| Author |
Message |
Beckie03
Member
07-05-2007
| Friday, July 08, 2011 - 11:24 pm 
so I missed a whole first season of torchwood?! maybe that's why I don't understand it...I must find this first season so I can catch up...
|
Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Friday, July 08, 2011 - 11:42 pm
Wait, Beckie...have you not seen any previous Torchwood episodes? I may be confused.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Friday, July 08, 2011 - 11:53 pm
Beckie, if you have netflix instant play seasons 1-3 are on there. I don't know if you mean you missed just the first season or all of them, if all of them, basically Torchwood are a team of people, around for about a century, who investigate and fix all the weird stuff. Most of the team are normal people, but Captain Jack Harness is actually from way, way in the future and is a time traveller, who became immortal when he was visiting the early 1900s and has stayed in that timeline for most of the time since. Almost all of the team members we've met in the past series have died and now we're just left with Gwen. The other policeman we saw knows vaguely what she used to do, and her husband knows more, but neither are Torchwood. It seems that now the people of Earth are immortal, Jack has curiously become mortal once more.
Yes, good question, are they going to be immortal or somehow just put back into the regular err, life stream, or whatever it would be called? I was thinking he needed a heart transplant, and maybe if he came back to life the heart would then just work, but of course where do you get hearts to transplant when no one dies?
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 12:00 am
Beckie, and if you (or anyone else) is new to Torchwood, it's best to be prepared with the knowledge that it's dark. Don't expect any happy endings.
|
Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 12:12 am
That's what I was confused about, had a post written about seasons 1-3 and then wasn't sure if Beckie had missed just one season or all three. If you haven't seen any of the seasons Beckie, dvr all of Miracle Day and hold off on those til you can watch the first three seasons.
Captain Jack first appeared on Doctor Who for a few episodes (Ecclestain's season and I'm sure I spelled his name wrong) and then went on to the Torchwood spinoff. And Kitt is totally right, where Doctor Who can be light, fluffy, and funny (though it gets dark too) Torchwood rarely has a happy ending. It does have it's funny moments and the characters can be a hoot at times. My opinion, definitely worth watching.
LOL, Kitt, maybe the blown up guy with his head now cut off. At this point, I don't know that he really needs a heart anymore. I'll tell you something else (speaking of now headless guy) that struck me as odd with everyone else being immortal and Jack being mortal...no one is healing the way he usually does. They get hurt or blown up, they stay that way, at least so far.
|
Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 12:55 am
Oh, oh, it just hit me whose heart the dude (Rex? Is it Rex?) can take. The pedaphile who managed to avoid execution! He'll be one I won't be sorry to see die in glorious Torchwood style.
|
Rissa
Member
03-19-2006
| Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 3:45 am
The way I always saw it was: The Sarah Jane Adventures was for kids, Doctor Who is for families and Torchwood is adults only. Russell created a triad with somthing for everyone. LOL
So excited about tonight!!! Seems like it has been forever and with all the confusion about whether or not there would be a U.S. version I worried for a while that there would not be a season 4.
Beckie, I echo the others. At the very least watch the season 1 premiere, the last couple of season 2 and all of season 3. Season 3 is only 5 episodes but you should practise holding your breath before watching because you might find yourself doing it thoughout. Very intense.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 11:08 am
Rissa, is Canada getting it on Saturdays? We're getting it Friday nights, so beware of us unintentionally spoiling you! (My friends in the UK don't get it until next Thursday and are mad about it!)
Some character names according to Imdb:
Mekhi Phifer is Rex Matheson
Bill Pullman is Oswald Danes
the pretty blonde is Esther Drummond
Good point that no one's healing when Jack used to heal. I wonder if the writers realised there was a difference.
I don't know if burnt guy's heart would work too well in Rex! Talking of burnt guy, I couldn't believe they so happily just snipped his head off!! The mortuary guy seemed so slapdash about it!
That pedophile is going to be trouble.
|
Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 12:09 am
LOL I know, Kitt. Hardly a bat eye over the head snipping.
|
Rissa
Member
03-19-2006
| Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 4:57 am
Thanks for the heads up Kitt, especially since I typically record shows to watch the next day so i can skip commercials which puts me two days behind.
Best season premiere ever!! Anyone else physically cheer when Captain Jack appeared on screen? Just me?  Lordy I have missed this show. So few shows that I love this much so I have been avoiding all spoilers. Had no idea Mekhi was going to play Rex. Love him and Pullman is perfect as Danes. Only disapointment? Season is too short. LOL
|
Beckie03
Member
07-05-2007
| Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 6:17 pm
Oh, there's more than one season? holy sheet.
well I guess I'll check out all previous seasons...
I thought it was a series premiere and I wasn't understanding any of it when I saw it. Makes more sense that there are previous seasons. LOL. idiot.
|
Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 9:19 pm
They are pretty short seasons though, Beckie. 1 & 2 are only 13 episodes and 3 is only 5. But, lots of background and fun.
Cheered here too, Rissa. Until he appeared I kept asking, "Where is Captain Jack?"
|
Calamity
Member
10-18-2001
| Monday, July 11, 2011 - 10:47 am
Good old Torchwood. You can always count on it to find a way to take what could be a miracle and make it nightmarishly grim and dark. Possible spoilers ahead for Beckie: After having gone missing for months, a teen returns from being taken by the rift - but has been driven utterly insane and now screams in torture for 20 hours a day. Jack defeats the 456 - but has to sacrifice his young grandson to do so. An alien sleeper agent fights to retain her humanity - but has to commit suicide-by-proxy to do so. Owen is somehow still here after dying - but...well, you know. (Sorry, Kitt). And on and on.
TW may have topped itself with this new season though. The human race becomes immortal - but not only are there issues with population growth and limited resources, the sick & injured don't appear to be healing. They simply don't die and so linger in who knows what sort of agony and fear. When it got to the part with that charred, not-all-there body which even after being beheaded still lived, I was gagging in horror. It's official - TW's back!
That's not to say I disliked the opening episode. Turns out I missed this show more than I'd realized. But I still prefer the original theme music. Loved Jack (wonder what he's been up to since he'd left) & Gwen. Good to see Rhys again. I liked Esther - is she a CIA agent or some sort of junior office worker? Bill Pullman was pretty effective playing against type and was creeping me out. But Rex, I'm not sure about him. When he was cackling about the other agent's wife having leukemia, I was thinking "am I supposed to like him?". The actor was good on ER though and there's already been some character development for Rex since his should've-been fatal accident so we'll see. I was wondering if something might be going on with the surgeon.
I hope (but won't hope too hard) that over the season we might get some clues about what had happened to Owen & Jack. Even though he'd heal & resurrect, remember when Jack asked the doctor is he'd continue to age - that he'd noticed a gray hair or something like that?
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Monday, July 11, 2011 - 2:10 pm
I think it was the Owen story that got them thinking about this, but I don't know what more they can say about him now. If there is any of him he's scattered in the atmosphere now, or the soil more likely. Oh that whole Owen storyline was so very disturbing.
Yes Esther is CIA, like Rex, The clips and videos aren't visible on the BBC site but all their background on the characters is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0122tc1
oh and of course Starz! has it too now:
http://www.starz.com/originals/Torchwood/Cast
I think Rex was meant to be ruthless and is now in for a shock... I think we're meant to grow to like him. One of the big things about all Russell T Jones characters is that they show all sides to them, warts and all, and sometimes a character can annoy you, or they do something bad, but somehow you've grown to care about them and accept them for their faults like you would real people. I've never known anyone write characters the way Russell T does.
|
Lycanthrope
Member
09-19-2002
| Monday, July 11, 2011 - 7:12 pm
Absolutely loved episode 1 of Miracle Day. Missed Jack and Gwen a lot. This American slant is still up in the air for me. I like my British shows to be British, but I'll be watching no matter what.
|
Jasper
Moderator
09-14-2000
| Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 9:47 am
I was kind of on the fence for a portion of the ep. I thought it was a huge leap for Rex to say yep Torchwood Miracle Day they are connected after Esther had been talking about it and he pooh poohed. Getting on a plane right away and going to Wales. lol, yes that is what I found unbelievable about the show.
I look forward to more of Capt Jack, Gwen and Rhys.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 11:41 am
I am loathe to criticise Torchwood because, well, it's Torchwood, but a couple of things are niggling me.
1. I don't believe the adulation of Oswald Danes. There are always freaks (not to sound too judgemental ;)) who worship murderers on death row, but it's too much to believe that so many would worship him as some kind of prophet.
2. It's been, what, two weeks since this started, and they're already talking about releasing prisoners on life because being imprisoned forever is a cruel and unusual punishment. Everyone was expecting them to be there for 40 years of whatever, so couldn't they at least wait more that two weeks before making such decisions?
3. And similar to number two on all the other things they're prematurely discussing - definitions of murder and so on. It's all too soon.
Otherwise I'm enjoying it.
|
Sanfranjoshfan
Member
09-17-2000
| Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 12:03 pm
Viewers more easily accept the impossible than the improbable.
-paraphrased quote by Roger Ebert-
|
Calamity
Member
10-18-2001
| Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 9:39 am
I was just trying to figure out how so many people got all those identical masks so fast. I didn't realize two weeks had already gone by so I guess that makes more sense. But anyway, among the last places I would want to be in this sort of unreal situation would be in a big city amongst a giant crowd of people!
When the surgeon told the police officer to do something about the husband who kept attacking his wife but the cop was, let's say, unhelpful, I actually got mad. It may be interesting to ponder the legal & language ramifications of the Miracle but that doesn't mean someone should get away with what hubby was doing. Can a morphic field spread mass stupidity too?
I was pretty spooked by that devilish pharm company rep who approached both the surgeon & Oswald (btw is his name supposed to be a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald? What about the Danes part?). She didn't seem quite so eerie in the third epi but still...
Speaking of the surgeon, her voice sounds so familiar to me but I looked at her credits and didn't recognize her from anything on there.
ETA: P.S. Not that long ago there was another story about whale songs and how they change suddenly in different places. I was going to post it in the Environmental News thread but didn't. Maybe I'll look for it later.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 10:17 am
Can a morphic field spread mass stupidity too?
Precisely. That's my beef with the show so far, but I'm trying to ignore it. I think they were interested in exploring the long term ramifications of what's happening, but because of the plot have to do it in a short period "real time." It doesn't really work for me. I kind of think most people would be getting on with their lives as if nothing had changed, at least in the short term.
Oswald Danes' name sounds like a bad guy's name. I don't know if it's the Oswald part or what it is.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 10:39 am
A tweet by thefutoncritic.com:
thefutoncritic
#BBCA at TCA: #DoctorWho returns August 27-October 1 with back half of season 6; Xmas special (written by Steven Moffat) during holidays.
43 minutes ago
I wasn't expecting it back so soon, Torchwood won't even be over!
|
Calamity
Member
10-18-2001
| Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 11:07 am
Thanks for the info! That kind of makes up for no Mad Men this summer. And two summer series is about all I can keep up with anyway.
|
Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Friday, July 29, 2011 - 10:48 pm
(Torchwood...) I want to know what they call dead. Say someone had a really bad illness or infection, they often die because the bacteria/virus multiplies so quickly the body can't handle it. But if the body is given time (because it can't die) to work on the sickness, and extra drugs along the way, maybe they'd actually recover.
If that's the case, then the new dead should only really be those who could not be alive if the rules were suddenly changed back to pre-Miracle Day. So mostly people with major injuries or heart/lung/major unrecoverable organ damage.
I think what I'm trying to say is most of those people in the new hospital didn't look "dead." Like the baby, it was perfect, perhaps it had "died" in a cot death, but as the injury wasn't traumatic, can it now live if the everything goes back to normal?
Or maybe I missed the point and once you're dead your heart stops beating even if it's undamaged?
|
Calamity
Member
10-18-2001
| Friday, August 05, 2011 - 3:40 pm
I don't know, Kitt. I'm really confused about whether some of the dead/dying are recovering (and here I thought Lost provoked the strangest ideas & questions for posts!) or whether some of them are just able to have a certain amount of functionality thanks to medical treatment & the miracle even though they're not actually healing or getting better.
I don't know if you've ever seen the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer but everyone who watches it ends up wondering the same thing: What's supposed to be wrong with the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys? Because she seems perfect. That's what I thought of in that scene with the baby: "What's wrong with the baby? I don't get it - why was she dumped?" It was awful when we saw the old man dumped but at least we knew why he was being abandoned. Anyway, I was a bit mystified by this scene too. Plus I wasn't sure if the image of a convicted child rapist/murderer holding a baby really would warm the cockles of anyone's heart other than those of the deeply disturbed and delusional.
But I'm guessing that these plague ship hospitals and overflow camps have something to do with whatever the plan is of whoever is behind the miracle since that voice from the triangle said the Tea Party politician's support was revealing things too soon or something like that. And, of course, because Gwen's dad was being taken to one also.
I'm not sure about who the families are supposed to be, if they're adversaries we've already seen on TW or DW or if they have anything to do with the myth that was mentioned or what. But you really can't help wondering where the Doctor is in this sort of situation! That's the problem with a franchise, lol.
P.S. I thought Mare Winningham's role & part in the story was awkward & contrived in the sense that it was too obvious her character was meant to be a political flashpoint. I'm not saying there's no place for that sort of thing in this sort of show, just that the way it was presented took me out of the story and made me wonder what was on CNN. (Then again, I've had similar feelings about actual Tea Party politicians - that they just can't be real.) And as much as I'm not a red-suiter, her fate, particularly the camera moving in to show her eye, was just sadistic. Between that and what happened to the computer programmer, I was left with a very sick feeling about this season. TW is again teetering on the too-dark-for-me-to-really-enjoy precipice. The episodes that make me sad and depressed can be very hard to take but the ones that just horrify me (such as the epis with that giant alien manatee and those cannibals) make me wonder why I'm watching at all. But, naturally, I have to find out what's going on. Just hope I don't regret it. Curse my curiosity!
|
Rissa
Member
03-19-2006
| Friday, August 05, 2011 - 5:29 pm
Even if people are not healing there are going to be many who will survive when the *miracle* stops. For example... massive heart attack due to blocked artery. Well the docs will repair the blockage and they will be fine. Matheson had his damage repaired so healing can just begin whenever even if he is remaining status-quo now (if he quits ripping his stitches that is LOL). On the other hand folks like the bomb guy at the beginning and Winningham's character will die. That's the way I have been looking at it anyway which seems to agree with you Kitt.
I am enjoying this season but it doesn't rise to the quality of last year (Children of the Earth) IMO.
|
|
|
|
