A Torchwood poll

[coalescent]

Inspired by:

Sarah Jane Adventures better than Torchwood? I'm a big fan of Torchwood's first season and I'm liking the second large. The ep of the Sarah Jane Adventures that I've seen was cool but not great so it's hard for me to judge relative merits. But, as The Evening Herald opined yesterday, I can't help but wondering if some of the "Torchwood is crap" sentiment springs from resistance to a show which is headlined by an openly gay man who is not camp and a career woman who is not girly.

[Poll #1127773]

Comments

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

A datapoint: John Barrowman as an openly gay man who is camp.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I should clarify my answer on 'significant factor', I think the show got an overly generous reception from a lot of youngish fans who were delighted to see a show that was a wee bit transgressive, and hence gave it a pass on the quality of the writing.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's why I left that question blank. I'm not sure whether the reception under discussion is the positive or negative one.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Captain Jack is a bisexual man who is as camp as Butlins.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

He isn't usually camp. he's gay, not macho, but not camp. there is a sot of refreshing open honesty about his sexualit - which is why Cpt Jack was so wonderful in Dr Who and why the sexual emphasis in Crotchwood series 1 was so counter productive. JB comes over as a man whose sexuality is as part of him as any het man but not MORE than that.

[dsky.livejournal.com]

Jack is not gay. He doesn't care what gender something is - male, female or other.

[matgb]

And he's as camp as Butlins.

So far, S2 has been passably OK, and much better than S1. To say it was criticised because of latent sexism/homophobia is to ignore the identities of many of those doing the criticism completely. Ah well.

More Tosh would make it better, naturally.

[non-trivial.livejournal.com]

Wednesday's episode was significantly better than the excreable first one; although this was not a great feat in itself, I actually quite enjoyed it.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

First two episodes of season two were better than any episode of season one, so I gave it a 'good' for improvement... would have preferred 'better' rather than 'good.'

Jack is astonishingly camp.

I object to the idea that Gwen is a career woman. She was the most unlikely cop I have ever seen in my life, and failed totally as the audience identification character she was meant to be. Luckily, they seem to have dropped that this season. Mind you, I never liked Rose, either.

As for your last question, a lot of the most rabid fans of Torchwood are fangirls squeeing because they have finally been delivered of a series where slash is canon. However, it may be that there is something in your contention - but if so it would not make the criticism any less true.

[wychwood]

Technically, Captain Jack isn't *gay*, but I agreed in the sense that, yes, he is someone who sleeps with (among other categories) people of his own gender, and in the "social outrage" sense he definitely fits the category. Also, he *isn't* camp. Wildly flirty, yes *g*.

And I found Gwen quite girly. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but she's definitely presented as stereotypically feminine in quite a lot of ways (the whole "heart of the team" thing, for one).

There may well be some homophobia behind some criticism of Torchwood - frankly, I'd be surprised if homophobes *hadn't* come along to complain about it. But I'm not homophobic, and I went in expecting (and hoping) to like the show, and at least moderately fond of Jack, and I only lasted four episodes before the sheer crapness stopped me. The show has far more serious flaws inherent in it, and to bring up the issue of homophobia is, I think, distracting from the actual problems. Certainly, the *LJ fandom* response was overwhelmingly "boy-kissing, yay!" with then a split on "show is BAD" and "show is GOOD"; even people who hated it generally liked the presentation of alternative sexualities, at least in the circles where I hang out.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I've seen plenty of homophobic reactions to Torchwood, usually the 'why do they have to shove it in our faces' idiocy with a side helping of 'oh no! gay agenda!'. And I've seen people complain that the show is crappy in just about every qualitative measurement. What this person is saying is that the people making the second, qualitative argument are actually motivated by homophobia.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I'm about as un-homophobic as a straightish boy can be - I have lived for years happily with a lesbian activist couple, for example - but I still found the 'do they have to shove it our faces' aspect annoying, because it was clumsy and obvious and distracting in a show that is supposed to be more about SF adventure, and sometimes (particularly the notorious Owen bit in the first episode) just done really badly. I am pretty sure my dislike of the shows treatment of sexuality is about quality of writing not homophobia (I've actually tended to like the more episodes that feature sex front and centre, like the second last, far more than the gratuitous added scenes).

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Question 7 is ambiguous, really, since you don't specify which of the reactions you mean - I think it got some good reactions because it had an openly bisexual lead and was open about everything, sexually, but it got bad reactions because the writing, plotting, direction, production and most of the acting was overwhelmingly shite.

I stopped watching Torchwood early on because they took a character who was fun and playful and dangerous and sexy when in Who and forget how to write him, and then surrounded him with a cast of characters whose main features were being annoying and dislikeable, and pretend they were an adult show by taking this bunch of utter incompetents and having them all have lots of sex. I'm not really isnulted by the suggestion that my dislike is due to homophobia, because to come to that conclusion you must be so in love with Torchwood and blind to its failing that we're never going to see eye to eye.

I have heard that S2 of Torchwood is now more like mediocre than actually bad, so I'll probably give the Martha episodes a try.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

One issue with Torchwood is inconsistency. Some of the scripts are rubbish, some are really pretty good, but even if you just got all the good ones, they still don't seem as if they belong in the same show. Poor show-running/script editing is its biggest flaw, leading to a confused show and poor consistency of characterisation.

As far as the transgressive stuff goes - I often find that Torchwood is like an adolescents idea of what adult TV is like (they snog and shag each other all the time! Everyone is bi and sleazy! People lose it and go crazy! They dress all tough and shoot people! They drive fast!). Its transgressive in a predictable and silly way, which ends up being transgressive in entirely the wrong way (Owen date rapist!). So I think its transgressive nature is a big point against it, but not from the homophobic crowd, rather from the people to whom its aggressive sexuality comes across as rather adolescent. I have no issue that Jack is aggressively bi, but find the 'who's turn is it to have a bi experience this week' stuff far too clumsy.

[saxonb.livejournal.com]

A thought I had, in the process of trying to come to terms with the glorious badness of Torchwood, is that while Jack is supposed to be 'aggressively bi', is it just me, or are his tastes very heavily targeted towards men? There's been a lot of flirting, but the only actual loving female relationship we've seen onscreen was with the old woman (can't remember her name) in the S1 episode 'Small Worlds'. I can't help feeling that Jack kissing boys is part of the whole badge-wearing 'look at me' attention-grabbing side of Torchwood, and that they play with Jack's nature as a 'will shag anything' bisexual, but they can't approach it completely seriously, otherwise they open themselves to the likelihood that Jack might end up in a serious relationship with someone female- thus torpedoing the "Look! Boykissing!" stuff. Again, this is something that plays far better on Who- because in a family show, you can't go further than flirting, and in that respect (once again) Jack works so much better, and is far more interesting in a climate where you do have to use subtext and dialogue rather than cutting to the full-on snogging.

Hope that made sense...