Why Russell T. contradicts himself... (and maybe there is hope)

[illyrya.livejournal.com]

So I was searching youtube and found some clips from conventions and one caught my attention in it JB says that people in Torchwood died young, does that mean that Gwen is also going to die, because he already killed all the other young people and if they do die young how come little miss perfect is still alive.

Also Rt reminded me why I do not like him. You see I would not have minded so much if the character was not brought back if the fans where treated with respect, back when I join the save daniel jackson effort, I never felt like I was talking to a wall or like the writers where making fun of us, and even if the character was dead, they still mentioned him in the series because he had been and important part of it. Can we say the same thing about Russell with his comments about hysterical women and his disregard for the characters that aren't gwen (Ianto, Tosh, Owen). Also what was the point in making Jack convince us that Ianto wasn't just a blip in time if Jack can forget him in just two years. I don't expect him to morn forever, but Jack seems like the type of man that when he truly loves someone he doesn't get over that loss easily.

Comments

[amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com]

Because, Russell T is a talentless hack with no interpersonal skills what so ever, and an over inflated sense of his own self worth. Obviously, as he has been allowed to write for television, and we have not, then whatever he thinks is right, and whatever we think is wrong, or we would be writing the shows. The only saving graces of the two shows in the Whoniverse (I refuse to acknowledge the existnance of the SJA), were the episodes written by other writers, ones who did know how to relate to the fans, and even that has now been bolixed, by the complete fcuking up of cannon, with the introduction of the Miracle Whip.

[weis07.livejournal.com]

"does that mean that Gwen is also going to die, because he already killed all the other young people and if they do die young how come little miss perfect is still alive".

In one of his interwiew he (or Julie Gerdner) mentioned that "you don't rape the Snow White" - meaning nothing bad happens to Gwen ever. Or if it does there will be someone to save her. She and hers is protected by higher force (RTD) and usual rules of Torchwood Universe do not apply to her. That's why she is "brilliant, defender of the human race, strong, brave, Jack' longtime colleague, the heart of the team, something Torchwood needed, etc" in media but not on screen or in Torchwood reality.

[dvcorvis.livejournal.com]

It was RTD who came up with "you dont fuck with Snow White"


I know because it was he who made me make this http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/DorianGVB/gwensnowwhite.jpg

Julie Gardner did say "The character of Gwen is permanitly off the hook and will not be killed off"

But it is interesting we had Owen's and Tosh's birthdays changed from being older than Gwen to now being younger than Gwen and the magical line for RTD in his writing is 30 (see other works) so Gwen is over 30 so she is no longer thought as young she is now safe where as
Tosh's birthday gets changed from July 75 to --> Sept 18, 1981
and
Owen's February 1980 means he became a qualified resident MD as a teen-ager

...but both are now cleared to die young because they are not over 30..they never had to do anything to Ianto's birthday but they changed his too. It went from being December 2 1982 to August 19th 1983


BTW if Gwen is Snow White...Ianto is the sun that got blotted out..or if we're going with the whole Disney character thing he's Cornelius prince of the fairies and Winter has killed everything.

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

I don't follow extraneous materials, but thanks for providing these highly curious numbers. The logistics are mind-boggling. Why de-age the actors at all, and if that's really why they changed the dates so radically... Golly.

[slns7552.livejournal.com]

Just nitpicking. Cornelius was not a Disney character. Thumbelina was done by the ones who did The Land Before Time series, Anastasia, and The Secret of Nimh.

[jsks.livejournal.com]

rusty has so much emotionally invested in the gwen and rose characters that he finds it hard to believe that the fans don't love them as much as he does. during both torchwood and who both jack and the doctor seemed to play supporting roles to both rose and gwen, both men seemed destined to play the emo lonely god to childlike woman who are convinced that if it were not for the saintlike influence they have with the doctor/jack both men would give into their baser emotions. for rusty who/torchwood were always all about his favorites to the extent that he couldn't even be half-arsed to creat backgrounds for other characters or ignored what little positive canon there was. during the first season tosh was going to a family event she had friends outside of torchwood by season 2 puff, ianto during season 2 father was a master tailor and the expression on his face recalling happy times going to the movies with his tad replaced by hints of child abuse and ianto the man who was ashamed of his background all the more to make gwen the only one with a loving family background. what is his problem with families that the only person with a relationship with both parents and was gwen?
as for the what is dead stays dead i brought the fact that according to rusty rose was trapped pete's world and not coming back yet fast forward to the donna(my favorite companion of the new who) years and rose goes back and forth between worlds easier then catching a plane between london and wales. rusty said it was because the fans love rose he felt the need to bring her back but for fans of ianto/tosh/owen what is dead stays dead because death would lose the drama if people didn't stay dead. rusty meet sci fi where the dead come back to life everyday without losing the 'drama'. in fact how they explain the return is part of the drama. as offenseve as rusty and his minions were bashing us the fans during coe who bashed fellow fans for not being true 'fans' despite the fact that many of who go back to the first star trek. who were we to argue with a genius's vision even when we pointed out his own words didn't match his actions?
end of rant my job which gave me the night now needs to come to work a hour later.

[irishjantogirl.livejournal.com]

The fact of the matter is RTD thinks that his opinion is the msot important. I don't claim to be an expert but I think that if you want your show to remain successful then character death should be appraoched with caution. If push comes to shove and the charatcer is killed; then he very least you can do is have some mentions of them from time to time. eg "Remember the time ..."

What angered me about Ianto's death wasn't just the fact it could have been prevented (hazmat suits) or that Jack didn't tell Ianto he loved him; but it was too soon after losing Tosh and Owen. It was the fact that when the fans protested at losing their favoured charater in a BS storyline where everyone was OOC; RTD turned around and INSULTED the very people whose viewing of Torchwood made it asuccess. A TV drama needs viewers otherwise it sinks like a cement suit. I would love to say that the past team will be mentioned in Miracle Crap but I'm not holding out much hope.

[kassy2.livejournal.com]

The reason RTD killed off Tosh and Owen and then Ianto was purely because he thought, for some strange reason, that he could force the fans to transfer their affections to Gwen by killing off the people that they, misguidedly, thought were the real stars of the show.
I think he judges everyone by his own standards, He is obviously a very shallow and deeply unhappy man, who is not at all secure in his own sexuality and suffers form a very poor self image. No doubt he also had a traumatic, or at least difficult adolescence, (let's face it he is no oil painting, it cannot have been easy for someone who has all the charm of Jabba the Hutt to come out...) and also has deep seated and quite well hidden envy problems.
Add to that the fact that he does not take rejection well and I think we can see why GDL had to go, and Ianto went with him.
I do not, for one minute, believe that RTD did not know exactly what the reaction to Ianto's death would be, I think he counted on it, and thought he could just shrug his way through it because he also has this delusion that he can walk on water.
In all, RTD is a phsychoanalyst's dream!

[weis07.livejournal.com]

“I think we can see why GDL had to go, and Ianto went with him”.

I thought too that RTD envied Ianto’ and to a certain extent GDL’ popularity, and I suspected it was partly the reason why GDL was let go so easily. I’m glad that it’s not only me thinking so.
But still, it’s unbelievably stupid to be so childish. Plus, there must be other people in control of Torchwood project, reasonable people able to see reason. Why didn’t they do something?
I think that what frustrates me – that RTD can force his opinion about Gwen, about Jack, about Jack and Ianto relationship onto audience as the only possible way of thinking, and there is no way to contradict it.

[kassy2.livejournal.com]

Well, why did no-one at the BBC stop the awful, terrible debacle that was the last DW that RTD was responsible for?
It was OOC and absolute rubbish (although, of course, all the RTD worshipers thought it was wonderful) and it left Moff with a HUGE mess to clear up, that he is only just now managing to do. So, the Beeb, you would think, had some sort of control, why did they not exercise it? Word at the time was that RTD did not go quietly, but was shoved, for becoming more and more difficult to work with, so, why did no-one control him??

[jsks.livejournal.com]

looking back the first sign of trouble should have been the departure of christopher eccleston.
rusty and bbc press statement announced that christopher had signed on for only one year for fear of typecasting but kept it quiet. several days later bbc admitted that ce had not approved the statement. rusty then in his book said it was not christopher's idea for a one year contract but his because they were not sure that the new who would catch on. it was not until 2010 that eccleston finally broke his silence that he "didn't enjoy the environment and the culture that(they), the cast and crew, had to work in.", although he enjoyed playing the doctor. what or who did christopher blame for the bad working environment. would he work with rusty again?
i cannot help but wonder if rusty/md bombs would then bbc take him back after all the bad blood? how happy can the bbc be with starz ads proclaiming that torchwood is their baby?

[dr-doomsduck.livejournal.com]

Oh, to be a fly on the wall there. I am so very curious about an inside look of what-the-hell-happened at Torchwood and Doctor Who, because I keep hearing these things. First about RTD not being first choice for Dr. Who but third, then this thing about eccleston, then there was the rumour that RTD didn't leave dr. Who voluntarily but was pushed by the beeb. Then Torchwood, of which he only wrote four episodes, including three from the dreaded CoE. The whole thing about Naoko leaving and John Barrowman telling the people to write to the BBC, only to have things go akwardly silent after that, until the blatant lies from CoE. I was also told that JB was not very kind in his book regarding the shooting of season 3 (or maybe even before that, I dunno).

And then there is this, found it on Wikipedia, apparently from an email to Cook in 2007.

I leave it till the last minute. And then I leave it some more. Eventually, I leave it till I'm desperate. I always think, I'm not ready to write it, I don't know what I'm doing, it's just a jumble of thoughts in a state of flux, there's no story, I don't know who A connects to B, I don't know anything! I get myself into a genuine state of panic. Normally, I'll leave it till the deadline, and I haven't even started writing. This has become, over the years, a week beyond the deadline, or even more. It can be a week—or weeks—past the delivery date, and I haven't started writing. In fact, I don't have delivery dates any more. I go by the start-of-preproduction date. I consider that to be my real deadline. And then I miss that. It's a cycle that I cannot break. I simply can't help it. It makes my life miserable."

Right....That actually..explains a lot! He works on scripts last minute and I don't just mean finishing it, We all work towards deadlines. But with most large projects, I start at least weeks before the deadline. he doesn't even START until then...Well, there you have it, the answer to all people why most of CoE was a pile of dung, the man didn't start until he absolutely had too.

I can only imagine that the BBC went something akin to: "well, emh, dude, you're no longer a part of Dr. Who and we're not the type of channel who likes kiddymurders, so basically, why don't you take it somewhere else. Have you tried some of the backwater paychannels in the USA? I heard they're really big on violence there." (Cause honestly, I had no clue about starz before this whole debacle)

If the big channels like CW, ABC, HBO or, god forbid, Fox were intested in Torchwood, do you really think he'd be knocking on Starz's door. Of course, they weren't to happy with depression'r'us either. So, he went to Starz and then the shit started to look like Spartacus and it became sex, violence and depression. But that's just me, speculating.

Can anyone tell me what JB and Eccleston said by the way? cause I've never read the books, just hearsay really. Ofcourse everything here is just hearsay and until someone opens their mouth, we won't know.

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

Eccleston's quotes from the article:

"I was open-minded but I decided after my experience on the first series that I didn't want to do any more," he said.

"I didn't enjoy the environment and the culture that we, the cast and crew, had to work in.

"I thought if I stay in this job, I'm going to have to blind myself to certain things that I thought were wrong."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10312426

Re: Barrowman, it's in his second book. I don't have the actual quotes but apparently he said he had arguments with director Euros Lyn on the set of CoE about the way they 'imposed' to him to interpret Jack and about the fact that they specifically imposed both he and GDL to play down the scenes between Jack and Ianto. There's also an interview with GDL on AfterElton when he says that Barrowman was very upset when he found out they were killing Ianto off.

[jsks.livejournal.com]

i always thought it was odd that all gay snarks were directed towards the gdl character and none at the character of jack played by the openly gay jb. i remember reading in john's second book his talking to scott about his fear of what they were doing to captain jack.
i have tried watching spartacus and camalot and found my mind drifting. if rusty idea of 'drama' includes blood, nudity(mostly breasts and oddly enough no male bits and pieces) and long speeches then he is at the right place. the odd quirky torchwood we love despite the plotholes because of the actors & characters we grew to love. the one we were blah about lives and prospers.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Ummm... I know I live under a rock here, but are Spartacus and Camelot tv-series? And if they are, do they have anything to do with the Rustoid?

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

Yep, both are tv series and they air on Starz. Spartacus is their bigger ratings success ever.

Nope, Rusty is not involved but Camelot is under Chris Chibnall's supervision.

IMO, both Spartacus and Camelot suck big time: lots of gratuitous naked bodies, lots of violence (in Spartacus case it's overdone slaughterhouse gore) and no quality.

[jsks.livejournal.com]

exactly, i have tried to be fair to both but finding myself fasting forwarding or losing interest. the reason i mentioned them were as examples of the quality of their shows. starz is no hbo or showtime and that is why the fact that rusty had to take torchwood to starz told me what direction they were going in.

[jennelldhalrbj.livejournal.com]

I accidentally watched a few moments of Spartacus once. It was dreadful and so far I have read nothing about Torchwood Miracle Crap that makes me want to watch it. The plot is ridiculous and I don't feel any interest in most of the cast, none of whom, except the ones from old Torchwood, I had heard of before. {I hadn't even heard of Bill Pullman, that's what it is like when you have a lot of kids}.

I don't intend to get interested in characters only to have RTD kill them. One death is realistic, three or more is just lousy writing. "Oh dear, I don't know what to write next, er, I know I'll kill someone."

Reading the Torchwood official Blog is quite fascinating in an alarming way. The word awesome is overused, because presumably the writers are afflicted with what my Husband calls "tiny vocabulary syndrome." When RTD signed an autograph they even described that as awesome. According to them, everyone is awesome, the writers are awesome, the actors are awesome, the scenery is awesome--etc.

While all this is happening JB describes the thing as really seriously dark, darker than COE by a long way and they all think this is very funny. Obviously a degree of insanity is necessary to work there. The idea seems to be that the folk who love Spartacus, and there seems to be a lot of them, will all watch Torchwood as well.

Advert: Torchwood Miracle Crap:
Watch our new Program tonite--do you want to see gratuitous sex and violence without any noticeable plot but with a lot of naked females and maybe the odd nude male--do you want to see blood guts and spurting gore--then tune in --

[dr-doomsduck.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that everything used to be "Brilliant", when RTD was still writing Who. The cast was brilliant, the writing was brilliant, the scenery was brilliant.

That, boys and girls, is the difference between one side of the pond and the other, RTD's ego didn't deflate, it just got 'awesome'.

Jennell, I think you are major brave for actually daring to read the official blog, I might try it for a bit, but will probably need major dr. Who season 6 spoilers to make me happy again.

Also, I am still in college, no kids and I never heard of Pullman either. I figured he used to be a big actor but stopped getting good jobs before I started watching anything other than cartoons and is now trying to get back in the game (IMDB says he's got a lot coming up in 2011)

*sigh* I don't know if Torchwood mira...whatever, will ever be the hit Spartacus is, mostly 'cause people have already seen Spartacus and because unlike Torchwood, Spartacus does its backstabbing in-story instead of at the fans. Ofcourse, if people didn't like watching the same bloody mess OVER and OVER again, then why do we have a scream 4.

aannnd then there's this, Spartacus is big, masculine gladiator fights. Torchwood, no matter how hard they try not to be, is still in the genre of science fiction, better known as 'that stuff nerds watch'. Dunno about everyone, but people who don't have a knack for supernatural things, will not watch a series that is about something that can never happen in real life (don't start about the bloodspatters of Spartacus, don't start about the blo...)

Thing is, there is the Niche of Torchwood, Fringe, Supernatural, Smallville, Buffy etc. etc. and then there is the niche of 24, CSI, Law and Order, Spartacus, hawaii-five-o. Don't get me wrong, I like things from both Niches, like most people here I suppose. But fans of Spartacus are not unlikely to shy away from Torchwood because, "that ain't real man".

[jennelldhalrbj.livejournal.com]

Hope people do shy away from Torchwood Miracle Crap as I want it to be a gigantic flop just to see what RTD says. It wont affect JB's career as he is always busy and has evidently turned down things to appear in this rubbish.

So glad you hadn't heard of Bill Pullman as Torchwood Blog is deeply in love with him.

Some person sent RTD a massive Cheese. They all thought this was awesome of course. I thought it was funny and told Dan and he and oldest laughed so much oldest fell off his chair. There is something surreal about being sent a Cheese.

[slns7552.livejournal.com]

Bill Pullman was the father in the first Casper movie and the President in Independence Day. He's alright but I wouldn't go out of my way to see him, especially now he's playing the pedophile.

[wounded-melody.livejournal.com]

He was also in "Space Balls" back in the day.
I prefer to remember him in that, especially since he's gotten older (not being ageist, just that it makes me sad to see when people have changed so much)

[jennelldhalrbj.livejournal.com]

Just want you want to see when you have 7 kids and am pregnant----something about a pedophile.

Never saw any Casper movies or Independence day. Thanks for the info though.

[dvcorvis.livejournal.com]

he is also in A league of their own...as Geena Davis' husband...and I kid you not, I tried to watched it the other day and didnt know or forgotten that he was in it and I loved that movie and I got to the part where he is introduced which is kind of anticlimatic to begin with; but once I saw him all I could think about was all I hated about Torchwood killing off all the characters I liked, taking the show to the US and how his character was going to be this murdering pedophile who survives lethal injection and I just could not watch 'A League of Their Own' any more ...now I am not sure if I'll be able to watch Sleepless in Seattle ever again either

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Aha. Thanks for enlightening me. I guess I haven't missed anything; especially as Hungarian TV had the good idea of buying "Merlin", with which my needs regarding Camelot are more than covered.

[stlscape.livejournal.com]

The only connection with RTD that I know of is that they both aired in the US on Starz (which is where TW:MD will air).

[qafkinnetic.livejournal.com]

I AGREE WITH ALL OF THIS.

[illyrya.livejournal.com]

Until now I had no idea what miracle day was about(it always makes me think of miracle whip, did RTd thought of the name while in the supermarket?) and now I have read that it has something to do with a pedophile, does RTD has something against children? Honestly first he has then taken over by aliens and then kills one of them While trying to kill the rest of them and now this? Did RTD misplace the pot-it note where it said what the original idea for torchwood was? Because this guy is all over the place. I mean his plot-holes, have plot-holes, his characters change from episode to episode and I don't mean in the interesting let's develop this character see how the character grows, etc, etc, it is worst than watching Lost and they confused people on purpose. But maybe I'm expecting too much of somebody who apparently can't do simple math or completely missed the fact that it takes years to become a doctor but according to RTD Owen was already a doctor four years before he joined TW, maybe it is different in England but where I live at 24 you are either on your first or second year of med school.

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

RTD has no idea of what he's doing or he just doesn't care. The ending result is the same anyway: no respect for the characters and for the public.

How about The Heart of Crapwood, who is there with the *only* purpose to show others what it means to be human (as if the others didn't know it and needed her to be shown what it means FFS!) now killing people (not evil aliens, people!) with bazookas and exploding them with a grin on her stupid smug face?

*That* is the bleeding Heart of the show?

Not to mention Capt. Jack being trigger happy too and using big guns, again, not against Daleks and such but on people. And with the same idiotic grin on his face!

Why don't they just rename the whole farce into something more appropriate like "Hypocrites".

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to make things even more disgusting, the paedophile character is not some character that we see for a bunch of minutes or at max for 1 episode, no, we're going to put up with the paedo (who, in the character resume is defined as 'boiling with rage and lust - for children - and waiting to strike again') for the whole 10 episodes frigging thing!

Why should anyone find it entertaining watching a frigging paedo for 10 episodes?

I believe RTD likes to think he's edgy by feeding his brainless public the worst that he can come up with. I don't care if he hates children or not, what is evident is that he is so out of original ideas and ideas in general that the only way he can come up with a story line is to rely on sensationalism, and after frying a child alive in CoE the only way he could surpass himself was by reaching an even lower and even more disgusting level: the child rapist and murderer at the centre of the whole show.

And what a farce, between Oswald the rapist who kills children and Jack the molester who kills children too (while having insignificant homosexual shenanigans) what a wonderful couple of assholes we should all fall ever ourselves to watch on the telly!

[slns7552.livejournal.com]

I read that Torchwood has started on Starz. Is this true? If so, does anyone know what kind of ratings it received?

[jennelldhalrbj.livejournal.com]

It is supposed to start on July 8th. They haven't actually finished filming yet. They have shown a Trailer that's all, I think.