Everyone who loved Captain Jack's character in the new Doctor Who show was psyched to hear that he would be getting his own spinoff called Torchwood. The premise: Captain Jack is the leader of a group in Cardiff, Wales, called Torchwood, which does *Men in Black-*style alien wrangling stuff. Why Cardiff? Apparently it's positioned over a rift in space-time, so lots of alien flotsam and jetsam wash up (it's sort of like the way Buffy's hometown Sunnydale sits on the Hellmouth). Russell T. Davies, who created the new Doctor Who as well as Queer as Folk, is at helm on Torchwood too. He promised viewers that the show would be a grown-up verison of Doctor Who where everyone is bisexual. That turned out to be true, and we've already seen lots of gay kissing, as well as bisexual flirtation and (literally) explosive orgasms.
Unfortunately, rampant queerness does not make up for bad plotting. You know the show is going terribly wrong when its opening voiceover says the Torchwood organization is "arming the human race against the future." Huh? I've downloaded watched the first five episodes of Torchwood now, and seeing the hot Captain flirt with boys and girls alike is doing nothing for me because I'm clutching my head in pain as a "cyberwoman" attacks. But don't trust me on this. Allow me to report what British fans are saying over on MonkeyFilter:
"I like [supporting character] Owen best despite the fact he date raped those people in thefirst episode - just because having a bastard around's slightly moreinteresting than anything else they've given us."
"I think [Jack] worked better as the hypercompetent sidekick from Dr. Whothan as a manager; we rarely see him in a body hugging shirt doingmanly stuff like fixing things with grunts and psychobabble."
"The Cyberwoman episode was dreadful. The woman playing title role wasawful - just running an estuary accent through a vocoder does not makeit scary.
And the script made me cringe several times.
Bloke - What was the last thing you remember?
Me - o god don't say 'Pain' that would be so crap
Cyberwoman - Pain
Me - *faints dead away*"
"It's alright, and I keep watching because it's new and shiny andeveryone else I know is watching it and I don't want to be the one leftout of the joke, you know? But it's really not all that. I'm stillpissed about the Cyber-female-thing a week later (FUCK OFF, SHOW) andthe backstory's all a jumble and they don't seem very competent, dothey?"
MonkeyFilter [message board]
