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enismirdal!!NO PLOT SPOILERS BELOW BUT LOTS IN COMMENTS!!
Like many others, I am disappointed by RTD's dubious plot decisions towards the end of this week of Torchwood. Even on Thursday night when people were getting uppity, I kept telling myself, "I trust him. He writes well and often makes decisions that sound like they'll never work, and then amazingly they do." Then Friday came. And he didn't redeem himself. It feels like...when you lend a pencil to a friend and they return it broken and mangled with tooth-marks and slobber all over it (I have actually had this happen to me).
In happier news, my current bee colony decided to produce queens. So I currently have a box containing four young queens and three unrelated males. So far the queens are not seeming especially keen on the males (though one of the males jumps on every new thing introduced to the box and tries to bonk it). Perhaps they'll come around in a day or two!
The fry in the lab's fishtank are growing. They now almost have recognisable bodies. One of the adult fish has disappeared, unfortunately, but I guess that's life. We still have 6 big adults, one von Frisch the Fisch, and about a half dozen tiny miscellaneous fry.
My brother will be moving to London soonish so was down here for a couple of days househunting and crashed at mine. That was fun. He's wonderfully sarcastic and thoroughly politically incorrect. He's also really quite a good guest when he's not accompanied by parentals! Food was eaten, beer was drunk, Yes, Minister was watched... Fun was had by all. If you'd asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have violently disagreed, but in retrospect siblings are great things to have. :)
In other news, I am really writing my thesis now. I started by pasting the text of my last 3 papers into a Word document. That gave me 120 pages (including references and diagrams) straight off (double-spaced, though). Of course, it'll need plenty of rewriting and trimming, but it felt productive to have the expanse of text there in front of me to look at and say, "Aah!". I also need to finish the introduction, start the conclusion and write two more chapters from scratch (or nearly-scratch) but I feel productive. It currently doesn't seem too daunting so with luck, I'll be able to submit roughly on schedule - probably before flatmate does, in fact.
Like many others, I am disappointed by RTD's dubious plot decisions towards the end of this week of Torchwood. Even on Thursday night when people were getting uppity, I kept telling myself, "I trust him. He writes well and often makes decisions that sound like they'll never work, and then amazingly they do." Then Friday came. And he didn't redeem himself. It feels like...when you lend a pencil to a friend and they return it broken and mangled with tooth-marks and slobber all over it (I have actually had this happen to me).
In happier news, my current bee colony decided to produce queens. So I currently have a box containing four young queens and three unrelated males. So far the queens are not seeming especially keen on the males (though one of the males jumps on every new thing introduced to the box and tries to bonk it). Perhaps they'll come around in a day or two!
The fry in the lab's fishtank are growing. They now almost have recognisable bodies. One of the adult fish has disappeared, unfortunately, but I guess that's life. We still have 6 big adults, one von Frisch the Fisch, and about a half dozen tiny miscellaneous fry.
My brother will be moving to London soonish so was down here for a couple of days househunting and crashed at mine. That was fun. He's wonderfully sarcastic and thoroughly politically incorrect. He's also really quite a good guest when he's not accompanied by parentals! Food was eaten, beer was drunk, Yes, Minister was watched... Fun was had by all. If you'd asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have violently disagreed, but in retrospect siblings are great things to have. :)
In other news, I am really writing my thesis now. I started by pasting the text of my last 3 papers into a Word document. That gave me 120 pages (including references and diagrams) straight off (double-spaced, though). Of course, it'll need plenty of rewriting and trimming, but it felt productive to have the expanse of text there in front of me to look at and say, "Aah!". I also need to finish the introduction, start the conclusion and write two more chapters from scratch (or nearly-scratch) but I feel productive. It currently doesn't seem too daunting so with luck, I'll be able to submit roughly on schedule - probably before flatmate does, in fact.
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no subject
Date: 11 Jul 2009 16:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: 11 Jul 2009 16:37 (UTC)OK, the bit that left me most upset was what they did to Ianto. I LOVED Jack and Ianto together. Even if RTD wanted them to stop being a couple, he didn't have to kill off such a beloved character in such a pointless way. Also, the fact that nothing interesting happened in the last episode except that Jack killed his grandson. The rest of the episode didn't really seem to contain any actual events aside from some fairly predictable conclusions and a really soggy solution to the alien problem. I could have thought of several better solutions with those aliens, and they wouldn't have involved forcing Jack to kill his grandson!
I also don't like the fact that Jack is now going off to brood and angst in outer space, leaving Gwen and Rhys to pick up the pieces, instead of staying in Cardiff to try and make the world a better place. I'm not convinced it's particularly in character, and I don't think it'll help the character development any (just turn him into a clone of Angel, which is soooo 1990s). There was definitely more potential for his relationship with his daughter, but the whole "Jack has a daughter!" was rushed in, in a not particularly sympathetic way and with insufficient backstory and no particular chemistry between them, and then rushed out again with d00m and tragedy.
I just feel that RTD needs to remember that as awesome as Jack and Gwen are, this isn't The Jack and Gwen show and we need a well-rounded support cast to make it cool. And it seemed as if he was using rather standard, hackneyed ways of trying to make the viewers cry rather than coming out with something original. I'm normally a big one for sobbing at TV, and I'd had 2 pints of beer so was pretty open to it, but I just watched whilst feeling a vague sense of boredom and annoyance.
:( I had so much hope and was enjoying it so much up till then.
no subject
Date: 11 Jul 2009 20:16 (UTC)no subject
Date: 11 Jul 2009 20:24 (UTC)You're right about death...but I suppose I imagine that Ianto would, ideally, have preferred for it to have occurred in the process of achieving something, rather than just in a futile endeavour. Given how fond I was of him, I feel like he deserved that much!
no subject
Date: 12 Jul 2009 16:37 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 12 Jul 2009 16:44 (UTC)I suppose it partly depends on whether you watch stuff like this for pure entertainment or for some expectations of morals. I certainly think dramas should try and endorse moral and honourable behaviour and, as I think