Writer in a Drawer, Series Three, General Blather, & State of the Lift

[invisible_lift]

If you weren't aware, Writer in a Drawer has made a triumphant return! I'm playing again this round, our winner from Round 2 is playing, and the other twenty on board reads like a Who's Who of two-fisted awesome. The writing period for round 3.01 ends later this week, and stories go up as fast as Waldo can code them, so please! Join us! Read and vote! Support the madness! I'll probably plug shamelessly throughout the competition, but figured that for best results I should start early. writerinadrawer, people. For serious.

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So I watched Series Three as it aired. I was about 80% unspoiled -- I'd limited myself to filming pics, the magazine, and a moment of weakness with a BFI screening review -- and so I didn't know what to expect. No, I haven't re-watched it yet. Yes, I've seen the Declassified.



I am of two minds. I really am.

I won't lie: I do think this was probably the most intense, most tightly-written television I have ever seen. The direction was top notch, the acting was probably some of the best we've ever seen on the show, and overall I think there's a lot to love about it. I'm not saying it isn't without problems thematically or technically -- more on that further down, I think -- but holy shit. I have never been so exhausted by a TV show. Ultimately, I think it fulfilled its promise as a dramatic program, even if the events that unfolded are difficult to swallow.

Which I think leads to my first point about Children of Earth: Torchwood is a dramatic series. I think it's easy to forget that, what with the humor and the adventure and the romantic subplots. We're most of us coming to it from Doctor Who, which is (usually) lighter and friendlier to younger audiences. But the premise of Torchwood is fairly dark. The show starts with a string of murders and a suicide.

The reason I bring this up is that, from a storytelling perspective, the nature of your story tends to determine the way it ends. Shakespearean comedies end in weddings. Mainstream horror flicks end with a harrowed group of ordeal survivors (often romantic interests) and that vague fear that a threat could return. I can't tell you how romcoms end because I have a paralyzing fear of Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, and the creepy dream logic employed in films that typically feature them, but I'm assuming they don't end with the hooker with a heart of gold crawling out of her grave to devour the flesh of the man who done her wrong.

From day one (and by that I mean the first round of advertising, not "Day One" or "Children of Earth: Day One"), the creators have been using words like "gritty" and "dramatic." They've told us that the lives of Torchwood Three's operatives are nasty, brutish, and short (thank you, Hobbes). That doesn't mean there isn't joy along the way, or ethical dilemmas, or contortionists in rubber masks, but it does imply that the story will probably end a certain way.

I think a lot of us forgot about this because it's not the way we usually interact with the material. Fan fiction is so often about relationship narratives, and one of the things a lot of people came to Torchwood for were those elements. One of the things that drew me and kept me was that there was a canonical queer relationship, and if it wasn't quite front and center, it was at least present, which is a true rarity on television, especially here in America.

And, you know, if I thought I could genuinely fault the creators for hiding this from us, I would. But they never quit saying it. They never shied from it. It just wasn't as exciting as the Gay Agenda, and the relationship narratives for a lot of us, and so that last hour and a half was shocking.

Well, it was going to be shocking anyway. This is an adult drama with two writers on board who've honed their chops with things like horror and stories that end in death and sacrifice. (Full disclosure: I'm not as familiar with John Fay's stuff as I am Moran and RTD.) So, you know, in hindsight it makes sense that this is what they'd write.

None of this, incidentally, is meant to apologize for Children of Earth, or to defend it exactly. I think what I'm aiming for is the sort of openness in which it can be taken for what it is. Complaining that Torchwood didn't turn out to be a romance after all is kind of like me complaining that the corn chips I ate earlier didn't turn out to be cod roe.

Anyway.

All of that being said, though, I understand the anger and the sadness. I swear to god, I've been bugging the hell out of certain friends because I fall into this deep well of loss -- I'm grieving, like a lot of people are -- and need to be distracted with porn or hilarity. I've read a lot of meta I couldn't bring myself to respond to because thinking critically about what feels like a personal loss was beyond me. I still can't quite read a story that rm and kalichan posted. I wish canon could have been different. While I think I knew something like this would come eventually, I'd have liked more time. I've wept real tears, lost real sleep. It's hard because these characters are, in a very real way, dear friends.

If I'm going to be critical of Children of Earth -- and I probably should because as much as I think it was brilliantly done, nothing is ever perfect -- I'd say I'm most disappointed with the race!fail element. Not the things that are said (though I can easily see Gwen's comment about adopting being as infuriating to someone else as I find Jack's little tirade about Vanessa in "Greeks Bearing Gifts), but the way in which PoC are constantly the ones being killed or acting in service of human evil.

I'm torn on whether I feel Ianto was "fridged," or that his loss eliminated the queer element since Jack doesn't automatically become un-queer upon losing him. (Side thought: what does this reaction say about our unconscious attitudes about monogamous or unpartnered bisexual people?) I can see why there's anger over his death being a plot point, but that's not the first time they've used that device on Torchwood. I'm saddened that our views about masculinity still necessitate killing someone off to get an "I love you" out of a masculine mouth, and that that particular masculine mouth is probably the most popularly feminized in our fandom while the character who usually doesn't go through that transformation in fannish hands didn't reciprocate.

And no, I don't have a problem with Jack's desperate "Don't go!" because, my god, I was right there with him.

I didn't find the 4-5-6 credibly scary because I didn't know enough about why I should be frightened of them, though I'm weirdly charmed by how terrible they are at communicating with us from an intellectual standpoint.

I'm still not sure why we needed Clem except as a plot point. Team Torchwood could have figured it out and got a confession out of Jack without him.

When we are all feeling well enough about this to have a drinking game, mentioning "Gwen's condition" is at least a shot, mostly because it totally made me need a goddamn drink.

I'm ambivalent about the way certain topics were overtly dropped into the dialogue. It threw me out of the story a little bit, and was weirdly overt considering how well the writers were doing otherwise, especially with the politics.

I want to know why Martha was fully out of touch. I could see not calling initially, but once the drama got into full swing, it didn't make much sense beyond Freema Agyeman being busy with L&O: UK.

Really, a lot of my issues are from a craft perspective. I'd love to sit down with Fay or Moran or Davies and ask why they made some of these choices. I'm curious, and I want to be a better writer.

From a character perspective, it was really gratifying to see Gwen reach her potential. This is who they've been trying to sell us for years, and we finally got her. Oh, Gwen. I love you to bits in this.

I'm fascinated by Ianto on some levels. He's always been a bit of an enigma, and I'm glad that even in death he still is. I'm sad that we may never get all the answers, but he's so complex and I identify with some of the things he does to keep people at arm's length. In a lot of ways, I love that he constructed his own persona and lived it, and maybe ran from his family so that he could. So much of that relationship rang familiar for me, it's kind of hilarious.

I love that Jack and Ianto are rubbish at being uncles.

I think that Children of Earth fulfills a lot of Jack's story arc. He's this amazing character who on the one hand is totally invincible, and on the other hand is just a man. He's a hero and a cautionary tale and fallible, and I hurt for him all over. I hope we see him again. I saw a meta I really liked about Children of Earth stripping him bare. I sort of like that he failed because that's interesting to me.

And, lest I leave him out, I feel so fucking vindicated in my love of Andy Davidson. I wish there'd been more of him, but that moment where we see him make that choice to join the riot blew me away. Tom Price is woefully underutilized. Fuck. Somebody hire this man to be on television more.

Rhys was wonderful too, though he's instilled in me a real distrust of beans. I loved that Gwen was all "don't eat the potatoes!" at him. (See Also: Andy Davidson, vindicated.) Kai Owen is a national treasure.

Capaldi as Frobisher blew me away. I found him sympathetic in a horrible sort of way because he really was one of the mascots of one of the whole human fallibility theme, and I ached for how he'd lost his agency to act out his own goodness. He was tragic, and I love the idea that he's perhaps one of Caecilius' descendants. In fact, the whole government storyline was brilliantly done and utterly chilling. Nick Frost Briggs (who voices the Daleks and Cybermen, and thank you for correcting me iamshadow) being the guy to make some horrid suggestions? The woman who went from being sort of sympathetic to ZOMGFINALSOLUTION in under three minutes? Fuck. What a demonstration of human nature.


So yeah. At the end of the day, I salute the whole creative team, cast, crew, etc. for their labors. They made us one hell of a miniseries, even if it struck a lot of us as wrong, too dark, or flawed. Suffice to say, fandom, I'm sticking around. Even though S3 closes some doors, there are a hell of a lot of stories to tell. There's a coda to IEIT to write, for a start. And more Disambiguation!verse stuff. And S1/S2 stuff. Pre-series. AU and what-if.



I do want to say one thing that's been on my mind since Friday, and that I've been saying here and there, about some of the vitriol I'm seeing.

As a creative, I really don't think it's okay to make personal attacks on someone for writing things you don't like. Critique the work? Absolutely. Tear it to bits if you think it's bad. That's the audience's prerogative, and I know I've done it more than once. Harassing someone, threatening them, or doing them violence over a story, though, isn't okay. No sensible writer sits back and thinks, "Oh yes, how can I alienate fans of my work today and make them miserable and hate me?" Writers want to make stories, and for people to read (or watch, or listen) to those stories.

Before you say, "So writers should write the stories they know people will want!" stop yourself and ask what sort of a dead world that would be. No surprise, no drama, no horror. I don't want to write pablum (even though I probably do now and again). I want to write the best story I can.

So what I'm saying, and what I'm asking of you, gentle reader, is to keep the personal attacks to a minimum here. There are plenty of places where you can vent about how RTD's move to America is suspicious, or to say that the creators are lying liars who lied to you.

Me, I want to make and talk about stories.

Thank you, and goodnight.