My Torchwood Echo Chamber
In my world, everyone eats mustard on pizza, prefers DS9 to any other Star Trek series and (at least) likes Torchwood.
i09 commenters destroyed two tenets of my faith this morning under a post about the article “Why Russell T. Davies Sucks” from the blog Jesus Drives an SUV.
“[...] Torchwood’s single redeeming feature [...] is that it’s efficient television for the sexually frustrated sci fi addict. It’s basically the investigating team from Angel, in the universe of Doctor Who, operating off of stolen alien technology like some renegade Welsh Stargate team, solving cases lifted from shows like The X-Files if not from Doctor Who itself, with the juvenile hyperssexuality of Lexx (though without the benefit of cruising around in a planet-destroying phallus, I’m sorry to say), all mixed together with the gender-bending intricacies of The L Word (admittedly, not sci fi, but at least there are lots of exposed breasts, which must count for something). Most of the episode plots are also recycled from other shows, and most of the characters are flat, predictable clichés, which means that instead of catching up on a dozen different shows, you can just watch Torchwood and giggle at the writing team’s crude efforts at innuendo. It’s ten shows for the cost of one! “
Now, like or don’t like the show, get or don’t get the campiness, hell, prefer Enterprise to DS9 if you want. Though that last one hurts a lot, I am an open-minded guy.
What surprised me most was that the comments on the i09 post (at least as of 1PM today) were pretty much all anti-Torchwood. One compared it to DS9 (aha!). Then I got to the end of the thought:
“Seriously, for me Torchwood is Dr Who’s equivalent of DS9. It was a show I tried to like, wanted to like and couldn’t.”
OK, so this commenter likes Voyager (or, god forbid) TNG more than DS9. We are clearly different kinds of people; I’m sure he has no use for mustard. And that’s OK.
The later comments remained negative. The show is “dull” and handles “sexuality in a very sniggery, adolescent way”.
Even the positives were back-handed.
“I like to watch it much like people watch train-wreck footage on the news.”
Though, that I appreciate.
I suppose I also think that Torchwood handles sexuality in a “sniggery, adolescent” way, but I find it fun. If the show were about sexuality, then such treatment would be bad. But it’s not. It’s about saving Britain, the Earth, the universe from catastrophe, enemies and themselves. Constantly. The campiness just makes it more fun to watch. And as one commenter put it:
“They’re under incredible pressure to save the freaking Earth all the time! Sometimes the UNIVERSE! It’d probably make me a little randy too.”
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I dont know why Torchwood is judged so harshly by some for its take on sex and sexualaty, althoe people looking at it through the filter of Doctor Who is definitely a factor, It really doesnt have any more sex in it than any late night british drama.
It would be easy to say many sci-fi fans are so sexually repressed that a portraiel of a fluid and experimental sexualaty has them tuting and flusterd………..so i’ll do that ;-)
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Okay, I hate mustard, Voyager’s my favorite Star Trek, and I don’t like Torchwood at all.
BUT!, some people go overboard trying to be derisive. I find the original i09 post you quoted quite overboard in demeaning Torchwood. Let not thy faith be assaulted.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
As the author of the original Jesus Drives an SUV article, let me try to restore your faith in humanity: I did like DS9, even if I don’t like Torchwood. I would go so far as to say that DS9 spanked the hell out of Enterprise, which is too bad because Enterprise, like Torchwood, sounded like a really good idea to begin with.
Plus, if I really hated Torchwood, I suppose I wouldn’t keep watching it. It’s just that I usually keep my well-written sci fi and my badly written porn movies in easily distinguished categories.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Mustard belongs only on corn dogs., DS9 is the best Trek series (with Garak being my favorite character from any series). Torchwood is enjoyable, but just not as much as Doctor Who. I can’t wait for Martha Jones to show up. Shall we start a debate on the better companion: Martha or Rose? Discuss.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Honestly I don’t know why the show made such a big deal about Rose, she didn’t really do anything for me. I thought she was a fairly standard Jane Everybody who was placed there to react to what’s going on, but she didn’t really add anything to the adventures.
My favorite companions were the ones who brought their own skills to the party; Martha as a physician, Romana as a time lady, Nyssa seemed to have a good handle on technology, and even… god help me… Adric could do math.
So that’s a Martha vote for me!