I think it Declassified has taught us anything (and it tries not to) it’s that this episode is all about… of course… PC Andy! He just wants to be on the inside with Gwen, and who wouldn’t want to be with him. He’s just so cute and cuddly! He is… Ianto, done nicely! I have to say that I prefer him to Ianto, so could we swap one for the other please? He’s proven he’s capable and tries to stand up to Gwen, which immediately gives him two points over Ianto, with the third being he’s not involved with naked man sex with Jack (which we also get to see in this episodes, at least making the fangirls happy). He also has more comic potential, which the series needs (done properly, note!)… but is in complete contrast to the rest of the episode (what a segue!).

The rest of the episode is all gloom and hopelessness as Gwen finds out that the Rift can take people (which shouldn’t be all that surprising), spit them out again, and force Jack to cover it up. Because he’s never done that before. Just like he’s never done other stuff without letting the team know. (As Gwen points out, “he’s a law unto himself”.) The episodes do vary as to who is the star of any particular episode, but the series has always struggled with the overall focus being on either Gwen or Jack. In many ways, it opts for Gwen, as the way in for the audience, but this then forces Jack into the background, making him more shadowy as he knows more than everyone else (Seventh Doctor anyone?). This does give a struggle to Jack to be his charming likable self and this dark manipulator he has to portray due to the plot point of the week, and the writers are taking to dealing with this rather bluntly. Case in point: Jack has the island (a positive for him taking care of matters), but keeps the information to himself (a negative in that it gives the team another reason not to trust him). No half-way position allowed, such as telling the rest of the team. Since I’m sure the rest of the team would have agreed with Jack that these people can’t be brought back into society, he could easily have told them, and made for a nice character point, but then we can’t be having that in this forced story clash. If nothing else, this episode shows the rest of the team getting in Jack’s way, and his way is looking to be the right way, so the writers aren’t doing too well with sowing dissent.

If it wasn’t for the direct tie-in into Torchwood activities, this episode would be another filler in yet another series of them. As it is, a lot of the problems here could easily be solved by judicious use of retcon (which would nicely deal with Nikki’s lack of hope issue). Perhaps we could all just accept that Jack does know best and move on, eh?

JE

Ladies and Gentlemen – here are your final eight!

The following monsters have prove their mettle in numerous arenas with several bouts between them. Undefeated, they will face one another to see who gets through to the final four and the semi-finals this time next week. The first team announced for each bout is awarded initiative.Let’s play…

Location: The Desert
Teams: Cheetah People vs Ogrons
The Cheetah People are back on their horses! Apex predators who hunt in packs with great speed and skill against the aforementioned monkeys with guns. On foot. Thoughts?

Location: The Pinnacles
Teams: Axons vs Toclafane
A gestalt being which absorbs energy and organic matter and delivers fatal plasma strikes against insane flying cyborgs with their own built-in forcefield. What do you think?

Location: The Crater Lake
Teams: Sea Devils vs Rutans
Both have an affinity for water and neither like heat very much. The Sea Devils have a range weapon while the Rutan deliver their shock largely by touch. Neither are great shakes in a cross country event. So…?

Location: The Standing Stones
Teams: Ice Warriors vs Sontarans
It’s another battle between heavily-armoured warrior races! Will the Ice Warriors be out-manouevered by the Trolls from Sontar, or will the taller team win? Over to you!

 Voting as usual is via the feedback form below. Let’s get this party started!

This was a great episode where Sapphire and Steel investigated children coming out of photographs… hang on… I mean, this is a terrible episode where Ianto and Jack investigate circus folk coming out of film (although I won’t say who was Sapphire and who was Steel). Yeah, what the hey? Is there anyone in control over at Torchwood productions? Were they so dazzled by the fact that “this is PJ Hammond!” that none of them went “hang on, didn’t we see this already?” [Certainly, PJH baldly states in the Declassified that he wanted to rewrite the S&S episode.]

Last time PJH wrote for Torchwood, it was a Jack-centric episode that revealed a past acquaintance. Now we have this new episode, centred largely around Jack, and reveals a past life as a circus freak (Something Borrowed already revealed a past acquaintance). Although I will admit that Ianto fills a significant role in this story too, so we do have a pair of leads (as for the rest of the team… what did they do again?). The split is the more emotive Ianto versus the more stoic and forceful Jack (no, I won’t say who is Sapphire and who is Steel), but it’s a good dynamic that’s developed that doesn’t revolve around either sex or tea (we can but hope they haven’t combined the two). In many ways, it’s like PJH is writing Jack not Torchwood. Perhaps someone should pass him a copy of the series bible.

Anyway… circuses! What is it about circuses that people think they are such a source of horror? I never did, don’t have clown fear, but will admit that Circus on Ice is pretty scary. That said, these carnies aren’t the usual sort. Not many people will let you stick their fingers down your throat, or give out tickets to your kid, so they are abnormal plus (water girl should have just sent everyone running!). But that isn’t what’s really scary about this episode. Consider that this is episode ten. Episode ten! And this is what we’ve got? Torchwood series two showed such promise, and yet we have crazy weddings, frightening carnie stereotypes and it looks like next week the padding continues! Perhaps we can defeat this if we expose the film to bright lights? Although I’m not sure it works for avi files or DVDs (that said, I’ve no idea why it should work for circus performers who escaped from film either).

If you’ve got nothing better to do that watch this, fine, but otherwise I recommend the original.

JE

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen to this, Round Three of our inaugural Monster Mash, and the first encounter between the winners of our first two rounds!

We’re seated here in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, a mosaic landscape of wildly varying terrain and climates to determine the answer to that most enduring of questions: Which Doctor Who Monster could beat all the others up before breakfast?

Winners are decided by YOU through the etheric medium of the feedback form below, with ties to be adjudicated by our glamorous assistant, the utterly lovely Jonovoratrelundar. Sixteen teams will be slugging it out today, to become eight a week from today, and then four, and then two, and then. Well, the Spice Girls put it best.

But to a different set of monsters – let’s meet our teams!

Here are the Winners of Rounds One and Two: Read the rest of this entry »

A constant question this series has been “is the comedy of episode one a one-off or a new series direction?” i.e. “Where is the comedy?” After watching this episode, the question is now “can we not have comedy again, please?” Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang shows that Torchwood can do comedy, but lightly. Something Borrowed is not light comedy, it’s a run-around laugh fest (according to RTD that is. And this is the same Declassified that had to pad out its own episode with two minutes of next week’s episode. Says it all, really.). Don’t believe me? Allow to say “Banana Boat” and dismiss your objections (not to mention Gwen’s baby nearly being born in a stable, not that Torchwood is into religious connotations or anything). But this isn’t to say that there aren’t worthy moments. Such as… nothing’s coming to mind, to be honest. No, this episode isn’t bad, per se, just that the moments that aren’t cringingly-comedic are merely… Meh.

Where it isn’t comedy, it’s going for “relation-ship dynamics”, which is this episode is mainly the Jack-Gwen-Rhys love triangle. Everyone watching knows that Rhys should even bother turning up (and next week’s episode puts paid to any ideas of an extended romantic honeymoon away), but this does give everyone a pairing, and we’re just one tasteless moment away from necrophilia for the entire team to be getting it on. This could be considered as a resolution to many of the character arcs, aside from the Jack/Gwen one (which will never be) and the Jack/Grey character arc (which I am presuming will be resolved by the end of this series – or provide a cliff-hanger). Some might see this as tying up loose ends, perhaps even a tying up of the series, but this is a very loose knot. If this is indeed the case, we could live with it, but I’m sure the producers could easily break the knot should further character development ever come to mind.

In a desperate attempt to find something deeper, we could parse “Nostrovite” as “Our life”. This is a couple who are bringing a new child into the world, and going to extreme length to complete their responsibilities. To this end, they interrupt the rather crazy world of Torchwood, presenting Gwen and Rhys a taste of life to come as they mature and raise a family. Unfortunately, this is then undercut by the need to have a monster-du-semaine, and so we are suddenly flashing back to the Buffy episode Hell’s Bells and recalling a far better attempt at this concept than Torchwood will ever be capable of.

As the “wacky zany wedding episode”, I wish they hadn’t. As a thought-provoking character piece, I wish they’d tried. Let’s just acknowledge that it could have been so much worse and leave it at that.

JE

We’re back in the Death Zone of Gallifrey, where the grimmest and greatest of televisual Doctor Who monsters are slugging it out for the coveted tiara of infamy – first prize in our inaugural Monster Mash! True to the original Death Zone the Daleks and Cybermen will not be making an appearance because a) they’re ‘too good’ at the game and b) that rivalry has already been played out and not everyone was happy. We couldn’t allow a rematch – there’s simply too much at stake!

But first: Round One Results:

The battles were hard fought – one was a weird struggle between crustaceans and creepers, another looked like a squad of Vogans beating themselves up. They fought on the causeway, in the air, and in the ice caves; but in the end only one team of each location could be the winner.

Ultimately two bouts were so close they ended in a tie, so we had to go to our impartial touch judge, the glamorous Jonovoratrelundar to give us the casting vote. And the winners are:

Ice Warriors, Sycorax, Refusians, Tractators, Menoptra, Rutans, Krynoids and Draconians.

Each team will return in Round Three, to face a new enemy apiece. And so the game continues after the fold… Read the rest of this entry »

Officer 565 is down, but not out. Like the famous bunny, he just keeps going and going and… sigh. Everything character based with Owen has now been neutered so why are we still suffering him? Does Burn have an unbreakable contract or something? His dramatic death has been completely undercut, so now his death status is just going to be a “fixture” of Torchwood that will be referenced occasionally… yep, he’s become the pterodactyl.

This raises the question of why? What’s the point? Why is he still around? The arc only has real impact if there is lasting influence, and his death and Martha being around now has no impact. If Owen had died and stayed dead, that would have been something, but no. If Martha had been killed, that would have meant something (extreme outrage from the fans for one…), but she was sidelined.

Has this whole three parter been as relevant as Random Shoes? Plotwise, no, as this arc was actually about the Torchwood team. But character-wise, it appears so. Stuff happened, but let’s move on and never talk about it again. Torchwood series two has built up some great character development, and I was really liking it, but now it’s just gone to crud. Hopefully the back five will pick up again.

But, hey, Richard Briers! Yay! Let us speak no more about Paradise Towers, as seeing him in this made for the one bright point in the otherwise doom-laded script (Joseph Lidster does seem incapable of writing anything else), and he gives a lovely performance that actually makes you like the character despite the sparse three minutes he’s on screen. I’d ask for more of him, but that might be a bit tricky (although we have now proved that death doesn’t stop anyone from staying the series…). But he is so wonderful he made it into the Declassified and we hear him talk about the part… go Richard Briers! (And the Declassified also features the Owen vs Cardiff Bay scene cut to a new soundtrack that’s just begging to be fleshed out into a YouTube video.)

Ugh. The arc is over, for all it doesn’t matter. Let us move on and try to forget about this period in our lives…

JE

The setting: The Death Zone of Gallifrey:

The Set-Up: It’s Monsters beating up other monsters to determine which race – in a fight – are the ultimate champion! No robots, mind.

The Rules: Voting is open to YOU the reader. Assume the beasties have their own kit (but no spaceships of course). The most-voted for team wins each of their particular rounds and progresses to the next level.

Let’s begin…

 Location: The Labyrinth
Combatants: Ice Warriors versus Nimon

Mars’ finest come armed with sonic weapons and great swords for their noble class. Weaknesses include extreme heat. The Nimon can emit deadly beams from their horns and have great strength. Initiative is awarded to: Ice Warriors

 Location: The Catacombs
Combatants: Silurians versus Sycorax

Earth’s Silurians have built-in cranial emiters that radiate various energies including a lethal ray. The Sycorax have swords, spears, and blood magic (providing they get first blood!) Initiative is awarded to: The Sycorax

Location: The Plains
Combatants: Refusians versus Vogans

The invisible Refusians have their relative lack of visibility as their greatest strength (although they don’t always have the wits to cover their tracks). They are also very strong. The Vogans are armed with projectile firearms. Initiative is awarded automatically to: Refusians

 Location: The Ice Caverns
Combatants: Cryons versus Tractators

The Cryons of Telos are armed with energy blasters and thermal explosives, although exposure to even temperate climates can be fatal. The Tractators are unarmed, but have a Gravis as their coordinator. Their talent is to manipulate local gravity fields. Initiative is awarded to: Cryons

Location: Sky Arena
Combatants: Tetraps versus Menoptra

 Aerial combat! The Tetraps can fly for short distances and can paralyse with a bite. Their weapons fire nets. The Menoptra of Vortis can also fly and carry energy weapons. Their organisation is military. Initiative is awarded to: Tetraps

 Location: The Causeway
Combatants: Judoon versus Rutans

The Judoon carry flesh disintegrating blasters and are built, literally, like rhinoceri. Representatives of the Rutan Host can assume most animal forms and kill with electrical impulses. Movement in their natural state is awkward  and exhausting. Initiative is awarded to: Rutans

 Location: The Rainforest
Combatants: Macra versus Krynoids

The parasitic Macra have great claws and strength on their side, using a hypnotic gas to overpower living creatures around them. The Krynoids consume animal matter and can control plant life within a localised area, movement in their natural state is limited. Initiative is awarded to: The Macra

 Location: The Temple
Combatants: Voord versus Draconians 

Our final bout of the day pits the rubbery Voord – silent amphibious assassins with nasty knives against the noble Draconians and their sword and blaster combo. Initiative is awarded to: The Voord

Let the Voting Commence!

And so the summer of our squee-content has drawn to a close. The mainstream media call this part of the year the ‘silly season’, where not a lot of real news happens, so instead of trying to find it, the papers and telly rummage through the old ‘wack-o’ files for anything they can find to fill the tyranny of the front page. This sort of thing never happens in the Doctor Who community because we generally have interesting things to talk about all the time and can be relied upon to introduce topics of conversation that invite feedback and discourse.

Or so we thought.

In other spaces of the intertubes this tendency to acquire blog-like symptoms has mutated. In this example for… example, we see that it’s still the happiest time of the year.

Still, last Christmas does seem to have been pretty unique for dragging on well into the first quarter of the following year, as Exhibit A (February’s DWM) proves. Please,  can we just step back in time from Kylie? She was a guest star, her character died, we moved on. What next? An update on what Imagination have been up to?

Enough grumpiness – or not! Yes, February brings us a new Spirit of Hartnell Award, and this time we award it with enormous pride to none other than the Restoration Team’s fearless spokesman Steve Roberts’ life-affirming statement on 2008′s big milestone.

Perhaps they’re concentrating on something extra special? Like CGI that not only fulfils a logical conclusion but actually adds to a story effortlessly. Like this!

And finally, you didn’t read it in Her Majesty’s zine, but Torchwood‘s back! And it’s been neutered improved with tighter stories, improved character motivation and less swears. We sort of miss that last bit because it made the show sound somewhat daft, unconvincing and pretend-cool, like listening to a bunch of third formers on a school bus. So in memory of the way things used to be, here’s a wee tribute to Torchwood series one: the Gordon Ramsay years.

The worlds of Doctor Who and knitting don’t often collide, it has to be said; but when they do you know you’re in for something quite magnificent. The Fourth Doctor’s scarf is an obvious candidate, but we forget the other lesser-known additions to this shared canon that are owed their rightful place, like the appearance of the Clangers in The Sea Devils - those wonderful pink-yarned creatures clearly coveted by the Master. And rightly so.

When Doctor Who fandom (even casual fandom) and Craft 2.0 collide in the real world it’s even more fun, because it’s a good example of creativity meeting imagination, and something we can appeciate in three dimensions; it’s tactile, it’s irresistably domestic, and when you combine the velvety goodness of wool with the angular worlds of Doctor Who’s TARDIS, you get something as cool as this:

Isn’t it a beauty? Click here to see more views of this creation by Christchurch’s crafty Pixelbrid. Better still, if you register with instructables.com you can vote for the TARDIS in the current competition and pass a few more virtual props on to its creator. Don’ be swayed by the Princess Leia hair helmet – this is the real deal!

PA