Torchwood Rant (humourous, spoilers)
OK, so for anyone that hasn't or isn't watching Torchwood: Children of Earth, you're not going to want to read this as it's chock-full of spoilers. Hopefully, though, you'll consider coming back and reading it another time.
Firstly and foremostly, I'm posting this rant having watched Ep1 and Ep2 of Children of Earth. I must say, I'm really enjoying the series and am very much looking forward to seeing what happens tonight!
BUT...
The Torchwood Hub is exploded at the end of Ep1, and Ep2 opens wiht Ianto and Gwen pulling themselves from the rubble. At this stage, we hit a major sci-fi cliche that never fails to bug me - normally highly skilled people becoming utterly useless when facing major characters.
The Government, who up until this point were sending units in with good tactics and high levels of training, seem to have hired to utterly dud snipers. As Gwen is stood in the doorway of the ambulance, she notices a red dot on her face - a laser scope. Rather than killing her immediately (as per, I assume, his instructions), the sniper waits for her to jump to one side and shoot back. This highly trained and competent marksman then inexplicably fails to kill her in any of the five or six shots he fires in the next thirty seconds. Why, exactly, is this guy being sent out to work as a sniper? He saw her go into the ambulance, surely he was covering it! She appears - he kills her, no?
Now I know that narrative causality means that she can't die at this stage of the story, and I'm entirely happy with that. I just get bugged when a major character survives not because of their own ability (eg, Neo fighting many Agent Smiths, Indiana Jones brawling with Nazis, Bond in pretty much every Bond film ever) but because the enemies suddenly become utterly shit. Gwen doesn't have superpowers. She doesn't do anything clever. She just shoots back with pistols, aiming upwards, at night, just after being blown up - and the sniper still can't kill her!
Meanwhile, another sniper is trying to kill Ianto. Ianto, being the tactical genius that he is, foils this attempt on his life by the genius notion of running away in a straight line. The sniper is obviously confused by this, choosing instead to ping shots off a range of items around him instead of, I don't know, hitting him through the chest.
I imagine the internal dialogue goes something like this:
Sniper: Target 2 has survived the bomb. Orders are to make sure there are no survivors. I'll just line up a good shot and... Oh, fuck! Missed! Good thing I covered this in training, I'll just have to aim again and drill him through the head, like I have those eight thousand times in training.
Oh shit, he's running away! In a straight line! Not particularly quickly! I've never covered what to do! I'll have to randomly spray shots around!
Fuck! Now he's hidden round a corner, I think! What does my training say about this? Oh yes, I shouldn't call in our extensive back-up, no, I should just lose track of him and disappear.
Excellent. Job done. Result.
I take this all with a pinch of salt, of course, but seriously - the writers have not done a good job on this one. However, they've done a very good job on the rest, particularly the laugh-out-loud funny moment of:
"We want a pony. We want a pony. We want a pony."
Incidentally, for those using twitter, #wewantapony is now coming into use.
Firstly and foremostly, I'm posting this rant having watched Ep1 and Ep2 of Children of Earth. I must say, I'm really enjoying the series and am very much looking forward to seeing what happens tonight!
BUT...
The Torchwood Hub is exploded at the end of Ep1, and Ep2 opens wiht Ianto and Gwen pulling themselves from the rubble. At this stage, we hit a major sci-fi cliche that never fails to bug me - normally highly skilled people becoming utterly useless when facing major characters.
The Government, who up until this point were sending units in with good tactics and high levels of training, seem to have hired to utterly dud snipers. As Gwen is stood in the doorway of the ambulance, she notices a red dot on her face - a laser scope. Rather than killing her immediately (as per, I assume, his instructions), the sniper waits for her to jump to one side and shoot back. This highly trained and competent marksman then inexplicably fails to kill her in any of the five or six shots he fires in the next thirty seconds. Why, exactly, is this guy being sent out to work as a sniper? He saw her go into the ambulance, surely he was covering it! She appears - he kills her, no?
Now I know that narrative causality means that she can't die at this stage of the story, and I'm entirely happy with that. I just get bugged when a major character survives not because of their own ability (eg, Neo fighting many Agent Smiths, Indiana Jones brawling with Nazis, Bond in pretty much every Bond film ever) but because the enemies suddenly become utterly shit. Gwen doesn't have superpowers. She doesn't do anything clever. She just shoots back with pistols, aiming upwards, at night, just after being blown up - and the sniper still can't kill her!
Meanwhile, another sniper is trying to kill Ianto. Ianto, being the tactical genius that he is, foils this attempt on his life by the genius notion of running away in a straight line. The sniper is obviously confused by this, choosing instead to ping shots off a range of items around him instead of, I don't know, hitting him through the chest.
I imagine the internal dialogue goes something like this:
Sniper: Target 2 has survived the bomb. Orders are to make sure there are no survivors. I'll just line up a good shot and... Oh, fuck! Missed! Good thing I covered this in training, I'll just have to aim again and drill him through the head, like I have those eight thousand times in training.
Oh shit, he's running away! In a straight line! Not particularly quickly! I've never covered what to do! I'll have to randomly spray shots around!
Fuck! Now he's hidden round a corner, I think! What does my training say about this? Oh yes, I shouldn't call in our extensive back-up, no, I should just lose track of him and disappear.
Excellent. Job done. Result.
I take this all with a pinch of salt, of course, but seriously - the writers have not done a good job on this one. However, they've done a very good job on the rest, particularly the laugh-out-loud funny moment of:
"We want a pony. We want a pony. We want a pony."
Incidentally, for those using twitter, #wewantapony is now coming into use.