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Trying to watch Torchwood: audience surrogates, unappealing characters, and Owen as date rapist
I'm trying to watch Torchwood to intersperse with all that Doctor Who, but it's not going to well so far. I know that the first season is a bit rocky, so I'm approaching it with patience—but I'll admit I'm a little tired of audience surrogates. One might be necessary without the background in Doctor Who, but even then this isn't "meet an alien man who happens to be a master of space and time"; this is "meet a pretty normal human cast (give or take one) who is dealing with alien forces." That's not so distant, not so alien (if you'll excuse the repetition), that the audience needs their hand held as they come to understand the concept and grow invested with the cast. Add the knowledge of Doctor Who, and it grows a bit redundant and condescending.
Even with my hand held, I'm not developing investment in the cast. I loved Eve Myles when she appeared in Doctor Who 1.3, but between being yet-another-audience-surrogate (yawn) and her makeup, which irks me for some reason, I have no love for Gwen. Captain Jack is a little unrefined and, as much as I love what many of his character traits are meant to be, that they're handled so heavily makes him grate on my nerves. I like Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones an awful lot, but they're too undeveloped for now. And Owen: Owen, whose face bugs me for superficial reasons (it's his mouth and jaw, mostly—too wide, overbite, just looks a little off despite that they groom him as such a pretty boy); Owen, whose first character crisis is over a dead woman's rape and murder even though the introduction to his character is rape.
Because that's the thing, Owen, my boy: if you make sexual advances on someone and they say no, and then you drug them until they say yes, you are a rapist. Rape isn't just something that happens in dark dank tunnels under bridges—it is something that happens every time you have sex with someone who has not given their consent. If someone is unable to consent (because, for example, they've been drugged), it doesn't matter how outrageous or sexual-orientation-defying the situation may be: if you have sex with them, you are a rapist.
Owen's crisis over the rape he witnesses doesn't forgive or balance out the rape he's committed. When we see some events (e.g. violent rape) as rape, and other events (e.g. date rape) as circumspect, forgivable, humorous, and otherwise maybe-bad-but-not-rape, we perpetuate rape culture—we allow more rapes to occur. It is never okay to remove someone's ability to consent. It is never okay to rape. There are no lesser varieties of rape, there are no excuses, it is never humorous, and that it's part of this character's introduction and never adequately resolved or condemned makes it hard for me to care what more he does or becomes from there.
ETA: I also find myself increasing discontent with Torchwood as the "grown up" Doctor Who. DW has nuanced, mature relationships, thousands of deaths, and personal and global losses galore. That it doesn't show explicit sex and violence does not mean that those aspects don't exist implicitly. It may be more ratings-friendly but it hardly lacks maturity. Conversely, adding sex and violence doesn't necessarily make for mature media, in the sense of complex, developed, and dark—even if it mature in the sense of rating. Take, for example, DW's Cybermen vs. TW's Cyberwoman: A species created through painful, violent mutilation, which strips away personality and emotion so much so as to essentially equal the death of the converted human, and as such tears families apart; a species designed to propagate itself by continuing these conversions, subjugating humans to intense pain and essential death or murdering them outright if they prove arbitrarily "unfit" for conversion—that is a fucking mature concept, one that proves to be brutal and heartbreaking in DW. A beautiful cyborg woman in a metal bikini is a lot more naked, but not inherently more mature, or adult, or dark and developed. In fact, that teenage glee in naked flesh is immature, not mature. I've yet to see anything from TW that has made me thankful for an after-hours spinoff of DW, because I've yet to see anything from TW that covers something they wouldn't be able to cover in DW with the same maturity, skill, and complexity that DW would turn on the subject if it could.
Even with my hand held, I'm not developing investment in the cast. I loved Eve Myles when she appeared in Doctor Who 1.3, but between being yet-another-audience-surrogate (yawn) and her makeup, which irks me for some reason, I have no love for Gwen. Captain Jack is a little unrefined and, as much as I love what many of his character traits are meant to be, that they're handled so heavily makes him grate on my nerves. I like Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones an awful lot, but they're too undeveloped for now. And Owen: Owen, whose face bugs me for superficial reasons (it's his mouth and jaw, mostly—too wide, overbite, just looks a little off despite that they groom him as such a pretty boy); Owen, whose first character crisis is over a dead woman's rape and murder even though the introduction to his character is rape.
Because that's the thing, Owen, my boy: if you make sexual advances on someone and they say no, and then you drug them until they say yes, you are a rapist. Rape isn't just something that happens in dark dank tunnels under bridges—it is something that happens every time you have sex with someone who has not given their consent. If someone is unable to consent (because, for example, they've been drugged), it doesn't matter how outrageous or sexual-orientation-defying the situation may be: if you have sex with them, you are a rapist.
Owen's crisis over the rape he witnesses doesn't forgive or balance out the rape he's committed. When we see some events (e.g. violent rape) as rape, and other events (e.g. date rape) as circumspect, forgivable, humorous, and otherwise maybe-bad-but-not-rape, we perpetuate rape culture—we allow more rapes to occur. It is never okay to remove someone's ability to consent. It is never okay to rape. There are no lesser varieties of rape, there are no excuses, it is never humorous, and that it's part of this character's introduction and never adequately resolved or condemned makes it hard for me to care what more he does or becomes from there.
ETA: I also find myself increasing discontent with Torchwood as the "grown up" Doctor Who. DW has nuanced, mature relationships, thousands of deaths, and personal and global losses galore. That it doesn't show explicit sex and violence does not mean that those aspects don't exist implicitly. It may be more ratings-friendly but it hardly lacks maturity. Conversely, adding sex and violence doesn't necessarily make for mature media, in the sense of complex, developed, and dark—even if it mature in the sense of rating. Take, for example, DW's Cybermen vs. TW's Cyberwoman: A species created through painful, violent mutilation, which strips away personality and emotion so much so as to essentially equal the death of the converted human, and as such tears families apart; a species designed to propagate itself by continuing these conversions, subjugating humans to intense pain and essential death or murdering them outright if they prove arbitrarily "unfit" for conversion—that is a fucking mature concept, one that proves to be brutal and heartbreaking in DW. A beautiful cyborg woman in a metal bikini is a lot more naked, but not inherently more mature, or adult, or dark and developed. In fact, that teenage glee in naked flesh is immature, not mature. I've yet to see anything from TW that has made me thankful for an after-hours spinoff of DW, because I've yet to see anything from TW that covers something they wouldn't be able to cover in DW with the same maturity, skill, and complexity that DW would turn on the subject if it could.