A Day in the Death

TARDIS Coordinates: February 27, 2008

You know, Owen Harper’s been dead for a while now; don’t you think it’s about time he got over it?

What I mean is that we’re going to go a whole episode with Owen Harper attending his own funeral. I found this episode depressing, but not for the reasons you might expect. I don’t want to spend a whole episode watching a character as cynical and unlikeable as Owen Harper go navel-gazing; unless his characterization is about to make a huge leap forward, I’m not particularly interested, and Torchwood isn’t the best place to go for positive character development.

We meet Owen trying to talk a potential suicide down off a ledge, though, of course, being a twat, the show decides instead to make it look as if they’re going to take the plunge together. We then see, in flashback, Owen Harper’s humiliation conga-line, as first he’s demoted to Ianto’s position, then relieved of duty, then he sulks at home, then he sulks around town…good lord, Owen, just wear black and listen to some Creed albums, why don’t you.

Near the end, they send him on a non-mission where he indicates that maybe his character is actually getting something out of all this, but there’s a sense, a feeling, a tone to the ending that doesn’t really say “Brave new world” to me, just “Well, back to work.” A couple of times Torchwood has tried to convince us that Life is Beautiful, but it’s always something it seems to mutter under its breath while putting the cast through hell, rather than celebrating all the myriad expressions of it.

Episodes like “A Day in the Death” are the sort that I remember when I look back upon Torchwood as a grim and depressing series, and completely forget the brighter episodes like “Random Shoes” and “Something Borrowed,” or more speculative episodes like “From Out of the Rain” or “Adrift.” It’s like an entire series of “Resurrection of the Daleks.” Now, down here in the archives, we know that’s not entirely true, but it seems that “A Day in the Death” is one of the episodes that sets the overall tone for the series, the one that is writ large and overshadows more optimistic or exciting fare, made all the worse for the fact that it goes nowhere. It’s just Owen’s funeral, and Owen’s funeral goes on, and on, and on.

Dead Man Walking

TARDIS Coordinates: February 20, 2008

What would you do if you woke up dead?

There’s a line in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” where some of the superheroes are speculating on the nature of Thor’s hammer, and what sort of science is actually controlling who can pick it up. Iron Man couldn’t budge it; Captain America shifted it slightly, which unnerved Thor a bit; Stark points out that “if you put it on an elevator, elevator goes up; doesn’t mean the elevator’s worthy.”

It’s interesting watching them explore the physics of the hammer in a non-narrative sense, like asking why Clark Kent doesn’t just punch through the bottom of the crashing airplane. Logically, if he were applying all his force to the spot where his hands are, he’d just rip through the fuselage rather than support the entire superstructure.

Owen Harper is dead, killed by a bullet to the chest, because five guys with guns trained on the bad guy didn’t shoot first. (Watch the scene in “Reset” and tell me how contrived you think it is.) Unfortunately, Jack, being a prick, finds another Risen Mitten and rousts him again, ostensibly to get the codes to the morgue, though probably just because misery loves company.Doesn’t work quite the way he intended, though. Once up, Owen doesn’t go back down, even though he has no pulse, does not breathe (so how can he talk?), and all biological processes have stopped. His body is numb because his central nervous system doesn’t work, so he feels no pain. At the same time, nothing heals, so he’s fragile.

All right, fanboys and Internet forum critics; there’s your superpowers. Go.

Something brought Owen back, or at least is using him for a bridge between one world and the next; in a previous incursion, this creature was called “Death,” though stepping back a bit and seeing him in the context of other Torchwood monsters-of-the-week indicates that he’s pretty much just another in a long line of extradimensional uglies conceived and handled no more or less spectacularly than all the rest. Which is actually good; I like the idea of science bringing mythology down to size, or science fiction bringing fantasy to heel. I read an essay about “Ghostbusters” that indicated that the movie was more or less about science studying and classifying what we consider “paranormal,” about the good guys defeating the bad guys with research and physics instead of magic and superstition.

The Doctor once said that life is just nature’s way of keeping meat fresh; in that context, one can wonder whether Owen could rightly be classified as alive or not. The processes that keep his body alive are no longer functioning, but something is certainly keeping his meat fresh, and his mind is still functioning. Granted, dying probably sucked, and his overall frailty is probably no picnic – give him a hundred years and he’ll be a mass of scars and metal plates – but he’s still around to deal with the implications of who and what he is and what it means.

Viewers take note, as well – Martha Jones has been in two episodes of Torchwood so far, and has been a victim in both of them. This bodes not well, Maybe she should quit while she’s ahead. Or while she still has a head.

Reset

TARDIS Coordinates: February 13, 2008

This is the second time I’ve done this. I’ve postponed watching Torchwood for too long, and now I need Jack to show up on schedule for his guest appearance on Doctor Who. Unfortunately, rather than watch the episodes in a timely manner, I’ve put off doing my homework until there’s no choice but to archive-binge the remainder of the season. So, I sit down and watch the remaining episodes in bundles.

There’s a reason I watch Doctor Who one story per week. Gulping down entire seasons of anything usually leaves me feeling a little flat; I’ve absorbed so much information that they start showing up in my dreams, usually in a nasty mood. I watched an entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a weekend and hardly remember anything except the sense of a wasted weekend and poorly-managed time. It gets even creepier when you’re watching Walter White or Ned Stark and that sense of brainwashing sets in; you don’t want a pissed-off Don Draper following you around while you’re trying to do the washing up.

I actually don’t remember whether Martha Jones showed up in Torchwood before or after the airing of “The Sontaran Stratagem.” I think it’s a bit before, though it’s probably academic; not much hash is made out of the events of “The Poison Sky” in “Reset.” Of course, if you’re going to do this crossover stuff, you need a pretty good reason. Otherwise, it looks like you’re just trying to goose ratings a bit.

Does Martha have a good reason for being in Torchwood? The rationale is that she and UNIT are studying the same thing – the effect of an alien parasite on a bunch of medical test subjects. Of course, this being Torchwood, it’s not enough that the miracle cure proposed by the medical tests has a bad side effect; no, it has to include an alien chestburster.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice to see her again, it’s nice to be reminded that, at its core, “Torchwood” takes place in the same universe as Doctor Who, and it’s nice to have a Doctor Who character providing something of an anchor for Torchwood, which frequently gets lost in its own crazy.

It’s all right to have a TV series and its spinoff be oppositional in nature; “Cheers” was about a bunch of working-class misfits visiting a Boston pub every night, while “Frasier” was about a pair of effete, sophisticated brothers trying to find love in 1990s Seattle, but they didn’t want for thematic continuity – one actively courted the other’s audience even as it maintained its own identity, and it did so without cheap tricks like magical crossovers. “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Lou Grant” couldn’t have been more different, and even they shared a certain number of themes and viewpoints.

But then you see Martha Jones strapped to an operating table with Frankenstein about to do horrible things to her, and you start to wonder: is she just here to be a victim? Shouldn’t she be there to demonstrate the character growth or provide the vital information that only traveling with the Doctor could have given her insight into? Is she going to be just another employee of Torchwood who gets her life fucked up by it? Holy crap, I don’t want to see that.

I don’t want to be too hard on “Reset,” because it does deliver. For part of the episode, it looks like we’re actually in a position to take a break from the brutality of the overall series and just remember the show’s roots. Then they inflict the pain of being in Torchwood on the last person we want to see it happen to.

Donna Noble would have kicked everyone in Torchwood three times around Roald Dahl Plass if she’d been invited along.