Swansong

Double post

I understood what you were saying lol. I think initially though they were setting up the idea that they would hook up so I suppose the fact that he lets her get away with stuff, treats her as something special to a degree he doesn't with the rest of the team even when they do in fact do something special etc. was in large part because of that. Because he fancies her and is apparently falling for her. Which I think explains some of his actions too. But I think, even outside of Jack, everyone is just supposed to see Gwen as just that special, be in love with her or in awe of her or threatened or jealous of her etc. etc. I mean look at Suzie's response to her. She's even more over the top than Jack with even far less reason. So in a way Jack's response is as much about the status quo the show is trying to set up in regards to Gwen and her effect as a reflection of his own personal interest. Speaking of Owen and Fragments (I know we weren't but anyway), but does it feel like Jack kind of set Owen up and used Katie's imminent death in order to recruit him? He doesn't retcon him after he sees what happened to Katie and the other doctors, leaves him to try and figure out what happened and then shows up at the funeral. Plus he tells Owen he tried to stop them, but we know how much clout Torchwood, at least the TW of s1 and 2 have. They can take over crime scenes when they want, order the PM around, but Jack can't say the word and have Katie's body moved just because a few doctors aren't interested. I always thought there was something really manipulative about the way he handles Owen in his segment which might explain why there relationship is so antagonistic.

I don't think the point is that Ianto may or may not have told Gwen this story. I think the real point is that we know he told it to Jack and that of all the people to supposedly tell this to if it was supposed to be a lie all along Jack makes the least sense because Jack should already know it's a lie since he had Ianto's background checked out and told him so which we are told in Fragments. If it was just about Gwen telling Rhiannon without the previous Jack factor I'd just assume that she was saying anything she could to curry favour with Rhiannon and not necessarily that Ianto had actually told her any of that stuff because COE doesn't exactly set up the idea that Gwen knows much about Ianto's background. Jack is the one who has to tells her Ianto has a niece and a nephew.

Maybe. lol. Is In the Silence the one where Gwen surpasses Tosh as a techno wiz? I thought the show was over the top when it came to her, but the books, at least the ones I read, make the show seem almost restrained which is saying something, but Ianto fans seem to love them too, especially how his relationship with Jack is portrayed in them which I find pretty puzzling because in Risk Assessment especially he is basically there to be insulted by the guest character and treated like the village idiot by the text. And every time Jack said something which I guess was supposed to come off as affectionate I kept imagining Jack patting him on the head and say 'there's a good dog'. I wanted to start a drinking game every time the author of The Undertaker Gift mentioned Jack looking into Gwen's big brown eyes, but I thought I'd save my liver the strain. It was like bad fanfic. The core plots were ok, but not enough to make me want to spend 300+ pages with them especially when the Torchwood stuff made me cringe so much. At least they were free, but I think I'd rather read fanfic.

It makes me think the writers don't really pay attention to what they write. If it was just Gwen I could buy him fudging his background , but Jack had a pretty good idea of Ianto's background before he hired Ianto which Ianto knew so what was the point of this lie. To prove to Jack what an incompetent liar he is? It felt like a bit of a cheap dig considering they'd already killed him off and it didn't exactly attempt to tell us much about Ianto. I don't really ignore COE, but l'm now convinced Ianto spent his formative years reading 19th century fiction and developed a weird fetish for old-fashioned things like stopwatches and paper diaries and men in period costumes because unless his father was a tailor or sewed in some capacity it seem like an odd job for a guy his age to settle on just out of thin air. I mean why Master Tailor? Are they still a particular thing in Wales?

Jack does background checks on his team? I'm shocked. lol If the show didn't try so hard to convince me Jack doesn't actually do proper background checks on his team then I could definitely see this. Jack seeing Gwen as a daughter figure is an interesting idea. It would make him copping a feel in Ghost Machine a tad more creepy though. Not to mention all those sexay looks of longing. It would probably better explain why he doesn't pursue anything with her even after he comes back in s2 and decides Torchwood really is where he belongs and after telling her that thoughts of her were what kept him going, but bottling it when she tells him she got engaged, but would happily reconsider if she got a better offer *hint*, *hint*. And it would have made most of their scenes together in SB a tad less obnoxious.

I've read three of the books. The Risk Assessment, In the Silence or Into the silence (the one where Ianto has to stand around singing or something) and The Undertaker's Gift where the writer has a real hard-on for Gwen's brown eyes and where Jack spends the first half of the book wanting to prove he can do things on his on, but later just has to drag a sick and dying Ianto off his sick bed to go rescue Gwen. Didn't really care for any of them and these are supposedly the best of the books so I gave up on the rest. The Radioplays are ok. They're probably the only things in the additional material I'd treat as canon outside of the show if pushed. I find the web stuff fun, but they're just as sloppy with that as they are with the show no surprise. Like the web stuff Dizzy put up. We're supposed to believe that Jack did a psych eval on his team and still thought it was a good idea to hire these people? lol. Or that Jack did an extensive background search on Ianto, but Ianto apparently forgot all about this or still feels he can lie about what his dad does? And there's that letter that Jack wrote from Lahore about the fairies killing all those soldiers which is dated long before the actual incident happened. I enjoy reading the im's between the team though. Makes me wish we'd seen more of that dynamic on the show.

Aww lol I think Ianto has a dark side, but I tend to like the fact that it's not necessarily the most significant aspect of him. Both he and Tosh have been through some dark stuff, but neither of them come off as jaded as they likely should. Which is why it makes me particularly sad that the show (and Jack by extension) seems so willing to write them off as lost causes except as fodder for Torchwood to chew up and spit out.

I assume Jack has a rather simplistic view of what it means to be normal and human (you have a boyfriend and are sometimes nice to strangers) because the show, through Gwen, seems be peddling a rather simplistic idea of those things. And her faults aren't really treated as an intrinsic part of her, but a consequence of being part of Torchwood. But I have to imagine even if Jack doesn't have a complete handle on our social norms he still has to have a somewhat more sophisticted handling of them than someone who'd honestly believe that all you need is a boyfriend and a chance to go bowling every Friday and that would be enough to protect you from succumbing to the bad things in the world or that just the act of having a boyfriend is proof of what a grounded normal person you are. Even the show can't sell that idea convincingly. Gwen doesn't stay grounded, if she was even all that grounded to begin with considering how quickly she seems to succumbs to cheating and drugging people just because she can. But even if you did believe that I still think you'd need to know more about a person than they have a boyfriend, like what that boyfriend is actually like, before you could say well obviously this person is normal and unjaded because they have this person in their life etc. I mean if they'd had Jack come to this belief about her after say Meat I could buy it, but the first or second episode? Jack telling Real Jack that there's no-one only bugs me in relations to him then kissing Ianto in EOD. It may not be a serious relationship, but he can hardly be no-one if Jack chooses that particular response with him in those circumstances. And then yeah he is a dick and why exactly am I supposed to give a crap about his feelings in this when his apparently change according to which cute guy happens to be in the room. Especially when it's not as if they give us anything else to go on.

They spent over 90 years coming up with Plan A so I don't even want to imagine what Plan b was going to be like.

Pretty much yes. As far as I can make out The Families plan was to make the world immortal so they could destabilize and destroy the world and then rebuild to their own liking and control everything and they realised they could do this by pouring Jack's blood into the great vagina. So, at least as we see on the show, they stole Jack's blood back in the late 1920s while he was being tortured (why they didn't just steal Jack and experiment on him I don't know since it's not as if they were above cruelty and murder) and because Jack's blood is so special (except not) in 2011 they were able to carry out their plan.

I would have loved that. The Torchwood 1 survivor's club.

I have to admit this is the part that has never and will never make any sense to me because for almost all of s1 and the first few episodes of s2 Jack hardly knows Gwen and doesn't meet Rhys until Combat, and then only very briefly, has no notion of her relationship with Rhys other than she happens to be in one. But he knows that being with Rhys is what grounds her to the point that he actively tries to protect this aspect of her life. The fact that Gwen seems so ambivalent with Rhys, has an affair with a colleague pretty quickly after joining Torchwood and seems interested in a potential something with him suggest that there may well be pretty significant issues with that relationship, but Jack remains pretty fixated on the idea that Gwen needs Rhys. It's almost like he's obligating her to stay in a relationship she may not entirely be happy with because it suits some vague agenda he has. That happens too, but after the hospital scene when they're back at the Hub.

No. Ianto starts fishing in the hospital when Rupesh, calls them a couple.

I think the radioplay Submission suggested they met on the job, but yeah it would have been nice to know some of these details.

On the other hand Jack also spent over 100 years living through and presumably having to adapt to the social more of the 19th, 20th and 21st century. I have a hard time buying that didn't influence his thinking in someways. If anything he should have a greater understanding of our social mores than either Ianto or Gwen because they grew up during a comparatively permissive time in comparison to the times Jack lived through. And granted he's trying to wind them up at that point, but he gets oddly judgmental about Gwen sleeping with Owen while proclaiming to be in love with Rhys in EOD. If anything Jack is the one who seems determined to set the parameters in both of these relationships, insisting Gwen keep to her 21st century life as much as possible, actively pushing her towards Rhys and he never suggests there might be an alternative to that. He comes off as pretty paternalistic with her. And as far as I can tell Ianto seems less concerned with Gwen's role in Jack's life as much as his own significance. As far as I can tell he's fine with Jack loving Gwen or anyone as long as his significance is defined. And it's not as if the idea of loving more than one person is that unusual even now so I'm not sure either Gwen or Ianto would have a hard time grasping that particular concept especially since they've both experienced that in one form or another. Also we're told Jack comes from a more permissive time with less rigid social mores than ours, but then they have him and Captain John joking about, who was the wife, so those kind of defined roles still matter in the 51st century? Otherwise, even jokingly, why would it matter who was the wife (apparently still a negative connotation) or not. And why would those kinds of jokes even still exist? Plus when we see Jack's family they have a chance to show us the kind of society Jack lives in and the ways it may be different and yet we get a fairly conventional family structure of two kids, a mother, and a father.

I think that's true. I know fanfic tends to write Ianto as devastated and unable to cope when Jack leaves at the end of s1, but if anything it seemed to be mostly fine with it.

I don't know. He does seem to love stopwatches and timing things. I tend to think Ianto accepts that Jack can't die or stay dead. By then he's probably seen all kinds of weird things and had a girlfriend who was cyberized so I can see him taking Jack's 'quirk' in stride. But whether he could really grasp the idea of immortality as anything than an intellectual exercise I'm not sure.I'm not sure how anyone, even Jack, would really grasp the concept of living literally forever. I mean even the Doctor doesn't really live forever although he can live for a very long time. That's something that seems so unique to Jack. Ianto does worry that Jack won't remember him in a thousand years, but honestly if he doesn't even feel sure Jack loves him in the here and now, as suggested in the Deadline and COE, while he's still alive, being remembered in a thousand years seems like it should be the least of his concerns. Plus Ianto seems convinced that he's only going to be around for a couple more years, five at most. So if anything I'd imagine he'd more concerned about how little time they actually likely to have together than how much time Jack has. He does sort of allude to that in their convo in COE, but it does seem like we're supposed to believe he's more concerned with his ultimate legacy in Jack's long life than what they actually are together. Ianto does seem to grasp the idea that life is short and that you need to take your moments while you can somewhat better than Jack which I found a bit odd. You'd think someone who has lived as long as Jack has and seen as much loss as Jack has and watched Torchwood agents come and go would appreciate the concept of gathering rosebuds while you can and all that. But he's the one who acts like they have all the time in the world to faff about figuring things out. I guess because he does. But you'd think he'd appreciate that Ianto doesn't.

We're told the aliens aren't willing to negotiate and will destroy the world if they don't get all the children they ask for. We're even given a scene where they try to negotiate the numbers down and it fails. So if we're supposed to believe that other countries are refusing to go along that's a pretty significant point that needs to be made on screen because really Britain handing over all those children to the aliens only works if every other country does as well. Otherwise all that effort, storming into homes and schools etc., is a bit pointless if the point is to avoid the aliens attacking them because other countries refusing ensures they're going to be attacked anyway. Plus it's a show. If you don't show it or acknowledge it in anyway on screen then it may as well have not happened. But mostly I don't really the point in deciding you want to write particular kinds of global story lines because they raise complex issues about the world and then decide to tackle them in the most simplistic,least global and least complex way possible. And moreso than MD, I don't really think COE, beyond the title of course, really needs to be set globally to work and if anything it seems to hamper their storytelling. I mean that scene where the aliens gas those people in Thames House instead of aiming for a couple of countries to show the world they mean business would have probably made more sense if it was just the UK they were threatening instead of the entire world. I get that getting to film in a couple of different countries( although other than Wales and a couple of cities in America did we get to see much of any other country the characters supposedly ended up in) is fun, but if one of the main points of a story is to consider how people and governments would respond globally it seems a bit pointless to then not really explore that. And the fact that even when they do have a bigger budget and more time and a storyline that really lends itself to a global setting and they still don't bother to really tackle the global perspective more than in token ways or as a hook kind of suggests that's maybe that's not an aspect they're really interested in addressing effectively, time constraints or otherwise.

This is so true. I think this is a relationship that shouldn't really work on any level, but at the same time I can see why it would work, but the show sadly never explores any of that. Despite being in a relationship in some capacity with Ianto for two and a half seasons so much of the focus on Jack's romantic feelings is filtered through his relationship with Gwen which I think really hurts how his relationship with Ianto comes across I think it's hard to separate one for the other and not because of Jack's pansexuality, but because the show clearly very much writes according to the hierarchy of its character's positions on the show. Trying to assess whether Jack loves Ianto or not feels almost irrelevant because until they kill Ianto off that's not something show ever seems all that interested in. How are you even supposed to go about even making that assessment? Even in COE we don't really get that which has always been weird to me because their building up to Jack losing Ianto mattering. At no point do we ever really get Jack's pov on this relationship. I think because I never really understand Jack's motivation for getting back involved with Ianto in s2 it's always hard for me to have much sympathy for him getting involved with Ianto at that point on the proviso that he won't expect things. That strikes me as a pretty shitty motivation for getting involved with someone especially since it's made pretty clear this isn't exactly casual for Ianto at that point and I have to presume Jack gets that because I doubt he would have suggested the date otherwise. I get why someone like Jack with his history might be reluctant to get involved again or why there might be trust issues between them (there should be trust issues Ianto betrayed Jack and Jack abandoned them) and emotional back and forth, but we don't see that on screen. We get Jack getting involved with Ianto and then kind of mooning every once in a while over Gwen without much explanation for or exploration of that except in terms of how it affects her relationship with Rhys. I do like the idea that there aren't too many illusions about one another , but they're still able to kind of see the best in each other. Their relationship does kind of begin after they've revealed at least some of the worst about each other (and kind of the best) and more than any others Ianto and Jack seem wedded to the idea of being Torchwood so there's that.

I just took it as a metaphor for his state of mind to emphasize how deep his grief and guilt goes to the point that pretty much everywhere he goes all he sees is the deaths he's caused. Hence why the planet feels so small.He can't escape himself. I don't think he meant he's literally seeing graves everywhere. The nod to the fallout seems to be the PM losing his job and that woman who said they should give away other people's children taking over. And how isolated because whatever is going on in the world never seems to touch there. I think it's so weird with people like Gwen and Rex and Esther because they're in jobs where you're supposed to be observant and aware and in both Gwen and Esther's case the suggestion is that even more than the people around them they're supposed to be curious and tenacious and not necessarily people who just accept the party line and yet they show no real awareness of things that even an ordinary, less critical person would have a hard time ignoring. Until Jack tells them about it of course.

I thought that was more a comment on his personal state of mind, that with all the deaths he'd experienced that's all he could see now and he couldn't escape it no matter how far away he got. I didn't really see it as a comment on actual events beyond his own personal involvement. They were probably on that island Martha went to each time a worldwide alien invasion happened.

And he's routinely being drained of his blood by someone with no medical training to a dangerous level. I get that shows aren't always good with this stuff and Torchwood was particularly bad, but being mortal and the limitations it places on him now is a fundamental point of his story in MD so you'd think they'd try to be as true to that as possible. I think it works if you ignore the fact that most of COE's focus is on the politicians and this supposedly horrible decision they make to the point of sending the army in to schools and homes to kidnap children. And then we get to the end and that's quickly wrapped up and seemingly forgotten. I know he likes to rely on the world just forgetting these big events, but I'm not sure the world is as quite as forgetful as he likes to pretend. Especially when they're directly impacted. And then he pretty much does the same thing with MD in an even more unlikely scenario. And he's routinely being drained of his blood by someone with no medical training to a dangerous level. I get that shows aren't always good with this stuff and Torchwood was particularly bad, but being mortal and the limitations it places on him now is a fundamental point of his story in MD so you'd think they'd try to be as true to that as possible. I think it works if you ignore the fact that most of COE's focus is on the politicians and this supposedly horrible decision they make to the point of sending the army in to schools and homes to kidnap children. And then we get to the end and that's quickly wrapped up and seemingly forgotten. I know he likes to rely on the world just forgetting these big events, but I'm not sure the world is as quite as forgetful as he likes to pretend. Especially when they're directly impacted. And then he pretty much does the same thing with MD in an even more unlikely scenario.

They aren't a well done foe. They basically have to spend the last episode explaining what the hell is supposed to be going on, but I'm pretty sure by that point too many in the audience just didn't care. I know I didn't. It's like Luckylyn said. They apparently controlled everything already so what was the point of going to such an extreme just so they could control everything. Surely after the ninety odd years they'd been working on this they could have come up with a more efficient plan. The thing that struck me about Miracle Day is just how little real sense you get of how immortality has changed the world because as the audience you rarely get to see it you mostly just hear about it. It really removed me from the story. You were supposed to be getting a sense of societies breaking under the strain, but it's mostly tell than show. Like they show the camps, but not all that much of the day to day world. And killing off Vera really affects that even more.

I guess since they're writing this show for teenagers and young adults it makes sense they'd have the characters behave like teenagers. Owen and Gwen seem to embody that in this episode and are kind of obnoxious. The rape for laughs didn't exactly do Owen any favours with me, but this episode pretty much doomed him. There's just so little I find appealing about him. And the fact that both Gwen and Tosh are fighting over him just makes me headdesk. And lol at the show for trying to make us sympathize with Gwen when Tosh has the nerve to get shirty when Owen and Gwen ruin her work and find that fact amusing. Not going to happen. Also ugh to the episode pitting Tosh against Gwen when Owen has to chose who to save. Because of course he's going to chose Gwen. No-one can be more important than Gwen. It's the law of Torchwood. That moment really did make me cringe. I do like the idea that while Tosh can be socially awkward and lonely and shy she can also be awesome and brave. I just wish that hadn't pretty much consigned her to stories based around her sucky love life. When she was talking about how the rest of the team didn't see the alien stuff the way she did I was thinking I wish we'd seen more of that aspect of her. I actually think that's something her and Jack might have in common. Or even her and Ianto since and he is supposed to be an archivist whatever that means at Torchwood. The best part of this episode is Tosh and Mary. The actresses have really good chemistry so it's kind of a pity Mary is a murderous alien who is just manipulating her. Well I guess there are possibly some genuine feelings there, but who knows. Her comment about having something to eat before she goes towards the end of the episode does seem to suggest she planned to murder Tosh and have her heart for a snack. But maybe she meant they could get pizza or something. Love the Jack and Tosh scenes. Their friendship, the little we get to see of it, is honestly one of my favourite things about the show. The actors have an easy chemistry. But is there a reason why they have him just walk away at the end when Tosh is upset instead of sitting with her or is that something he's only allowed to do with Gwen at this point. It's such an abrupt transition. She's clearly still upset and he just gets up, pauses a bit and walks away. lol. Was there a roof he just had to be on? I never noticed before how little Jack is in this episode. So Mary points out that Tosh has been at Torchwood for three years, but by Fragments she's supposed to have been there five years. The transition from Tosh using the pendant to it apparently messing with her head and perspective and her lamenting about it does feel a bit abrupt. Mary's expression during Tosh's meltdown over the pendant and how it's changed her does make me laugh. The episode almost makes it seem like she decides to brave Torchwood just to get away from that.