|
Post by Shan on Nov 24, 2006 16:31:44 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Shan on Nov 24, 2006 18:59:59 GMT -5
Okay, a teensy bit of backstory about Jack. Gwen immediately doesn't buy the "I knew your father" stuff. Good on Gwen!
Fairies...interesting! Bad fairies...whoah! Would like to have seen more, though.
Creepy molester guy isn't dead enough even though it was a GOOD death to watch, for it being a molester.
Jack continues to make the horribly difficult decisions, though, letting the girl go right in front of her mother just after the mother's husband had died (even if the guy WAS a bastard, which seemed unnecessary).
I wanna know what Jack's motivation is, how he does these things, what happened to him to make him STICK to this character. He came to us via DW as a charming, wide-boy conman. What happened to change him so drastically? Okay, there was the whole thing with the Daleks where he died and was resurrected, but...was that enough to change him from a guy who'd been scamming everybody throughout time and the whole universe to a "save the world" kind of hero? Or is that part of what this series is about: making us wonder and then slowly dribbling us the answer, episode by episode, so that we come back for more each week?
|
|
|
Post by beccaelizabeth on Nov 25, 2006 6:02:38 GMT -5
Fairies...interesting! Bad fairies...whoah! seriously? that was in any way a surprise to you? because I thought bad fairies were what the stories were all about, and a basic genre convention. The good fairies are the weird exception. but then when we were supposed to come up with connotations for various age groups I could only come up with creepy kid stories. Haven't actually seen any actually sweet kids for ages and ages. Even the nicest ones were waving spear guns around. ETA: episode comments
|
|
|
Post by Shan on Nov 25, 2006 10:35:01 GMT -5
Fairies...interesting! Bad fairies...whoah! seriously? that was in any way a surprise to you? because I thought bad fairies were what the stories were all about, and a basic genre convention. The good fairies are the weird exception. but then when we were supposed to come up with connotations for various age groups I could only come up with creepy kid stories. Haven't actually seen any actually sweet kids for ages and ages. Even the nicest ones were waving spear guns around. Jack's initial exposition about them wasn't that much of a surprise, with them being "elementals" not to be meddled with. The stories DO have people doing that and thereby bringing out the "badness" in the fairies. I don't think that makes the story-fairies inherently bad creatures any more than a swarm of hornets is behaving badly by stinging someone to death after they've poked a stick into its nest. But I didn't expect the fairies in THIS story to look like a cross between a dragonfly and a zombie, especially after they started off with the cutesie photographs.
|
|
|
Post by Onjel on Nov 25, 2006 23:47:00 GMT -5
Wow. Just wow. Jack looked broken watching the mother run after her child. He felt he had no choice, but it appears others felt he either did or should have made another choice appear. And, just how long has he been alive, anyway?
Scary fairies. I always thought of them as mischievous, rather than evil. Naughty and prone to bad behavior. Not good for the most part, but not bad. Mostly just juvenile.
|
|
|
Post by Queen E on Dec 11, 2006 16:48:49 GMT -5
The faeries quote Yeats! "Come away, o human child/to the waters and the wild/with a faerie hand in hand/for the world's more full of weeping/than you can understand..."
|
|
|
Post by Queen E on Dec 11, 2006 20:20:19 GMT -5
So sad, and yet...what other choice could Jack have made? For that matter, what other choice could Jasmine have made? She was already half there already; having given herself over to the faeries, her assertion was correct that more would have died. Again we see the characters faced with pyrrhic decisions. And lest all of you think I'm way too Angel obsessed, Jasmine? A "child" named Jasmine being the site for difficult and painful choices?
As for Jack, it's weird, but I think not overly in need of fanwanking, to think that he has jumped around so much in time that it is impossible to look at his arc chronologically. As for the "why" of him changing from happy-go-lucky to the Jack of Torchwood has a simple explanation, in my opinion: Somewhere between the events on Platform 1 and now, he got back the missing 2 years.
|
|
|
Post by beccaelizabeth on Dec 13, 2006 19:06:32 GMT -5
So sad, and yet...what other choice could Jack have made? For that matter, what other choice could Jasmine have made? She was already half there already; having given herself over to the faeries, her assertion was correct that more would have died. Again we see the characters faced with pyrrhic decisions. And lest all of you think I'm way too Angel obsessed, Jasmine? A "child" named Jasmine being the site for difficult and painful choices? As for Jack, it's weird, but I think not overly in need of fanwanking, to think that he has jumped around so much in time that it is impossible to look at his arc chronologically. As for the "why" of him changing from happy-go-lucky to the Jack of Torchwood has a simple explanation, in my opinion: Somewhere between the events on Platform 1 and now, he got back the missing 2 years. Interesting, but I don't think so. I found the change in attitude adequately explicable by being dumped at the wrong end of time by someone he loved enough to die for. Plus the whole turning out to be immortal thing which was freaking him out. He joined Torchwood to use it for his own ends, look for the Doctor in the place he was most likely to go back to, but that left him with a couple of huge secrets to hide. So he goes all closed in and angsty. Plus gains a unit he's responsible for but not very skilled at (in a management sense), who are under resourced and not as smart as they think and won't listen to him. Like he's suddenly acquired teenagers. Much stress, small incentive to share. There could be more explanation but that's a whole lot of explain already.
|
|
|
Post by Queen E on Dec 13, 2006 19:19:56 GMT -5
So sad, and yet...what other choice could Jack have made? For that matter, what other choice could Jasmine have made? She was already half there already; having given herself over to the faeries, her assertion was correct that more would have died. Again we see the characters faced with pyrrhic decisions. And lest all of you think I'm way too Angel obsessed, Jasmine? A "child" named Jasmine being the site for difficult and painful choices? As for Jack, it's weird, but I think not overly in need of fanwanking, to think that he has jumped around so much in time that it is impossible to look at his arc chronologically. As for the "why" of him changing from happy-go-lucky to the Jack of Torchwood has a simple explanation, in my opinion: Somewhere between the events on Platform 1 and now, he got back the missing 2 years. Interesting, but I don't think so. I found the change in attitude adequately explicable by being dumped at the wrong end of time by someone he loved enough to die for. Plus the whole turning out to be immortal thing which was freaking him out. He joined Torchwood to use it for his own ends, look for the Doctor in the place he was most likely to go back to, but that left him with a couple of huge secrets to hide. So he goes all closed in and angsty. Plus gains a unit he's responsible for but not very skilled at (in a management sense), who are under resourced and not as smart as they think and won't listen to him. Like he's suddenly acquired teenagers. Much stress, small incentive to share. There could be more explanation but that's a whole lot of explain already. Excellent point! You've got good thinky thoughts. Huh. I should have remembered that from when my coworker became my boss; she went from someone cool and potentially a friend to a pain in my ass. Even if you've got the best employees in the world (like me ), it changes the way you are, at least in the work environment. Add in immortality and the level of loss he went through, and that pretty much explains it.
|
|
|
Post by Karen on Dec 24, 2006 0:25:11 GMT -5
The faeries quote Yeats! "Come away, o human child/to the waters and the wild/with a faerie hand in hand/for the world's more full of weeping/than you can understand..." Oh, I wondered where that was from! That was very haunting. I didn't get why they needed the little girl.
|
|
|
Post by Queen E on Dec 24, 2006 8:38:56 GMT -5
The faeries quote Yeats! "Come away, o human child/to the waters and the wild/with a faerie hand in hand/for the world's more full of weeping/than you can understand..." Oh, I wondered where that was from! That was very haunting. I didn't get why they needed the little girl. Well, it's a fairly common trope in both horror and fantasy fiction that children's innocence and imagination is powerful...they must have thought that she had those qualities in enough supply to "save" them. IT by Stephen King deals in this, as well...the idea that children are boundary creatures: half in this world, have in their own...
|
|
|
Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jun 17, 2007 20:23:27 GMT -5
ShirtlessJack- YAY!!!! Having a nightmare- Boo.
Flashback land! Yay!!
Jack and Ianto. Awkward.
Fairies. So we're reffing that story.
He swallowed a fairy? Vomiting rose petals. Still gross, dude.
Picture of Captain Jack. And Jack covers by saying it's his dad.
Worse than alien. Because they're part of our world, but we know nothing about them.
Reference the actual story. Good.
Nothing can pick them up.
This guy's a pedophile, and that's why the fairies are trying to kill him?
Fairy circle.
The fairies suffocated him to death.
Hello? Gloves?
This looks all too familiar to Jack. Yep.
They protect their own. Children and the spirit world go together.
Part mara.
Lahore 1909.
All of them were dead? Wow. And they were his squad.
Gwen received a fairy visitation. Why did they ransack the place instead of attacking her directly?
The fairies were children once. Interesting...
Oh, stepdad fenced off her play area. And then he slapped her. He's a dead man.
Good effects on the fairies.
|
|
|
Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jun 17, 2007 20:26:50 GMT -5
Fairies...interesting! Bad fairies...whoah! seriously? that was in any way a surprise to you? because I thought bad fairies were what the stories were all about, and a basic genre convention. The good fairies are the weird exception. but then when we were supposed to come up with connotations for various age groups I could only come up with creepy kid stories. Haven't actually seen any actually sweet kids for ages and ages. Even the nicest ones were waving spear guns around. I've always thought of fairies as mostly good. Probably because of Disney.
|
|
|
Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jun 17, 2007 20:29:50 GMT -5
Re: the story that the episode is based on. There are two movies that may interest y'all: FairyTale: A True Story is basically historical fiction. Photographing Fairies is more of a inspired by "true" events. Very mind stretching and bending.
|
|
|
Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jun 17, 2007 20:37:48 GMT -5
Oh, and I hate Gwen's hair.
|
|