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antigwenallies Nov. 23rd, 2012 01:00 pm)
kamiandcat.livejournal.com posting in antigwenallies Nov. 23rd, 2012 01:00 pm)...has a nice article about our beloved Gwennie.
http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/torchwood/23546/revisiting-torchwood-gwen-cooper
http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/torchwood/23546/revisiting-torchwood-gwen-cooper
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But then that's me and my humble opinion.
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I've had the experience of the police coming to my door to let me know that my husband had been killed in a traffic accident (many years ago, and it happened before our divorce, so while it was a shock, it wasn't the tragedy in my life it could have been), and *I* certainly never carried on the way Gwen did. (Mind you, I treated my soon-to-be-divorced-husband better than she did Rhys, too.)
I've never thought that scene was believable either. Like you said, it's always about Gwen...and always Jack's fault. (Don't you remember *Jack* tasing and dragging Rhys to the Hub?) And then less than 24 hours later it's back to "all about me/Rhys who? Forget him - he can wait until I'm ready to remember him or until I want him to do something for me."
I was glad to see the article wasn't all "Gwen's the best thing since sliced bread", but have to disagree with a lot of it. I never saw Gwen as down-to-earth or an obvious heroine. I also didn't see Torchwood leach anything out of her. She wasn't a character I admired any part of, from the first moment I saw her on the screen, and I never saw anything to change that opinion. I certainly never saw her "save the world".
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Remember the first scenes in the pilot episode? Rhys comments on the murder, having heard about it or seen a report on the TV, or some such, and she completely (and totally unnecessarily) denied even being there. Fair enough she might not have wanted to divulge what she witnessed, for fear of being accused of seeing things or worse, but there was no reason to lie about being at the scene.
It came across as so completely natural, too, like she was well-practised at lying to him. She never hesitated, the lie just flowed smoothly out of her mouth. All Torchwood did was give her an excuse for her lies and deception.
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Second paragraph he states that she is the obvious heroine. I have to disagree with the obvious part. After all, she lied to Rhys, abandoned Andy miles from the station so he had to find his own way back, and got the porter or whatever he was killed because she wouldn't listen or obey the do not enter signs or the porter when he told her to leave the area and that was even before she joined Torchwood. I also didn't agree with her being "the most down to earth" because she never seems to face reality and always acts as if Jack/Torchwood should be able to perform miracles. If she was so down-to-earth, she would have been more realistic and less idealistic as well as taking responsibilities for her screwups instead of blaming others (Jack). I think she and Rose are very much alike which explains why I don't like Rose either. He also claims that Torchwood "leeches" compassion from her. From what I saw she has no real compassion to leech out.
Was he claiming Ianto was a vampire? Gwen predicts Barack Obama? What the hell does that mean? Sitting with Jack in EOD was an attempt at atonement? What? Did Geek not see the same show I did. Gwen, no matter how big the screw-up, still thinks she did nothing wrong, so what would she need to atone for? She didn't seem to think she was at fault for Jack being dead. What innocent did she save to make us view her as likeable until she cheated on Rhys?
Sorry for the rant. I could go on and on because of stupid remarks like comparing Mother Gwen to Ripley/Mrs. Weasly or the fantasy Geek presents of her questioning herself in Adrift.
Oops, I did it again. I better stop now.
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Thinking back, and I only just realized it while I'm writing this, Gwen's 'suzie-moment' in Miracle Day (The more people died, the more that meant I was special) feels so hollow because, as always, she gets a full pass on it. There are no repercussions to her wrongdoings, or her ephiphany of evilness. If her family had died as a result of her actions, she would've been forced to change, to become a different person.
But she didn't...
Which makes the comparison invalid.
And don't tell me 'Rhys' is her saving grace here, because let's face it, Gwen NEVER let's him influence her decisions.
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The question is: Why do we need someone to 'keep them in the real world' when the world they live in isn't really going anywhere? I mean, they deal with aliens in Cardiff, they're bound to run into civilians now and then. The entire Torchwood team already HAS ties to the world (Jack had his daughter and grandson, Ianto his sister, Tosh her mother, Suzie her father and Owen...Alright, I'll give you Owen.) It always felt like saying "We run a succesful bakery, let's hire a farmer to keep us closer to our wheat" It just doesn't make sense. You protect the earth BECAUSE you've got stake in it.
I guess what I'm saying is what's normal? They don't need normal, they need to fucking deal with their issues. Don't hire Rhys, hire a bloody therapist!
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On the contrary, she often hindered them in their attempts to handle a crisis in a professional manner, so unless one defines "humanity" as a mixture of unprofessional behavior, hypocrisy, histrionics, and incompetence, I really can't see what humanity she brought to Torchwood's interactions with others.
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A-class marketing, right there.
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That would've been such a mindfuck.
But she's our Point-of-view character!?
Wait, what does that say about the viewers, that 'we've' been rooting for her all this time?
Glorious...I tell you.
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And! I love your idea of Gwen turning out to be a villain. Hardly going to happen but one can always dream.
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Points:
1. She is a compulsive liar.
Evidence: She lies unnecessarily to Rhys even before knowing anything about Torchwood beyond its name.
2. She is reckless.
Evidence: She stupidly allows herself to be riled by Owen's verbal poking and reacts in such a way that results in the deaths of at least a dozen men.
3. She has no morals when it comes to herself in relationships, but expects exclusivity from the men she beds.
Evidence: Willingly jumps into bed with Owen despite being in a steady and supposedly exclusive relationship with Rhys whilst clearly lusting after Jack at the same time; throws a massive tantrum and leaves Owen stranded after learning that he cheated on her with Diane. (She had a habit of leaving men stranded, didn't she?)
4. She's self-righteous beyond all reason.
Evidence: On her first day at work, accuses her teammates of not knowing what it is to be human, when she knows not a single personal thing about any of them, except for Jack's inability to stay dead.
She pursues the Jonah Bevan case against Jack's orders, and to the detriment of everyone involved, and still behaves at the end of it as though it's all about her - despite causing far more pain to Nikki Bevan than the poor woman deserved.
Miracle Whip: Her ridiculous monologue at the end about sacrificing her father by ending the miracle. Excuse me? Firstly, without the miracle, her father would have been dead months previous. Secondly, if the miracle continued, her father would have been shoved into a giant oven and burned alive. By ending the miracle, she actually afforded him a peaceful death. In the course of four series, Gwen has lost nothing of significant importance to her because of Torchwood - she made it very clear what she really thought of Tosh, Owen and Ianto's deaths.
5. She is arrogant to a fault.
Again, the Jonah Bevan case. Oh, how that episode highlighted so many of her greatest faults.
Also, Children of Earth. Since when did an ex-copper who never even knew one end of a gun from the other know more about conning and stealing than an immortal man who had once survived doing exactly those things - only on an intergalactic level? I don't recall Gwen ever stealing a Chula warship...
Miracle Whip: Since when did Gwen get a doctorate in Chemistry? And again, that lovely little rant about Tosh, Owen and Ianto's deaths making her feel important.
I could go on, but this post is long enough now. But oh, there is so much evidence to point out that there is nothing at all heroic about Gwen "Super Trooper" Cooper...
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NONE.
End of list.
Though, I've read about how some Gwen fans like her because... she has nice hair.
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I just cannot, for the life of me, understand how anyone in their right minds could possibly believe that Gwen was popular.
After the first series of NuWho I never liked Rose- but loads and loads of people did, there was no denying it. Possibly people were getting tired of it towards the end, I don't know, but it was an arguable point. This is not. Three years later and fans still have steam coming out of their ears about the way they were treated! Way to get a show remembered RTD.
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I also don't think they realise but continuing to bang on about how great Gwen supposedly was, they're just making it worse. Given that most people's problem with Gwen comes from the Isn't she the greatest!!! attitude the PTB have towards her, continuing to go on about it now kind of means that nobody's feelings have a chance to cool down, because everytime it's brought up again, tempers understandably go right through the roof again.
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The only excuse I can come up with is RTD's free reign over it. With Who the beeb had major stakes rolling on it, so ANY writer (while being given quite a bit of freedom) is chained to the BBC's reputation and probably has to abide by it. That's why RTD's ego was kept reigned in. Now, in Torchwood's case, those restrictions weren't present? maybe? So that the only one who decided what was important on Torchwood was the fucknugget himself.
Imagine the poor PR-intern who had to tell RTD that maybe his Gwen angle wasn't working.
I don't think they ever found the body...
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Maybe. But why? In the beginning, sure, but once it became clear that things were going wrong? The BBC has been around for quite a long time, and they've created quite a few successful TV shows, so surely they must understand how to make money with their products. And someone must have realised that Torchwood, being a spin-off of what is arguably their most successful show ever, had the potential to tap into the Doctor Who market and generate even more sales. With both shows connected properly, it could have become a great success that might have run for who knows how many seasons. So why did they allow RTD to ruin something that could easily have made them a lot of money if handled properly?
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Then, to add insult to injury they buy Miracle Crap form the States- as if we do not have enough crap of our own without importing it!! No, he has to have cut a deal somewhere, and I am pretty sure it has to do with his contract on DW- maybe it wasn't up and they had to buy him out? Something smells rotten and you do not have to be Danish to smell it!!
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Moffat had known he would take over since Silence in the Library/Forest of the dead. EVERY episode after that was written by RTD. SitL was aired in august 2008, and would've been written/recorded a few months before it, so, guesstimation, RTD knew he was a goner since the start of 2008.
COE started filming in August 2008, again, fits the timeframe.
Honestly, I can just see them bargaining it. RTD says "Alright, I'll step away, IF I get the rights to Torchwood and SJA, get a final series of Torchwood on the BBC1 and get to write the rest of the season"
BBC answers "No, sorry, you can't have the SJA-" (knowing full well that it tied much closer to Who)"-, but we'll give you Torchwood and an hour-long special for it on BBC1 and the rest of the Who season."
Arguing ensues and eventually RTD gets FIVE episodes, rather than one long special. And guess who shows up in DW two episodes after the forest of the dead? That's right, RTD's beloved Rose...
On a personal note, what about the seasons finale did you find so jarring? because I couldn't get into season one to four (it just didn't grip me) to begin with and had never even HEARD of Who before 2005 (Not British, don't sue me). So what, in your opinion made it so off-beat? And how are you feeling about Moffat's writing?
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And don't even get me started on the whole thing with Jack and Alonso. It's not that I don't understand that Jack would eventually need to move on. It's not Alonso I object to, it's the way it was presented. The whole "Sorry my absence got your lover killed - here, have a new one" undercurrent is what rubbed me up the wrong way there. At the very least, I would have liked to see Jack being mad at the Doctor.
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As to Mickey and Martha, yeah, didn't see that coming! She didn't even meet Mickey until Stolen Earth and Journey's End.
Jack will never be mad at the Doctor. All his companions, even Donna to a certain extent, act as if he was God and isn't one of his names "The Lonely God"? I think it would have made better tv to have Jack and the Doctor met and settle their differences and have the Doctor apologize for being a bastard to him. Of course, I don't know good drama because I don't think you need to kill off 3/5s of your cast to further the plot. After all, Star Trek the next Generation went 7 years with only 1 crew member dying and that was because the actress wanted out of the series. Of course, she came back a few seasons later as another character.
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After all, Star Trek the next Generation went 7 years with only 1 crew member dying and that was because the actress wanted out of the series.
Yeah, funny how many series manage to have plenty of drama without killing off the majority of the characters, really. And the whole argument that bringing characters back would diminish the impact of the death is so much bollocks as well. It didn't diminish Spock's death scene when he was brought back in the next film - on the contrary, the anticipation of whether or not it would actually be possible was very gripping, indeed. Warehouse 13 has been very creative with bringing people back without taking anything away from the show as well. And anyway, for me, the whole point about watching fantasy and sci-fi, rather than reality based shows, is that anything can happen. There is room for hope and miracles - that's what it's all about. There's enough depression in the world, I don't need it to creep into my escapism as well, thank you very much.
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A time-lord whining about being a time-lord, yeah, that was bullshit, Nine never pulled out that kind of drama. My guess is that the Doctor was basically serving as a puppet for RTD's emotions on the whole thing. The way he visited ALL the new companions as if to say 'Look, look how great I was, and now you're making me leeeeeaaaavveeee'.
I was less upset at Jack and Alonso, because really, did we expect anything less degrading? But Mickey and Martha that's just so...pair the spares...pair the POC's. Nah, that shit ain't flying.
Killing a character is the cheapest way to create drama. It's easy, it's instant, it's lazy. It would have been far, far more difficult to continue Jack and Ianto's relationship, to have them work through their issues. Or to have Jack explain to his grandson that he wasn't ever going to grow older, to see if Jack could even handle having an extended family, same goes for Ianto. But no, they got axed and the most standard, most cookiecutter easy couple was still playing house.
Rory is awesome! He gives us hope for the future.
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Expect, no. Probably not even hope for. But there was definitely a bit of wishful thinking on my part that they would have done something better.
It would have been far, far more difficult to continue Jack and Ianto's relationship, to have them work through their issues.
My thoughts exactly. There is so much there that could have served for really great drama. How would they have coped with the realities of Jack's immortality and its effect on their relationship? How would Ianto have felt meeting Jack's family and realising that his lover has a daughter who is older than Ianto is himself? And that's not even mentioning the fact that they are from entirely different times and probably have very different ideas of what a successful relationship would even involve. So much to explore, all wasted. Gwen and Rhys are such a boring, normal couple by comparison (although some drama and interest might have been gotten out of Rhys breaking through the retcon and them actually having to work through him finding out that Gwen cheated on him, but it's not like that would have ever been allowed to happen).