but-pointless?"

He

Comments

[geekrock]

"The problem with Dead Man Walking, in my opinion, is that Jones used the same motifs in this as he used to represent Satan in the who episodes..."

I agree. The black-eyed, Ancient Greek-esque talkin', resurrected man and the "horde of followers" (Weevils/Ood). You couldn't tell that it was written by the same man at all.

Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the episode. Yes, it was creepy, and I even jumped a few times when my brother banged around in his room next door, but I had to fight off more fits of giggle-attack than anything else. I particularly liked Gwen's Googling of "Death" and managing to track down exactly the right article. The Whoniverse obviously has a far superior crap-filter than our modern-day Google has. A current search for "Death Cardiff" spits back over 540,000 hits.

And "Smokey" is such an accurate name. I just couldn't really take a puff of smoke and CGI skeleton as seriously as I'm meant to take the most feared concept on Earth.

"Anyone else notice the inside joke when Ianto ran and grabbed the hockey stick

[crabby_lioness]

Hey, Smokey could have been worse. He was much better than the space whale.

The hockey stick was FTW.

[claramata]

I don't think they could really do much worse than the space whale.

Oh shit, did I just jinx the show?

[crabby_lioness]

"Ask and ye shall receive...."

*ducks and covers"

[love_jackianto]

'ETA: I got the hockey stick joke. It was the only time in the episode I laughed at something that was supposed to be funny.' I may not have cared for this episode, but I did like the hockey stick joke. I love how there is at least one reference to Jack/Inato's relationship in every episode. It really gives me something to look forward to.

'It gives some perspective to his strong feelings for Gwen and provides more evidence that his strong reactions to her now are not motivated by lust or romantic feeling so much as a deep desire to both protect his makeshift family and exercise some control over his own life.' Excellent point. To me, it has always seemed like Jack thinks of Gwen as the Rose to his Doctor.

[katestamps]

The thing about Jack, and you touch on it here, is this season he has an over-developed sense of "mine." Everything Torchwood is Jack's. Just ask him, he'll tell you, they are all HIS people. So he won't let Gwen go (even if it means adopting Rhys as part of the bargain) and he won't let Owen go...they are HIS team and no one else need apply. He's like a 2 year-old with...anything the 2 year-old can see. I get the feeling Ianto spends most of his time trying not to roll his eyes at Jack being hyper-possessive.

And my DH and I were talking last night about how Torchwood seems to continually have the issue of not knowing how their universe works. The seem to have not sat down and decided the rules for monsters, aliens and the like (or they don't enforce them to their writers...same thing) and the episodes often suffer for it. Which is too bad, because rules could be the difference between good and great, plot-wise.

[crabby_lioness]

I agree about the first but not the second. In fact the second is a point I argued against continuously last series. The universe is a honking big place with loads of diversity. Torchwood deals with the unknown. It would be unrealistic of them to have figured out the rules, or for everything that comes through to hold to the same rules. That's the very mistake Torchwood London made, and they paid for it in blood.