So... Torchwood ep 4. Did anyone see it?

I saw it, but the show still isn't doing it for me.

Fiona--I thought 104 was particularly impressive in taking what everyone assumed would be a quiet secondary character and really packing a dramatic and emotional punch. I liked how they tied directly in with DW series two, like they automatically expected you to know the true tradgedy of the Cybermen. The huge gaping plot holes aside, I quite like Ianto and his super-dramatic storyline, and it was nice to take the focus off of Gwen, and Gwen+Jack, for awhile.

But I still think the completely random mid-episode snogging was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

I have to agree with SA on this one. I didn't care for the ep. as much as some of the previous.

Torchwood 104:

If I closed my metaphorical eyes, I enjoyed it, but this thing where Gwen freezes in the face of danger is getting really tedious.

If I closed my metaphorical eyes, I enjoyed it, but this thing where Gwen freezes in the face of danger is getting really tedious.

I have to agree with you, Dana. There was a time when I thought that they were pushing the Jack/Gwen thing because Gwen reminded him of Rose. But her clearly panicking at crunch time is not the quality that might bring out that response. Rose did not always know what to do, but she was able to think on her feet and contribute in important ways IN the thick of things. It was easy to view Rose as a naif but she had her eyes open. Gwen seems to have set up camp in her naivete like she is planning to retire in it. Or I could be talking through my hat.

Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Torchwood 1.04:

Man, I really go back and forth on Gwen. I want to like her so much, and at times I really do. She impressed me a lot in the first episode, and I quite liked her in the second as well; but I agree that she seems to be getting progressively more useless. I said, after last week's episode, that I was going to enjoy watching Torchwood toughen her up, but I do wish they'd hurry it up a bit.

I was also less than thrilled with the creepy, creepy objectification of Lisa's body in its Cyberwoman cage. The doctor groping her breasts and rubbing her stomach? A world of EW.

That said, I continue to love this show beyond any logical explanation. I can recognize that the stuff I mentioned above is problematic, and yet, I can completely ignore it in favor of the stuff I love: Captain Jack's kiss of life! The pterodactyl-vs.-Cyberwoman fight! Barbeque sauce! And dude, Captain Jack has become some kind of monster, hasn't he? I can't wait to find out how he got to such a dark place. Though I do hope we'll see some more glimpses of the old Jack at some point this season.

OK, I'm going to watch it right now, so I can read the whitefont. And possibly comment.

I kind of hated the latest Torchwood, due to the kind of the stuff Kate mentioned above. Plus, I really couldn't give a crap about Ianto and his idiotic, morally reprehensible mainpain. Maybe if we had learned to know and love Ianto for a while, I'd have bought it. But at the end of it, I kind of wished the Pterodactyl did off with the lot of them.

Jack is pretty, and the boy-kissing was hot if gratuitous. I am theoretically interested in how Jack got to be where he is now, but I don't think Barrowman has the acting chops or the gravitas to pull of the broody and tormented.

One thing about the distance between Torchwood and Doctor Who:

We have no idea how long it has been for Jack since he got left behind on the Gamestation. I read and thoroughly enjoyed a fic in which the rift in Cardiff brought him from Post-Dalek-Apocalypse to the 1950s, and he had lived and worked in Torchwood for decades before we see him in the show. I like that idea. Alternatively, who knows how many scores of years he kicked around the Galaxy before winding up there. Of course, that really would put paid to my notion of him hitching a ride back to 21st Cent. Britain, hoping to run into Rose and, therefore, the Doctor again, and just getting caught up in Torchwood, incidentally.