catalyst2 | Torchwood - Everything Changes

Well, I watched it and

This wasn't what I expected at all. No-one told me it was so funny! That, btw, made it all the better because I love that whole "laughter under fire" vibe!

Visually it is gorgeous - who would have thought Cardiff - frakking Cardiff for goodness sake! - could look so metropolitan and just, well, so damn cool? Jack looked every bit as gorgeous as everyone (well, lots of people, any way) has raved on about. The rest of the cast slotted in very smoothly and to lose a "major" cast member so early was good too - although, as a BtVS fan, it is a familiar device! I wonder if Suzie will become as instantly forgotten as Jesse?

I did notice that Jack seems to like to stand on the top of tall buildings a lot (a la Dark Knight, I suppose) but that gave us some very iconic shots too - also showed up a part of his detachment from humans.

I like that the issue for the team was their detachment from people - covering up deaths without a moment's hesitation, bringing people back from the dead just to test the glove (of Myhnegon? just kidding!) - because that is a very under-explored dynamic in situations like this. Think about how soldiers who come back from combat struggle to reconnect. I liked that as the theme for this episode.

What could have been cool (but didn't actually work here because of 10's saturation advertising and the tagline they gave the series) was when Jack was shot dead but then came back (see 10, if you center your entire campaign around "The man that can never die", there's no drama in this scene!) but it would have been a great moment if it was a surprise!

I also liked the entire pizza delivery sequence - behind the hidden door is NOT a beautiful metal/glass/tile antiseptic lab of SF cliche but a dirty, grotty tunnel leading into an untidy, messy (and, let's face it, slightly chaotic) workshop. The talented. high-powered team WERE NOT FOOLED FOR A SECOND by the transparently obvious ploy and in fact tried to play along until they laughed out loud. And then Owen admits he orders pizza to Torchwood and that he's a twat! There were just so many SF staple plot devices in that one sequence and every one of them was inverted and used to good effect.

In short, a great opener - we know a bit about what these people do, the new team member is deftly slid into position and there's a whole lot of unanswered questions to draw me back in next week - which will, most assuredly, happen!