1.11: Combat

[Dave]

Torchwood does fight club.

Not sure the Weevils could be kept secret with so many of them free, and so many people knowing about them.

Gwen has lost all credibility. All the characters seem cracked in some way now. Maybe that is the intention; to show how unstable they are, but I don't see how they could still function as a team, there is too much history. It's good that there is a show that is not afraid to have character arcs and to develop them. I constantly bemoan this fails to happen on other series, so I guess I can't complain when it does! Rhys has gone up in my estimation as Gwen has gone down.

What do you think Owen was doing in the ring? Trying to contact the Weevil telepathically, or waiting to die?

 

[Lou_TW]

i Think he just wanted to die with all this Diane stuff, i suppose he felt like there was nothing left. What happened to Gwen and Owen?

 

[Lou_TW]

The best part is when Gwen is with Rhys and she says ' Say you forgive me! ' It is so Welsh and amazing!! I Just Love Welsh accents!

 

[PTeppic]

Torchwood does fight club.

Not sure the Weevils could be kept secret with so many of them free, and so many people knowing about them.

Torchwood does fight club with weevils. But it's still just fight club. Who are pretty damn organised - but as they say, so many young men searching for something else in their lives in the pointless modern world: who wouldn't do anything for this strange new purpose.

As for the Weevils, the majority don't know what they are, not for sure. They're more heading for experiment/radiation victim etc. So they've seen something - who would believe them: it's like big cats on Dartmoor etc. [For non-UK people there are perpetual stories of "big cats" (e.g. pumas or jaguars) escaped from zoos or private collectors, loose in the UK countryside, but never any proof; some damaged farm stock, the occasional blurry, long range photo, but nothing substantive.]

 

[Coolhand]

I’m starting to feel rather bad about myself.

You see, sitting down to write a scathing Torchwood review has become a little bit like hanging around outside the school front gates at home time to beat up the weak nerdy kid who writes the teacher love letters and tells on you when you‘re not paying attention in class or chewing gum.
In other words it’s easy to do and it’s also extremely satisfying, but you do tend to worry that it’s inflicting some terrible dark damage on your soul somewhere in places that you can’t yet see.

Anyway, this week’s ep.

Let’s get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first, shall we? In other words, let’s talk about Gwen.
She’s actually pretty superfluous to this episode, existing only to drug her boyfriend with an amnesia pill then ask for forgiveness as if though it’s not such a big deal she’d been cheating on him and neglecting him. She then cries into her pizza which was funny because A: It was badly acted and B: I enjoy seeing Gwen suffer. Hopefully next week her suffering will take the form of a baseball bat with nails in it.
Arrggh. See what I mean about damage to my soul? Enough of Gwen!

Now for the plot.
Someone is kidnapping Weevils and apparently I’m supposed to care what happens to these insane multi-fanged killing machines. Well I don’t and I never will so the main urgency of this ep is pretty much gone already.

After a few close encounters of the “just missed you” kind, Jack sends Own undercover to see what’s going on. Owen encounters Tyler Durton who tells him that modern life has emasculated men and turned them into consumers. Together they create fight-club as an outlet for their aggression. The first rule of fight club is not to talk about fight club. Things proceed into creating Project Mayhem which involves blowing up a tall building…
…Eh Sorry. Not sure what happened there.
So any Tyler Durden is running Weevil club and Owen/Edward Norton, rather than reporting back to Jack when he finds the Weevil and arresting Tyler, finds the idea of biffing weevils attractive so decides to go along for the fun.

Meanwhile, back at the prat-cave…
With no sign of Edward Norton, the crew change tack, desperate to find the missing weevil. (Seriously, why should I care? It‘s like asking me to sympathize with Geiger’s Alien in the midst of a chest-bursting frenzy. I don‘t, I can‘t and I never will.)
Jack has been shopping at Baldrics Store of Cunning Plans, and has purchased a real humdinger of a brainwave. His strategy is to tag a captured weevil’s clothing (not implant the tracker in the body so that it’s secure, just hang it off the flimsy lapel instead. Yeah, you can see what’s coming too huh?) and then follow the weevil in the Torchwood Mobile. And wait for the bad guys to kidnap the weevil, hoping that they won’t notice the massive SUV with Torchwood written on it that is rumbling along less than ten feet behind the weevil with all the subtlety of a big flashing neon sign saying “TRAP.”

Seriously.
That’s the plan.
I’m not making this up.

However the weevil is obviously a tactical genius and does the one thing that no one, not even Sun Tzu himself could have ever predicted I.E. It runs off of the main road and into a side street where the SUV cannot follow. And the best bit of the whole sequence is the shocked expression on Jack’s face as if HE HAD NO IDEA THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN.
Clot.
And then the cloth with the tag tears off. Cue another astonished expression from Jack.
Double Clot.
However, this does lead to a great scene where Tosh and Jack try to hide behind a wire link fence (possibly the worst piece of camouflage in the universe. Well, they could have tried to hide behind a pane of glass I suppose) and the bad guys five feet away DON’T SEE THEM.
Laugh? I nearly lost a lung.

Anyway, cut back to Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.
“I’d have to be stupid not to connect you with the two guys who came snooping around my warehouse.” says Brad.
Yes Brad, you would. Apparently you are not stupid, which puts you at least six rungs higher on the mental development ladder than the staff of DriftWood to whom that thought did not occur.
Anyhow a suicidal Edward gets into the cage with the weevil and lets it chew on him just as Torchwood arrive, guns drawn and probably half-cocked. Jack watches the weevil eat Edward Norton for A GOOD TEN SECONDS before he decides to intervene and shoot the weevil. Glad you didn’t hesitate to long jack. Forget how to work that gun huh? Yeah they can be tricky things those hair triggers…

Anyhow, once Edward Norton has been mauled to Jack’s satisfaction, he allows Tyler to walk into the cage and commit Death By Weevil. Yeah, don’t try to stop him or save him Jack, I mean the psychotic flesh eating monster has rights too you know. Screw the human, save the weevil. And John Hurt was a cruel insensitive ******* for caging that Alien in his rib cage. Poor thing suffered awful trauma from having to break his sternum like that…

In the end, Edward tells Jack that he wanted to die and Jack tells Edward to be in work tomorrow. Great. Nice one Jack. Dude’s suicidal so obviously you want him in field ops for a spec-ops unit watching your back…

In short, Chuck Palahinuk should sue, Jack wins Idiot of the Episode and once again the Torchwood crew make the Keystone Cops look like Navy SEALS.

And Noel Clark, writer of this episode and actor who plays Mickey the Idiot in Doctor Who really should hang his head in shame. His previous writing credit is the social drama Kidulthood. That is a worthy genre to write in Noel. Please stick to it in future.

Still not quite as bad as Greeks Bearing Gifts though.

 

[Dave]

Coolhand again writes the best review!

As for the fight club secrecy -

Who are pretty damn organised

Organised, but it's still basically a flash mob. They even send text messages out to dead guys - dead guys who were one of the organisers!

Before Jack and Driftwood (like that!) could have stormed the empty building, he would have first needed to push his way past a troop of 'News of the World' journalists and paparazzi, a Channel 4 documentary team, David Icke and Nick Popes.

 

[PTeppic]

Laugh? I nearly lost a lung.

As did I reading this review...

 

[sanityassassin]

thank god Torchwood is back for a second season just to read coolhand's reveiws of them. These people are meant to be clever but I do find them lacking in common sense they are a bit like idiot savants. The strange thing is the trailers for the next episodes usually look quite good but when you watch them they almost always dissapoint

 

[Coolhand]

Aww shucks...(blush)

The strange thing is the trailers for the next episodes usually look quite good but when you watch them they almost always dissapoint

I totally agree. The trailer for this ep looked really quite cool and I was hoping, after the suprisingly good previous episode, that we'd finally start getting some decent TV out of Torchwood.
More fool me.
Likewise, the trailer for NEXT week's ep looks pretty good. But what are the odds that it'll turn into a bizzare back to the future clone where jack gets to shag his younger self?

 

[Dave]

The strange thing is the trailers for the next episodes usually look quite good but when you watch them they almost always dissapoint

It was very strange reading this, because I was just reading elsewhere how the quality of a trailer is inversely proportional to the quality of a film. Even weirder, I think the quote actually came from an interview with Russell T Davies, only I can't find it again to link.

 

[PTeppic]

It was very strange reading this, because I was just reading elsewhere how the quality of a trailer is inversely proportional to the quality of a film.

This would probably make a worthwhile thread on it's own elsewhere on the forum. I would agree there are many films where ALL the good bits have gone in the trailer, and so there is nothing else in the movie. But there are also many examples of brilliant movies whose trailers were correctly pointing you in that direction.

So which superb films have rubbish trailers, to back up the original thought?

 

[Lenny]

Another "meh" episode. Not brilliant, but not bad enough to share a bus shelter with Eugene.

No parallels to draw to Series 2, so I'll just comment on the episode.

First of all, Torchwood actually went to Dan Hodges wife and told her he'd died. A first, that. Secondly, how on earth did Mark Lynch know about what was in the dark?

And the third thing I'm going to comment a bit more on - RetCon and Rhys. I knew I'd watch it happen, and this is the episode I'd seen it in. Now, in the Episode 1 thread I made a comment on how long it took for the RetCon to kick in an knock Gwen out. In this episode, however, and in all future episodes (barring Adam, where it happens instantly), it takes a couple of minutes for the RetCon to kick in.

The best part is when Gwen is with Rhys and she says ' Say you forgive me! ' It is so Welsh and amazing!! I Just Love Welsh accents!

I agree with you there. It was a good line, and it sounded almost musical!

Well, the finale for me tomorrow, and then onto Series 2!