Torchwood and Timetabling
Well, I watched the first episode of the new series of Torchwood tonight.
I'm impressed.
The first series went a bit overboard when trying to be “darker and edgier” than Doctor Who and often ended up with unlikable heroes and unsympathetic villains shooting at and having sex with each other for no particular reason, usually to the detriment of the character development and plot.
Right from the start, the new series establishes a lighter tone with the now sans Jack Torchwood team chasing a sports car-driving alien through the streets of Cardiff in their trademark SUV. This isn't played for laughs however as we quickly learn that, despite its humorous appearance and introduction, this alien is armed, dangerous and knowledgeable about the team. This whole section also serves to reintroduce all the characters and give Captain Jack a suitably dramatic entrance.
While some witty banter helped a lot, the thing that really made the Torchwood characters more appealing was that they were actually competent at their jobs. Remember in the first series how they didn't notice a half-converted Cyberman in their own basement for months? None of that here, much to my relief.
The team manage to work together and actually save some lives for once rather than just whining and letting a combination of Jack and random chance fix everything. This makes the characters and their role as defenders of the planet so much more believable than it was before.
You could try to chalk it up to character development – everyone had to grow up while Jack was away or else the world wound have imploded – but really this is how it should have been in the first place. There's been a subtle but hugely important shift in the tone of the show and it's all the better for it.
Nothing much going on today. Spent a lot of time watching Firefly in between lessons, to my great delight. Room changes are still going on so we got put in one of the science labs for Maths today. It was the lab where I had Higher Chemistry and it reminded me that, more or less one year ago, I would've been studying like mad for my Chemisty prelim. And now I barely remember any of it. Strange.
I also currently have a problem facing me – I have no idea where my Physics class is going to be tomorrow morning. I know we've been shunted out of our usual room but I think the room we're going to has changed several times, meaning that the schedules posted around the school are probably wrong.
Normally, I'd just go for safety in numbers and hang around with my classmates until we either found the room or collectively gave up, hoping that any blame would be spread thin. Since I'll be coming in late, presumably after everyone else finds the room, I'm more or less screwed.
I was about to ask Sam to leave me a note of some kind when, for the first time I can ever recall, he decides to go to bed early and logs off. Hopefully, someone in my class or, more likely, my teacher will have the common sense to get me the information somehow if the room has indeed changed.
I'm impressed.
The first series went a bit overboard when trying to be “darker and edgier” than Doctor Who and often ended up with unlikable heroes and unsympathetic villains shooting at and having sex with each other for no particular reason, usually to the detriment of the character development and plot.
Right from the start, the new series establishes a lighter tone with the now sans Jack Torchwood team chasing a sports car-driving alien through the streets of Cardiff in their trademark SUV. This isn't played for laughs however as we quickly learn that, despite its humorous appearance and introduction, this alien is armed, dangerous and knowledgeable about the team. This whole section also serves to reintroduce all the characters and give Captain Jack a suitably dramatic entrance.
While some witty banter helped a lot, the thing that really made the Torchwood characters more appealing was that they were actually competent at their jobs. Remember in the first series how they didn't notice a half-converted Cyberman in their own basement for months? None of that here, much to my relief.
The team manage to work together and actually save some lives for once rather than just whining and letting a combination of Jack and random chance fix everything. This makes the characters and their role as defenders of the planet so much more believable than it was before.
You could try to chalk it up to character development – everyone had to grow up while Jack was away or else the world wound have imploded – but really this is how it should have been in the first place. There's been a subtle but hugely important shift in the tone of the show and it's all the better for it.
Nothing much going on today. Spent a lot of time watching Firefly in between lessons, to my great delight. Room changes are still going on so we got put in one of the science labs for Maths today. It was the lab where I had Higher Chemistry and it reminded me that, more or less one year ago, I would've been studying like mad for my Chemisty prelim. And now I barely remember any of it. Strange.
I also currently have a problem facing me – I have no idea where my Physics class is going to be tomorrow morning. I know we've been shunted out of our usual room but I think the room we're going to has changed several times, meaning that the schedules posted around the school are probably wrong.
Normally, I'd just go for safety in numbers and hang around with my classmates until we either found the room or collectively gave up, hoping that any blame would be spread thin. Since I'll be coming in late, presumably after everyone else finds the room, I'm more or less screwed.
I was about to ask Sam to leave me a note of some kind when, for the first time I can ever recall, he decides to go to bed early and logs off. Hopefully, someone in my class or, more likely, my teacher will have the common sense to get me the information somehow if the room has indeed changed.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:44 PM
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