Rate and Discuss 4.8 End of the Road

[Alex]

Frickin' hell, this was yet another massively disappointing episode. After everything with Angelo last week it really looked like we might learn something, but no, of course not. Indeed Angelo was in a coma from the get go and dead within 20 minutes, and the rest of the episode was piss poor emotional crap with lots of irritating family nonsense in it. Rex has never been more annoying, Esther bland, and even Eve Myles or John DeLancie couldn't save this one. Oh, and there was some really inconsistent writing in the scenes with Oswald, whose role in all of this looks increasingly pointless.

I'm really ****ed off with this now, and the only reason I'm sticking with it is that there's only two episodes left. But if there is another series, I won't bother with it unless the reviews are stunning. But I'd be amazed if there was one, to be honest, given how shit this has been.

2/10. Pathetic, quite frankly.

[Anthony Williams]

...and in complete contrast, I really enjoyed it!

This isn't the fastest-paced show ever, but I'm loving it. It's allowed for much more proper character growth and development. We're seeing genuine human emotions here - Esther's worries about her sister and her nieces, Rhys and Gwen's Mum caring about Gwen, Rex being scared for his life, or Brian Friedkin - having got himself in far too deep, killing himself for the good of his family.

This is unpredictable in a good way - you can't always predict how things are going to turn out, but you know that it'll be solved by the end of the season, nor am I sitting there going "I KNEW IT!" with it. Nor does it feel that they're making it up as they're going along. What I'm seeing is a drama that flows extremely well.

All in all, I feel that these are characters that I connect with. I know people who have similar personality traits (well - I don't know anyone quite as gun-toting as Rex, but I know people who are boisterous and arrogant in the way that Rex is, in order to cover up their own personality flaws)

All in all, this is wonderful stuff, that I'm really enjoying. Roll on the final two episodes!

Oh, and John De Lancie stole the bloody show!

[Ssarl]

I'm really baffled by the decision to introduce and dispatch new villains in literally every episode. The casting has been great - they've got someone from just about every sci fi show - but they're all so pointless. Forget engaging with the characters, I can't even manage to figure out who they are before they get killed. They do the same thing with the plot MacGuffins, too - introduced, fought over and forgotten about in the same episode, every time. Nothing that happens in this series matters by next week!

Even more bizarrely, they try to disguise the villains in this rushed format. Turns out the character we just now introduced is THE VILLAIN! What a twist!

[Alex]

I'm really baffled by the decision to introduce and dispatch new villains in literally every episode. The casting has been great - they've got someone from just about every sci fi show - but they're all so pointless. Forget engaging with the characters, I can't even manage to figure out who they are before they get killed. They do the same thing with the plot MacGuffins, too - introduced, fought over and forgotten about in the same episode, every time. Nothing that happens in this series matters by next week!

Even more bizarrely, they try to disguise the villains in this rushed format. Turns out the character we just now introduced is THE VILLAIN! What a twist!

Agreed, I was wondering why Wayne Knight even bothered to turn up given how little he had to do in the series. I don't know, maybe he doesn't get as much work these days as he used to...

I hate the amount of filler in it as well, like the episode on the plane with a poisoned Jack, when they had to break in to Pziser to get hold of the servers, or the long dragged out escape from the base, or Gwen messing around with her Dad, etc, etc.

If they were better written characters that I cared about I'm sure I'd enjoy it more as such scenes would have meaning, but bar Gwen (when she's not in hysterical mode) I find everyone really irritating and don't care in the slightest what happens to them. Rex is mouthy, arrogant and stupid, Esther follows him around like a lost puppy and looks miserable throughout, and Jack spends his time shagging about or overacting. It's a real shame as I love him in Who, but here (especially after his speech about skinning Gwen alive to save his own skin) he's often either bland or ridiculously OTT.

I think this could have been a really good four part mini-series if it had cut out all the crap, but each and every week it teases that something might happen, we might actually learn something, but then we never do. And with two episodes to go, I can't see how the ending could ever redeem everything that's taken place so far.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

So those contact lenses can now transmit audio can they? Nice and consistent as always...

I'm wondering what the point of this series is really now. The central premise seemed initially to be about everyone living forever and the social problems it would cause, but that's barely even been mentioned for weeks. Aside from as a sort of a reason for setting up the concentration camps, everyone might as well be mortal for all the difference it's making. Everyone was hyper alive at first, and carried on moving around and looking at you even when they were a charred corpse with a severed head; then they introduced the idea of Category 1 and so now you can just threaten people with guns or have them sacrifice themselves in car bombs as if everyone were still mortal. If you hadn't watched the first few episodes you wouldn't even know everyone was immortal from the way they're acting, aside from the occasional throwaway line of dialogue. All those masked death cultists didn't amount to anything. Bill Pullman was introduced as if he was going to be the key figure in everything, but he's just sort of fizzled out into nothing with 2 episodes left. I won't quite say it looks like they're making it up as they go along, but it certainly seems as though it doesn't have any real clear direction the way it introduces concepts before immediately abandoning them and going off in some other direction. Maybe it'll all amazingly get tied up nicely in the next two episodes and all the parts we'd forgotten were ever part of the story will come back and mean something. Yeah okay, let's assume that's what's going to happen and move forward with a positive attitude

[Dirk Gently]

So those contact lenses can now transmit audio can they? Nice and consistent as always...

Isn't the sound created by the computer by the lenses lip reading? Although how the screen in the bed bay knew it had to translate lip reading in to sound is another matter.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

It usually does that with a funny electronic-sounding voice though. Whereas this time it was clearly just Friedkin's actual voice.

[Andrew Curnow]

Having just watched it, and although I did enjoyed this week's episode, I can't really disagree with anything ZH says above - the 'hyperalive' thing has totally faded away, Oswald's character seems irrelevant (he wasn't in it at all last week, and might as well have not been this week), and those blank masked cultists only appeared in, what, part 3 never (so far anyway) to be heard of again. And, yes, the contact lenses are rapidly becoming the sonic of Torchwood - originally with a very clear, limited ability, they are now able to transmit actual audio, to any device within a radius, triggered by heart-rate (and presumably programmed to do so by Rex while nobody was looking....?)

I'm finding Gwen particularly annoying, and really other than save Jack on the plane I'm not sure she's really added anything to the story. Her character seems to have been rewritten as "arsy" because she just gets really bolshy with everyone as soon as she meets them. Not to mention, by the trailer at least, next week looks to be full of a lot of 'looking for Gwen's dad' padding - presumably in part to give Gwen something to do. With only two episodes left, I'd expect it to be story, story, story, and I can't see how hiding the dad from the authorities (tense though it may be) is anything other than a small-scale sup-plot.

And last week's episode, in hindsight, turns out to be very odd doesn't it? Why go to all the trouble of kidnapping Gwen's entire family and threatening them, and having her kidnap Jack, etc, etc... when a simple "Mr Colosanto would like to see you, here's the address, ciao" would clearly have done the trick.

An odd, odd, disappointing, odd fourth time out for Torchwood.

[shada pavlova]

Just a thought...

In the last series of SJA there was an off-hand mention of Ian and Barbara not having aged since the sixties...

...and if you rearrange "Abelmarch Costerdane and Frines" you get "Ian and Barbara Chesterton"...

You've been planning this for years, Russell, haven't you? How meta can you get?!

[Dino]

Just a thought...

In the last series of SJA there was an off-hand mention of Ian and Barbara not having aged since the sixties...

...and if you rearrange "Abelmarch Costerdane and Frines" you get "Ian and Barbara Chesterton"...

You've been planning this for years, Russell, haven't you? How meta can you get?!

The only thing more impressive than working that out would be if Ian and Barbara were just as they were in the 60's and Barbara had to explain to Ian how "pansexual" works to Ian's disbelief.

[shada pavlova]

I'm sure Jack would be more than willing to teach him the proper pronunciation of Koquillion.

[Alex]

Just a thought...

In the last series of SJA there was an off-hand mention of Ian and Barbara not having aged since the sixties...

...and if you rearrange "Abelmarch Costerdane and Frines" you get "Ian and Barbara Chesterton"...

You've been planning this for years, Russell, haven't you? How meta can you get?!

It's a lovely idea, but you're missing an F from Ian and Barbara Chesterton...

[shada pavlova]

...And you've spoiled it.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Just watching this episode a second time and realised actually I was enjoying it just as much as I enjoyed ep 7 (my favourite of the series so far) until 28 minutes in when Oswald Danes appeared. I really didn't miss him not being in the previous couple of episodes.
Plus points the scenes with Jack talking to Angelo and Esther talking to her sister are sublime.