More Sarah Jane

Good news for fans of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The intrepid journalist is back for another 24 episodes this year. Yes, that is right 24 episodes. More than double what they commissioned for the first series. What that means is that instead of five stories we are going to get 12 stories, which is great as the first season did seem to finish just as it was really getting going for me.

My wife thinks it may be on twice weekly now they have 24 episodes and I am inclined to agree with her, as how many children’s series have 24 episodes seasons, and then how many of them are shown once a week? Not many I think you will find which makes the twice weekly broadcast more likely.

That is, of course, assuming that they are not just filming two series of 12 episodes back to back, one for 2008 and the other for 2009, which is another possibility.

This now means that we have Torchwood till March/April, Doctor Who from March/April to June/July, then Sarah Jane from September/October to November/Decemember, a full year of Whoniverse goodness.

There is no such thing as aliens

Torchwood: Sleeper

I must admit that I was mightily impressed with James Moran’s debut script for television, it was funny, fast paced and had a good central idea of sleeper agents sent to a planet who are totally unaware of who or what they truly are, which, alright, was not James Moran’s idea and has often been used in other science fiction shows, but I thought it worked and was a good episode in its own right.

Ianto continued his metamorphosis into the shows resident comic (with some great lines he is certainly an improved character in this second series, and is a lot more confident than he was in the previous series and is afforded more respect and is included a lot more as a proper team member rather than glorified teaboy) and I have not noticed his make a single cup of coffee so far, so perhaps they order that in as well as pizza!

Moran even gave Tosh a better share of the action, than she is normally afforded, and she is too is an improved character because of it although having said that I have always had a soft spot for Tosh, so it is nice to see her with more to do. They all worked well together in this episode, and I do believe that this is going to be how it is from now with the characters having forgotten about their petty dislikes of their fellow Torchwood team-mates and are getting on with the job in hand without any of the back biting and sniping which you would expect when they have been through what they have and they can now get along, which is the one thing I think is an improvement this series.

I must admit when I was watching the bit when the other sleeper agents were activated when Beth was frozen I did wonder why they had never considered that possibility when Jack was telling everyone about the Sleeper agents. He did say that there was an advance guard but he didn’t seem to consider that a problem at first.

In the end though the advance guard of this alien race did seem to only consist of four people (Beth, the woman with the baby, the smartly dressed man and the paramedic) which isn’t really much of an advance guard when you think about, but when they can do what they do, perhaps they only need about four of them. After all we only every had three Daleks at a time throughout the original run of Doctor Who so there is a kind of precedent set for the amount of aliens needed for an actual invasion.

Of course by the end of the episode they didn’t solve the problem which means that no doubt at some point they will encounter these aliens again, probably in another episode written by Mr Moran. After this episode, though, I am looking forward to Moran’s episode of Doctor Who (the one set in Pompeii) which should be a good one and, if this one is anything to go by, a funny one too.

I thought that the direction was frenetic and was often a bit too fast paced for its own good. The opening scene before the titles was well done but left you not really knowing what had happened except for the fact that it probably wasn’t very nice.

The episode was relatively gory and the amount of blood on show will probably be heavily trimmed when the episode is repeated but I didn’t think that it was overly gory. In fact considering it was written by a bloke who’s only previous work was a horror film I was expecting it to be a bit gorier than it actually was.

The girl playing Beth was better when she was playing the fake human Beth, than the alien Beth, and you did start to feel sorry for her, even though she was in fact a homicidal alien killing machine, like Gwen was when she was talking about her boyfriend and how she feels human and all that sort of stuff.

I thought that Sleeper was a good episode with lots of humour, heart and action. I hope the second series continues along this vein, which I have no doubt that it will. I thought Torchwood was great during its initial run, but it is even better this time round.

Gizza Kiss

Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

After having watched Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, the first episode of the second series of Torchwood, I don’t really think that a great deal has changed with the series. The only major differences that I saw was the fact that the main characters seems to be more united than they were in the previous season and they all seemed to get along fine. Aside from that I would say it was pretty much what we got last series, with a few more laughs.

The characters all seem to be a bit better drawn than they were in the last series as well. Even Tosh and Ianto had a lot more to do than they did last time, which was nice, especially for Tosh, whom I always thought was the most underused character of the lot. She seems a lot more confident and is even more part of the team than she was before, much like Ianto, who also seems to be a lot more confident in himself, and is quite droll.

Owen was a lot more likable than he was before and Gwen was, well, Gwen was just Gwen. She had taken charge of the team in Jack’s absence and had also recently got engaged. I think that after nearly losing Rhys at the end of the first season Gwen has realised what she had and is now determined not to let it lapse like it had done before. Even Rhys seems more amenable about her work now, which shows that there is a lot more trust in their relationship now.

I loved the story about Rhys’ proposal how he got down on one knee but had to lie down for a while as he got a twinge in his back. That made me laugh. I am just glad my wife proposed to me as if I had got down on one knee I would have not been able to get back up again!

This episode was a lot of fun and was thoroughly enjoyable and that was partly because all of the characters seemed to be a lot more laid back than they did before and even Jack was a bit more like his old self. You can tell that now after meeting up with the Doctor again he has loosened up a little. I still believe that the reason he was often so pissed off in the first series was because he knew that he couldn’t die and was pissed off at the Doctor because of what had happened whereas now he is over it and as a consequence is back to his old self again.

James Marsters Captain John Hart was a highlight of the episode and was tremendous fun throughout the episode, much like Jack was when we first met him in Doctor Who and much like Jack did in his first appearance he threatened to take over the show with his screen precense. He was so much like Jack it was scary: he flirted with everyone without exception, he was charming and there was so much sexual innuendo in the air, it was like The Doctor Dances all over again. It would seem that all of Time Agents will shag anything that moves, literally.

Perhaps part of the interview process involves showing them pictures of things and if you said that you would shag it then you are in. They also seem to like being part of the military and are usually Captain’s. John Hart seems to be wearing what looks like an eighteenth or nineteenth century British army uniform. Marsters has the swagger in spades and he more than holds his own up against Barrowman on screen.

We don’t learn much about the Time Agency here apart from the fact that it has closed down and that there are only 7 of them left. Of course knowing that John Hart is a conman and that you really can’t believe anything that he says then it is quite likely that they are nothing of the sort and that John Hart has just gone rogue like Jack before him. I would imagine that this might be addressed later on in the series when Captain John returns (which we know from the coming up trailer at the end of the episode) and there is the whole matter of who Gray is, because it is certainly someone known to both Jack and John, and judging by Jack’s face he was quite shocked to find that out. That could all be baloney as well, but I think that Captain John was telling the truth there, for once.

The story, what there was of it, was not quite as interesting as the characterisation of the main guest star and his interaction with the Torchwood crew, but it was quite a nice twist when Captain John found out that he had been tricked as well and what he had stolen was not what he thought it was and that there was no diamonds after all. They all found that quite amusing, especially Jack.

I am not going to say that there was a vast improvement in this episode from that of the first series because in my mind there wasn’t. There was some improvement but I really enjoyed the first series so I don’t feel that there was much that needed fixing. I will, however, say that I really enjoyed the episode and look forward to the next twelve episodes, which look really good judging by the coming up trailer before the end credits.

7 out of 10.

According to the quiz at http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/262/s2_member.jsp You are Toshiko

It’s tough being a geek. People walked all over you in high school, and you’re finding that adult life, sadly, isn’t so different. But without you, our computers would crash, we couldn’t program our DVD players, and our plasma screens would be on the fritz. Clearly, you’re a necessary part of the operation, even if everyone else doesn’t always realize it… Which character are you?

Start of something good?

So far I have only seen the trailer that they ran after Doctor Who – Voyage Of The Damned, but it looks as though the we are in for a cracking season!

Series Two

Torchwood series 2 starts next Wednesday (16th January) at 9pm on BBC2. It is repeated on BBC3 at 11.30pm the same evening.

So far we know the titles of the first 6 of the 13 episodes. They are:

1. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by Chris Chibnall
2. Sleeper by James Moran
3. To The Last Man by Helen Raynor
4. Meat by Catherine Tregenna
5. Adam by Catherine Tregenna
6. Reset by JC Wilsher

The clips that I have seen in the trailers and in the red button content suggest more of the same for Torchwood in this series and I don’t think that much will be different to the first series, except the fact that the writers, the production team and  the cast will have much more of a handle on the show and the characters now than they did in the first series. I was perfectly happy with the first series so I am more than looking forward to this new series. More of the same please.

James Marsters looks like he is going to give John Barrowman a run for his money in the first episode. I can’t quite work out what accent Marsters is putting on for this episode but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the Sid Vicious type accent he employed as Spike.

Hopefully we will find out a bit more about the Time Agency, although I doubt we will find out much more about Captain Jack. Perhaps that will be saved for one of the 2009 Doctor Who specials. Now there’s an idea…
 

Hello world!

Hello and welcome to The Rift a new Doctor Who and Torchwood blog.

This is mainly to be a repository for my writings about the new series of Doctor Who and Torchwood.

I have thought about having my own blog for quite some time now and decided that the new year would be a good time to actually do something about it, so this is it.

Enjoy!