Fandom Review Of The Year Meme
Dec. 26th, 2007 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoI got this from elfinessy's lj: Fandom Review Of The Year Meme.
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elfinessy summed up my thoughts on my current favourite pairing: Captain Jack Harkness and the Doctor. If she doesn't mind my quoting her:...and so: Utopia was the most amazing thing... just to watch the slash on screen, the moment that seemed to last a lifetime from the end of Torchwood to the start of that episode, unfurling to bring about that gorgeous face-off through the glass panel of a door shielding the Doctor from the radiation and the Doctor from Jack, that sing-song note in the Doctor's voice, 'Jaack'. So gorgeous, so incredible... so destroyed by the final episode when offered the love of his life, the adventure of so many lifetimes, Captain Jack Harkness TURNED IT DOWN to stay with the bunch of miserable, self-interested cretins that work at Torchwood in CARDIFF. 'No thanks, I mean space is all great but I'd rather stay in SOUTH WALES.' It'll be a long, long time before I forgive RTD for that one and seriously, this series of Torchwood needs to be SCORCHING.
And so I hope it will be.
The best fannish show of the year: 1 January, 2007, the first airing of the Torchwood episode "Captain Jack Harkness", one of the most romantic TV episodes I've ever seen, and the hottest m/m kiss I've ever seen on screen.
The worst fannish moment of the year: 30 June 2007, the first airing of the Doctor Who episode "The Last of the Time Lords", which broke my heart with what it did to my Jack/Doctor relationship.
Biggest fannish surprise of the year: The news that Rose would be back in Doctor Who series 4. As the Doctor would say: "What?"
Best new tv show: Life.
Fallen angel: Heroes. Nichelle Nichols played a wonderful, wonderful character - but did she get good lines or a place in the plot? I could make any number of comments about Heroes, a show I love - a show with many characters in it whom I adore, like Hiro and Ando and the Petrelli family and Mr. Bennet - but Mohinder is a colossal disappointment (he's scum, absolute scum) as are, on the whole, all the women.
Best merchandise: The 2008 Torchwood calendar. (Salute here to
josanpq, and a hug too.)Best tie-in: The Torchwood novels.
Best comic book series: Daredevil. Not for the first time.
Best comic book series: Daredevil. Not for the first time.
Best movie of 2007: 300. It was original, it was historical fiction, and it had both Gerard Butler and David Wenham - as well as a strong female lead.
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Date: 2007-12-27 03:18 am (UTC)I am currently watching that movie, and I can definitely see why you chose it.
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Date: 2007-12-27 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 05:40 pm (UTC)In the Christmas Special, when the Doctor talked about travelling alone and looked so sad, I let myself think it was Jack he was thinking of, and wished he was travelling with.
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Date: 2007-12-27 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 08:51 pm (UTC)(but I quite liked Astrid)
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Date: 2007-12-27 08:55 pm (UTC)I think I've also recommended the Dalek series? They are way more scary than the TV ones. If you decide to listen to them, do it in the proper order, even more important than with Sarah Jane or Bernice.
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Date: 2007-12-27 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 08:58 pm (UTC)Oh, yes! He was quite lovely in the one episode, but he'd get very annoying after a while. And he has quite a bit still to learn about Earthology.
I liked Astrid, too. She was sweet, and brave, and deserved a better life than she had.
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Date: 2007-12-28 01:05 am (UTC)But what really makes me irritated (and it does, I know that sounds excessive, but I read this and was annoyed, still am) is the gratuitous slamming of the choice he does make - to stay on Earth, at this time, and not just slummy little Earth but a tedious backwater like Cardiff - and not just that slum but "the bunch of miserable self-interested cretins that work there".
You know, one of the things I do find most admirable about Jack is that he's tolerant. He isn't snobbish or elitist about his comparatively greater depth of experience in all things - and what kind of a jaded, superficial monster would he be if he was only content with newer, brighter, shinier and more perfect people / places / experiences? If that really is a good summary of your view of Jack, then I'd have to guess that the whole of Torchwood as a series falls far, far short for you, because it's predicated on Jack's capacity to enjoy and celebrate and safeguard and, yes, even love, *anything* and *anyone*, Even the humdrum life on boring old Earth, camping and fish and chips and all. Even the limited, un-Time-Lordly people around him, who fall short and falter and get it hugely wrong and keep trying anyway.
Do you believe Jack would have been the better man - would he have been creating, in Torchwood, a thing worthy of representing the change in himself that he claims the Doctor wrought in him after their first meeting - if he'd simply turned his back on his team and the responsibilities he chose to take on, for ever, blithe and indifferent? Because I know I don't.
Part 1
Date: 2007-12-28 02:16 am (UTC)Oh, dear, I didn't mean to say something distressing or rankling! I've been struggling to make that episode make emotional sense to me (on numerous levels) ever since I saw it, and this was just one more attempt to express my frustrations over it - I really didn't mean to distress anyone, just because I was upset by what happened.
I can understand, if that's your OTP, even if I don't agree with it or share it (either as an OTP or indeed as a bad / wrong choice on Jack's part: I think it makes perfect sense for him).
I would agree that it makes sense; it is probably the only choice Jack can make at this point.
You know, one of the things I do find most admirable about Jack is that he's tolerant.
Yes, I agree. I like that too. I don't need to defend
I would be perfectly happy with the ending of "The Last of the Time Lords" if Jack and the Doctor had hugged, or smiled warmly, or if the Doctor had thanked Jack for his help and courage, or if Jack had truly wanted to go on the TARDIS but regretfully chose to do his duty on Earth instead.
Remember the ending of "Captain Jack Harkness", when Jack was about to kiss the other Jack, and the rift had opened, and Tosh was calling him, and he said, "It's my duty" - and left? That was heroic. If I'd had any iota of that sort of ambiance - the sense that Jack still cared deeply about the Doctor but cared about his duty and felt he was needed on Earth - I would have been happy. Very happy.
I'd have been even happier if the Doctor hadn't then sabotaged Jack's votex manipulator, whichwas an insult on several levels, but that's another issue.
I have absolutely no doubt that Jack loves Earth and the people on it - which I think is wonderful. I believe that Jack's main motivation, besides a desire to do what good he can and live up to the example of the Doctor, is to make reparation to the people of Earth for the disaster he almost unleashed in "The Doctor Dances". I totally love that. I love it that he deeply loves his team at Torchwood. The best thing about Jack is that he has a wide and enduring capacity for love.
Oh, dear, I'm going to have to continue in a follow-up message...
Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 02:16 am (UTC)I'm hoping that their experiences in series 1 will have taught them something about maturity and responsibility for series 2, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not implying that Jack should love them any less, or turn his back on them or on Earth: but that I want some reason to believe that his love for the Doctor remains.
It would be easy to say that my frustration is not with the characters but with the writing that makes the Torchwood team less intelligent and heroic than I would like, and which has stretched my wonderful Jack/Doctor relationship almost to the breaking point. (Note how optimistically I say "almost". I think it's quite easily recoverable, but I don't know to what extent they want to recover it.)
That would be true, but I always believe that any show is more fruitful from a fannish point of view if one can find a way to reconcile all facets of it, rather than picking/discarding what we like and don't like. Which is why I keep poking at the events of the end of series 3 Doctor Who like a sore tooth.
And really, I love Torchwood - I'm not asking Jack to turn his back on anyone. He could spend weeks or months on the TARDIS and come back to Torchwood without losing a day. Or he could make the choice he made, but have made it in a way that emphasizes his allegiance to the Doctor.
Put another way: my identification with Jack, and my love of the Doctor, is such that the Doctor's treatment of Jack in "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums", and (particularly) "The Last of the Time Lords" was painful to me. Since I don't want to lose my love and respect for the Doctor any more than I want Jack to lose his, I continue to struggle with the events and dialogue that disturbed me.
I don't want Jack to turn his back on anyone, but I want the emotional bond between him and the Doctor to remain. I didn't have a problem with his choice: my problem was with the way it was expressed in the show.
I suspect this doesn't make you feel any better about our comments! But it maybe clarifies a little - ? Thank you for raising your point. I agree with you that Jack made the right choice. I woudln't want him to leave earth. But his return didn't happen the way I hoped, and wanted, and expected it to happen. It could have - the plot and action could have been just the same, with Jack and the Doctor reconciled at the end, and the Doctor showing at least a word of approval for all Jack went through for him.
That isn't the way they chose to write it, and I'm doing my best to cope.
Re: Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 03:42 am (UTC)When I think about the arc of Jack returning to the Doctor and then leaving, it makes complete sense to me and was also emotionally fulfilling, from start to finish. Yes, I'm someone who wants Jack with Torchwood and prefers him there, and I don't entirely mean this in an OTP-ship sense, because I find his various relationships with the team as a whole more layered and balanced than his with the Doctor. I think there's a fundamental imbalance between Jack and the Doctor - actually, one that's paralleled in the relationship between Jack and Ianto, and that imbalance bothers me too. Not that either pairing can never progress and even out, given time! But as far as Jack and the Doctor go, I'm always going to be conscious that Jack's nearly always in the Doctor's shadow, his acolyte - and that he survived his death and then spent over a hundred years living slowly in the hope of getting back to the Doctor, while the Doctor *knew* he had survived, was out there, and just didn't have any kind of reciprocal yearning.
I think one of the things that surprises me - irks me! - in the overlapping fandoms, is that there does seem to be a kind of intense hatred for the Torchwood team, for 'stealing' Jack back away from the Doctor in some fashion - and, as far as I've seen, there was never any equivalent hatred for the Doctor's equivalent part in 'stealing' Jack away from Torchwood in EoD. I know that particular ending made me happy and sad at the same time - happy for Jack, who was so clearly utterly delighted to be getting what he'd craved for so long a time: sad for the people he left behind without a word of explanation.
But I didn't despise the Doctor for being the most important priority in Jack's life right then. Which is why I'm annoyed when Jack / Ten shippers in particular seem to be so angry about the possibility that Jack's need for the Doctor was partly the need to understand what happened to him and - once he'd found out - the need to return to his team became the stronger priority at that moment. Why so much venom directed at the team? After all, if the argument is that they've all undervalued Jack or treated him badly, isn't the same true far more forcefully for the Doctor? Why is it 'better' in some absolute sense, for Jack to be with the Doctor, than is is to be with Torchwood? Why not a matter of some things being right at some times and not others?
What felt to you, I think, like a lack of warmth, or a more intimate resolution, when Jack and the Doctor parted company - to me that was pitched just right. There's no getting around the fact that the Doctor was un-nerved by Jack's survival, the way it happened - Utopia made that plain, also (it seems to me) that it was a kind of instinctive ab-reaction on the Doctor's part, and one that he learned to come to terms with or put aside.
[edited to fix typo - and there's one more bit, sorry!....]
Re: Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 03:44 am (UTC)Equally, Jack is given the one thing he might have craved unbearably, if it had been held out of his reach - the chance to stay with the Doctor and leave Earth and that life behind. I think if Jack had been more tempted, more regretful, it would have soured the nobility - the heroism, if you like - of his choice to step up to the responsibility he's made for himself. For me, it was perfect that he was completely free to choose, and that he made a clear and willing choice.
I'm also less bothered because it really isn't a once-and-for-all decision. Yes, Jack could have gadded off with the Doctor for half of Eternity and then popped back to Cardiff a day later, with no-one the wiser. Except that Jack wouldn't have been the same man by then, mentally! I think there's something about the Time Agent life that belonged to the old Jack, who could be cavalier about coming and going, because he felt no loyalty to anyone but himself. Now, he's lived through a long unbroken timeline - he has ties to this place and these people, they're what his thoughts kept returning to in that long year. It definitely makes more sense to me that he really wants, at that moment, to get back to them within the same linear time-frame that they inhabit. Also, jack must rationally know that, with his immortality and the Doctor's longevity and time-travelling, it's far more likely that he'll meet the Doctor again in the future, and less of a wrench to part from him now than it would be to leave the team behind.
And yes, he chose to return to that bunch of idiots! I guess the thing is that I really don't have the harsh view of any of the Torchwood team, that you have (and a lot of other Who / TW fen too, absolutely). I don't see them as evil people, or even fundamentally dishonest. The great and lesser deceptions of that first season - Ianto, Tosh, Gwen - are driven by love and ignorance, and fear too, and I think Jack understands that (or why be so ready to forgive and even to work to redeem Ianto, who put them all at such great risk?).
I've always loved that this is a team of utterly un-super-human individuals, that they get scared and make mistakes, that they can be misled by malevolent aliens. Isn't that the point of the show, in some ways? that there's a potentially hostile universe out there that we, as individuals, are hopelessly ill-equipped and inexperienced to deal with - that we need to learn to find those who can lead us, and learn to rely on each other, too?
[...and one last bit...]
Re: Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 03:45 am (UTC)And yes - I'd like to think they've ALL grown a bit for Torchwood's next season. The team because of Jack's absence, and Jack because of the year he had to think about - stuff!
Long story short - I do feel defensive about Torchwood, the show and the characters. I resent the tendency within fandom that I've mostly seen from Doctor / Jack shippers, which is to despise Jack's team, and detest RTD for making Jack and the Doctor part so easily when they should have been welded together soul to soul. I don't agree with the assertion that the team aren't worthy of Jack - especially if the corollary is that the Doctor is somehow worthier! And, loyalties aside, the way that they parted and the reasons for it do all fit in with the way I see Jack, the Doctor, and the universe they inhabit. I didn't feel that they weren't reconciled, quite the opposite - for me, they parted as better equals than they'd ever been up to then, and that is a good thing.
The venom baffles me, though. I love the Doctor, I don't mind that he has foibles, I don't mind that he means so much to Jack - more than any other living thing, quite possibly. And though what you say makes sense to me, I really don't understand why some fans are so utterly malevolent about what happened.
And now... I really ought to go to bed, oops!
Re: Part 2a
Date: 2007-12-28 04:09 am (UTC)Oh, good, I'm glad.
I thank you for being far more temperate than me.
Oh, well, it's the least I can do, given that I started it with my comments! I know you and I are both here because we love the show - both shows - and if we see it from different angles, that should, in the end, make our discussions of it all the more interesting.
I find his various relationships with the team as a whole more layered and balanced than his with the Doctor.
A very interesting comment. I'll have to think about it. I certainly do love his interactions with the Torchwood crew, both as they stand and in their nuances and implications. (The sexual tension between him and Gwen, for example, and his forgiveness of Owen.)
I think there's a fundamental imbalance between Jack and the Doctor
I agree. This is one of the reasons I love it. The Doctor will always be the mentor there, and Jack the acolyte. I can't imagine that changing. Now, personally, I wouldn't want it to change - unless to stabilize and deepen - but not in terms of personalities or lifestyles.
actually, one that's paralleled in the relationship between Jack and Ianto
Very much so. They've a way to go before reaching parity, though I think it's possible they might - if Ianto matures and Jack waits for him to do so. Do I want that to happen? Well, I like watching the Jack/Ianto relationship, but we haven't seen enough of it for me to understand what each of them feels about it - we can only guess from peripheral evidence. (E.g., Jack telling the other Jack "there's no one" and Ianto weeping over his coat.)
I am disappointed by the lack of 'reciprocal yearning' but not quite demoralized by it. I live in hope.
that there does seem to be a kind of intense hatred for the Torchwood team, for 'stealing' Jack back away from the Doctor in some fashion
Really?
Huh.
I hope you don't think I feel that way. I love Jack with Torchwood. I also love Jack with the Doctor. I don't see the one as competing with the other, any more than the Doctor's adventures 'steal' him away from Jack. IAs you said.) That isn't... that isn't even in the picture. They work together beautifully, they work apart beautifully, and I wouldn't want either to change. The last thing I want is for Jack to turn the Doctor domestic - or vice versa! One of the reasons I love them together is that it's so free of that kind of... I'm not sure what word to use. Possessiveness? Conventionality? Expectation?
This will need a part 2b to answer completely...
Re: Part 2b
Date: 2007-12-28 04:10 am (UTC)know that particular ending made me happy and sad at the same time - happy for Jack, who was so clearly utterly delighted to be getting what he'd craved for so long a time: sad for the people he left behind without a word of explanation.
That ending made me utterly happy because it made Jack happy, to be seeing the Doctor again. I knew he'd come back to Torchwood. He wasn't happy to be leaving them because he loved them and he always intended to come back. I really don't see a dichotomy there.
I don't feel any kind of a venom towards the team for that or anyone else. I wish they were more honest. I wish Gwen didn't do stupid things like taking an undead serial killer for a drive, unarmed and unsupervised. I wish Tosh didn't tell a pretty stranger all about her top secret work and I wish Ianto had supported Jack and stood by him in "End of Days". None of that has anything to do with the Doctor! And I love the characters despite their flaws... heck, in Gwen's case, I love her because of them. Some of them.
I think everyone should treat Jack better, and love him. I don't always get what I want....
I don't think it's better for Jack to be with Torchwood than on the TARDIS in any objective sense. I want to see a situation where Jack can and does see the Doctor occasionally, and has adventures on the TARDIS, but Torchwood is his home and his base and he loves his team like family. I don't want to give up my Jack/Doctor relationship for Torchwood, and frankly, until this convesation, it never occurred to me that there was a way of seeing it as an either/or situation.
There's no getting around the fact that the Doctor was un-nerved by Jack's survival, the way it happened -
Yes. I was hoping for more resolution. Actually, I was hoping for a more capital-R-romantic motive on the Doctor's part, not instinct, but - something like, if they met again there'd be crossing timelines and the universe would implode or the Reapers would come back, something like that. So he avoided Jack for that reason. Given the situation we have, I'd hoped he could come to terms with it, and their relationship could revert to what it had been - not with Jack staying on the TARDIS, but with them being on good terms, happy and warm terms.
This is not what I got, but what I got doesn't preclude that. There is story still to be told. What I am now thinking - and hoping - is that they're playing a long game and there will be rapprochement and resolution in the future.
Or maybe it's just like other, lesser fandoms, and we the fans will have to put it there with our extratextual imaginations.
More from me tomorrow...
Re: Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 02:50 pm (UTC)Aah. It would have made all the difference to me. (Ponder the phrase "hopeless romantic". That's me.)
In the end, each of them has come to a point of perfect free will.
That part, I like. But 'free will' and 'profound love' are not incompatible. Even if one party choses duty and responsbility over all else. Moreover it's a mixed message: the Doctor has trapped Jack in the present, removing the fee will he had just assumed, even though staying in the present was Jack's choice. I find this confusing.
In spite of his initial skittishness around Jack, the Doctor makes him the unconditional offer to stay and travel together, be together.
Yes, and I was glad of that. It implies... something. Given the way it was written, I'm not sure what, but at the very least it shows that the Doctor isn't holding Jack's immortality against him any more.
I don't think it's in his nature to make a big deal out of courting any of his companions, never has been - he makes a good show, at least, of being almost indifferent
I'm not looking for romantic declarations or the kind of longing he shows for Rose. I'm looking for something like we had in "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways" - camaraderie, a sense that they understand each other even in grief. That is what was missing. For me. I might be able to read it your way if it weren't for the trick with the vortex manipulator. Which is why I liked what
For them all to have been emotionally exuberant at that time would have seemed strange to me.
I'm not asking for exuberance: just gratitude, respect, understanding, and/or caring.
I'm also less bothered because it really isn't a once-and-for-all decision.
Yes. I think at first I was taking it as 'the end of the story' and that was devastating. But it isn't the end of the story at all, just a piece of it. (Good!) When I realized that, it did a lot to make me feel better. But... it shook my faith, because I'd thought Russell T. Davies valued the Jack?Doctor relationship too. This episode made me think he values other themes more. I see no reason to believe he won't make things worse between them, rather than better, when they next meet.
I really don't have a harsh view of the Torchwood team, I just... prefer heroism to screw-ups. No, I don't think they are fundamentally dishonest or evil at all, but they lie and cheat and make really stupid mistakes, and that isn't what I want to see in my heroes. I like it as a plot point that Gwen lies to Rhys unnecessarily - but I don't like it as a plot point that she takes alien technology home in defiance of Jack's orders, implying a lack of respect for those orders, and for Jack. I like so many things about her that it hardly matters. But... of all things I value in characters, intelligence is paramount, and I hate seeing these lovable geniuses being so dumb about things. I like it that even when they do thinks to Jack like shoot him and open the rift, he is still forgiving. I can forgive Owen, because Jack does. I have more trouble with Ianto's betrayal, but it isn't a major problem. We can hope he learned from the experience.
I agree about the point of the show being to learn to deal with hostile aliens and the like, but the Torchwood team, knowing what they know already, should be a little more sharp and have more common sense than they show. If they didn't keep trying to kill each other, for example. (Though the scene where Ianto shoots Owen is one of my favourites.)
Re: Part 2
Date: 2007-12-28 03:19 pm (UTC)Heh. I failed to keep it secret. The thing is that I'd thought the theme of the show was their growing solidarity as a group as they came to love and depend on each other, and to appreciate Jack. Each had opportunity to bond with him - Gwen in "Everything Changes" and "They Keep Killing Suzie" particularly, Tosh in "Captain Jack Harkness", Owen in "Combat", Ianto in "Cyberwoman" and (obviously!) on occasions we don't see. I didn't so much mind that Owen betrayed and shot Jack - I thought that was well set up. And Gwen was beside herself with grief over Rhys. But Ianto and Tosh? - I don't see Bilis' inducement as being insightful, I thought it was fairly feeble - I had trouble believing that they would or did take his visions seriously. I couldn't see why they would have more faith in Bilis (whom they didn't know) than in Jack (whom they loved). Even if they thought Jack had been jerking them around.
I do feel defensive about Torchwood, the show and the characters.
So I see why
I love the Doctor, I don't mind that he has foibles
Right up until "The Last of the Time Lords", I didn't mind his foibles. Or after that. In fact, I loved his foibles very much indeed. But in "The Last of the Time Lords" he either did or failed to do a number of things that distressed me, some of which had nothing to do with Jack. That's a different issue - but since it was all in the same episode, it was a sort of double-whammy. I loved the Doctor in "Time Crash" (both of him!) and "Voyage of the Damned", so my problems with "The Last of the Time Lords" can at least be shelved, if not resolved.
I don't mind that he means so much to Jack - more than any other living thing, quite possibly.
I agree with that, of course, and it's important to me.
I really don't understand why some fans are so utterly malevolent about what happened.
Simple disappointment, I think.