Young and Full of Fluff

I had an epiphany yesterday: Torchwood wants to be the sci fi version of Criminal Minds. No, really. Criminal Minds is a procedural about profilers and serial killers, but it's also about what this line of work does to these people. It's about how it psychologically damages them, isolates them from the rest of the world, destroys their outside relationships, and forces them to rely more and more on just each other for everything.

Torchwood is trying to do the same thing, especially in the first season--show how the work damages and isolates the characters. But where Criminal Minds manages to pull this off in an authentic and realistic way, Torchwood...not so much. And while Torchwood has no problem killing its characters to prove the harshness of this world, Criminal Minds, rather than killing them, has no problem taking characters we like and having them go through emotional breakdowns that turn them into people we no longer like or admire. I think that shows the harshness of the world far more than martyring the character, because it destroys the character more completely.

So, yes, I think Torchwood wishes it were Criminal Minds. And let's face it, John Barrowman is no Mandy Patinkin.

In case anyone on the internet has missed this, David Tennant plants one on John Barrowman at a panel at San Diego Comic Con.

( It happens at about the five minute mark )


I didn't actually listen through the rest of it, so I have no idea if there are spoilers for things, recent or upcoming. So if you're worried for that, you can skip it. Or just fast forward.

Gakked from dotfic.

So I've been listening to this excellent podcast on Torchwood:Children of Earth (spoilers!), and they keep mentioning Torchwood audio plays.

Where can I find these Torchwood audio plays?

So, I've been contemplating fic ideas I have for both Star Trek and Torchwood, and I realize that...they're the same damn stories. Both are about one character who wants a relationship, and another who doesn't understand why promiscuity could be a problem.

And then I realized...

Captain Jack/Captain Kirk

Why have I not seen this yet? It seems inevitable.

I suddenly have an enormous craving for Torchwood. Possibly because I've been listening to the TW soundtrack while working. (It's a good soundtrack! The track where ( spoiler ) is particularly good.) I feel like I've read all the fic. When's it coming back?

My brand new icon: John Barrowman! Yay! I finally have a Torchwood icon! Also, I did nothing to this image but resize it. This is an actual promo image for Barrowman's Robin Hood pantomime. Sparkles included. More pics from this (including with a giant robot WTF) are here.

So, I am finally caught up on Torchwood. That did not hurt the way I thought it would. In fact, I didn't mind it too much.

( A Day in the Death )

( Something Borrowed )

( From Out of the Rain )

( Adrift )

( Fragments )

( Exit Wounds )



( Overall thoughts on the show )

As gryphonrose pointed out, Torchwood deserves some sort of prize for most improved show from the first to the second series. I'm beginning to see hints at a show I could genuinely enjoy. But only hints. It improved a lot, but that doesn't mean it's actually good now. Maybe if it sticks around for enough seasons eventually it will be.

Out of curiosity last night I looked up the birth years of some of the actors on Torchwood. The actor's age isn't always the age of the character, but it's a good way to guess at it in the absence of canon establishing an age.

Gareth David-Lloyd, who plays Ianto, is 26. John Barrowman, who plays Jack, is 40. Even setting aside the whole 200-year-old immortal thing, that's quite an age gap. Not an insurmountable one, to be sure, but enough to make things complicated. Let's just say, I'm 26 and 40 is a few years older than I would date.

This also makes more sense for the Ianto-as-teaboy thing. Most 26 year olds are still in relatively menial office jobs (just ask my friends!). Of course, the actress who plays Gwen is only three years older than that, so it doesn't quite make sense that Ianto's job is so much more, um, useless than everybody else's. Now I have a picture, though, of Ianto photocopying stuff back at Torchwood One. He'd've been 24 at the Battle of Canary Wharf, which is plenty young enough to have a job in the mailroom, there.