Lost: The Economist

It's Lost day!!! And how cool is this? As if by magic, my complaining on behalf of angry Naveen Andrews paid off (several months ago, when the episode was filmed), with last week's The Economist representing the best Sayid-centric episode yet. Maintaining the outrageously high quality of this season, we saw Sayid as ruthless killer and hapless romantic who is liable to fall in love with his mark to such an extent he will even improbably cover her boobs in a considerate post-coital move prior to getting into a gunfight with her.


So, he's another one of the Oceanic Six, which pretty much ruins my theory that they are the ones who have been visited by visions on the island. As far as I can remember, Sayid has not seen anything weird, so perhaps the chosen ones are selected by a more mundane process than being picked out by a sentient land-mass. I will say this, though; he certainly scrubbed up well.


In another internet venue Diane Court made an interesting point. Post-island, our heroes are becoming the things they least wanted to be. Hurley is institutionalised again, Jack is a drunk loser just like his dad, Sayid is forced to use his considerable skills as a killer to fulfil the wishes of his new boss, Ben Linus. As I've said before, Lost is a sci-fi show about the psyche, and it seems like the Oceanic Six left the island before their therapy was over. Could the island / psychiatrist's-couch-with-trees-on-it have influenced their lives once they left? Is it that sentient, that powerful, that mean-spirited? His first scene, facing off against a terrified Mr. Avellino, was one of the most shocking Lost moments yet. Note the sprinklers; rain often accompanies important moments in Lost, and this artificial rainfall makes up for what would have been a narratively inconsistent appearance of water at this point (why play golf during a rainstorm?).


However it happened, it's an immensely satisfying twist, and this week Sayid got to be James Bond (as pointed out by Doc Arzt and Jeff Jensen), travelling to the Seychelles and Berlin (i.e. Hawaii and Hawaii respectively), wearing tuxes, having very nicely styled hair (seriously, it was distracting), and getting to ice people with extreme prejudice followed by Casino-Royale style remorse. I complained that Sayid was not getting enough to do, but that's been resoundingly dealt with. So far, his is the most intriguing and shocking post-island story yet.


As this week was directed by Jack Bender (with 300 and Watchmen DoP Larry Fong on photography for the first time since the first season), the episode had a markedly different look. Whereas last week featured enigmatic medium shots, glowing vistas and unusual lighting choices, this week was all about the close-up. While going through the episode to select screen-caps, I realised almost every shot was filled with pretty faces, usually in a state of some misery. When we weren't seeing faces, we were getting close-ups of objects or parts of the body, often in a really tight focus. It was a striking visual template.


Considering the theme of this episode seemed to be honesty and deceit, it made sense to focus on faces and eyes, both of which were open and/or closed throughout. The most honest moment of the episode came when Sawyer painfully explained his feelings to Kate, who responded weakly and delayed her answer, while in the background we saw masks in ironic counterpoint to Sawyer's openness. She has yet to lower her guard, even though he has finally shown who he really is (she even calls him James throughout the scene). Or maybe it's because she still doesn't know who to choose.


There was far more deceit than honesty. Most obviously Sayid lied to Elsa, who lied to Sayid, and Hurley lied to Sayid and Kate and Miles. At the landing site, twitchy scientist Faraday kept his theories about the island really close to his chest, making sure to avoid speaking to the mysterious Minkowski. Hell, even Jacob's shack lied to Locke by not being around where he thought it would be, and most amazingly the island deceived time itself with the mind-blowing 31 minute delay thing.


For the first time the episode opened on closed eyes as Sayid prayed, before respectfully closing Naomi's eyes, which was echoed in his flashforward as he closed Elsa's eyes after shooting her. Of course, this was also ironic. If Sayid is really the badass he needs to be to protect the island, he should be more observant, as Elsa totally played him and used his weaknesses (any woman who pays him even the slightest bit of attention) against him.

That said, the close-up style didn't run through the entire episode. At the end Sayid and Desmond took a ride with Frank Lapidus, with Michael Giacchino's stunning music in full effect, and we got to see vistas of the island from the air. It's not the first time we've seen it from a higher viewpoint; the shots at the start of season three come to mind.


However, this is the first time any of the characters have, and having the majority of The Economist shot from eye-level in such close up made those first airborne wide shots all the more impressive. And moving. Even though we were heading towards the big shock reveal at the end, with Sayid broken and Ben back to full evil power, it was still a glorious moment (and yes, I did choke up).


It's not the only moment that made me get all teary. The aforementioned Sawyer/Kate scene made my bottom lip quiver all over the place. For the first time I saw the power of the flashforwards, as Sawyer's plea is shown to be futile. Kate will leave the island, and there is the distinct possibility that he will not make it off. Internet rumours of an imminent death have got me a-scared. His character is rendered somewhat defunct now that he has killed Original Flavour Sawyer, not to mention him being usurped as King Bitch of the island with the introduction of Miles who, as Hurley memorably pointed out, is another Sawyer. To make things worse, Josh Holloway's performance in that scene was heart-rending. Sawyer looks like he's reaching the end of his tether. ::sniff::


The irony is that if he does get written out, the role that many thought was his, i.e. Gambit in the Wolverine movie, has gone to FNL's Taylor Kitsch, which is not as perfect as getting Holloway to do it, but is still pretty great. If you like Gambit, that is. I think he's a Cajun douche with freaky eyes, but the casting is still spot on.

Back at the landing site, poor Jack had to contend with the news that his decision to send Kate to the Barracks had led to her staying behind with Sawyer. To be honest, I was unsure if she had stayed because of Sawyer or Sayid just couldn't be bothered to let Jack know she was being held captive. I'll have to double-check that one. Whatever the outcome, his reaction was one of intense sadness and disappointment.


It's taken me a long time to emotionally connect with the love triangle / quadrangle, but by the end of last season, with Sawyer depressed and Jack practically having a nervous breakdown, it all suddenly made sense. I was rooting for Sawyer to keep the relationship going with her, but torn over Jack, who was obviously hurt by the whole thing (the men on this show sure are sappy romantic fools). At the same time I was worried about Kate and how her jealousy towards Juliet would manifest. What had once seemed so dreary suddenly vibrated with emotional power.

Canyon feels differently, partially because she is totally siding with Sawyer (not helped by her antipathy towards Jack), and yet also disgusted by Kate's grimy clothes. She reckons there is some serious stink coming off her, as expressed in cries of, "Have a shower! You sicken me!" whenever she appears onscreen. Canyon is not squeamish about hygiene, I hasten to add, but she's right. There is a terrible sheen of ick on Kate right now.


All the scenes set in the Barracks were great. Sayid finding Ben's hidden cache was a terrific moment, proving once and for all that our dangerous hero is the islander with the most common sense. Many people have noticed that the £20 notes were out of date by a few years (having been phased out in 2001), but it's apt as the face on it is that of electromagnetism guru Michael Faraday.


I thought there was something significant about those notes but couldn't put my finger on it. However, I forgot all that when the next shot showed Sayid rifling through Ben's passports, which made me think that if he is meant to be on a James Bond kick, Ben is more like Jason Bourne, with his awesome stash of travel documents and world currency.


Considering the amount of punches he has taken this season, I don't think he's going to be killing anyone with books and towels any time soon. Canyon was getting anxious about how bloodied his face was. EW recounts his beatings, but misses out the time Jack nicked his kidney during surgery and almost let him bleed out. Thank the island for being all supernaturally healy and stuff. Without that he would not have made it this far. Thankfully he looks fine in the future, if rather Dr.-Christian-Szell-like.


Ben had a couple of my favourite moments this episode. When Sawyer discusses shooting Ben's toes off Locke elegantly smacks him down, but the best thing about the scene is that even with his face bloodied and bruised, Michael Emerson can still project Ben's amusement over Saywer's humiliation.


Later on Ben is held in the rec room / barracks brig, and I loved his "I'm thirsty!" line. It was perfectly delivered, as if he is the kid who no one likes but keeps hanging around trying to attract attention with pointed comments loaded with obnoxious confidence.


It begs the question why would he have Sayid try to protect the castaways left behind, which I strongly believe is what is going to happen (I doubt he's protecting the Oceanic Six). The castaways have treated him about as badly as a human can be treated and not be dead. I doubt I would want to save them. I guess Ben needs Sayid's help to protect the island by killing the people on his list, and is merely using Sayid's empathy as a lever to make him do his bidding against his will. He may have been killing people with his ankles last season, but the sudden bout of praying and his treatment of Naomi's corpse suggest he is trying to atone. Unfortunately he has been pushed into a corner upon leaving the island, and that has put the kibosh on that plan. Oh Ben, what a glorious bastard genius you are.

Enough about that. Other things about this episode that occurred to me: Frank, Jack and Daniel seemed awfully relaxed considering an enormous missile was heading towards them at an absurd speed. I would have hidden behind the volcano at the very least.


Much as I thought this was an incredible installment of the best show on TV, there was one thing that happened that really got me down. That old chestnut, the bullet to the shoulder. I've railed against it happening in other shows, and though I'm tempted to not mention it just because I love Lost so much, it's unfair to Torchwood and Terminator: TSCC and a million other shows to act like nothing happened. I can see why Elsa would wound Sayid, so that she could contact the Economist and be sure of her mission before plugging him, and it's not like he was running around at the end as if nothing had happened, but still, it irked. TV characters who get into gunfights should wear metal shoulderpads or something, because apparently clavicles attract lead.


Almost as bad as that, in the restaurant scene, why did Sayid ask for an "expresso"? Another of my personal bugbears!


Is the barrier that has failed to keep Jacob's shack in check made out of Bisto gravy granules?


I love that the iconic swing set got mentioned by Miles as they arrived at the Barracks. It's been the site of many significant Lost moments. That said, why didn't his ghost-whispering go into overdrive? Enough people died there during the Purge. Surely there would have been some ghosts, or were the Dharma chaps not interested in hanging around to avenge their brutal murders?


Doc Arzt saw a preview tape of this episode, and apparently there was a deleted scene showing the trio arriving at the sonic barrier. A pretty significant scene, especially as Miles could somehow tell that the fence was off. It seems from that transcript as if he could hear it, which seems apt as Faraday was able to see a difference in the light of the island, and the new arrivals might represent different senses (which means CS Lewis, Frank and Naomi would have to represent taste, touch and smell, and I don't want to know how those would manifest, thank you very much).

That said, it could also be Miles using his psychic power to get guidance from a victim of the fence, perhaps even Mikhail, although he didn't die (or his other world parallel self did, or something). Or maybe the fence kills by firing ghosts at people's heads! You could sit and ponder this for days, which is why I'm so surprised that this scene was cut out. Surely there was something else that could have been left out. Maybe about fifteen of the shots of Sayid's lovely glossy post-island hair.


Locke is looking old lately. This is not really significant. I just thought he has looked odd this season. His neck freaked me out. It's like he aged four years between seasons.


Oh, hello Desmond and Juliet! I almost forgot you existed. Luckily we have flashback episodes for them soon, which is a relief as I had thought they were about to go the way of Mr. Eko and Ana-Lucia. Though that could still happen. ::sulks::


I love that Jack and Frank are bonding. Jeff Fahey is playing Lapidus as a genial laid-back character straight out of a Stephen King novel, and I love it. I think he might be my favourite new character, though my opinion changes from scene to scene (no Lance "Intensity" Reddick to freak me out this week, sadly).


Is it R.G. or R.C. on the bracelet? No one seems to be sure. Perhaps the recent podcast cleared it up. I'll listen to that at some point. (What kind of a Lost fan am I?) It blew one of my pet theories out of the water. Elsa was so obsessed with her beeper that I thought her evil boss was actually Dennis "Beeper King" Duffy from 30 Rock.


One of the things that was brought up during the after-episode speculation was that The Economist is also the name of a UK magazine about money that is written by anonymous hacks working as a collective, which was kind of apt. However, I take the magazine for granted to such an extent that I couldn't imagine it having any significance in the context of the show, but a Google images search uncovered this.


Eggtown in a few hours! Rumour has it it has a "killer" finale. Not Sawyer! Anyone but Sawyer! Waaaauuugh!

Questions Raised By Torchwood: Meat

Not wishing to be repetitive here, but Torchwood is a polyp on the colon of British TV, but sometimes, even when it's at its horrible worst, it raises questions that demand answers. At gunpoint, obviously. Here are some that came up during last week's episode, "Meat". Just to get you up to speed if you didn't see it, our team of bumbling sex addicts investigated metaphorical cruelty towards animals that manifested as big chunks of space meat, while Gwen dealt with her trust issues as her stupid fiance finally found out about the existence of Torchwood. That was something that made absolutely no sense, as the first episode of the season featured an old lady taking the appearance of Mr. Fish in her stride before grumbling about Torchwood running around in their ridiculous SUV, so it's not like they're that secret. There's a question posed straight away. If Rhys is that stupid, how did he get the job at Harwoods Haulage?

How technologically advanced are Torchwood?

They totally have computers that project onto walls instead of just on screens! Star Trek looks so analogue and unsexxy now.


Of course, such incredible technology means sod all if the wall is white and makes the information all smeary.

How feeble is Tosh?

As I've said before, Toshiko Sato has no defined personality at all, other than being the kind of desperate person who stares longingly at those she loves and is too nervous to do anything about it (exactly the kind of panicky insecure person you'd want protecting the world from alien encroachment). Her yearning hopefully reached its zenith (nadir? Apogee? LaGrange point?) when supplying the object of her desire (Owen) with some sandwiches, and did a little half-hearted gesture to denote how much she wanted to touch him and hug him and kiss him and love him love him love him right up!


All through the episode she makes sad little comments about how it is possible to have relationships while working as world-saving nymphomaniacs while staring pointedly at Owen, but all she gets in return are glances like this as the man in question tries to tolerate her needy whimperings.


Keep dreaming, Tosh! At least they have their dreary love for people thrown through time to talk about.

Is Gwen blind?

Several times during the episode Rhys stands within Gwen's eyeline, and yet she doesn't see him. Here is a representation of the lack of stealth employed by the haulage company manager.


Later on, he drives a few feet behind the Torchwoodmobile for several miles, and then continues the pursuit onto an abandoned industrial estate, and yet they still don't notice him, even though he's driving his car, something that surely Gwen should have noticed. So, is she blind, or is this just lazy contrivance and shoddy direction at play? (Clue: The answer to a lot of questions will be the latter.)

How long will it take for Jack to make a laboured double entendre revolving around the meat plot?

Nine minutes forty, which was shocking considering we'd run through several possible candidates by that point. Delightfully, after Gwen asks how it was eating alien meat, prompting Jack to respond, "He seemed to enjoy it," it takes Gwen a good few seconds of intense duh-face to get it.


I love his rakish grin as he waits for her to figure it out.

Will someone please stop Owen using guns or teach him how to look cool?

Because seriously, this made me laugh so hard I scared Canyon. I do this terrible wheezing thing when I get too amused, and this episode made me do it about four times.



And here's a gif of it for when that clip gets taken down. Accidental brilliance. That said, a lot of Burn Gorman's choices are a little peculiar. The face he pulls when staring at space meat is inexplicable.


I note that the character has been toned down a lot since the first season. His loathsome nature was show-wrecking, but this season, as he dials down the dreadful misanthropy, his position as Torchwood Gupta is being seriously challenged by the increasingly vile Gwen. Here, for instance, is how she looks at Jack while kissing her fiancee.


Considering Jack is very very old, you'd think he'd see through high school bitchery like that, but apparently no, he's heartbroken by it all. Remember the cool, sexy, confident, raffish gadabout who thrilled and delighted us in Doctor Who? He's been absorbed and replicated by pods from the planet WeakassLoser.

Do you remember the pterodactyl?

The showrunners finally did. It's been missing for ages and now it's back.


It was probably hiding from the rest of the team just in case they tried to shag it.

Is the poor, hacked-up space whale/metaphor for poorly treated livestock as cool as a pet pterodactyl?

In a word, no.


Sadly it looks, as Canyon pointed out, like a slightly-melted Snickers bar, but while the low-budget for the effect excuses the execution, the design is pretty crummy, being nothing more than a long blob with a silly mouth that splits open for no reason. Here is a picture of that as well, in the emotional finale when it goes bonkers and starts thrashing about to such an extent that Owen has to inject it with a bucket full of drugs and then snarl, "Mercy killing!" in his best tortured Toughguyese.


I really don't want to bitch about those effects too much, but honestly, if the budget could have been spent on a cool alien used sparingly instead of on a rough looking alien that is displayed in crane shot after crane shot after superfluous crane shot, it could have been a memorable visual. Of course, the show has a lot of time to kill (about eight minutes longer than a US show), and they have to fill that out with a lot of nonsense. Sadly, this time it was Spacey the Space Whale that suffered. As Jack melodramatically intones upon meeting it, "What have they done to you, my poor friend?"

Who has the most intense grief face?

Is it Jack, bemoaning the imminent death of Spacey the Space Whale?


Is it Owen, grieving over his decision to give Spacey a "MERCY KILLING!"?


Or is it the chap in the background, responsible for drugging Spacey, and horrified at the turn of events when his employers turn out to be trigger-happy scumbags?


Tough call.

Is John Barrowman taking the piss?

We're fans, don't get us wrong, but some of his line-readings in this episode buried the ham needle (steady on!). Here he is slamming Gwen against a wall because she was about to leap to the defence of Rhys.


He growls, he gesticulates, he hints at giving her a good old Captain Jack rogering right up against that wall! Barrowman is seriously operating on Warp Acting Speed 9 right now, and I love it love it love it. Shame he's not getting much opportunity to be dashing, but it's just not going to happen while he's on this show.

What's the main bad guy's major malfunction?

Not that the main antagonist is particularly effective, what with him bitching at his staff for not working hard enough and whining about how he's never had any luck and now a big slab of alien meat has landed in his lap and no one is going to take that from him, but he does have a bizarre intolerance for lying. About five minutes of the show is taken up by him asking hostages how many people are in the warehouse, and warning them not to lie, which of course they do immediately. He gets so pissed off by this that he tries to shoot Gwen even though she poses no threat. He's just so mad that she lied to him! Do real people do things like this? Perhaps, but it strains credibility somewhat. God help his friends when he gets a bad new haircut and they pretend to like it.

This silliness is eclipsed by this awful moment. Even though Gwen has plenty of time to get out of the way of this guy shooting at her, she stands stock still, and it's up to Rhys to further their trust plot by clumsily struggling to get past her and take the bullet instead, which is the catalyst for her acceptance of him at the end.



As he lies bleeding, she administers medical help to him by stroking his hair and telling him he's going to be alright. For about five minutes. And he lives. And walks around at the end of the episode with his arm in a sling laughing and joking and acting like nothing has happened. ::bangs head against table:: Why why why why why why why!??!?!?!

Why is Ianto suddenly such a wisecracking hardass?

In the first season Ianto was the sketchily written teaboy in an improbable suit with his half-human, half-Cyberman girlfriend hidden in the basement. He was so anonymous that when he turned his guns on the rest of the team and repeatedly lied to them about how deadly she was in an attempt to save her from their intervention, I thought he would get written out. But no. Now he's Jack's lover (another event that came out of nowhere), and after the first episode (where he reverted to whiny needy type) suddenly morphed into the snarky action hero we see now. Don't believe me? Here he is on a taser rampage. First, he uses jokes to distract a guy before electrifying his stomach.


A few minutes later, he saves Owen by blasting the vet guy with volts. Note that this doesn't affect Owen, probably as he is made from cardboard.


This guy gets a door in the face before Ianto shocks him, causing some amazing painface.


Then he gets the guy who shot Rhys, kicking his gun away (it looks like he connects as well, which must have stung), and with a barely convincing threat ("Pray he survives!"), tasers the guy right in the forehead! Nice!


So by rights I should have enjoyed Ianto's rampage, but early on in the episode we see him eating pizza, with what looks like a tablecloth protecting his nice suit.


Would Wolverine worry about grease-stains? Did Anton Chigurh ever do anything so prissy? I think not. Sorry, Ianto, but you get a FAIL rating for that one. Thanks for the mayhem, though. It was the episode highlight.

Which is the worst scene of the episode?

Is it the scene where Gwen confronts Rhys about his involvement in the meat factory, during which her gesture circuits explode so hard that the cameraman loses his footing and whip-pans right past his mark, missing Rhys and ending up looking at the bookcase behind him?



Or is it the meeting-room scene featuring Jack imitating Tom Cruise from the recent Scientology video, Ianto betraying his ignorance of the plot of Moby Dick, Gwen being remarkably childish to the embarrassed horror of the rest of the team, and a final line delivered so ineptly that I did the gaspy overlaugh thing again?



Or is it the final scene where Gwen tells Jack she won't neuralise Rhys because she loves him and what does he know about it? Again her gesture circuits blow, and it fries what's left of Jack's subtlety chip, leading to possibly my favourite line delivery of the entire episode, which occurs right at the end of the clip.



Actually, that final scene did do something I liked; Rhys keeps his memory! If the showrunners had erased his memory and made him ignorant of Gwen's career, it would have shown, once and for all, that they have no ideas and no courage whatsoever. Allowing him to move beyond his current role as bewildered and cuckolded plot element to actual proper character bodes well for the show. See also Buffy (when she told her mother about her calling) and Journeyman (the first brilliant decision on that show was for Dan to tell Katie about his time-travelling. It opened up numerous interesting plot avenues as a result).

Is Torchwood salvageable?

In my previous excoriating post I expressed a hope that even though the show is regularly awful, it could, in time, become good, though perhaps never great. The premise isn't particularly promising, and the characters don't make much sense from episode to episode, but surely there's some way to make it work.

Then, while finishing off this post today I stumbled across this interview with Meat writer Catherine Tregenna, where she reveals that Russell T. Davies never created a show bible, and encourages the writers to write fast and loose.

“As long as you stay faithful to their past, the characters really are up for grabs. With a series like EastEnders or Casualty you are sent the story bible. Although you do write entire episodes with EastEnders, it has been pre-planned by the production team and they know what they want to happen. You work out the structure – give them a scene breakdown describing what happens in each scene, so people can see how the episode builds. The dialogue comes right at the end.

"Casualty is slightly different when you bring your guest stories. It has been running for years and goes out 50 times a year, so there the problem can be when you pitch your medical story, it might have been done before. Someone looks out for that at a very early stage. But inevitably your character will bring a new angle to it, so it isn’t a case of what an interesting piece of medicine but who is going through the interesting piece of medicine.”

But she says writing for Torchwood is a “very liberating” experience.

“There is no bible at all. I said to Russell T Davies when I first met him I felt agoraphobic because I didn’t have the limitations and boundaries of, say, being in an emergency ward.The danger, however, is sometimes just sticking to a guest story in that episode and having the Torchwood team reacting to it. The best episodes are where they are personally on some sort of journey. I have noticed in this series how Torchwood can hold different genres, so you can have a very character-driven episode followed by an action alien invasion episode but it all holds together quite well.”

That's all very nice for Tregenna and her buddies to have this liberating freeform writing experiment to practice their craft on, but it makes for some particularly shoddy TV for the rest of us. And what journeys are they going on? Tosh in love? It's rather Niles and Daphne, isn't it? And Gwen? She's gone from dork to adulterer (which made some sense) to harridan (which makes none) in a few episodes. Earlier I asked why is Ianto suddenly a tough guy with a sarcastic sense of humour, and why does Tosh have no personality. It's because they have no inner life, and will be whatever the writers want them to be from episode to episode. Sadly, the writers seem to think they're doing the opposite. Tregenna says:

The unsung hero is the script editor. I have worked with Helen Raynor who also writes for Torchwood and Brian Minchin and they will help you with the overall continuity of the character’s voice, for example they will say Ianto has a very dry sense of humour, so don’t be afraid to give him the very dark gags.

But why? When did he become the guy with the dark jokes? For the entire first season he wasn't like that, but suddenly this year he ineptly tells snippy jokes. Maybe someone noticed the show didn't have someone who tells jokes, and Ianto got forced into that joker-shaped hole, which is dumb but understandable, but please don't tell me he's always been like that. I've watched the show. He wasn't. He just was suddenly written differently.

Perhaps with a competent showrunner to keep things consistent this wouldn't matter so much. Joss Whedon is notorious (in a good way) for running a very tight ship, polishing his writers' scripts and ensuring nothing appeared on his shows that ever contradicted anything that had happened before. His characters (and those of many other professionally made shows) could be imagined offscreen behaving in exactly the same way as onscreen because they had been fully worked out.


With Torchwood, you don't get that sense at all. I have no idea who these people are or what their motivations are (other than that they are perpetually horny and not very bright). No matter how often they say the showrunners make sure the characters are consistent from week to week, anyone watching the show with open eyes would see that this is anything but the case. Knowing that the show is being run by Chris Chibnall and Helen Raynor (who wrote the appallingly bad Daleks in Manhattan double bill from Doctor Who last season, not to mention two dreadful Torchwood episodes), it's a miracle the next episode doesn't show our heroes inexplicably transformed into otter/potato hybrids working as sanitation engineers on the moon. No show bible, no coherence or consistent internal logic, no hope of improvement.

Did Russell T. Davies not bother with the show bible because that's just how he works? It's possible. I didn't see Queer As Folk so I have no idea how coherent it is, and the one thing of his I saw before Doctor Who was The Second Coming, possibly the best non-Cracker drama on ITV in the past twenty years. That didn't need a show bible, and Doctor Who didn't really, what with the huge mythos of the previous series to draw from.


So was Torchwood created without the bible because RTD thought it was the best way to go? Or was he rushed and just didn't have time? I've got no evidence of the latter, but it strikes me as a plausible theory. The BBC were eager to capitalise on the success of Doctor Who, and hastily developing a promising idea from someone as talented and successful as RTD is bound to seem like a sure-fire proposition. Sadly, it was put into production right after Doctor Who's first triumphant year while RTD was working on the second (plans that were complicated by the departure of Christopher Ecclestone), instead of waiting another year to make sure all the right elements were in place. Without proper foundations to build on, the show was crumbling from the get-go, and isn't getting any better. As far as I can tell, it's not even vaguely salvageable.

Now I'm just watching it for the car crash screw-ups, the FX work from The Mill, and John Barrowman being big, camp, and silly. Plus, I need to keep an eye on it as a barometer of the delusion present in the Guardian Guide, which each week points out how this week it's good, unlike the last week, when it wasn't, and please ignore the fact that we said that that week was good, and better than the week before that, even though we said that was great too, and... erm... ::infinite regress:: Meanwhile, as they praise this neverending horror as, "an improvement on last week," Phelim O'Neill makes pissy comments about Lost being made up as it goes along. Oh boy, oh boy! Anger! Rising!