posted
AKA "The Trouble With Lisa". Middling episode for me. Great stuff for Ianto (whereas all he's done to this point is smirk and bring food for people), but as such the whole thing was a little out of place. Notes:
-They neatly dodge the continuity problems by saying that Lisa was upgraded with parts made in this universe, so she wouldn't be sucked back. Also, as they were in a hurry towards the end of the battle, they'd started upgrading people the "old fashioned" way by systematically replacing human parts with machine, instead of just transplanting the brain.
-Still, at some point the Cybermen decided that Lisa needed boots with heels in them, and Cyberboobies. Feel free to justify them as you wish.
-Ianto was at Canary Wharf during the battle in "Doomsday". Clever use of cheap plastic sheeting to reproduce the upgrade chambers we saw in that episode, too. Was Ianto next in line to be upgraded? And odds are that he didn't see the Doctor there, but he certainly must have known about him being in the building. One wonders where Jack was, then. Not on the train there?
-Jack's breath of life does wonders, doesn't it? And apparently, to bring someone back to life (or at least wake him up), he needs to give a full-on smooch.
-They never addressed the dead cybernetics guy, whom we assume is still rotting in the misty squalor of the Hub basement. That guy must have worked for Torchwood too; is he from T1? The facility is still there, so it must still be working...
-Jack LIVES at the Hub, and he never went to the basement in the whole time Lisa was there. Lying in a large room containing nothing else. Behind a locked door. With a big window in it.
-Jack somehow controls the pterodactyl with his wrist thingy? And turns off the cyber conversion thingy? Is it his version of the sonic screwdriver? He had the gizmo when he was travelling with the Doctor:
-Jack makes the same "what-EVER" sign with his hands that he did in "Boom Town". Methinks as such that it's an actor's choice, and not scripted.
-The thing with the pizza girl certainly caught me by surprise. So did Ianto's reaction - you could easily see that he understood Lisa was gone and that the piza girl had to die, but he still couldn't bring himself to do it. In a story about him where you'd expect through the natural flow of the story for him to grow some guts, he doesn't do anything of the sort.
-But the ending was screaming "reset switch" regardless. The modern Doctor Who has gone a long way to show the consequences of adventuring through time and space; will Ianto learn from this? Or will he be happily serving tea again next week? Sorta feels like the latter case here.
posted
Really? I found his acting quite genuine... It's basically the worst situation he's ever been in. The performance may not have been very textured, but when all you're asked to do is hatred and sorrow, there isn't much subtlety involved.
quote:They never addressed the dead cybernetics guy, whom we assume is still rotting in the misty squalor of the Hub basement. That guy must have worked for Torchwood too; is he from T1? The facility is still there, so it must still be working...
posted
The current frame of Doctor Who + Torchwood is SUPPOSED to take place about one year ahead of when you're seeing it. This was established in "Aliens of London" when the Doctor brought Rose back home a year later than he picked her up (which is in Spring 2005). Thus, "The Christmas Invasion" is meant to be Christmas 2006, and the second season takes place over the course of 2007. Presumably the Doctor is not necessarily locked to one-year-removed London anymore now that Rose is gone, but to avoid running into himself (and thus the extreme embarassment that will involve) season three will almost certainly take place in 2008, about concurrent with Torchwood's first season.
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