Mr Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Hello boys! It's us again! So, which one of us is going to win the "I can brood and pout the most" award? We've already BOTH won the "Air-brushed Action Man" prize...

Well, I thought last night's installment of Torchwood was actually...reasonably okay. Gasp! Actually, it was...more than reasonably okay. It was certainly entertaining, had lots of exciting bits, humour, some nice effects and a potentially good villain.

So the plot was pretty superficial - time agent Captain John, an old flame of Captain Jack's, arrives in Cardiff,and after causing trouble in the odd bar or two, tells the Torchwood team about some radioactive canisters which need to be disposed of and offers to assist. But it's all a hoax and an excuse for sly-puss John to try to bump off the team, as well as get his hands on an important diamond...

Really the opening episode of Series Two was an exercise in getting the audience reacquainted and re-engaged with the programme's leading characters. I'm pleased to say, second time round the Torchwood team are coming across as a slightly more likable bunch. Slightly. I mustn't go TOO far. Dare I say, there was almost a feeling of "coming home" on seeing the likes of Jack, Owen, Ianto, Tosh and gappy Gwen back on our screens again...they kind of felt more...settled? You almost sympathised with the team's sense of loss at the start of the story with Jack still AWOL, having abandoned them all at the end of Series One for a three episode reunion with the Dr. When Captain J popped up again to save the day - shooting a very strange alien that resembled a blowfish - it wasn't just the Torchwood team breathing a sigh of relief. Good to see the team feeling narky with Jack for leaving them in the lurch too - a normal kind of reaction - with Gwen stroppiest of all. And there were some quite good conversations between her and Jack (but what is this "thang" they've got going on? The relationships in the Hub are getting positively incestuous).

As for James Marsters, lots of people have been commenting on the similarity between his character Spike from "Buffy" and Captain John Hart i.e. that they were virtually the same. Having never watched "Buffy" properly, I can't say. John made quite an effective villain in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" though, with a suitable line in rude patter and some very violent tendencies. And a natty waistcoat too that admittedly looked rather incongruous in modern day Cardiff (I suppose he could have always claimed he was going as Adam Ant to an 80s fancy dress party). However I did think he was a bit of an odd-looking fellow, not really the good-looking studmuffin that everyone else had made him out to be - a bit haggard even? Miaow. And his accent was strange - a strange hybrid of English and American - where was he meant to be FROM? But a nicely amoral character nevertheless with obvious hedonistic tendencies as well. As for the back story with Jack, well there were hints at their past "relationship" but it kind of left you wanting to know more...Nice that John got his comeuppance by a lay-dee hologram - kind of served him right for all the chaos he'd caused. Except he didn't die atall. How fortunate. Most intriguing of all were John's parting words to Jack as he was whisked off into a time vortex: "By the way, I found Gray" - or sounded like that anyway, unless anyone would care to correct me. What's THAT all about? Sounds like another series-wide story arc like the "Mr Saxon" references that were peppered throughout the last series of Dr Who.

I shall now quote from my fellow blogger Steve, who has just written a very perceptive post on the same episode:

"But much as I enjoy this tour of sexed up sci-fi, shouldn’t there be more to Torchwood than just adult content? Shouldn’t there be more to it than all this inter-species spooning and inter-office bed-hopping? Doesn’t there need to be?

Good sci-fi needs to press a few intellectual buttons among the hi-tech barrage of flashy effects and glistening cleavage. Otherwise it runs the risk of being all gimmick and no content. And that is bad."

Hope you don't mind me nabbing your comments Steve...! But I couldn't have put it better myself (and in fact was too lazy to attempt to do that...) Yes, although the show is no doubt entertaining, it's still lacking in REAL depth and content.

To be honest I'm not holding out much hope for some kind of massive ideological shift during this series of T-Wood. But the future looks promising, if the "rest of season trailer" is anything to go by (although you will note that the word "sex" is uttered several times, not to mention shots of the cast snogging the faces off various other characters. Overkill? Surely not! Nice shot of Jack and Ianto engaging in tonsil-hockey though. Goodness. I'm SUCH a hypocrite).