Posted on 07/25/2009 8:14:38 AM PDT by reg45
For those of you who have seen the BBCAmerica mini-series "Torchwood: Children of the Earth". I would like to discuss the critical theme of the series that even the "best" government can become evil on very short notice.
For those of you who have not seen it all, it will be repeated all day tomorrow (Sunday 26-July).
Watched the ending last night...it just goes to prove a politican will sell anyone to keep in power and save his own skin.......
It features horrible, horrible, horrible, terrible, bad, bad bad acting. If you can get past that, the gay love story theme, the remarkably thin plot, and the BAD acting.......it might have some value as social commentary.
At the end, the only remaining team member is the heterosexual woman with a normal married relationship.
>Any government that acts in its own self-interest is the enemy of free people.
Not entirely true: providing for the common defense IS a universally accepted function of Government, and without Government protecting itself (from invasion) in this manner the People would be lost to some other government.
But you never got a good look at the alien...just its blood..
ping
I loved the series...even though it was written by the execrable poufter Russel Davies, who insists that every story have a homo male lead, and every story must contain shots of the homo male leads kissing each other.
But, wow, I loved that story.
I thought the characters were interesting, from Frobisher to Habib to Frobisher’s secretary.
I didn’t like, and never have, the Jack Harkness character as played by John Barrowman, and I never liked Ianto, but Meg was great, as was her husband.
I liked that when she considered aborting her baby because the world was being turned over to the aliens, her husband said “NO, you would never do that would you?” And she replied “I could never do that to you,” and they kept referring to her unborn baby as a child, not a fetus or other pre-born murder friendly language.
I totally believe our craven governments would turn over 10% of the world’s children to alien junkies if it saved their lives. I believe America allows similar things to happen that they know hurts innocent people, like deliberately allowing aliens who have committed crimes to stay here, rather than deporting them.
I wish Sifee (STUPID name change) would feature shows like COE more often, rather than the monster-driven dreck they’ve done in the past.
I loved The Lost Room, though...but that was ages ago.
Ed
I though the acting and the show were good. Too bad. Showing homsexual men kissing is perverted and evil. To watch it as “entertainment” is also evil.
Boy did they ever explore that theme, they completely showed the hypocrisy of government and I kinda felt sad for Forbisher at the end, well sorta.
I tried to watch but the show is waaaay too gay for me.
I have the first season, or whatever they call it over there— series— haven’t gotten around to watching it because the first two episodes sucked so bad.
I liked Harkness from the intro in Dr. Who onwards. Ianto took a long time for me to like, hard to say why.
COE was good in the respect that it had other characters such as Frobisher and others have some dimension.
Yeah, it was very well done in terms of character exploration, from Frobisher who took the Masada route for his children, to the venal prime minister, to Habib who started as some sort of spy for someone who then became a spy for Torchwood, to Frobisher’s secretary, even the cliched African American bullet-headed general who takes command of England.
All in all it was a great series, almost as good as Blink or Silence in the Library.
Ed
Frobisher did what the Jews did at Masada...I saw his viewpoint: given a choice between his daughters being kept alive for all of eternity, being fed upon by aliens who use them as drugs to get high, or death, which would you choose?
The Jews at Masada knew their wives and daughters would become sex slaves to the Romans and their sons would be subjected to the most evil tortures possible before being murdered, what would you do?
Sad thing is Torchwood succeeded, if they had listened in the first place rather than hushing up the 1968 “drug deal” for the 12 children, none of it would have been necessary.
I found the MI5 agent an interesting character. She seemed to be pure evil, killing a fellow MI5 agent because it would help cover up a story, and being willing to kill anyone the gov’t ordered her to, yet in the end she’s the heroine who frees Harkness who then saves the world’s children...so, was she really evil? Or can one do evil things whilst still being a good person?
And Harkness at the end, killing his nephew to save millions of other children, harkens back to Caiaphas’ quote about Jesus. He had to do it, but how can the mother ever forgive her dad for sacrificing her son?
Excellent show...
Ed
Homosexuality aside, ‘Children Of Earth’ was great television! A well done, layered story that easily stands up to and sometimes exceeds ‘Torcwood’’s previous three seasons.
The Torchwood team has been trimmed down to lean and mean, almost negligable status, yet they still persevere. Having some insight into the children phenomemon and oddly shut out by the powers that be in London.
The political connivance reminded me a lot of BBC’s earlier, excellent ‘The Sandbaggers’ and the discussions held in the fourth installment seemed eerily close to ‘The Wansee Conference’ or HBO’s later re-make, ‘Conspiracy’.
Captain Jack Hartness, Gwen and Ianto pulled out all the stops in both action and emotion, while The PM and his adjutant could not have been colder or slimier.
BBC is running the entire mini-series again at noon today, though I imagine SyFy (stupid name!)will probably pick up the entire franchise in re-runs later this year.
Jack.
He was the only one to “do the honourable thing”.
Actually, it was his grandson. Also, it wasn't so much a killing as a sacrifice. Furthermore, Steven was chosen because he was convenient - there were no other children in the vicinity - and also as a form of expiation for the "original sin" of turning the first twelve children over to the aliens forty-four years earlier (Captain Jack had been involved then also).
The more you think about it, the more you find that the entire plot is rife with allegory and symbolism.
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