Have you seen the SJAs, Tommy? I can confirm that there is more hugging. Less M/M snogging, but more hugging.

Torchwood 2.02: I actually had a lot of problems with this episode. I got talked down off some of them on lj, but I still feel like overall, there were some hot button problems.

I felt like it was too close to the Cyberwoman episode with a black female being Other, mysterious and dangerous, possessed by something else, and without agency outside of her husband, with the only possible ending for her to go down in a hail of Torchwood bullets. Not just one bullet.

She's half of a mixed race couple and is automatically assumed to be the villain. She is incarcerated, coerced, and ultimately subjected to extreme and potentially lethal levels of pain to force a confession.

The other angle to it, the sleeper cell/terrorism thing is a problem for me, too, but I have to give it more thought.

Because, after going somewhat ape upon seeing the ep, I read this fascinating discourse over at lj, where BHP expresses several of my objections. Make sure you read the whole thing, because there's a British POV in there that completely flipped my world around and makes me think differently about the ep.

Before reading that, I felt that I was being asked to accept that Jack, the hardcore boss figure, Did The Right Thing, and we should all get in line and applaud his willingness to make the tough decision, blah blah. But what the commenter in the journal said was, look, the cultural bias here means that we see the charismatic, charming Jack as charismatic, charming, and (and this is the important bit) fundamentally untrustworthy. The American wartime imagery that is Jack, is an image that brings with it a completely different subtext. The expectation is that Jack will recommend direct action, after which one of the team will come up with the right answer.

I'm paraphrasing here, so unAmericans can correct me at will, but I found this fascinating. That recasts the entire way I view the episode, and indeed probably the series. If I'm being asked to view Jack as untrustworthy, then I'm intended to view his abrasive choices with discomfort. In fact the whole thing becomes a negative commentary on American torture practices instead of a tacit approval or at least nonaction.

That still leaves my objection to yet another mixed race couple (yay, mixed race couples!) where the minority female is ultimately evil and causes pain and/or death to the white male. But I know that ita, among others, feels differently about the depiction, so I'm willing to have the discussion further.

I hadn't thought of the racial angle before. I think there's a valid argument to be made, based (at minimum) on Beth and Cyberwoman being the only black women (and really, just about the only blacks of any gender) that we've seen at all.

I must say it's an interesting commentary that Jack is supposed to represent The American Way -- jumping right into action and doing the wrong thing.

I think there's also another argument on interracial couples. While I don't dispute your interpretation, it's also true that interracial couples (and I'll add Tosh and the alien) don't excite comment for being interracial.

Have the longish previews been shown on BBCA? I'm trying to determine if something is still a casting spoiler?

I think there's a valid argument to be made, based (at minimum) on Beth and Cyberwoman being the only black women (and really, just about the only blacks of any gender) that we've seen at all.

There was the policewoman in "They Keep Killing Suzie."

The one that's up on the BBCA site is the only one I've seen.

OK, Dana. Good point.

Yeah, that's why I interjected the yay, because part of why I fell in love with the Whoverse was because Rose & Mickey's ethnicities were completely nonissue in their relationship. I really love to see interracial relationships being treated matter-of-factly, which has happened in these serii. Which is why those two specific interracial relationships, which also happened to both be white male/black female pinged me so badly. In both cases, there were also gender politics in play and some other underlying issues I found problematic.

Which is not to say that the concerns aren't valid. It didn't ping me, but I'm well aware that my love for the show completely overwhelms the thinky brain.

The one that's up on the BBCA site is the only one I've seen.

At the end of the first ep aired in the UK, there was a longer promo that showed scenes from several of the upcoming episodes, including a casting spoiler. I take it BBCA hasn't shown that?