film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Get it? It is a truth universally acknowledged that men love with their dicks and women love with their brains. Everyone just knows this. I’m not sure if we should take this as an indication that the people involved in making this movie actually genuinely don’t understand that people are wildly individualistic and so figure … more…
Tons of spoilers! Don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode!
Lots of spoilers! Don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode!
Lots of spoilers! Don’t watch if you haven’t seen the episode!
If you’re a newbie — say, you’ve been hearing about this BBC/BBC America show and have been meaning to check it out — here’s the spoiler-free, nothing-ruined-for-you-till-you-watch-it-yourself lowdown on the series.
Tons of spoilers! Don’t read unless you’ve seen the episode!
Man, this is grim. Nerd wakes up to the possibility of life outside nerdom, and dies immediately thereafter. What’s the point?
We snark about how no one ever dies in science fiction (or in comic books) but still… this is the weirdest extrapolation of that idea ever. *Torchwood* is a deeply weird show, of course, but it gets weird *and* profound in this episode.
Man, this is a bleak show. Not bleak about how the universe is out to get poor (almost) defenseless planet Earth or anything like that. Bleak about people. About how damaged we all are, even the healthiest of us, and about how hard it is to find people we can at least be comfortably damaged with.
I’m probably in the minority on this, but I like that there turned out to be no psychopathic alien influence at work here. I like that ‘Torchwood’ isn’t pretending that you have to leave the planet or import creatures from outer space in order to find terrible things.
