Bloody Torchwood (A Proper Grown-Up Review)

A WORD FROM YOUR BLOWFISH ELECT

'Hello. Is this the audition for X Factor? It's just that I've got a really unique USP. I’m a blowfish. Haven’t had many of those now, have you?

Come on, Simon? Surely you can't just smugly dismiss my utterly individual cover version of Aqua Marina, the theme from Stingray?

Now Cheryl, surely you in all your manifest WAG wisdom can see fit to vote a blowfish through to the regional finals? I'm the new minority, and we all know audiences love an underdog! Remember when you were here in my place, struggling to prove your talent to an uncaring world... you weren't just a slightly annoying child model from Newcastle, you were a f%^&ing star!

Like Barack says, we can do it, yes we can! If Geri Halliwell proved that Girl Power was a valid form of feminist protest, then I'm flying the flag for blowfish power!

And it doesn't even matter that I'm just a snappy gimmicky scene-opener for season two to hook the audience back in! Remember the struggles of Martin Luther King, Emily Pankhurst, Rosa Parks, Germaine Greer, Harvey Milk, Saint Geri Halliwell...

One day, my children, we will get to the PROMISED LAND!!!

Unless someone comes along and cruelly assassinates me. Of course that's never going to happen.

Hang on - who that dashing human in the greatcoat with the Webley? Oh bugg -'

MODERATELY SERIOUS, HE SAID

'Hey, guys, I've got a question - what do think are the chances that all of us are actually standing here together in the street and haven't just been photoshopped in from a multitude of different locations?

Oh. No one's answering me... how strange!'

ADVANCE WARNING

Right. As I said in a previous post, here’s a halfway serious appraisal of my basic feelings about Torchwood thus far. I wrote this about a week before I perhaps misguidedly decided I was going to write three Torchwood fan novels purely for a laugh. They’re all plotted out but haven’t quite spluttered into gear yet - but rest assured, they will appear at some point or another - in the meantime here’s some borderline dated opinion.

'No honest - we really were all just standing like that - that's exactly what the CCTV caught. It was another slow alien day, to be honest and since Martha was round and Owen wasn't dead yet we just thought we'd all stand around for a while posing. Honest, Guv!'

UNWANTED AMAZON BITCH-FEST, NUMBER 1

Okay - I know the boxset isn’t out yet - but I figured if Amazon is listing it, I’d better get in quick with my appraisal of the run thus far. The general impression one gets from Season Two of Torchwood is of a series still hampered by not quite knowing where to go and what to do when it gets there.

For me, Torchwood still seems to have two quite severe problems - obvious budgetary constraints and a almost cloying desire to appeal to the widest possible demographic. What makes these complaints of mine all the odder is that it seems to be these very shortcomings that are contributing to Torchwood’s huge success thus far.

Coming to the money issue, don’t get me wrong - Torchwood never looks cheap. In fact, it looks anything but - performances, scripts, lighting, music and sound design, sets and special effects… all of the above are always top-notch. The root of my problem is that the programme’s creators cautiously limit themselves in the type of series they want to make.

Many have observed that the show’s concept - a top-secret pseudo-governmental organization protecting the world from alien incursions - is perfectly sound and should, like the X-Files, provide almost limitless opportunity for exploring all manner of extraterrestrial and supernatural shenanigans - but despite this, Torchwood’s first season was already repeating itself halfway through its run.

A FUN GAME FOR FANS OF TORCHWOOD

Hey kids! See if you can figure out the name of a well-known television programme just from these two images -

Yes that's right - It's Twin Peaks!

MORE OF THE SAME

Creator Russell T. Davies has said on a few occasions that he has no intention of trying to slavishly imitate American sci-fi shows - but then, instead of doing this and introducing such crazy concepts as a wider ensemble cast, more complex and intellectually stimulating arc storylines and, crikey, some aliens wouldn’t go amiss, the showrunners instead try to make everything seem slick, movie-like, sexy and dramatic on the clearly limited resources they freely admit to, and wind up regularly shooting themselves in the foot by degenerating into Eastenders-style grim soap opera rather than anything more imaginative; leaving at times little more than a glossy surface sheen, composed of much artifice and little real substance.

The one show Torchwood seems to be content in ripping off the most in terms of general style and approach is the BBC’s own Spooks (or MI5 to you Americans out there) which has virtually the same set -up and premise as Torchwood, even down to the secret high-tech base, squabbling, unstable team-mates and a generally amoral boss deputizing his top agents out on field missions and undercover. All you have to do is replace the word ‘terrorists’ with ‘aliens‘.

ALIENS: NOT ACTUALLY HERE ALL THAT OFTEN, REVEALS TOP-SECRET WELSH ORGANIZATION

Ah, yes. Don’t mention the aliens - Torchwood did a couple of times but I think it got away with it. For an organization combating exactly these particular extraterrestrial beings, the best we’ve had so far this year has been human-looking memory stealers (not the first rebuffing of a vintage accessible science fiction cliché) human-looking alien sleeper agents (or Battlestar spooks with T-1000 knife-arms) more World War time-romance (sci-fi cliché-flogging) alien slug-munching (bizarre but boring - remember meat is murder, kids) the unfairly-shunted-out-of-Doctor-Who (is anyone bovvered?) Freema Agyeman showing up (and going swiftly away again), someone dying (and then not dying) and - surely the highpoint - him off of Buffy, still doing a silly English accent.

And Richard Briers. And alien impregation. And Jim from Neighbours being evil. So far so so-so peculiar.

HEY KIDS! MORE LARKS!

See if you can spot the differences between these two pictures of a terrifying Doctor Who monster -

A WEEVIL

CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON

Yes that's right - there absolutely no f%^&ing difference at all! Congratulations!
One of them's a snarling, grotesque and menacing publicity-shy creature of the night, and the other one's a Weevil!

A NORMAL SHOW FOR NORMAL PEOPLE

Then there’s those flipping Weevils. Which still don’t seem to have anything useful to do except wear Christopher Eccleston’s cast-off leather jacket and snarl at people a bit. This brings me back around to my second issue; Torchwood’s clear decision to convince the world that no, this isn’t some geeky pointy-eared spaceships-and-rayguns franchise - it is, in fact, a NORMAL show, for NORMAL people! Which will only ever have one alien in it at a time, like some corner shop dictate barring unruly kids. All within is done very well, is not spectacularly - those of us out there constantly wishing for something to challenge the likes of Battlestar Galactica or the excellent new Terminator series might have to hang on a while.

Despite all this, things do take off this season. There is a greater sense of purpose to the show that at least keeps hinting bigger things are coming. Owen stops being a utter tit and starts to acquire some depth. Tosh is given fractionally more to do. And Gwen nearly stops moaning all the time...

A GAY SHOW? HOW QUEER!

And as for those people constantly complaining about the supposedly gratuitous amount of gay and/or bisexual characters and content in the series, please: stop bloody moaning. If you don’t like gay people, go watch a soap opera - no offence meant, but the year is 2008 and it’s quite normal, or at least should be, to have many more halfway realistic gay characters in popular mainstream TV shows - which is at least what Torchwood is, despite what other people might say.

It was certainly the case that the first series was often guilty of shoehorning gay references in willy-nilly (oo er missus etc) and ‘metaphorical’ same-sex interactions (usually between a member of the team and some nefarious LGBT alien - this did happen a few times so as to almost not be coincidental) as if desperately trying to attract more gay viewers or just gain some notoriety, although at least this time around nothing feels overly forced, and the ever-bubbling relationship between not-always gung-ho Captain Jack and whipping-boy Ianto finally smacks of realism rather than titillation.

But despite all my portents of doom, personally I’m becoming inclined to believe that Torchwood might just prove to have a potentially longer shelf-life than the new Doctor Who - which, judging from its tendency to just be just far too silly and childish rather than intelligent and well-written, is managing to alienate a significant portion of Who-fandom, leaving it severely hamstrung by always having to stay primarily a kids’ show.

And at least it’s not Primeval. For that alone surely we can all feel grateful. Plus; that show’s got the exact same premise as well. Just replace ‘alien’ with dinosaur and ‘rift’ with ‘badly CGI’d hole in space.’ I could go on…

STUN EXCLUSIVE: TORCHWOOD ACTRESS ADMITS WHO SPIN-OFF SHOW IS 'PROPER RUBBISH'

'I tried to deny it for so long but I was living a lie... I'm a proper actress you know, I've been in Dickens... oh and an episode of Merlin - that's at least four hundred times better than Torchwood! I shouldn't be wasting my copious talent and sexy gap-tooth-big-hair look on bollocks like Torchwood...

Oh plus John Barrowman is a total bellend. He keeps going on about how he's from Glasgow and putting on this ridiculous accent, but I'm pretty sure he's talking out of his arse. Plus he keeps showing me his cock... this has got to be sexual harrassment, surely.

Did I mention I was a proper actress and everything? I was in a play once... no one who watches Doctor Who ever saw it of course so there's virtually no point in my mentioning it here. But it did actually happen...'