Torchwood review: Wahey! My cock's on fire!

WARNING: SPOILERS TA RAAS

So. This was it. The final episode of the second season of Torchwood, execrable spin-off of the hysterical Dr Who, reinvented and revitalised by Russell T Grant, the world's most desperate Joss Whedon wannabe. The first two seasons of Dr Who, long before it jumped the shark by involving Catherine Tate, indubitably had their faults. A full list may possibly follow.

However, when you pull back and look at the big picture, the achievement was more than respectable: a successful update and relaunch of a franchise which had been essentially dormant for many years and in serious decline for many years before that. Dr Who was where Grant flashed his chops. Torchwood is where his reach exceeds his grasp.

In the beginning there was Angel, divine spin-off of the exquisite Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The title character, a superhuman given to long coats and long silences where Captain Jack is merely given to long coats, is played by the tall, handsome and brooding David Boreanaz. Captain Jack Harkness is played by John Barrowman, who is merely tall and handsome.

In one storyline, Angel, the vampire who can never die, is captured by his son, Connor, who's been driven bitter, twisted and a bit mad through torture by monsters in a strange dimension far away. Connor erroneously blames his father for abandoning him to his fate when in fact he has never stopped thinking about him. Connor buries his immortal dad at sea in a lead box so his torture will be eternal.

In tonight's Torchwood season finale, "Exit Wounds", Captain Jack Harkness, the temporal agent who can never die, is captured by his brother, Gray, who's been driven bitter, twisted and a bit mad through torture by monsters on a strange planet far away. Gray erroneously blames his brother for abandoning him to his fate when in fact he has never stopped thinking about him. Gray buries his immortal brother underneath Cardiff AD 27 so his torture will be eternal.

Guess whose punishment is the most excruciating.

So. We continued to play the usual Torchwood game of spot-the-nick. I got the climactic scene of Fight Club where the buildings are exploding around the protagonists. My friend got Tasha Yar's prerecorded posthumous speech sprung on her surviving colleagues in the episode "Skin of Evil" from season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Toshiko dies and springs a prerecorded posthumous speech on her surviving colleagues. The poignancy was detectable.

Spike the bleached-blond vampire — magnetically and irresistibly played by the god in human form that is James Marsters — dies heroically in a magical conflagration at the end of the Buffy series finale, and is revived as an insensate ghost in Angel. Owen, the twitching ferretty Spike manque — soggily and resistibly played by the hole in the air that is Burn Gorman — dies earlier in season two of Torchwood and is revived as an insensate being and now dies again (did I say heroically?) in a nuclear catastrophe, tastefully bleached out to an oblivion whiter than Spike's Billy Idol barnet.

Functioning as the moral centre of the programme, the competent but winsome Gwen almost promises to leave on account of she can't stand it any more. We feel her pain.

And Joss's hits just keep on coming. The (Cardiff) Power Walk — smash cuts — helicopter shots of an ominous nocturnal metropolis. Team Harkness with porn-star good looks. Hey, check it out, it's just like LA with cheese on toast!

And of course - how could we forget? I mean, like, HOW? — James Marsters!!!!!!! Spike Himself!!!!!!!!! (As something called "Captain John".) Yet another morally ambiguous, sexually charismatic bad boy turned good guy with an almost perfect posh-punk English accent. And a bad 1980s jacket that fell out of an Adam Ant video threatened to upstage His Gorgeousness.

And the high emotion! If you milked a cow like this, the Animal Liberation Front would be camped in your yard and PETA would be on your tail. Why o why, ten whole minutes after the A-story has ended and Gray the evil brother has been vanquished, are they all still ladling on the sentiment? It's a fifty-minute telly show, ferfuxache! This kind of aggressive begging for BAFTAs would get you moved on by the cops if you tried it in the street. I haven't seen so much snot and grizzling since Respect imploded. [For readers sufficiently fortunate not to be au fait with the ins and outs of the cat's arse that is the British Left, the Respect split was a tragic tale of epic proportions. Two bald men, not just fighting over a comb, but over a comb that had no teeth.]

So. As Ann Robinson would demand, who is the Captain Jack Sparrow and who is the Captain Jack Harkness? If I may quote myself rather than simply repeat myself: there is STILL only one Captain Jack and Keef Richards is his dad.

So. There.

James Marsters of the Universe: Torchwood returns

This is what telly would look like if you gave an infinite number of internet sex-pests an infinite number of keyboards.

Thank Who that someone at the BBC remembered to administer a big dose of Ritalin to Russell T Grant's team for the new Torchwood, turning the hysteria down to "screeching" from 11, which is where the dial was stuck throughout season one.

I still had to check the script wasn't by Julian Clary, though, what with the rogue Time Agent, played to great media fanfare by the lovely James Marsters of Buffy fame, embodying sex 'n' death and having to utter lines like, "Mine's smaller but it lasts longer", speculating on Captain Jack's "tourist entrance", and in the strangest mano-a-mano fuck-fight since a naked Alan Bates and Ollie Reed pummelled themselves silly in "Women In Love", arguing over who had been the "wife" in a two-week romance that felt life five years due to a space-time-continuum rift wormhole thingy. (Heh, heh, she said, "wormhole".)

Make no mistake: this was bitchslapping on a Grande Dame scale.

I was glad to see they've given up trying to turn Owen into a sex-stud. Among all these pretty people, Owen's sole function seems to be that of the plainer variety of male porno-flick stars (the tubby hirsute Ron Jeremy being a case in point, so I am told); to show their punters that ugly guys can get laid, too.

It may have had all the sexual tension of a Donald McGill seaside postcard (we British do saucy so much better than sex) but with at least the makings of a coherent plotline, it was followable. One of the climaxes (oh gawd!), when they were about to be blown up was marred by James asking, "Anyone fancy an orgy?". Subsequently moved to take a vow of celibacy by the relentless shoving down my throat (stoppit!) of the writer's single-entendres, I managed to tune out the smut flying thick and fast (oh, Jeez!) and enjoy pretty James in his pirate get-up.

Naming and shaming, the script was by Chris Chibnall; direction by Ashley Way.

See why I need Celine and Julie Go Boating?


More on James Marsters and Torchwood here.

Bloggers do Torchwood: Splintered Sunrise, Louise and A Very Public Sociologist.

James Marsters of the Universe: Torchwood returns

This is what telly would look like if you gave an infinite number of internet sex-pests an infinite number of keyboards.

Thank Who that someone at the BBC remembered to administer a big dose of Ritalin to Russell T Grant's team for the new Torchwood, turning the hysteria down to "screeching" from 11, which is where the dial was stuck throughout season one.

I still had to check the script wasn't by Julian Clary, though, what with the rogue Time Agent, played to great media fanfare by the lovely James Marsters of Buffy fame, embodying sex 'n' death and having to utter lines like, "Mine's smaller but it lasts longer", speculating on Captain Jack's "tourist entrance", and in the strangest mano-a-mano fuck-fight since a naked Alan Bates and Ollie Reed pummelled themselves silly in "Women In Love", arguing over who had been the "wife" in a two-week romance that felt life five years due to a space-time-continuum rift wormhole thingy. (Heh, heh, she said, "wormhole".)

Make no mistake: this was bitchslapping on a Grande Dame scale.

I was glad to see they've given up trying to turn Owen into a sex-stud. Among all these pretty people, Owen's sole function seems to be that of the plainer variety of male porno-flick stars (the tubby hirsute Ron Jeremy being a case in point, so I am told); to show their punters that ugly guys can get laid, too.

It may have had all the sexual tension of a Donald McGill seaside postcard (we British do saucy so much better than sex) but with at least the makings of a coherent plotline, it was followable. One of the climaxes (oh gawd!), when they were about to be blown up was marred by James asking, "Anyone fancy an orgy?". Subsequently moved to take a vow of celibacy by the relentless shoving down my throat (stoppit!) of the writer's single-entendres, I managed to tune out the smut flying thick and fast (oh, Jeez!) and enjoy pretty James in his pirate get-up.

Naming and shaming, the script was by Chris Chibnall; direction by Ashley Way.

See why I need Celine and Julie Go Boating?


More on James Marsters and Torchwood here.

Bloggers do Torchwood: Splintered Sunrise, Louise and A Very Public Sociologist.

Dr Wh(ed)o(n) strikes again: Dr Who Christmas special

Faster, faster. More, more! Raise voices to fever pitch then take it even higher.

Chuck in Restaurant At The End Of The Universe; Kylie as Ripley in Aliens slugging it out in a robotic exoskeleton and saying everything but "Get away from her, you bitch!"; Kylie as Ripley in Aliens Three, giving it large with the sacrifice as she plunges Christlike to a fiery doom (because Russell T Davies likes his "homages"); and an entire cast in relentless boggle-eyed hysteria. Just what we want after Xmas day with the relatives.

With one eye on the computer game, let's stick our heroes on a rickety bridge playing junkyard cricket with murderous cyborg angels and their lethal Odd-Job/Goldfinger stylee halo-blades.

Jeopardy, survival, fury, sentiment. These broadest of brushstrokes are apparently the only ones available to writer and series helmsman Davies, and he can no more vary these than he can the volume of the action which is all VERY LOUD.

The Dr Who Christmas special was high in production values but signified very little as we are getting used to to by now. Lord knows we were all fed up with the plodding Brit (non) drama of old and someone was bound to borrow the surface characteristics of the far more exciting American shows sooner or later, especially after Whedon lit the shining path for all us believers. But, sadly, such emulation proved skin deep. How can you care about characters with only one unvarying dimensionless objective: survival. And for over an hour. Yeech!

I see from the Torchwood trailer they have recruited James Marsters (Spike from Buffy) to add some much-needed class to this sorry dog of a series. Davies has played in Joss Whedon's toybox for long enough, he may as well be up front about it. If we didn't get the greatness by association message via Anthony Head (Giles from Buffy) in Dr Who, he'll hammer it into us now til it bleeds.

Thanks to Louise for kicking off.

More pix of James Marsters here .

Dr Wh(ed)o(n) strikes again: Dr Who Christmas special

Faster, faster. More, more! Raise voices to fever pitch then take it even higher.

Chuck in Restaurant At The End Of The Universe; Kylie as Ripley in Aliens slugging it out in a robotic exoskeleton and saying everything but "Get away from her, you bitch!"; Kylie as Ripley in Aliens Three, giving it large with the sacrifice as she plunges Christlike to a fiery doom (because Russell T Davies likes his "homages"); and an entire cast in relentless boggle-eyed hysteria. Just what we want after Xmas day with the relatives.

With one eye on the computer game, let's stick our heroes on a rickety bridge playing junkyard cricket with murderous cyborg angels and their lethal Odd-Job/Goldfinger stylee halo-blades.

Jeopardy, survival, fury, sentiment. These broadest of brushstrokes are apparently the only ones available to writer and series helmsman Davies, and he can no more vary these than he can the volume of the action which is all VERY LOUD.

The Dr Who Christmas special was high in production values but signified very little as we are getting used to to by now. Lord knows we were all fed up with the plodding Brit (non) drama of old and someone was bound to borrow the surface characteristics of the far more exciting American shows sooner or later, especially after Whedon lit the shining path for all us believers. But, sadly, such emulation proved skin deep. How can you care about characters with only one unvarying dimensionless objective: survival. And for over an hour. Yeech!

I see from the Torchwood trailer they have recruited James Marsters (Spike from Buffy) to add some much-needed class to this sorry dog of a series. Davies has played in Joss Whedon's toybox for long enough, he may as well be up front about it. If we didn't get the greatness by association message via Anthony Head (Giles from Buffy) in Dr Who, he'll hammer it into us now til it bleeds.

Thanks to Louise for kicking off.

More pix of James Marsters here .