Two subjects to talk about today. First up, Torchwood started on BBC 3 on Sunday and I was there for the first two episodes. The new Doctor Who has done so well it’s managed to spawn a spin off that’s aimed at adults. So far it appears to be a British X-Files based in the Doctor Who universe. I just hope they manage to address UNIT at some point, because the fact the British Military has an organisation that investigates the paranormal seems to have been forgotten.
Captain Jack Harkness, the second companion for half of Ecclestone’s series has been given control of the third Torchwood facility in Cardiff. The fact that Torchwood isn’t hiding the fact that it’s based in Cardiff is one of the things that have impressed me about the show. Having just come back on the Friday from my business trip there it was very cool seeing one or two places that I recognised. Even to the point that one of the pubs I went in could just be seen as Gwen, the character the series seems to from the perspective of, enters the Torchwood facility for the first time.
More to the point, the stories are really good. It is far more adult that Dr Who can be at 7 o’clock on a Saturday night with death and murder quite strong in both episodes. The show does seem to have a fixation on sex though. With Captain Jack a little is to be expected, he was easily the horniest companion in the history of Who. We have been promised every single member of the cast will get a same sex kiss, and we’ve already had two in as many episodes. The whole plot of the second episode revolved around an alien that fed off orgasmic energy, killing the male in the process, similar to that Outer Limits episode that scared me shitless when I was 14. It seems to me that Russell Davies has to get some of this out of his system, since he has to spend his time looking after a ‘family’ show the rest of the time.
Thankfully they’ve addressed the fact that Captain Jack is alive despite the fact he died facing the Daleks in the final episode of Eccelstone’s run. He even mentioned wanting to meet the Dr to find out what’s going on. Technically the audience knows this as it was shown at the end of the Who episode (though I had to read it on Wikipedia) and from the special effect when he kissed the orgasm alien its obvious that its to do with the chronal energy that Rose Tyler absorbed. All said, the show is great and I fully intend to keep watching it every Sunday.
The second topic of conversation is the new Fantastic Four cartoon. I’ve watched two episodes so far, and I’m yet to be impressed. The animation is pretty slick although it falls under the category of the US imitating anime once again. I was mildly surprised to see the first episode start with a Ronan the Accuser story, a minor character from the Marvel Universe rather than an origin story or something with a better known character such as Doom. Which brings me onto my next point, it feels like I’ve missed some episodes. The series just starts getting on with things, no real character introduction and the second episode is Doom and it doesn’t really explain the feud between Doom and Reed its just accepted fact that Doom hates him. Now I can cope with this as I’m a major comic geek and this stuff to me is like the Bible is to the Pope, but have we got to the point where we don’t have to tell the origin of the Fantastic Four or their biggest villain? If so that’s great, but I only thought we were there with Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. I’ve got a total of five episodes to watch, I’m going to watch them and see if I fancy watching anymore. Though the hints at a Kree-Skrull war hinted at in the first episode has got me very intrigued.
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