Thoughts on Torchwood

How frickin good was Torchwood?

I know, I’m somewhat behind on stuff lately, it’s because I took a holiday, so I’m catching up with things, but I’m almost up to speed now!

So me and my beautiful fiancee have a thing about Torchwood. See, I love it because it’s good sci-fi and a spin off of Doctor Who. She loves it because it’s got John Barrowman in it. Also, I’ve been gradually nerding her up over the last three+ years! (don’t tell her! She mustn’t know until it’s too late and she’s one of us!) We also have a thing about Cardiff, we had a good weekend there once and tend to visit for a few days every year now and always love it. And I proposed to her at the water tower over the hub. So naturally we were quite excited by the prospect of a week long Torchwood-fest, however, due to the late announcement of it’s airdates, we’d already got stuff going on that week. So we watched the whole lot in a 5 hour sitting on the Saturday, thanks to the magic of iplayer.

Starts off well, some really nice character moments, and the really creepy incidences of motionless children. I liked Ianto’s little obsession with the term ‘couple’.

What? Jack’s got a daughter? And a grandchild? Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

What have they done to Jack? Oh my god, I bet they put a bomb in him!
They did put a bomb in him! Shit!

Man, they blew up the spot where I proposed! Ooh, Gwen’s got two guns! This is kickass!

So it went on like this for a few more hours. Particular excitement from my lady love when Barrowman’s bum was revealed for the world to see. We were both happy to see Rhys play a significant part in the proceedings, we worry about Rhys, bless him, he seems like the most likely character to be deemed expendable.

Wow, we misjudged that one huh?

Poor Ianto, his dry sarcasm was a wonderful feature in the hub. Plus the additional layers to the character that had come up with his family being introduced and his relationship with Jack. So didn’t expect to see him killed. Especially as that bit had been building up as Torchwood’s triumphant return to the situation, they swaggered in there completely confident. It was cleverly done, the battle seemed to be to get the government to stop their bungling and let Torchwood handle it. Once they’d won that battle, no-one seemed to give any thought to the problem of the 456, as if going in there and announcing that Torchwood was calling off the deal would have the 456 going ‘Shit, we hoped you’d not say that, oh well, we’ll be off then!’.

So the way they casually wiped out a whole building of people with a main character was brilliant! In the way that suddenly you’re reminded how big a threat these guys are, in case you were too caught up in the government’s attempts to stop Torchwood.

The ultimate solution was a little bit understated, but then I guess a big showy special effects bonanza would have completely detracted from the big issue of Jack sacrificing his own grandson to save everyone else’s children.

Pretty big decision. Fiancee wouldn’t believe it for a long time, she was insistant that there was a trick, that Jack had found a way around it.

But that shows up the way that Torchwood differs from Doctor Who. You know the Doctor would have found a way. Granted, the Doctor has had to make tough decisions before, in the vein of making a sacrifice for the ‘greater good’. Pompeii as an example. But I can’t see him killing a child. Of course, I may be wrong, but off the top of my head I can’t think of any episodes where that happens!

But then, it’s a different kind of show, and I don’t think I’d enjoy Doctor Who if it took that sort of a direction. Being a kid-friendly show, Doctor Who always has this sense of wonder and awe, and a feeling that, with the Doctor around, things will turn out pretty much right in the end.

A grim, gritty, darker Doctor Who, in Torchwood style? I’d miss that optimistic and happier feeling. And it’s another great thing about Torchwood, if you’re old, like me, then you can have a grim and gritty ‘adult’ sci-fi in the Whoniverse, without significantly adjusting the feel of the main show.

And that ending. Well, that’s left a bit open isn’t it? I guess it’s a sufficient ending if there is no more Torchwood, but there’s enough left in place to start a new one. Hopefully with Mickey and Martha! Though then there’s reports that Russell T Davies is off to America and won’t touch UK TV again, but then tabloids love to print all sorts of stories about Doctor Who and the BBC with little factual substance. So I just wait and see.

Come with me if you want to live!!

If you asked me to name my all time favourite films, you’d be treated to a long ramble about whether or not I can count the Star Wars films as one film, as really it’s one long story, and even if I had to choose a favourite, it would change depending on my mood, is it Empire, or am I in a Jedi mood? However, once I finally got over that, and actually started to give you a list, we’d very soon come to The Terminator. I love that movie, it’s one of the understated classics of my lifetime. It’s a movie with everything! 80’s hair, time travel, apocolyptic future, 80’s hair, guns, explosions, 80’s hair, romance, a big killer robot and 80’s hair!

Seriously, is Sarah Connor initially just the epitome of the 80’s? Even that scooter!

So recently, you may have noticed, a fourth film in the Terminator saga came out. And my beloved fiancee expressed an interest in seeing it. I was somewhat surprised, gleefully so, until I realised that Chrisitan Bale was probably the primary motivation for her. Fine, you watch the pretty man, I’ll watch the awesome robots!

However, my lady love is a bit wary of seeing anything part way through a series. Well, I gallantly and selflessly agreed to watch the first three with her to solve this problem! I know, I’m a modern day hero!

So basically, I’m just gushing about how awesome the Terminator films are! Like mega awesome!

I’m most enamoured of the first, I think it’s always going to be the best in my mind. It’s just so much fun! And I find there’s a much greater sense of jeopardy when a human protects an unprepared girl, as opposed to a robot Arnie protecting a prepared boy and his very prepared mother. And mostly it's the first. I cheer when Reese says 'come with me if you want to live!' because I know that's where the line starts. Also, it's a really cool line.

So I was pretty excited by the prospect of a new film. Ok, this one's during the war, so there probably won't be any time travel, and Arnie's not going to be in it but hey, it could still be good.

It really was! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it had helped watching 1&2 through beforehand, so I was in a Terminator mood and I was having an easier time picking up on the little references. Like the T-600 that grabs John near the beginning, the whole sequence looks a lot like Sarah's final fight in the first one. So quite quickly they've drawn me into this film as part of the 'Terminator' world. Then it goes along quite nicely, me and my fiancee both cheered when Kyle Reese first appeared and said 'come with me if you want to live!' (bless her, she's wonderful!) and it's a pretty action packed film. Then John meets the first T-800 model. Shit! That thumping bass theme comes on and fricking Arnie steps out of the door! Not actual Arnie, but bloody 80's Arnie! So he really looks like the T-800 from the first film! And a thrill of excitement shot up my spine! There's 80's Arnie fighting today's Christian Bale!

So, while it's not the brilliance of the first two films, it's still really bloody good! For the record, I do like 3 a lot too, there literally wasn't time to watch it before I went on holiday and I had to watch Salvation before then or it would finish it's cinema run.

My PC is funtimes again!!

You know what’s a lot of fun in a nerdy way? Setting up a new computer! I remember with great fondness the olden days, over 10 years ago now, when my Dad bought our first proper PC (IBM Compatible was the old term), a P75 with Window 95. 8MB of ram, an 850MB hard drive and a 1MB graphics card.

Frankly, it was a sod to get working. We were fiddling with DOS memory managers and tinkering with the Autoexec.bat and config.sys a hell of a lot to get the thing working. But to me, that was part of the fun! The charm of a computer to me was always the tinkering, learning a little about the system and the files that make it go. In my younger days I learnt a fair bit of BASIC on my old Amstrad CPC. That’s just me, I’m a little bit geeky like that!

So in recent years, Windows has become something of a disappointment to me. It never needs anything like that sort of poking around in system files anymore, it’s just frustrating driver installs and constant re-starting of the machine. Frankly, I was becoming a tad bored with it. So recently, I decided to try something a little different and downloaded a copy of Linux. The latest Ubuntu, 9.04, to be exact.

You know what? I fricking love it!

A lot of people say they enjoy Ubuntu because it ‘just works’. Now, as I explained earlier, that’s not exactly what I’m after. Now, that’s not to say I want an OS that doesn’t work, I want an OS that’s got one or two compatibility issues that I can tinker with and learn a bit about the system as I fix them. So i enjoyed the installation of Ubuntu, as my wi-fi receiver was immediately recognised and functioning, which was a relief, but my monitor wasn’t firing on all resolutions. Brilliant! A little internet research and I learnt about the X.config and was able to modify it so the monitor works beautifully.

Since then, there’s been no requirement for me to do anything else like that. No requirement, but lots of opportunities! Which has been brilliant, as I’ve been able to learn about various aspects of the setup, what various system files all do, at my leisure and for fun! Note the word requirement there, I don’t want to be responsible for people being put off Linux because they think that it’ll be a difficult thing to setup. I had that one issue with my monitor, which I very easily found a fix for. The time spent researching and implementing that fix (which was longer that necessary as I wanted to learn more about what I was doing for curiousity rather than just immediately doing it) has easily been made back in the easy and speedy installation, the much faster start up time my machine now has and the fact that every other component of my PC was instantly set up by Ubuntu itself, saving me a lot of fiddling about with a pile of installation CD’s/ So don’t ever be put off by notions that Linux is difficult to set up or use. It’s not.

However, if you’re a bit geeky, like I am, it’s a hella lot of fun!