In the end, it's all just fiction. And definitely not fiction that deserves death threats, if any fiction ever does. People need perspective.

It left a sour taste in my mouth, but I get it. I got it the whole time. I just don't like what it did to the show and the team. I hope the series is done with, because I lack the imagination to imagine it day forward as even a shadow of its former self. But that is probably just one of the many reasons I'm on this side of the creative divide.

you know, I was hoping that they would have hired at least 2 new people for the team before this miniseries started up. I could see watching another miniseries. I'm a glutton for punishment. Maybe having a brand new team? I hope that the whole team survives, that Gwen and her child and husband survive. You can have dark without it going into Spooks territory with every outing. There's a reason why I stopped watching Spooks.

I can't see mommy Gwen throwing herself into danger's way every week, though. I saw her pregnancy as just a different way for Jack to lose her from his team.

It occurs to me that they never found out about Rupesh, did they? I guess it's not so important in the grand scheme of things.

Some people on LJ were saying that Ianto's death was well foreshadowed because of the "watch me die" speech he had, but in the Dead Line radio play he has a much longer "no one in Torchwood dies of old age" speech he gives to Jack, and wants a comatose Jack to not see him as just a blip in time, so it was all lost on me, since the CoE speech was so much less impactful than the radio play one. Did you guys feel the foreshadowing?

Re. the TW & Spooks comparison: I actually liked that aspect of the show -- the thorny, difficult politics, and compromises that get made, and the cravenness of the people on the top. That conference room talk in episode 4, in which that female cabinet member calmly talks about taking the 10% from the Undesirables, chilled my blood completely. I thought that was fucking brilliant, especially for being Right on the Money. And when they killed off everyone in the Thames House, my first thought was OMG YOU DID NOT JUST FUCKING KILL HARRY PEARCE. And Ros and Jo and Malcolm! No!

'Suela speaks for me in that I, too, thought the series was well done, other than some major moments of egregious stupidity and plot illogic. I also had a lot of problems with what happened to the Frobishers, even though I agree with some people that it was the logical end dictated by the story. If you think of the whole thing as a Greek tragedy (you can make a very good case for it, I think), it was all about the paying for one's sins with the blood of the innocent. So the convention of the classic tragedy dictates that Frobisher must sacrifice his children for the role he played, and Jack must do the same with Stephen for the role *he* played back in the '60's. Not that I liked it -- as a matter of fact, I was completely gutted by what happened to the Frobishers, even more so than by Ianto's death (which was affecting but Jack's plan was SO STUPID that the sheer irritation won over the sadness.)

Positing a question:

if you lived to 300, and subsequently all of your former lovers died, your children, your grandchildren (great-, great-great-, etc.), how would you experience loss? There's got to be a point when the individual deaths wouldn't have the same impact as the first few did.

I was sad for Ianto for Ianto's sake and his family. I was a little mystified at how hard Jack took it.

This is all to say, I didn't see his death telegraphed. I actually thought Jack's daughter was going to bite it.

Well, it's hard to judge foreshadowing since I knew about it going in, but what jumped out at me was that within the first ten minutes Jack jokes, "You get killed, not me! You die like a dog."

LeN, I think that Ianto is supposed to be extra special to Jack, moreso, than say, his daughter's mother. This I'm gathering from the radio play reaction as well as CoE.

Torchwood:

Did you guys feel the foreshadowing?

I read the whitefont so

I also have a hard time judging, but the die like a dog line was jarring. I don't think it would have been AS jarring if I didn't know what was coming. Then when Jack's daughter was talking about Jack standing at her mother's funeral, never getting older but making the rest of them feel old, I felt like screaming, "yes, we get it. Jack outlives everyone he loves. Ianto has to die." If it had been a death by natural causes it wouldn't have been any less traumatic for Jack because he still had to keep on living as if he was thirty years old. The loss would always be too soon. But for us as the audience, the only way we would feel the loss of that relationship was for Ianto to be gone "too soon" for us.

Overall, I'm left rather depressed and not sure I would put myself through all that again. OTH, I think it was a legitimate story that was well executed. Even if Jack wasn't heroic, by golly, the British people were heroic, and the series as a whole was more about Gwen/them anyway. I cried when Andy took off his police gear to fight for the children. The series was then full circle with Gwen walking away from Torchwood, the chapter of her story with Jack had been told.

I liked the series and the mini-series. It was dark, gritty, and ugly the whole way, making bold unpopular choices from the first episode to this last. But I always felt I was seeing who these people were and exactly what they would do.

have not seen COE yet. But I can comment on what I have seen. Isn't it totally in character for Jack to make wrong choices and keep making wrong choices? We first met him as a stylish con man on DW who took a stupid risk and almost wiped out earth. He has a broad selfish streak, and really bad judgment even though he really does want to be a good guy. Also being made in Britain when the series was made isn't "American cowboy type who trusts his gut over good advice" pretty good shorthand for someone who can be counted on the screw things up? Especially, as stuff is shown in the series his gut actually doesn't make decisions that well. Even something as fundamental as choosing his team - even though his people did have skills he really chose an extremely flawed team, and from the flashbacks at the end of season two, chose them in an extremely half arsed way.

What was half-arsed about the way he chose them? I really don't think the text is supposed to make us sincerely doubt him. I think we're supposed to trust him for the most part. And to think that in the end, in CoE as well, that he made the right call.