Torchwood: EPIC FAIL - Episode 1x1
Jul. 12th, 2008 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadydaveCURSE YOU INTERNETS, I WAS TRYING TO EDIT THIS. Ahem.
Anyways, it has become apparent to me that several of you quite enjoy Doctor Who, which is of course right and proper. However, this may lead to the urge to watch Torchwood, the spin-off starring everyone's favorite bisexual adventurer of space and time, Captain Jack Harkness. However, there is one small problem with this: Torchwood, Series One, isn't actually very good. It certainly has its moments, but since they tend to occur in the midst of things like "logic" and "good writing" wandering off to other TV shows where they are more appreciated, this can be very frustrating. Basically, Torchwood has a wee problem in that it consistently fails on some level at least once an episode.
However, I have discovered an interesting phenomenon, which is that Torchwood sounds 100% more awesome when someone tells you about it, versus actually watching it yourself. Thus, in the interest of taking one for the team, I present Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project. Now you can enjoy Torchwood in all of its cracked out glory without actually being exposed to its failure at television, all in the comfort of your own home! Handily included are the Fail Scale (which calculates each episode's score by subtracting instances of FAIL from moments of WIN), Death By Torchwood (which records Torchwood's unfortunate tendency to cause the death of countless thousands merely by existing), and a link to the Captain's blog, BBC America's recap of each episode, which is notable for usually being more awesome than the actual episode.
So, in case you wanted to stay up-to-date on Doctor Who or watch Torchwood, Series Two (which is much more awesome), click away!
Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project
Episode 1: "Let's Show Everyone the Potential We're About to Squander!" aka "Everything Changes"
This is Gwen (and her friend Andy): they're cops.
One day, Gwen gets kicked off a crime scene to make room for Captain Jack and 3 people trying to look cool in the pouring rain.
Jack has foregone the space pirate look in favor of WWII RAF gear, but it is unclear whether he still carries a gun up his butt.
The last time we saw Jack, he had been left behind during "Parting of the Ways" sometime in the future, after being dramatically brought back from the dead. Obviously, he must be about to explain what's going on:
JACK: There you go. I can taste it. Estrogen. Definitely estrogen. You take the Pill, flush it away, it enters the water cycle, feminizes the fish, it goes all the way up into the sky, and then falls all the way back down on to me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again.
...or not. Also, estrogen is apparently now pronounced "eestrogen".
Gwen hides in a parking garage to watch Torchwood, not unlike its viewers. Team Torchwood member Suzie uses a metal gauntletty thing to bring the murther victim back to life, but they've only got 2 minutes before it stops working. Coincidentally, the guy's name is John Tucker, so obviously he must die. Team Torchwood member Tosh asks John Tucker (who is understandably upset at being dead) who killed him, but he doesn't know. They all stand around awkwardly because they don't know what else to ask, until Jack has a brilliant idea:
JACK: Tell me ... what was it like when you died? What did you see? John. Tell me what you saw.
JOHN TUCKER: Nothing. I saw nothing. Oh, my God. There's nothing. ::dies::
WAY TO COMFORT THE DEAD GUY, JACK.
This is Gwen's bf, Rhys. He's pretty awesome but usually doesn't relate to the plot.
Gwen tries to investigate Captain Jack and Torchwood, but fails -- no one knows anything about the organization, and the last Captain Jack Harkness disappeared during WWII. Meanwhile, the cops are trying to find out who stabbed John Tucker and 2 other people, and Gwen and Andy hit the beat:
ANDY: CSI Cardiff, I'd like to see that. They'd be measuring the velocity of a kebab.
They break up a pub fight, but Gwen gets hit in the head and goes to the hospital. There she sees a long, swooshy coat running up the stairs, and rightly assuming it's Jack, follows. What she finds instead is the very first appearance of Torchwood FAIL.
Gwen enters a sealed-off hallway, and by sealed off, I mean "covered with plastic because Torchwood cannot be bothered to lock a stupid door". Inside the hallway, she finds an alien wearing a darling Torchwood jumpsuit and just kind of chillaxing.
Exhibit A: Impenetrable barrier
Exhibit B: Alien hanging out in hospital
Jack has apparently gotten lost on the stairwell and is nowhere to be seen. After just kind of standing around, listening to Gwen's beautiful Welsh vowels, the alien eats a nosy porter, whereupon Torchwood SPRINGS INTO ACTION. I guess it was really hard for them to find their lost alien when it was STANDING STILL IN THE FRONT HALLWAY FOR 5 MINUTES WHILE GWEN WAS TALKING TO IT. Maybe they ALL got lost in the stairwell. In conclusion, FAIL.
Gwen tries to follow them, but loses them at the Millenium Centre. That night, she lies to Rhys about working, and goes to look for Torchwood again. She finds their address at the place you would naturally expect a super secret organization to disclose their information to: THE PIZZERIA. This is the first of many incidents of Torchwood TOTALLY FAILING at secrecy.
Cunningly disguised as a pizza delivery girl, Gwen penetrates their secret lair -- except then everyone starts laughing and it turns out she was expected. Evidently this is part of Jack's elaborate security measures for dealing with intruders:
JACK: Come on! She was gonna say, "Here's your pizza," and I was going to say, "How much?" and she says, "Oh, whatever, twenty quid," and I say, "Oh, I don't have any money." I was working on a punchline. I'd have got there. But it would've been good!
After the hilarity dies down, Gwen finds out they've covered up the porter's death, and asks about the murther victim:
GWEN: And that other man, John Tucker? Last night in the alleyway, I saw you.
JACK: And what did you see?
GWEN: You revived him.
JACK: No. What did you see?
VOCAB FAIL. 'Revive' TOTALLY means "bring back to life."
Jack introduces Gwen to the Weevil, the alien that ate the porter. Gwen is obviously too stunned by the existence of aliens to ask WHY THE HELL THEY GAVE IT A MONOGRAMMED JUMPSUIT AND LET IT WANDER AROUND A HOSPITAL. Then Jack introduces her to his team: Suzie, his second in command; Tosh, the techie; Owen, the doctor; and Ianto, the butler/chauffeur/office bitch. Or, given their underground base and penchant for pizza:
SUZIE:
TOSH:
OWEN:
IANTO:
*where "party" means "cleans up, makes coffee, and looks good in a suit"
Also, Jack has a random pet pterodactyl and the Doctor's hand (what got cut off in "The Christmas Invasion") in a jar. WIN. He also has an invisible lift that opens right in front of the water tower, caused by the TARDIS going haywire in "Boomtown".
Exhibit A: Invisible Lift
Exhibit B: Gwen has the Doctor's shoes! Win.
GWEN: But, hold on, if no-one can see it when the lift's coming up, there's a bloody big hole in the floor, don't people fall in?
JACK: That is so Welsh.
GWEN: What is?
JACK: I show you something fantastic - you find fault.
Avoiding the subject only means that we now know people fall down your elevator shaft all the time, Jack.
Jack takes Gwen out for a drink while wearing a weird lumberjack... thing and gives her the lowdown on Torchwood:
JACK: We don't just catch aliens. We scavenge the stuff they leave behind. Find ways of using it. Arming the human race for the future. The twenty-first century is when it all changes, and you've got to be ready.
Pay no attention to the lumberjacket:
After Gwen expresses her concern (as she should) that such power and responsibility lies in the hands of such a small group of incompetents, Jack assures her that they never abuse their power, nope, nosirree.
Meawhile...
OWEN: ::uses alien cologne to pick up chicks, which, PS, is totally DATE RAPE. ULTIMATE FAIL::
SUZIE: ::resurrects dead flies with gauntletty thing::
TOSH: ::scans Tale of Two Cities into a PDF with alien gizmo::
Finally, Gwen realizes that even the head of a secret organization that orders pizza under its own name can't be retarded enough (even if his jacket is) to just randomly tell her everything, so Jack casually informs her he slipped her amnesia pills (called Retcon, because Jack is apparently a huge closet GEEK). Gwen runs home and tries to type out everything she remembers, but Ianto wipes her computer with his 1337 H4X0R SKILLZ and she passes out on the keyboard. (By rights she should have awesome key imprints on her face when she wakes up, but alas, this is not exploited.)
Meanwhile, Jack stands randomly stands on the roof of some building, attempting to look angsty.
Exhibit A: Angst
Exhibit B: Roof Angst
The next day, Gwen has forgotten everything. Down at the station, they were able to reconstruct the murther weapon, some kind of weird knife thing. This causes Gwen to stare randomly into space all day.
Staring into space:
More staring into space:
After having repeated flashbacks about the knife, Gwen finds a brochure for the Millennium Centre, on which she has handily written "Remember". She wanders down there and comes face to face with Suzie, who whips out the knife and explains her entire evil plan about how she murthered John Tucker et al: the knife and the gauntletty thing are connected, or something, and she needed violent deaths with it so she could practice bringing people back from the dead or something and eventually achieveWORLD DOMINATION immortality for everyone, or something. Gwen, meanwhile, still can't remember anything and has no clue what the hell is going on.
I would like to interject here that Torchwood has broken Chekhov's cardinal rule: if you're going to use an alien knife in Act 3, you're supposed to have introduced it on the mantle in Act 1. Observe:
SUZIE'S INTRODUCTION
WELDER BY DAY,DANCER MURTHERER BY NIGHT!
You'll notice that there is no knife whatsoever, which is somewhat inconvenient as according to her flashbacks, Gwen was supposed to see it reflected in Suzie's welding visor. FAIL.
Suzie then explains that since she's told Gwen her entire ev0l plan, she'll now have to kill her. Suzie freaks out about losing her job, while Gwen freaks out about losing her life, but who should arrive via invisible lift to save the day?
Except since Suzie has used the guantletty thing so much, the invisible lift actually isn't invisible to her, and she shoots Jack in the head. Gwen freaks out even more about the sudden appearance of a random dead guy. However, Jack doesn't stay dead for very long, much to the surprise of Gwen, Suzie, and the audience. Suzie shoots herself rather than get fired, and Gwen finally remembers what's going on.
The next day, Jack confiscates the alien gauntletty thing, Owen's alien date rape cologne, and Tosh's alien PDF maker, and then sticks Suzie in the refrigerator. Gwen asks him about the whole "randomly coming back from the dead" thing; apparently, when Rose resurrected him, she did it a little too well, and now he can't die at all. Oopsies. However, he's hoping that one day, he'll run into "the right kind of doctor" who will fix him. Awwwwwwww.
Jack offers Gwen a new job of being Torchwood's police liaison, since they have an opening on account of Suzie dying and all. Gwen says heck yes, beginning her epic journey of never really liaising with the police ever. The camera zooms out dramatically, revealing that Gwen and Jack are standing on yet another roof with the pterodactyl swooping overhead, performing the dinosaur equivalent of walking the dog, and this is why Torchwood wins occasionally. THE END.
The Fail Scale
FAIL:
- Jumpsuit-clad Weevil in hospital FAIL
- Maintaining secrecy while ordering pizza FAIL
- Vocab FAIL
- ALIEN COLOGNE DATE RAPE FAIL
- Alien knife on the mantle in Act 1 FAIL
WIN:
- Gwen's shoes
- The Doctor's Hand-inna-Jar
- Pterodactyl go walkies?
TOTAL SCORE: -2
Death by Torchwood:
6: 3 murther victims and Jack killed by Suzie, 1 Suzie killed by Suzie, and 1 hospital porter eaten by escaped Weevil
Captain's Blog: Upcoming issues: Will continue to monitor Weevil activity increases, and review internal security procedures. Hinges on pterodactyl cage failed again, will need to be welded properly this time – i.e. not by Ianto and Owen.
Next episode: The classiest of all Sci-Fi TV tropes -- sex aliens!
The Torchwood: EPIC FAIL Project Table o' Contents!
Anyways, it has become apparent to me that several of you quite enjoy Doctor Who, which is of course right and proper. However, this may lead to the urge to watch Torchwood, the spin-off starring everyone's favorite bisexual adventurer of space and time, Captain Jack Harkness. However, there is one small problem with this: Torchwood, Series One, isn't actually very good. It certainly has its moments, but since they tend to occur in the midst of things like "logic" and "good writing" wandering off to other TV shows where they are more appreciated, this can be very frustrating. Basically, Torchwood has a wee problem in that it consistently fails on some level at least once an episode.
However, I have discovered an interesting phenomenon, which is that Torchwood sounds 100% more awesome when someone tells you about it, versus actually watching it yourself. Thus, in the interest of taking one for the team, I present Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project. Now you can enjoy Torchwood in all of its cracked out glory without actually being exposed to its failure at television, all in the comfort of your own home! Handily included are the Fail Scale (which calculates each episode's score by subtracting instances of FAIL from moments of WIN), Death By Torchwood (which records Torchwood's unfortunate tendency to cause the death of countless thousands merely by existing), and a link to the Captain's blog, BBC America's recap of each episode, which is notable for usually being more awesome than the actual episode.
So, in case you wanted to stay up-to-date on Doctor Who or watch Torchwood, Series Two (which is much more awesome), click away!
Torchwood, Series One: The EPIC FAIL Project
Episode 1: "Let's Show Everyone the Potential We're About to Squander!" aka "Everything Changes"
This is Gwen (and her friend Andy): they're cops.
One day, Gwen gets kicked off a crime scene to make room for Captain Jack and 3 people trying to look cool in the pouring rain.
Jack has foregone the space pirate look in favor of WWII RAF gear, but it is unclear whether he still carries a gun up his butt.
The last time we saw Jack, he had been left behind during "Parting of the Ways" sometime in the future, after being dramatically brought back from the dead. Obviously, he must be about to explain what's going on:
JACK: There you go. I can taste it. Estrogen. Definitely estrogen. You take the Pill, flush it away, it enters the water cycle, feminizes the fish, it goes all the way up into the sky, and then falls all the way back down on to me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again.
...or not. Also, estrogen is apparently now pronounced "eestrogen".
Gwen hides in a parking garage to watch Torchwood, not unlike its viewers. Team Torchwood member Suzie uses a metal gauntletty thing to bring the murther victim back to life, but they've only got 2 minutes before it stops working. Coincidentally, the guy's name is John Tucker, so obviously he must die. Team Torchwood member Tosh asks John Tucker (who is understandably upset at being dead) who killed him, but he doesn't know. They all stand around awkwardly because they don't know what else to ask, until Jack has a brilliant idea:
JACK: Tell me ... what was it like when you died? What did you see? John. Tell me what you saw.
JOHN TUCKER: Nothing. I saw nothing. Oh, my God. There's nothing. ::dies::
WAY TO COMFORT THE DEAD GUY, JACK.
This is Gwen's bf, Rhys. He's pretty awesome but usually doesn't relate to the plot.
Gwen tries to investigate Captain Jack and Torchwood, but fails -- no one knows anything about the organization, and the last Captain Jack Harkness disappeared during WWII. Meanwhile, the cops are trying to find out who stabbed John Tucker and 2 other people, and Gwen and Andy hit the beat:
ANDY: CSI Cardiff, I'd like to see that. They'd be measuring the velocity of a kebab.
They break up a pub fight, but Gwen gets hit in the head and goes to the hospital. There she sees a long, swooshy coat running up the stairs, and rightly assuming it's Jack, follows. What she finds instead is the very first appearance of Torchwood FAIL.
Gwen enters a sealed-off hallway, and by sealed off, I mean "covered with plastic because Torchwood cannot be bothered to lock a stupid door". Inside the hallway, she finds an alien wearing a darling Torchwood jumpsuit and just kind of chillaxing.
Exhibit A: Impenetrable barrier
Exhibit B: Alien hanging out in hospital
Jack has apparently gotten lost on the stairwell and is nowhere to be seen. After just kind of standing around, listening to Gwen's beautiful Welsh vowels, the alien eats a nosy porter, whereupon Torchwood SPRINGS INTO ACTION. I guess it was really hard for them to find their lost alien when it was STANDING STILL IN THE FRONT HALLWAY FOR 5 MINUTES WHILE GWEN WAS TALKING TO IT. Maybe they ALL got lost in the stairwell. In conclusion, FAIL.
Gwen tries to follow them, but loses them at the Millenium Centre. That night, she lies to Rhys about working, and goes to look for Torchwood again. She finds their address at the place you would naturally expect a super secret organization to disclose their information to: THE PIZZERIA. This is the first of many incidents of Torchwood TOTALLY FAILING at secrecy.
Cunningly disguised as a pizza delivery girl, Gwen penetrates their secret lair -- except then everyone starts laughing and it turns out she was expected. Evidently this is part of Jack's elaborate security measures for dealing with intruders:
JACK: Come on! She was gonna say, "Here's your pizza," and I was going to say, "How much?" and she says, "Oh, whatever, twenty quid," and I say, "Oh, I don't have any money." I was working on a punchline. I'd have got there. But it would've been good!
After the hilarity dies down, Gwen finds out they've covered up the porter's death, and asks about the murther victim:
GWEN: And that other man, John Tucker? Last night in the alleyway, I saw you.
JACK: And what did you see?
GWEN: You revived him.
JACK: No. What did you see?
VOCAB FAIL. 'Revive' TOTALLY means "bring back to life."
Jack introduces Gwen to the Weevil, the alien that ate the porter. Gwen is obviously too stunned by the existence of aliens to ask WHY THE HELL THEY GAVE IT A MONOGRAMMED JUMPSUIT AND LET IT WANDER AROUND A HOSPITAL. Then Jack introduces her to his team: Suzie, his second in command; Tosh, the techie; Owen, the doctor; and Ianto, the butler/chauffeur/office bitch. Or, given their underground base and penchant for pizza:
SUZIE:
TOSH:
OWEN:
IANTO:
*where "party" means "cleans up, makes coffee, and looks good in a suit"
Also, Jack has a random pet pterodactyl and the Doctor's hand (what got cut off in "The Christmas Invasion") in a jar. WIN. He also has an invisible lift that opens right in front of the water tower, caused by the TARDIS going haywire in "Boomtown".
Exhibit A: Invisible Lift
Exhibit B: Gwen has the Doctor's shoes! Win.
GWEN: But, hold on, if no-one can see it when the lift's coming up, there's a bloody big hole in the floor, don't people fall in?
JACK: That is so Welsh.
GWEN: What is?
JACK: I show you something fantastic - you find fault.
Avoiding the subject only means that we now know people fall down your elevator shaft all the time, Jack.
Jack takes Gwen out for a drink while wearing a weird lumberjack... thing and gives her the lowdown on Torchwood:
JACK: We don't just catch aliens. We scavenge the stuff they leave behind. Find ways of using it. Arming the human race for the future. The twenty-first century is when it all changes, and you've got to be ready.
Pay no attention to the lumberjacket:
After Gwen expresses her concern (as she should) that such power and responsibility lies in the hands of such a small group
Meawhile...
OWEN: ::uses alien cologne to pick up chicks, which, PS, is totally DATE RAPE. ULTIMATE FAIL::
SUZIE: ::resurrects dead flies with gauntletty thing::
TOSH: ::scans Tale of Two Cities into a PDF with alien gizmo::
Finally, Gwen realizes that even the head of a secret organization that orders pizza under its own name can't be retarded enough (even if his jacket is) to just randomly tell her everything, so Jack casually informs her he slipped her amnesia pills (called Retcon, because Jack is apparently a huge closet GEEK). Gwen runs home and tries to type out everything she remembers, but Ianto wipes her computer with his 1337 H4X0R SKILLZ and she passes out on the keyboard. (By rights she should have awesome key imprints on her face when she wakes up, but alas, this is not exploited.)
Meanwhile, Jack stands randomly stands on the roof of some building, attempting to look angsty.
Exhibit A: Angst
Exhibit B: Roof Angst
The next day, Gwen has forgotten everything. Down at the station, they were able to reconstruct the murther weapon, some kind of weird knife thing. This causes Gwen to stare randomly into space all day.
Staring into space:
More staring into space:
After having repeated flashbacks about the knife, Gwen finds a brochure for the Millennium Centre, on which she has handily written "Remember". She wanders down there and comes face to face with Suzie, who whips out the knife and explains her entire evil plan about how she murthered John Tucker et al: the knife and the gauntletty thing are connected, or something, and she needed violent deaths with it so she could practice bringing people back from the dead or something and eventually achieve
I would like to interject here that Torchwood has broken Chekhov's cardinal rule: if you're going to use an alien knife in Act 3, you're supposed to have introduced it on the mantle in Act 1. Observe:
SUZIE'S INTRODUCTION
WELDER BY DAY,
You'll notice that there is no knife whatsoever, which is somewhat inconvenient as according to her flashbacks, Gwen was supposed to see it reflected in Suzie's welding visor. FAIL.
Suzie then explains that since she's told Gwen her entire ev0l plan, she'll now have to kill her. Suzie freaks out about losing her job, while Gwen freaks out about losing her life, but who should arrive via invisible lift to save the day?
Except since Suzie has used the guantletty thing so much, the invisible lift actually isn't invisible to her, and she shoots Jack in the head. Gwen freaks out even more about the sudden appearance of a random dead guy. However, Jack doesn't stay dead for very long, much to the surprise of Gwen, Suzie, and the audience. Suzie shoots herself rather than get fired, and Gwen finally remembers what's going on.
The next day, Jack confiscates the alien gauntletty thing, Owen's alien date rape cologne, and Tosh's alien PDF maker, and then sticks Suzie in the refrigerator. Gwen asks him about the whole "randomly coming back from the dead" thing; apparently, when Rose resurrected him, she did it a little too well, and now he can't die at all. Oopsies. However, he's hoping that one day, he'll run into "the right kind of doctor" who will fix him. Awwwwwwww.
Jack offers Gwen a new job of being Torchwood's police liaison, since they have an opening on account of Suzie dying and all. Gwen says heck yes, beginning her epic journey of never really liaising with the police ever. The camera zooms out dramatically, revealing that Gwen and Jack are standing on yet another roof with the pterodactyl swooping overhead, performing the dinosaur equivalent of walking the dog, and this is why Torchwood wins occasionally. THE END.
The Fail Scale
FAIL:
- Jumpsuit-clad Weevil in hospital FAIL
- Maintaining secrecy while ordering pizza FAIL
- Vocab FAIL
- ALIEN COLOGNE DATE RAPE FAIL
- Alien knife on the mantle in Act 1 FAIL
WIN:
- Gwen's shoes
- The Doctor's Hand-inna-Jar
- Pterodactyl go walkies?
TOTAL SCORE: -2
Death by Torchwood:
6: 3 murther victims and Jack killed by Suzie, 1 Suzie killed by Suzie, and 1 hospital porter eaten by escaped Weevil
Captain's Blog: Upcoming issues: Will continue to monitor Weevil activity increases, and review internal security procedures. Hinges on pterodactyl cage failed again, will need to be welded properly this time – i.e. not by Ianto and Owen.
Next episode: The classiest of all Sci-Fi TV tropes -- sex aliens!
The Torchwood: EPIC FAIL Project Table o' Contents!