Torchwood: Adrift (2x11)

[fajrdrako]

Ahhh: this week is a good time to be a Torchwood fan.

And it's hard to know where to start in enumerating the ways I loved this one.

1. Gwen Cooper. As I've said before, I love the character, and that includes loving her flaws - no, I don't like liars in the least, but I find it interesting to see a sympathetic lead character who lies and is unfaithful to her boyfriend. Now that Gwen seems to have stopped both the lying and the infidelity, she is no less interesting - her policy of telling the truth is getting her into trouble, too.
   
   So: Gwen in "Adrift" was headstrong, stubborn, dedicated, smart, stupid, resourceful and downright fascinating. Her strengths were weaknesses and vice versa: she listened to the right people at the wrong times, and the wrong people at the right times. And generally went her own way anyway. For the last few episode I hadn't found her as pretty as usual; here she was downright stunning. What's different?
   
   Scene after scene, I loved Gwen's interactions: accusing Rhys of wittering, then being surprised by his forceful reaction; wanting to help Nicky, and then ultimately being able only to give her the knowledge that was more painful than the doubt; her embarrassment, amusement and fascination at walking in on Jack and Ianto's, er, dabbling; and the dirty trick she played on PC Andy at the dock.
   
   Gwen: gorgeous.
   
   
2. Rhys used to be the perfect boyfriend. Now he's the perfect husband. All the more so in that he isn't letting Gwen walk all over him. Feed him toast in bed, that's another matter.
   
   
3. PC Andy. Oh, how I love PC Andy!
   
   
   
   So he didn't go to Gwen's wedding, and went on the defensive when she asked him about it. Sounds as if he said he'd be there, and didn't show - bad form. Look what he missed - a murdering alien, and an experience with Retcon! Gwen thinks he's in love with her: he may be. (Wouldn't blame him.) And he wants to join Torchwood. I'd love to see him there - but does he have an area of extraordinary expertise?
   
   Tell me to get visions of Jack/Andy slash out of my head, okay?
   
   
4. Another reason to love this episode is that there was nothing about the Tosh and Owen relationship. Tosh was - well, not at her very best, but not bad at all. It was fun to see her working with Gwen.
   
   
5. One of the things I enjoyed was a new and unexpected sense of Jack's secrets. We've always known he has secrets from the Torchwood team - his own past as a con man or Time Agent, his knowledge of the Doctor, the future. But now we know he has projects going on that are not directly related to Torchwood. Projects he is reluctant to talk about. He has always told them the Rift was a one-way trip: this exposes his lie.
   
   
6. But Ianto knew about the convalescent home for Rift abductees. This is the first indication we've had that Jack has told Ianto things he hasn't told the others.
   
   Why did Ianto think Gwen should know? Why give her the clue she needed? Perhaps Ianto thought she'd never give up until she knew the truth, and he'd help her before she drove them all crazy. Maybe he thinks Jack should tell everyone, but hasn't presuaded him to do so yet. Will Gwen tell the others, or will she keep Jack's secret? And what other secrets are Jack and Ianto keeping from the others?
   
   
7. Interesting too to see that Ianto has a mind of his own and acts on it, even when it isn't what Jack wants.
   
   
8. maaseru thought it looked like a great many missing people. Gwen seemed to think so, too. The show didn't give statistics - though I loved that scene where at first Nicky thought no one else would show up for her support group, and then more and more people arrived. How many people, in a town the size of Cardiff - or Ottawa - go missing and are never found, over a ten year period? I'm not even sure how to look it up. I suppose the 'and never found' is the tricky bit: of the many people who go missing, over ten years the majority of them would turn up alive, dead, or as runaways. The difference in Cardiff, of course, is you add in a percentage of extra disappearances for Rift anomalies.¹
   
   
9. Jack has always said it was impossible to go through the Rift and come back. Obviously this is not true, but if the Rift takes people randomly, it seems impossible that 17 people would be able to come back to the planet they'd started. Even if there were initially hundreds of them: surely if dropped randomly into other parts of the universe, they would would simply perish in the vacuum of space or in the heart of some star or planet. Seems to me there are implications there: that the Rift is not as random in space and time as it seemed. Those seventeen people were unfixably damaged, but they survived and came back.
   
   
10. Though Gwen says she trusts Jack (and she does), I was amused that she was willing to trust the story of a stranger, Jonah, but not to stay and listed to Jack when he was ready to tell her the whole story. That's what being passionate in one's reactions can do to you. In the end it pretty much backfired on her, but I'm not sure if she would have done anything differently if she'd talked to Jack before going to see Jonah. I suppose it would have depended on what Jack told her: he could have told her Jonah's condition. I think by that time Jack was ready to just let events transpire and see what happened.
    
    
11. Nicky was interesting. I thought at one point, at the end, that she wasn't even going to see Jonah again, that she couldn't bear it - but I don't think that's it. After months of hope, she gets the truth all in one blow and will need some adjustment time.
    
    Why did I get the impression that after returning from beyond the Rift, most of the survivors didn't live long?
    
    
12. What is the relationship between Rift activity and Captain John's vortex manipulator? It looked as if Captain John was able to use the Rift as a wormhole to go where he wanted - was it like getting an extra push into the Time Vortex?
    
    
13. Remember how I've been ranting over the past week - ever since "Out From the Rain" - that I don't have enough sense of the relationship between Jack and Ianto? Well, here we got a good glimpse of it, and I loved it.
    
    And no, I don't mean the sex, though I was happy to see that, too. (More, please.) No, I mean the sense of sexual connection, the awareness each had of the other even when they weren't touching any more - they were getting dressed, they were talking to Gwen (and looking at her) but they were totally aware of each other all the time, in a very visceral way. Of course: they were still aroused, having been interrupted.
    
    And they were giddy with it. High on endorphins. Happy in the moment. Enjoying loving each other. That was what I wanted to see.
    
    
14. So Jack invited Gwen to join them. I had several reactions to that:
    
    
    • He really does want her, and taken by surprise, aroused, and unthinking, expressed what he might not otherwise have said
    
    
    • Annoyed to be interrupted, he expressed what he might not otherwise have said
    
    
    • Ianto knows all about Jack's feeling for Gwen and it's fine with him. He's probably taking all his sexual cues from Jack these days, no limits
    
    
    • It might well be the polite 51st century response anyone would make when caught having sex - invite the other party to join in.
    
    
15. We were discussing a few days ago whether Jack wears his wristband during sex. I had to look at the scene several dozen times to be sure, but his wrists are bare. So: he at least sometimes takes the wristband off. My guess would be that if he is undressing for sex (as opposed to having sex with his clothes on), he takes off the wristband.
    
    
16. Love Ianto's smile.
    
    
17. Love Jack's body.
    
    
18. All the rest aside, it was fun to see how playful Jack and Ianto are with sex. Naked hide and seek? Is that like the game Stephanie Plum calls "hide the sausage" in the Janet Evanovich novels?
    
    
19. Some of the joy of this episode was that many of the things I don't like about Torchwood weren't there. No blood, no fighting, no plastic-headed aliens, almost no Owen. And though I like the off-the-wall stories on crack, I like this better: character-based and realistic, dealing with implications of their situation rather than direct action and monster menaces.
    
    
20. I wondered if anyone came back from the other side of the Rift undamaged enough to go home again. From what Captain Jack said, it seems not. If they did - I imagine no one would believe their experiences, if they were even willing to talk about them.
    
    This struck me as the dark side of the Rose Tyler story. She wandered off into the time vortex with a chance-met alien and came back twelve months later - yes, they'd aimed at twelve hours, but the point is that she came back, happy and safe and sound, despite a few close calls. These people didn't come back safe and sound and will probably never be happy again.
    
    Martha Jones came back changed, but she came back stronger and wiser and braver. Another success story.
    
    The biggest difference, of course, is that both Rose and Martha were in the hands of a benign alien who, though he might get them almost killed on a thousand occasions, cared about them and (so far) always got them out of trouble and back home again.
    
    
21. But we do know two people who went through the Rift and came back again with no more damange than a broken heart - Jack and Tosh did, in "Captain Jack Harkness". Was Bilis responsible for both the guided nature of their disappearance, and the safety of their return - or was it that their Rift manipulator works better than anyone dreamed?
    
    Come to think of it, Jack's knowledge of what happens to people who fall through might be his incentive for building and trying to perfect the Rift manipulator. He wants that kind of thing to stop.
    
    What did Gwen expect from him, when she demanded that Torchwood do something about the problem? Does she think he has a magic wand? Haven't they been trying to 'do something' about the Rift all along? Gwen seemed to be thinking of something more like - a public awareness project, maybe?
    
    As the story ended up showing, knowledge is not always the best thing.
    
    
22. The episode was from Gwen's point of view. It would have been interesting to see it from Jack's point of view. Completely different story. Mind you, we don't get much from Jack's poitn of view. Too bad.
    
    
23. At last - beautiful Welsh scenery. I loved the scene of Jack and Gwen, sitting together. A welcome change after all we've seen of sodden and littered back alleys and city streets.
    
    
24. One of the things I really liked was that Jack, having set up his top-secret hidden hospice for incurable Rift-casualties, goes to visit the people there. I don't think his visit was purely administrative - though it looked as if they might have found another person. I think Jack cares enough to come back, knowing them personally, and caring about their fates.
    

~ ~ ~
¹ Not to mention hungry aliens, vicious Weevils, fairy abduction and Sleeper terrorism.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Not supposed to have full control over" - who can decree that?

Well, the Doctor, I suppose. Jack obeys the Doctor implicitly and completely, and the Doctor has stopped him from travelling in time, so maybe Jack's keeping the project under wraps.

But he is also building a TARDIS. (Not that he's told the others.) So Jack does have... plans for the future.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I meant by what RTD has implied- humans don't get time travel for awhile.

I thought Jack's coral being a baby TARDIS was fanon, not canon

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I meant by what RTD has implied- humans don't get time travel for awhile.

Right. But there are people among them who have travelled in time - Sarah Jane and the other Companions, the Doctor occasionally, Jack, Captain John, etc. So while people don't have time travel, that doesn't mean that an individual couldn't have the capacity.

I thought Jack's coral being a baby TARDIS was fanon, not canon

Nope. I first came across it in something Russell T. Davies said in the Radio Times. It hasn't been mentioned in the show so I guess you could take it as non-canonical if you like, but personally I'm ready to accept anything RTD says is canon unless it refers to something yet to happen, in which case I take it for granted he'll lie like a con man.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Then again RTD can't keep his own canon straight. There's no way the TARDIS should have been able to go from needing to refuel on the rift for 24 hours to 20 seconds.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, RTD will play fast and loose with anything. We can take it for granted. But if I like one version, and it's a possibility, I'm happy to stick with it. Or to make up fannish explanations about discrepancies or whatever. I'm not usually too worried about contradictions.

Actions on the screen that are out of character bother me more.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

those are the WORST

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Drives me nuts, but what can you do? Rationalize as much as possible!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

and write fanfic to justify and make it right in your own mind!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Of course! It's the best use of fanfic I can think of. Those things that niggle until you find a way to explain them.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

absolutely. And I love it when you find an author who wrote everything exactly fixing everything you found wrong or explaining what needed explaining.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I love it when I think of a way to fix things that need explaining. Are there any particular bits you'd like to see explained or fixed?

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

not really so far this season. There have been bits I haven't been thrilled with, but that's to be expected. And, while I haven't read spoilers (and have no desire to know for certain), I assume the arc this season is Grey, so the mystery of who he is will eventually be explained

my speculative questions...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

There are odds and ends I'd like to play with, or come up with answers to the questions in my head:

- why was Jack kind to Owen in "Dead Man Walking" but not "A Day in the Death"? Had something happened to make Jack grumpy?

- who put the dragon-mural on the wall in the Hub, and why?

- why was Jack in the circus in the 1920s, and who was he working for?

- why didn't Jack want to tell Gwen about the Rift survivors on Flat Holm island? And why did Ianto want her to know?

Re: my speculative questions...

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Jack's reactions to Owen have always been scattershot. It's a good question

The dragon mural is cool- My fanfic opinion is that a painter from the Renaissance who fell through the rift did it.

Jack in the circus- we don't exactly get a date for it, do we? I've really been curious about who gave him the orders. He says "it's complicated" which implies it ISN'T Torchwood, because Ianto wouldn't think TW was complicated!

I wondered if Ianto wanted to bring Gwen down a peg or two- make her realize sometimes there isn't easy answers

Re: my speculative questions...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Jack's reactions to Owen have always been scattershot.

That's true. I used to wonder why Jack put up with so much from Owen. Then one day I found myself wondering why he was being hard on him.

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<i>Jack's reactions to Owen have always been scattershot.</i>

That's true. I used to wonder why Jack put up with so much from Owen. Then one day I found myself wondering why he was being hard on him.

<i.My fanfic opinion is that a painter from the Renaissance who fell through the rift did it.</i>

Yes! Well, you know Jack and Leonardo must have been... acquaintances.

<i>Jack in the circus- we don't exactly get a date for it, do we?</i>

Not specifically. 1920s by the look of it.

<i>I've really been curious about who gave him the orders.</i>

Yes - that was intriguing.

<i>He says "it's complicated" which implies it ISN'T Torchwood, because Ianto wouldn't think TW was complicated!</i>

Unless for some reason Jack didn't want to say it was Torchwood, and his reasons for that were complicated. But why would that be? It's a nice exercise for curiosity regardless of what kind of answer we imagine.

<i>I wondered if Ianto wanted to bring Gwen down a peg or two- make her realize sometimes there isn't easy answers</i>

Maybe. And Jack wanted to protect her from the truth? That would probably fit what we know and see. Jack thinks Gwen isn't ready for the truth; Ianto thinks she is.