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torchwood 2x03, "tommy can you hear me?"
(Okay, sorry, the episode title is "To the Last Man", but seriously, in the bit at the end -- you know the bit I mean -- I was totally expecting the above line. Did not expect Tosh to start singing, though, so it was okay that she didn't.)
I do like these rift episodes. I know the wheeze is aliens, and like Doctor Who they should be messing about in time and space (only they're earthbound so the space has to come to them), but the time episodes please me quite a lot, so this was Fox-compliant by concept as well as (mainly) by execution.
I'm a little hesitant about Tosh -- I'm having a hard time not cringing, right, she's a 30-plus-year-old woman who's getting gussied up for a 24-year-old kid who lives in a freezer more than 99% of the time? I mean, the hero in Brigadoon -- whose name is also Tommy, now that I think about it -- falls in love with Fiona in the single day that he knows her and then can't get her out of his mind and goes back to be with her (which is miraculously allowed, because of course he should have missed his chance by a hundred years, but love will out, I suppose?), and I don't think that's pathetic or evidence of the writers making him insipid or dishraggy, so maybe I ought to cut Tosh a little slack. She does not wait all year for this day, despite the fact that she marks it on her calendar -- it's simply that when it comes around, she enjoys it.
I don't know, man. I still feel like the attitude of the whole show, Jack and Gwen included, is Oh, bless, Tosh gets to spend the day with her little friend.
I did like Owen in this episode, though. I like him more and more, and I like that he's evidently grown from the Diane and Doubting Thomas (Tommy again!) events of the previous season. I like that he told Tosh he didn't want her to get hurt if she had to say goodbye, and I love that the writers didn't actually hit us over the head with the sledgehammers in their hands, that they left the name Diane unspoken. Re-Exposition and Unnecessary Backstory are for the birds. Yay, writers!
Anh, Gwen. She didn't bug me as much as I know she can. I wish she wouldn't hear that something is (a) sealed and (b) addressed to the CO of Torchwood and then look Jack in the eye and try to open it. I mean, come on. But that's exactly in character for her, so what can you do. Still, we've got Rhys next week, so she'll have the opportunity to address all my Gwen Issues. (I don't hate her, I just find her almost continually disappointing.)
Leaving Jack and Ianto. Ianto! [lovelovelove] Here's basically what I think about that: Jack:Ianto::Doctor:companion(s). Right? Jack loves Ianto, but of course Ianto will never, broadly speaking, be the Only One For Him, and Ianto adores Jack, and knows this. ... That was a good kiss, as well, and I've been in love with the fact that Ianto was in control of it since we first saw it in the trailer. Even, Ianto's hand is where Jack's hand normally goes when, as is usual, he's the one doing the kissing. Watch Jack kissing Rose/the Doctor/Captain Jack/season-one Ianto/Spike (a little less so in that case). The right hand is half on the jaw and half on the neck, so he's really taking the theme of holding the subject's head in place to new high levels of, right, it's because his hands are big and the folks behind the camera don't want them blocking anyone's face, but still, the guy is going to kiss someone so he grabs him/her by the throat? I'm just saying. That's someone it's very satisfying to see on the bottom, as it were, of this kiss -- Ianto's hand is on his jaw and Jack flails a bit and grabs at his shoulders before settling in and reaching up for the back of Ianto's neck.
[/overanalysis]
Also, speaking of Captain Jack Harkness (the real one, not this one), I've always thought -- and this is probably years of watching Quantum Leap talking -- that it's probably impossible to mess around in time and not influence it somehow. I mean, the kinds of time travel are different, right, so in this universe there's no concept of "the first time this happened" and alternate timelines and whatnot*, but still, when I get my head around it, our Jack first took the name of Captain Jack Harkness after the original Captain Jack had died; and he explains to Tosh how the guy was (or will have been) killed in a surprise attack during a training exercise -- and then they dance together and have a lovely goodbye kiss in front of a whole 1941-vintage RAF squadron, so you know, it's hard for me not to think maybe when they got set upon by the Messerschmitts in that training exercise, the real Captain Jack's squad may not have helped him out quite as much as they might have if they hadn't seen him in the arms of another man the night before.
All of which is by way of saying that alternate timelines or no, I think the actions of the Torchwood team in and on other times must be real, and thus, although Jack reads that Tommy was shot as a coward for suffering shell-shock when he got sent back to the front, I am going to choose to believe that once blue-ghost!Tosh tells him he's her brave, handsome hero, he goes back to France and maybe freaks out a little bit and then gets himself shot in battle, not by a firing squad.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
*except there totally are, because Rose changed the circumstances of the day her father died. And there was only one Pete, and only one Jackie, so the first thing was true for Rose, but she changed it and made the second thing true as well. In short, you can't talk me out of it, and Captain Jack would have died in a firefight either way but once Jack mucked it up it was partly due to the general homoreluctance, and Tommy would have been shot either way but once Tosh got in on it he died a hero instead of a coward. [nods decisively]
I do like these rift episodes. I know the wheeze is aliens, and like Doctor Who they should be messing about in time and space (only they're earthbound so the space has to come to them), but the time episodes please me quite a lot, so this was Fox-compliant by concept as well as (mainly) by execution.
I'm a little hesitant about Tosh -- I'm having a hard time not cringing, right, she's a 30-plus-year-old woman who's getting gussied up for a 24-year-old kid who lives in a freezer more than 99% of the time? I mean, the hero in Brigadoon -- whose name is also Tommy, now that I think about it -- falls in love with Fiona in the single day that he knows her and then can't get her out of his mind and goes back to be with her (which is miraculously allowed, because of course he should have missed his chance by a hundred years, but love will out, I suppose?), and I don't think that's pathetic or evidence of the writers making him insipid or dishraggy, so maybe I ought to cut Tosh a little slack. She does not wait all year for this day, despite the fact that she marks it on her calendar -- it's simply that when it comes around, she enjoys it.
I don't know, man. I still feel like the attitude of the whole show, Jack and Gwen included, is Oh, bless, Tosh gets to spend the day with her little friend.
I did like Owen in this episode, though. I like him more and more, and I like that he's evidently grown from the Diane and Doubting Thomas (Tommy again!) events of the previous season. I like that he told Tosh he didn't want her to get hurt if she had to say goodbye, and I love that the writers didn't actually hit us over the head with the sledgehammers in their hands, that they left the name Diane unspoken. Re-Exposition and Unnecessary Backstory are for the birds. Yay, writers!
Anh, Gwen. She didn't bug me as much as I know she can. I wish she wouldn't hear that something is (a) sealed and (b) addressed to the CO of Torchwood and then look Jack in the eye and try to open it. I mean, come on. But that's exactly in character for her, so what can you do. Still, we've got Rhys next week, so she'll have the opportunity to address all my Gwen Issues. (I don't hate her, I just find her almost continually disappointing.)
Leaving Jack and Ianto. Ianto! [lovelovelove] Here's basically what I think about that: Jack:Ianto::Doctor:companion(s). Right? Jack loves Ianto, but of course Ianto will never, broadly speaking, be the Only One For Him, and Ianto adores Jack, and knows this. ... That was a good kiss, as well, and I've been in love with the fact that Ianto was in control of it since we first saw it in the trailer. Even, Ianto's hand is where Jack's hand normally goes when, as is usual, he's the one doing the kissing. Watch Jack kissing Rose/the Doctor/Captain Jack/season-one Ianto/Spike (a little less so in that case). The right hand is half on the jaw and half on the neck, so he's really taking the theme of holding the subject's head in place to new high levels of, right, it's because his hands are big and the folks behind the camera don't want them blocking anyone's face, but still, the guy is going to kiss someone so he grabs him/her by the throat? I'm just saying. That's someone it's very satisfying to see on the bottom, as it were, of this kiss -- Ianto's hand is on his jaw and Jack flails a bit and grabs at his shoulders before settling in and reaching up for the back of Ianto's neck.
[/overanalysis]
Also, speaking of Captain Jack Harkness (the real one, not this one), I've always thought -- and this is probably years of watching Quantum Leap talking -- that it's probably impossible to mess around in time and not influence it somehow. I mean, the kinds of time travel are different, right, so in this universe there's no concept of "the first time this happened" and alternate timelines and whatnot*, but still, when I get my head around it, our Jack first took the name of Captain Jack Harkness after the original Captain Jack had died; and he explains to Tosh how the guy was (or will have been) killed in a surprise attack during a training exercise -- and then they dance together and have a lovely goodbye kiss in front of a whole 1941-vintage RAF squadron, so you know, it's hard for me not to think maybe when they got set upon by the Messerschmitts in that training exercise, the real Captain Jack's squad may not have helped him out quite as much as they might have if they hadn't seen him in the arms of another man the night before.
All of which is by way of saying that alternate timelines or no, I think the actions of the Torchwood team in and on other times must be real, and thus, although Jack reads that Tommy was shot as a coward for suffering shell-shock when he got sent back to the front, I am going to choose to believe that once blue-ghost!Tosh tells him he's her brave, handsome hero, he goes back to France and maybe freaks out a little bit and then gets himself shot in battle, not by a firing squad.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
*except there totally are, because Rose changed the circumstances of the day her father died. And there was only one Pete, and only one Jackie, so the first thing was true for Rose, but she changed it and made the second thing true as well. In short, you can't talk me out of it, and Captain Jack would have died in a firefight either way but once Jack mucked it up it was partly due to the general homoreluctance, and Tommy would have been shot either way but once Tosh got in on it he died a hero instead of a coward. [nods decisively]