So Torchwood was pretty cool. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I could hear it better. Audio seemed really low. Had to wear headphones. And the picture seemed kind of gray, which is not how I'd describe previous seasons.
I probably hyped it up in my head more than anything. Sad day. I've been wanting to watch it since there were only rumors of it possibly happening. I mean, Children of Earth was so fucking awesome.
It could be the fact that it was like what, two years since that came out? And the fact that I'm really only interested in Jack, Gwen, and Rhys, because they've been on the show since the beginning. There was a lot of focus on Rex and Esther's discovery of Torchwood.
I love that the show has stuck to its main theme (or what I would think its main theme would be): death. I mean, they're constantly asking, "what is death?" - would it be better to die after living a short while, or to live forever? Jack will go on forever and ever, while everyone around him will perish one by one.
The big thing that's been repeated over and again in the first season is that "there's something moving in the dark," something that's coming after Jack. Anyway, I loved the "They Keep Killing Suzie" episode - before I gave the show another chance here a few weeks ago, that was really the only ep I liked. It was interesting, and now that I think about it, it was everything that Torchwood kind of IS. It's about the seduction of the power/knowledge that alien technology brings - it overtook Suzie, and that's why she killed herself in the first episode, but it also showed her master plan of returning to life and making Torchwood pretty much impotent. She was terrified of dying again, she said she'd "do anything to stay". It's a really great contrast to show her clinging to life while Jack is bummed out that he's lived so long and cannot die. And in the end of the first series, Jack, the man who can't die, dies. Yet a kiss from Gwen brings him back (or she kissed his dead body at just the right moment - who knows, who cares, it was kinda silly).
And the second series really hits this theme home with Owen's death. Jack finds the other resurrection glove, like the one that Suzie used, and brings Owen back, but instead of Owen coming back and dying a couple of minutes later, like Suzie, he stays. Yet unlike Suzie, he is dead, and conscious, rather than alive and draining life from whomever brought him back. It was perfect what he said to Jack, "you get to live forever, I get to die forever." Owen remained animated after death, like Frankenstein's monster, without all the mess. It was really interesting to see the show's writers' take on death for Owen, since (and this is one thing I learned at Convergence) RTD admitted to using stuff out of the Buffy playbook (people on the panels mentioned more than once that the first season of Torchwood was just like the fifth season of Buffy, where she sacrifices herself to save the world, and that the second season of Torchwood was like the third season of Angel, where Angel's son (in this case, Jack's brother) throws him in a box and buries him (in the ground instead of underwater, though) for a long time to punish him. The Torchwood writers made Owen almost like Spike in Buffy. What it means to die is that you can't enjoy all the human things, the things that make you feel alive. Vampires still hunger, and can fuck their brains out, yet they heal and are pretty much unstoppable, unless Buffy's around. When Owen dies, he can't eat or drink, since his body can't digest it, it just sits in his stomach. He can't breathe, or hardly feel it when he's touched. He can't get laid, since he has no bloodflow and can't get it up. He doesn't heal, he's fragile. He can do nothing but just exist. And of course, he's upset. He was used as a vessel for death incarnate, and his "faith" defeated it, but he wants to die. He doesn't belong anymore, and it is awful punishment to live like that. Yet he goes from wanting to die, to grieving and accepting his loss, and in the end, he's afraid. He finally gets his chance to die, and doesn't want to go. That nothingness that comes after terrifies him, and so "rage, rage, against the dying of the light." Y'know, I really disliked Owen at the start of the show, but he broke my heart when he finally died for real.
And then Children of Earth came out, and it didn't so much as ask, "what is death?', but it did pose the question as to "what's it like to live forever?" Jack has made mistakes throughout his long life. He's not a very good leader. We find out in series 2 that he wasn't actually supposed to be the leader, he just was the last man standing. And what is it like to live forever? Jack told Owen after he'd died that it's better to live a short while, to want to seize the day, to feel a sense of purpose, a sense of time, and that when you live forever, you don't really see the point of things anymore. And not only what's it like to live forever, but for a man who never dies - he has nothing to fear. And that was the main theme tackled in Children of Earth. Jack's daughter said it, more than once, I believe. And she's right - he ended up having to sacrifice her son in order to save the world from the 4-5-6. Like 90% of people on the planet would probably be too afraid to do it, too guilty to do it. It's not one life versus millions, it's a child versus the world, and if we can't protect our children, then what can we do? What are we good for? I mean, it could be taken as how very inhuman Jack's become. It's like living forever has almost put him to sleep and having to do that woke him up and he realized just how awful things have been.
But what is death? It's like nothing anyone's ever experienced, or will ever experience again.
And Miracle Day is loaded with this. People no longer die, and just continue to be, no matter what happens to them. In Children of Earth, Jack was in an explosion, but he healed. In Miracle Day, a guy set off a bomb and his body was recovered. Though there's not much left, he's still alive, and conscious. Miracle Day so far is a statement that we actually need to die. Not only for the obvious reason that if we didn't die, we'd lose purpose, like Jack, but to put it on a mass scale, there's a lot of problems with it. People with terminal illnesses cannot die, so they continue to suffer and get worse, but still stay. War is all that much more terrible - if people can't die, numbers will only go down for injuries that should have been fatal, but aren't. People still hunger, they need to eat despite the fact that not eating won't kill them. People still have babies and so without death, population will expand, there won't be room, or food enough for everyone. I mean, sure, murderers are pretty much obsolete, but they can still inflict pain. I'm wondering what Bill Pullman's character will do now that he's out of prison after his failed death sentence (really, I bet people with legalese would end up saying that he was sentenced to death - to be imprisoned until he died, and this wouldn't be an issue, but whatevs).
And strangely enough, Jack is now mortal. I can't help but wonder if aliens put the spell of life on the earth just to get to Jack. Clearly it's a Torchwood thing, since someone sent the CIA, etc, an email containing the word Torchwood. Jack's lived a long time and made a lot of enemies. He can now die, and easily. I'm interested to know what happens next, but I think I liked the show better when it took place in the UK. I'm not too keen on the American characters. Bill Pullman's character is creepy, but I'm slightly underwelmed as of now. And Rex? He bothers me. His first scene, he's laughing and smiling away because someone higher up on the CIA chain has a wife with a terminal illness and he wants his job. Ester's all right, but she's not Gwen. They're making her like Gwen, but she's not. Gwen and Rhys are cool, but they're saying how her life was one big nightmare when she worked for Torchwood. She loved her job. She thought it was brilliant. Granted, this was all before the 4-5-6 came and went, and before Ianto died, but still. Tosh and Owen died, and she still loved her job. Her job was to stop aliens from doing bad things, to save the world, and now they're on about how awful it was because she saw scary things? I think that's more of Rhys' point of view than hers, because she was telling a story to her baby daughter, and saying how beautiful an alien was, but still. I'm not entirely sure that's how it would have played out. Yet can I just say that the rocket launcher to the helicopter was awesome? And Rex asks, "who are you people?" and she says "Torchwood!" that was pretty cool. It's just I think it took a bit too long getting to the Jack and/or Gwen/Rhys bits of the show.
It's only one ep in, though, so it has time to go from "all right" or "good" to awesome. It hinted at that with the rocket launcher. Yet sadly enough, John Barrowman's getting older, and you can sort of tell. Or maybe he had a bad makeup day. Or it could be the aforementioned picture quality. It just makes me sad to see actors older than what I'm used to. Like Jim Carrey. He will forever in my mind be as young as he was when he did Ace Ventura or The Mask. He looks the same, but so different now. :/
In other news, my car may have a gas leak. YAY. Just another reason to get a newer one. I'm thinking of a little Honda. Don't want to spend more than $6,000, though. I'm not sure if I can get one less then ten years old for that amount, though. I suppose I'll have to research it a little, but I don't have much saved up yet. My job at Adworks got extended another two months, so that will help. I think I have like $800-$900 in checking. I need to start transferring most of my check into savings, but I need to figure out how much I generally spend per week on gas driving back and forth to the city.
feeling: 
contemplative
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write_light at BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way
tired
cold
devious![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/user_ontd.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
sleepy
surprised
awake
excited