Too much Gwen. The BBCA Torchwood website is an Ode to Gwen.
Why can't it be July already? The Jack/Ianto promo pics that showed up on Gay Times and Attitude in the last couple days are very nice, I'll hold on to that to keep my mind away from Saint Gwen :)
I really love Torchwood more than it's good for me, considering how many things I hate about it.
that one was posted in Attitude magazine, I know there are lots of problems with that pic technically, but I love it :) and Gareth's interview (the quote about Jack took me back to squealing fangirl in a second), of course.
Really nice interview and that lovely Jack/Ianto pic, and a very cool action!Ianto too. I need a copy of that mag, and one of Attitude. I'll be bothering brits friends for them :)
If this is going to be another long season of non-stop idiotic Gwen bashing I will skip reading these blog comments. Some of us just want to watch the damn show.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
And it's not that Gwen doesn't have her flaws. She's definitely the most "human" of all the Torchwood characters. It's just when recappers and posters have to make a kneejerk "EW, GWEN SUCKS" comment every time she enters a scene, it gets damn tiresome damn quickly. It's also very unimaginitive.
I think the way Gwen is written is more than just a little misogynistic, the character is completely defined by the men around her. It's all she's about, how they see her, how much they want her. I dont think there is anything random or arbitrary about my dislike of her character. It's a pity because some times I really like her, there are very little moments in a few of the episodes when I find her truly likable, but it always lasts too little.
there's also the more shallow, though still not random or arbitrary, issue of being told constantly that we should like her, being told and very rarely shown that she's perfect. They show us her flaws, but they told us they are not flaws in her case, because she's Gwen and she's got a big heart and she's always right about everything, even when we are being shown she got it wrong.
It's lucky you can enjoy her character, because TW is mostly about her anyway. I wish I wasn't annoyed and sometimes offended by her characterisation, I'd be a happier fangirl.
I can give very detailed reasons why I hate Gwen. It's not at all vague or knee-jerk or automatic.
She's touted as the "heart" of the team but she's actually a raging selfish b!tch. She's mistreated her adorable and devoted boyfriend/husband. She insists on acting as if she were in charge even though in fact she has the least experience in virtually all aspects of Torchwood's operations. She has a tendency to expect everyone around her to do what she wants and gets very pissy if they don't.
That's just the summary. I could go on at great length. Other people have in various venues as well. One particularly fun one I once read detailed all the times she put herself and/or others in danger by refusing to listent to anyone else.
This is Gwen. I think she was meant to be the Rose Tyler of Torchwood but they fell rather short on the execution phase. But she's definitely no Rose, and certainly no Martha (who I prefer even to Rose). And poor under-utilized Tosh. So much potential, so little screentime because everything needs to revolve around Gwen.
Sarah puts it exactly right. Gwen has heaping piles of flaws, but we're not supposed to acknowledge them as flaws because she's Gwen and she's wonderful. So even when she's, I dunno:
1) Throwing metal tools at alien object landing sites, thus unleashing death on multiple people.
2) Aiding and abetting former(ly deceased) Torchwood agent Suzie despite knowing that she was insane and a serial killer, thus putting herself and others at risk.
3) Cheating on her devoted boyfriend with a known date rapist from work.
4) Retconning her boyfriend proactively before confessing that she's cheating because she's hoping for forgiveness but definitely doesn't want him to remember.
5) Endangering the world to ressurect slain boyfriend because she feels guilty.
6) Incompetently failing to avoid being kissed/poisoned by time-traveling sociopath despite having been warned he would attempt to do so.
7) Using her engagement as a way to guilt trip Jack. "No other man will have me." (Because most men are smarter Gwen)
8) Blasting poor decent officer Andy for not coming to her wedding so that she could rub it in his face that she was marrying someone else (and doing so while he's trying to get her input on child disappearance case).
9) Snidely dismissing the notion that Andy could possibly understand a piece of technology she got from Ianto at Torchwood, even though it was only a GPS (thus implying that she didn't understand it herself). Belittling Andy seems like one of Gwen's favorite passtimes. He might feel better about Rhys getting her rather than him if he knew that she cheated on Rhys sexually with Owen and continues to do so emotionally with Jack.
10) Dragging the mother of said missing child from #8 to see him, now greatly aged and mutilated, simply because she believes that because she herself is insatiably curious and will never accept not knowing the truth, everyone else should likewise see it, no matter how horrible.
Those are just the ones off the top of my head!
On a good day Gwen just looks incompetent. On a bad one she looks like a b!tch. Not clear if the writers just hate Eve Myles or what. All I know was that I was praying that she would die in mid-Series Two so that she could be replaced by Martha. I was even willing to fudge and let Jack, Ianto and Martha be a threesome. Just so long as it got rid of Gwen.
Could not agree more. If Ianto were as "poorly written" as people say Gwen is, I don't believe for one second that people here would be rooting for Jack to be with Gwen instead. It's not an issue of writing. It's an issue of the gay audience not wanting a male character to choose a female lover over a male one. Jack is omnisexual, not gay. And further, though Ianto seems smitten with him, he seems amused by Ianto at the most. There is no evidence on the show to suggest he's in love with him. There's much more to suggest he considers him a fling.
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her. She's one of the few people, male or female, who flat-out turns him down, and I think that intrigues him.
Either way, I am very uncomfortable with the amount of ire people have for Gwen here. I can't quite imagine people being quite so nasty if Gwen were another man. And Ianto were a woman and Gwen were a man in that scenario, everyone would be clamoring for Jack to be with Gwen and tearing apart Ianto, I guarantee it.
That if Jack were to fall in love with a woman and have kids and live happy ever after I wouldnt mind one jot. It is Gwen that I do not like, not the fact she is a woman.
Infact if they introduced another woman as his love interest then I would be fine about it, the fact that a program has a possible homosexual storyline is not why I watch TV
I think Jack is fond of Ianto and possibly doesnt want it to develope into more than that as Ianto will age and die and Jack will not.
she flat-out turned him down? You mean that's what she was doing in the "nobody else would have me" scene in KKBB? or in Meat when she's kissing Rhys and looking at him? or in Something Borrowed when she almost snogs fake!Jack when she's about to get married with Rhys?
...in the end, she does emphatically, in Something Borrowed, turn Jack down. She may flirt with him. She make go dangerously close to crossing the line. But she hasn't.
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her.
Hee hee! He can't have her? Please. If he ever gave any sort of serious sign that he wanted to be with her, she'd be on her back in a blink of an eye, even now when she's "happily" married. But he never has - instead, how many times have we seen Jack remind her of Rhys or send her on her way home or literally hand her over to Rhys?
Do I think there's some attraction there on Jack's part? Sure. Do I think he loves his whole team in one way or another? Absolutely. Does that mean he wants a relationship or even just to sleep with her? Nope. I don't fall into the camp of people who think that just because Jack is omnisexual, that means he can't love Ianto (or any of his other previous partners), be in a relationship or make it through the day without sleeping with everyone in sight. However, I do think he flirts and uses her feelings for him as a way to manipulate her.
My dislike for the Gwen character has absolutely nothing to do with wanting her far away from Jack and Jack/Ianto. I like J/I together, but I'm hardly a crazy fangirl about it. As others have mentioned, she has done despicable things and yet we're supposed to think of her as the "heart" of the team. She has no discernible skill or talent that makes her useful to Torchwood, yet she acts like and is treated as a leader. Further, I find the focus on her character to be annoying. It's easy to forget sometimes, especially in early episodes, that this show was designed as a spin-off starring JB. I don't need someone to be the "eyes" of the audience or whatever they tried to pass her off as. I would prefer a true ensemble of supporting characters, with the focus on the actual star, thank you.
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her. She's one of the few people, male or female, who flat-out turns him down, and I think that intrigues him.
When has Gwen turned Jack down? Indeed, if anything she has radiated "I'm available" to him since day one. She even went so far as to use her engagement to Rhys as a way to guilt trip him, that great "No other man will have me." line that was so laden with open suggestion.
My personal theory has been that what's really at issue is that Jack was initially attracted to Gwen's ordinariness. When he first met her she was very a pushy, but plucky, average girl living in the "normal" world.
What's happened since is problematic for Jack. He can't have her without destroying what interested him in the first place. This is why he's always on her case about maintaining her "normal life" outside of Torchwood. Rather than encourage her to sever her external attachments and commit herself wholly to Torchwood, and thus to him, he insists she try to hold on to her normal life.
I've observed that Jack gets noticeably less pleasant towards Gwen whenever she starts acting all "Torchwood" and stops with the ordinary gal routine. I think he doesn't like that because when she does it she ceases to be attractive to him.
So Jack is stuck in that regard. Gwen lost her wide-eyed wonder a lot faster than Rose did and Jack knows that if he pulled her entirely out of the everyday world (by getting her to ditch Rhys for example) she would become someone other than the plucky young cop who amused him by tracking Torchwood down back in the beginning.
This is of interest about Jack's relationships with women in general. He seems to favor men in his action-oriented lifestyle, while preferring women when he's trying to get away from it. Appearances suggest that he prefers more action-oriented men (Captain John, the real Captain Jack, Ianto...) while with women he likes them to be a little more ordinary. For example Estelle, whom he said he loved, but didn't stay with or come back to during WWII. His mystery wife, from the photograph, is another case. Just the fact that they got married implies a traditionalism in her that we don't generally see in Jack himself. And of course Gwen, whom he loves to show off to, but doesn't seem to like it when she starts showing off herself.
Jack did, and perhaps still does, love Rose. But she never really lost the wide-eyed wonder. Gwen started to become very serious and darker pretty quickly. Jack knows that taking her on as a partner would probably change her even more, and the whole point was that he liked who she was in the beginning, not who she might turn into if pulled completely from the real world.
I don't mind Gwen -- she's a voice of moderation....but she does seem to have been given too much screentime and it becomes apparent that she's the de facto head of Torchwood and not Capt. Jack. Just look at the picture above -- she's more important than the 'original' members of Torchwood.
I can't wholly agree that she is a voice of moderation, but I won't go into that again :) But I agree they're making it look like she's the leader of Torchwood, and it's not just that one picture. If you look at BBCA and the BBC official website, it's really unbalanced and she has more screentime in the trailer than Jack.
I can understand when people disliked the Gwen/Jack pairing, because that would have been awful, and not just because it was blocking Jack/Ianto. But, other than that, I don't see anything wrong with Gwen as a character. I like that she differs from Jack, and is head strong. It adds tension to the group.
I soooooooooooooo can't wait for it in the UK. I have been waiting ages for a new season of torchwood and my fix of the loveable and cheeky jack/john (cos theyre both loveable and oh so cheeky!). BTW the whole only 5/6 episodes of doctor who with like months in between each episode is verrrrrrae annoyin'.
My tounge would catch your tounge...were the world mine :-)
Gwen has just reassured Rhys that he is the one she wants, the one she loves. Then, while she kisses Rhys, she locks eyes with Jack and gives him an "I'd much rather be kissing you" gaze. SO not cool.
That probably the most interesting part of her personality, the fact that she is in love with two men, its what makes her human as we can relate to her faults.
If Gwen had been honest with Rhys at some point (preferably before she married him) about her unresolved feelings for Jack, I'd be more willing to cut her some slack. But this is a woman who confessed to Rhys about her affair with Owen only after slipping Rhys some Retcon, so that he wouldn't remember her confession - thereby clearing her conscience without having to deal with any long-term consequences. Personally, I don't see her level of self-serving deceit as being particularly human - at least, not the humans I'd want in my life. Rhys is basically a good man who honestly loves Gwen, and he deserves far better than he's getting.
is a very separate issue from my feelings about Gwen, which is the subject of my post. IMHO, Gwen's specific flaws, as I have previously spelled out, are contrary to what I perceive to be her role on the show - the heroine who represents the humannity/heart of the team. Your mileage may vary by quite a bit.
That is what she is there for, just like the reasoning behind all the characters actions are to move the story on.
I dont like Gwen as I think its poor role, but her actions make sense overall.
Human behaviour is just as red in tooth and claw as the rest of nature and its interesting from that view to see how the relationships pan out as even good people do bad things sometimes.
Would I like a friend to date a Gwen in RL? No of course not, no one wants there mates to be cheated on but we dont watch TV shows to get a rose coloured view of the world.
We all have them, and fictional characters with flaws might be interesting unless we are constantly being told that their flaws aren't flaws. That everyone else's flaws are flaws, but not this one character's, who's perfect and it's always right. That grates, even more so when it happens again and again and...
Confessing her infidelity and then retconning Rhys was a low, very human thing to do, a great scene too, but Gwen never has to pay for her missteps, never has to face consequences and never gets knocked down her very high horse -not until she was pushed a little in Adrift.
But even if flaws might make a character interesting, doesn't mean
they'll make them likable to everyone, the Holier-than-Thou's ones will
never be among my favorites.
And so are the best fictional characters. Does the fact that Gwen loves two men justify constantly bashing her everytime she comes on screen? Jack clearly has feelings for Gwen, too? Why don't we all "hate" him?
dishonesty is another. Jack has never (to our knowledge) stood up in front of family and friends and pledged eternal love and devotion to anyone - he is free to be his omnisexual lusty self. Gwen married Rhys, but would, IMHO, dump him in a minute for Jack if Jack gave her that option.
And I don't bash Gwen every time she comes on screen - I actually enjoy parts of her storyline. I just wish they'd write her so that her vows with Rhys actually meant something to her.
Thats what makes her so unlikable and annoying! She married Rhys out of need and defeat when she couldn't pursue Jack any more but it seems like she just plain uses Rhys for convienence, she doesn't seem to love him as much as she claims to and seems to fake her way through their relationship. Not to mention the other serious flaws such as being overly self righcheous(spelled wrong) and just annoying in general its aslo rather tiring that 98% of the storylines and screentime revolves around her.
People fear what they don't understand.Thats why homophobes are so scared of gay people.
I don't think I'd mind Gwen so much if we didn't have better female characters, like Tosh and (especially!) Martha, to compare her to. Martha was an excellent match for Jack and I wouldn't have minded them hooking up (at least for a while). But when you put Gwen next to Martha -- it's ridiculous.
Frankly I'm insulted at the notion that I should identify with someone so thoughtless. I identify far more with the show's brainy introverts (Tosh and Ianto), the brooding older figure (Jack) and even the dysfunctional-but-honest sleezeball (Owen) than with the team's lying airhead.
The problem with Gwen is "Screenwriting 101" -- she's one of those POV characters that series put in because they think the audience is too stupid to "get it." She's like Dr. Watson, who has to stand around blubbering while Holmes explains everything. She's also like the traditional Doctor Who Companions -- there's an assumption that the audience couldn't identify with an "alien" and so had to have a "lowest common denominator" so they wouldn't lose the 12 year olds. But at this point even the 12 year olds don't need that kind of hand-holding. Viewers are a lot more knowing than they were in 1890 or even 1972. But lazy writers (and I'm pointing the finger at RTD) still dump these characters into shows because that's the way it's always been done, especially in sci-fi. In the pilot of "Torchwood" there's no reason in hell for Gwen to, out of the blue, be invited to be a member of the team. She has no training, no special knowledge, and no skills -- not even "people skills"! She's there to be the "eyes" of the audience. Unfortunately, much of the audience hates her! When that happens it's a major problem. I truly believe that if the show wasn't "groundbreaking" in other ways (i.e., the sexuality of Captain Jack) it never would have gone beyond the pilot stage because without Jack and that hook it has no reason to exist. And I'm saying that as a fan! (I'll add that I'm not an Ianto/Jack fan or ship or whatever it is -- I think he belongs with Captain John and their adventures AWAY from boring Cardiff and all the Rift nonsense would improve the show 100%!)
It is formulaic and outdated. I think that because Torchwood is a Doctor Who spinoff there was a sense that it needed to follow some of the Who standard format. You know, the whole ordinary-person-caught-up-in-extraordinary-circumstances thing.
The problem was that Torchwood didn't need that. Jack was the only "paranormal"member of the team, so the "human" perspective was still available through Ianto, Owen and Tosh. Again, I think that RTD was hoping to duplicate the Doctor/Rose dynamic. But it failed on several levels.
For starters, pairing Jack with a woman essentially negates his vaunted "omnisexual" coolness factor. If he were ever to find one true love with a woman then he would effectively become "straight". Jack and Ianto were not originally a planned major pairing, and indeed options for killing Ianto off were floated several times supposedly. But to the complete astonishment of a lot of people working Torchwood, what started out as a few instances of slashy flirting provded hugely popular with audiences.
The second problem was the way Gwen was written. She comes across as someone who is outrageously lucky, yet is always greedy for more. There was no good reason for Jack bringing her into Torchwood. She was a beat cop, not a detective and didn't even have any firearms experience. She's not at all technical nor does she have any other remarkable skills. Yet Jack brings this entry-level gal into Torchwood, based purely on a whim and perhaps the fact that she managed to partially shaked off the retcon he gave her.
Once she's in Torchwood Gwen becomes like a kid in a toy store screaming for her parents to buy more toys. She has a slavishly devoted boyfriend but she clearly wants a piece of Jack, and she actually has a torrid affair with Owen. She is demanding, lectures people who are smarter than her and often puts other people in danger whenever she disagrees with something she's been told.
So I think that in audience identification she comes up short. Fangirls see her a pretty girl who gets what she wants and is still never happy about it. Gay fanboys don't see the point of her and Jack, especially when he has better chemistry with Ianto and we've been waiting too long for gay characters on sci-fi shows as it is. Straight fanboys probably don't care who she shags so long as her knickers get pulled periodically.
This is why I loved the episodes where they brought in Martha. An experienced companion of the Doctor now working for UNIT, she just oozed competence. So there was none of this clueless-waif-trying-to-provide-audience-perspective-on-weird-happenings nonsense. Martha had a better personal dynamic with everyone else (I loved her conversation with Ianto about Jack).
Somehow, during her tenure on Doctor Who Martha developed into the kind of competent person you'd expect working for some government anti-alien organization (although I suppose it helps that she's also a physician). In contrast Gwen still comes across as a random adrenaline junkie who still barely knows what she's doing and mostly gets by with luck and the support of her teammates.
They totally wanted to replicate the Doctor Who/Rose chemistry! Unfortunately, you can't "write" chemistry -- it either happens or it doesn't. In this case, it doesn't and that throws off the entire dynamic of the show. We tune in to see Captain Jack and end up watching "The Adventures of Gwen, Clueless Welsh Girl Guide!" And I don't want to watch that show. I was thrilled when they hinted that Martha would be joining Torchwood (at the end of the big DW story about the Daleks). Alas, it didn't happen! My fear is that at the end of this short "super season" the "last man standing" will be... Gwen. Can you say "jump the shark"?
One thing that I consider as a standout difference between the Doctor/Rose and Jack/Gwen is that the latter was rather more flagrantly contrived.
When they rebooted Doctor Who the initial chemistry between the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose was not at all romantic. It was very much more a camaraderie of two people having fun adventuring, one of whom just happened to be a time-traveling, hyper-intelligent alien and the other a cute London chav.Of course this made some sense. Orthodox Whovian's have a near-religious obsession with the Doctor's chastity and any early romance would have been mega-controversial.
Developing the chemistry on a romantic level took more time and it really wasn't until after David Tennant took over as the Doctor that romantic tension began to filter in over the course of the second series. But again, this took some time to develop, even though the Tenth Doctor is strikingly handsome. So fans had some time to build up acceptance, and eventually enthusiasm for the idea.
But on Torchwood the attempt was much more heavy-handed. Gwen was dropped in on the very first episode as a prospective love interest for Jack. The writers were very unsubtle in trying to automatically inject the kind of chemistry that had taken a couple of series and two different Doctors to create on Doctor Who. Unfortunately that made it seem very fake. Because while Jack definitely comes across as the kind of guy that will shag at first sight, he doesn't seem like one who falls in love at first sight.
Which leaves me wondering if that is part of the fangirl rebellion against Gwen and in favor of Ianto. Gwen seems almost over-privileged. She's dropped into the midst of Torchwood and it seems like the whole thing is hers.
Ianto, in contrast, was sort of the underdog. The early subject of Jack's flirtatious interest he didn't seem like much more than decorative background. In series one he and Jack don't actually even kiss onscreen until the very last episode. But in series two his relationship with Jack develops (possibly fuelled by untold gigabytes of online slashfic, photo-manipulations and YouTube clips). The underdog comes out from behind and becomes increasingly Jack's primary romantic interest. He's practically Cinderella, doing all the chore, while Gwen is a wicked stepsister who thinks everything should be her's by right.
This left me wondering if perhaps this was linked to something in fangirl psychology. Like maybe they disliked Gwen's extreme entitlement and were rooting for Ianto to win the prize. As I've said a lot of times, Gwen is like the most popular girl in school who everyone secretly hates but doesn't dare say so. She seems like things are just handed to her by everyone around her. Such characters are usually the villainesses of chick flicks and romance novels, not the heroines.
That's my theory anyway. It may be utter toss, but make of it what you will.
Woooo! Can't wait.
Woooo!
Can't wait.
:)
Too much Gwen. The BBCA Torchwood website is an Ode to Gwen.
Why can't it be July already? The Jack/Ianto promo pics that showed up on Gay Times and Attitude in the last couple days are very nice, I'll hold on to that to keep my mind away from Saint Gwen :)
I really love Torchwood more than it's good for me, considering how many things I hate about it.
crazy stuff...
i like that trailer better than the first one. more intense. looks to be an interesting, yet a bit spooky season. :-P
July
Is it July yet!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excellent Interview
http://www.zinio.com/reader.jsp?issue=416082892&o=int&p=36&zoom=1&x=0&y=80
This is with London's Gay Times and is adorable AND insightful. Bring it on!!!
She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain~ Louisa May Alcott
Torchwood 3: Wonder if
Torchwood 3: Wonder if you guys have seen this? (yeah i'm a bit out of breath myself...)
I can't seem to post bigger picture?? Anyway you can see it here: http://superunderwearperverts.blogspot.com/2009/05/true-romance_28.html
found this one too..
Attitude
AWESOME PIC!
JULY JULY WHY CANT IT BE JULY YET???????????
SERIOUSLY THIS LOOKS AWESOME!!!!!!!!
People fear what they don't understand.Thats why homophobes are so scared of gay people.
Gay Times
Each Season Torchwood has about 5 good episodes
so hopefully, this whole season will be good! :)
I wish people cut out the random and arbitrary Gwen hate, though. Reeks of misogyny.
What is misogynistic about
so hopefully, this whole season will be good! :)
I wish people cut out the random and arbitrary Gwen hate, though. Reeks of misogyny.
Disliking a poorly acted and poorly written character...I disliked owen just as much and was glad when he left.
I don't think I would mention "poor acting"
I didnt say he could act either
As its clear he is pretty awful too, I was just saying that just because people dont like gwen does not mean that they are misogynistic.
The acting in Torchwood is pretty bad all round but I will still watch it hoping that atleast a few of the episodes will be ok.
completely agree Herald...
If this is going to be another long season of non-stop idiotic Gwen bashing I will skip reading these blog comments. Some of us just want to watch the damn show.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
Thanks
And it's not that Gwen doesn't have her flaws. She's definitely the most "human" of all the Torchwood characters. It's just when recappers and posters have to make a kneejerk "EW, GWEN SUCKS" comment every time she enters a scene, it gets damn tiresome damn quickly. It's also very unimaginitive.
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I think the way Gwen is written is more than just a little misogynistic, the character is completely defined by the men around her. It's all she's about, how they see her, how much they want her. I dont think there is anything random or arbitrary about my dislike of her character. It's a pity because some times I really like her, there are very little moments in a few of the episodes when I find her truly likable, but it always lasts too little.
there's also the more shallow, though still not random or arbitrary, issue of being told constantly that we should like her, being told and very rarely shown that she's perfect. They show us her flaws, but they told us they are not flaws in her case, because she's Gwen and she's got a big heart and she's always right about everything, even when we are being shown she got it wrong.
It's lucky you can enjoy her character, because TW is mostly about her anyway. I wish I wasn't annoyed and sometimes offended by her characterisation, I'd be a happier fangirl.
I can give very detailed reasons...
I can give very detailed reasons why I hate Gwen. It's not at all vague or knee-jerk or automatic.
She's touted as the "heart" of the team but she's actually a raging selfish b!tch. She's mistreated her adorable and devoted boyfriend/husband. She insists on acting as if she were in charge even though in fact she has the least experience in virtually all aspects of Torchwood's operations. She has a tendency to expect everyone around her to do what she wants and gets very pissy if they don't.
That's just the summary. I could go on at great length. Other people have in various venues as well. One particularly fun one I once read detailed all the times she put herself and/or others in danger by refusing to listent to anyone else.
This is Gwen. I think she was meant to be the Rose Tyler of Torchwood but they fell rather short on the execution phase. But she's definitely no Rose, and certainly no Martha (who I prefer even to Rose). And poor under-utilized Tosh. So much potential, so little screentime because everything needs to revolve around Gwen.
Sarah puts it exactly right. Gwen has heaping piles of flaws, but we're not supposed to acknowledge them as flaws because she's Gwen and she's wonderful. So even when she's, I dunno:
1) Throwing metal tools at alien object landing sites, thus unleashing death on multiple people.
2) Aiding and abetting former(ly deceased) Torchwood agent Suzie despite knowing that she was insane and a serial killer, thus putting herself and others at risk.
3) Cheating on her devoted boyfriend with a known date rapist from work.
4) Retconning her boyfriend proactively before confessing that she's cheating because she's hoping for forgiveness but definitely doesn't want him to remember.
5) Endangering the world to ressurect slain boyfriend because she feels guilty.
6) Incompetently failing to avoid being kissed/poisoned by time-traveling sociopath despite having been warned he would attempt to do so.
7) Using her engagement as a way to guilt trip Jack. "No other man will have me." (Because most men are smarter Gwen)
8) Blasting poor decent officer Andy for not coming to her wedding so that she could rub it in his face that she was marrying someone else (and doing so while he's trying to get her input on child disappearance case).
9) Snidely dismissing the notion that Andy could possibly understand a piece of technology she got from Ianto at Torchwood, even though it was only a GPS (thus implying that she didn't understand it herself). Belittling Andy seems like one of Gwen's favorite passtimes. He might feel better about Rhys getting her rather than him if he knew that she cheated on Rhys sexually with Owen and continues to do so emotionally with Jack.
10) Dragging the mother of said missing child from #8 to see him, now greatly aged and mutilated, simply because she believes that because she herself is insatiably curious and will never accept not knowing the truth, everyone else should likewise see it, no matter how horrible.
Those are just the ones off the top of my head!
On a good day Gwen just looks incompetent. On a bad one she looks like a b!tch. Not clear if the writers just hate Eve Myles or what. All I know was that I was praying that she would die in mid-Series Two so that she could be replaced by Martha. I was even willing to fudge and let Jack, Ianto and Martha be a threesome. Just so long as it got rid of Gwen.
Sadly, my dreams were not fulfilled...
Could not agree more.
Could not agree more. If Ianto were as "poorly written" as people say Gwen is, I don't believe for one second that people here would be rooting for Jack to be with Gwen instead. It's not an issue of writing. It's an issue of the gay audience not wanting a male character to choose a female lover over a male one. Jack is omnisexual, not gay. And further, though Ianto seems smitten with him, he seems amused by Ianto at the most. There is no evidence on the show to suggest he's in love with him. There's much more to suggest he considers him a fling.
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her. She's one of the few people, male or female, who flat-out turns him down, and I think that intrigues him.
Either way, I am very uncomfortable with the amount of ire people have for Gwen here. I can't quite imagine people being quite so nasty if Gwen were another man. And Ianto were a woman and Gwen were a man in that scenario, everyone would be clamoring for Jack to be with Gwen and tearing apart Ianto, I guarantee it.
--
Rob
http://www.robwillreview.com
I can honestly say
That if Jack were to fall in love with a woman and have kids and live happy ever after I wouldnt mind one jot. It is Gwen that I do not like, not the fact she is a woman.
Infact if they introduced another woman as his love interest then I would be fine about it, the fact that a program has a possible homosexual storyline is not why I watch TV
I think Jack is fond of Ianto and possibly doesnt want it to develope into more than that as Ianto will age and die and Jack will not.
?
she flat-out turned him down? You mean that's what she was doing in the "nobody else would have me" scene in KKBB? or in Meat when she's kissing Rhys and looking at him? or in Something Borrowed when she almost snogs fake!Jack when she's about to get married with Rhys?
But...
...in the end, she does emphatically, in Something Borrowed, turn Jack down. She may flirt with him. She make go dangerously close to crossing the line. But she hasn't.
--
Rob
http://www.robwillreview.com
Jack, Gwen, Ianto
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her.
Hee hee! He can't have her? Please. If he ever gave any sort of serious sign that he wanted to be with her, she'd be on her back in a blink of an eye, even now when she's "happily" married. But he never has - instead, how many times have we seen Jack remind her of Rhys or send her on her way home or literally hand her over to Rhys?
Do I think there's some attraction there on Jack's part? Sure. Do I think he loves his whole team in one way or another? Absolutely. Does that mean he wants a relationship or even just to sleep with her? Nope. I don't fall into the camp of people who think that just because Jack is omnisexual, that means he can't love Ianto (or any of his other previous partners), be in a relationship or make it through the day without sleeping with everyone in sight. However, I do think he flirts and uses her feelings for him as a way to manipulate her.
My dislike for the Gwen character has absolutely nothing to do with wanting her far away from Jack and Jack/Ianto. I like J/I together, but I'm hardly a crazy fangirl about it. As others have mentioned, she has done despicable things and yet we're supposed to think of her as the "heart" of the team. She has no discernible skill or talent that makes her useful to Torchwood, yet she acts like and is treated as a leader. Further, I find the focus on her character to be annoying. It's easy to forget sometimes, especially in early episodes, that this show was designed as a spin-off starring JB. I don't need someone to be the "eyes" of the audience or whatever they tried to pass her off as. I would prefer a true ensemble of supporting characters, with the focus on the actual star, thank you.
What Jack sees in Gwen
Personally, I don't think Jack's in love with Gwen either. I think he wants her because he can't have her. She's one of the few people, male or female, who flat-out turns him down, and I think that intrigues him.
--
Rob
http://www.robwillreview.com
When has Gwen turned Jack down? Indeed, if anything she has radiated "I'm available" to him since day one. She even went so far as to use her engagement to Rhys as a way to guilt trip him, that great "No other man will have me." line that was so laden with open suggestion.
My personal theory has been that what's really at issue is that Jack was initially attracted to Gwen's ordinariness. When he first met her she was very a pushy, but plucky, average girl living in the "normal" world.
What's happened since is problematic for Jack. He can't have her without destroying what interested him in the first place. This is why he's always on her case about maintaining her "normal life" outside of Torchwood. Rather than encourage her to sever her external attachments and commit herself wholly to Torchwood, and thus to him, he insists she try to hold on to her normal life.
I've observed that Jack gets noticeably less pleasant towards Gwen whenever she starts acting all "Torchwood" and stops with the ordinary gal routine. I think he doesn't like that because when she does it she ceases to be attractive to him.
So Jack is stuck in that regard. Gwen lost her wide-eyed wonder a lot faster than Rose did and Jack knows that if he pulled her entirely out of the everyday world (by getting her to ditch Rhys for example) she would become someone other than the plucky young cop who amused him by tracking Torchwood down back in the beginning.
This is of interest about Jack's relationships with women in general. He seems to favor men in his action-oriented lifestyle, while preferring women when he's trying to get away from it. Appearances suggest that he prefers more action-oriented men (Captain John, the real Captain Jack, Ianto...) while with women he likes them to be a little more ordinary. For example Estelle, whom he said he loved, but didn't stay with or come back to during WWII. His mystery wife, from the photograph, is another case. Just the fact that they got married implies a traditionalism in her that we don't generally see in Jack himself. And of course Gwen, whom he loves to show off to, but doesn't seem to like it when she starts showing off herself.
Jack did, and perhaps still does, love Rose. But she never really lost the wide-eyed wonder. Gwen started to become very serious and darker pretty quickly. Jack knows that taking her on as a partner would probably change her even more, and the whole point was that he liked who she was in the beginning, not who she might turn into if pulled completely from the real world.
I dont know why
we have to wait in Britian so long to see it!
I do hope gwen gets written out soon but it seems unlikely.
You know
it looks like that
I can't wholly agree that she is a voice of moderation, but I won't go into that again :) But I agree they're making it look like she's the leader of Torchwood, and it's not just that one picture. If you look at BBCA and the BBC official website, it's really unbalanced and she has more screentime in the trailer than Jack.
So much for Torchwood being his show!
gwen
OMG!
Looks good, but what I'm most excited for is
Peter Capaldi! \o/
(a.k.a. Malcolm Tucker)
YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!
I soooooooooooooo can't wait for it in the UK. I have been waiting ages for a new season of torchwood and my fix of the loveable and cheeky jack/john (cos theyre both loveable and oh so cheeky!). BTW the whole only 5/6 episodes of doctor who with like months in between each episode is verrrrrrae annoyin'.
My tounge would catch your tounge...were the world mine :-)
My problem with Gwen
is summed up in this picture:
Gwen has just reassured Rhys that he is the one she wants, the one she loves. Then, while she kisses Rhys, she locks eyes with Jack and gives him an "I'd much rather be kissing you" gaze. SO not cool.
To be fair
I completely disagree.
Yes but if she had done
The need to move the story along
Yes but
That is what she is there for, just like the reasoning behind all the characters actions are to move the story on.
I dont like Gwen as I think its poor role, but her actions make sense overall.
Human behaviour is just as red in tooth and claw as the rest of nature and its interesting from that view to see how the relationships pan out as even good people do bad things sometimes.
Would I like a friend to date a Gwen in RL? No of course not, no one wants there mates to be cheated on but we dont watch TV shows to get a rose coloured view of the world.
flaws
We all have them, and fictional characters with flaws might be interesting unless we are constantly being told that their flaws aren't flaws. That everyone else's flaws are flaws, but not this one character's, who's perfect and it's always right. That grates, even more so when it happens again and again and...
Confessing her infidelity and then retconning Rhys was a low, very human thing to do, a great scene too, but Gwen never has to pay for her missteps, never has to face consequences and never gets knocked down her very high horse -not until she was pushed a little in Adrift.
But even if flaws might make a character interesting, doesn't mean they'll make them likable to everyone, the Holier-than-Thou's ones will never be among my favorites.
Yes, human beings are complex
Complexity is one thing
dishonesty is another. Jack has never (to our knowledge) stood up in front of family and friends and pledged eternal love and devotion to anyone - he is free to be his omnisexual lusty self. Gwen married Rhys, but would, IMHO, dump him in a minute for Jack if Jack gave her that option.
And I don't bash Gwen every time she comes on screen - I actually enjoy parts of her storyline. I just wish they'd write her so that her vows with Rhys actually meant something to her.
Exactly
Thats what makes her so unlikable and annoying! She married Rhys out of need and defeat when she couldn't pursue Jack any more but it seems like she just plain uses Rhys for convienence, she doesn't seem to love him as much as she claims to and seems to fake her way through their relationship. Not to mention the other serious flaws such as being overly self righcheous(spelled wrong) and just annoying in general its aslo rather tiring that 98% of the storylines and screentime revolves around her.
People fear what they don't understand.Thats why homophobes are so scared of gay people.
I don't think I'd mind Gwen
OMG
me, me, me, Gwen timeHas an "audience ID figure" ever repelled so many?
*FLAIL*
I...
*cries in happiness*
Thank you for this early birthday gift.
Can it be July now?
Torchwood in the UK?
When will it air in the UK??
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R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P.
The problem with Gwen is
Audience identification
It is formulaic and outdated. I think that because Torchwood is a Doctor Who spinoff there was a sense that it needed to follow some of the Who standard format. You know, the whole ordinary-person-caught-up-in-extraordinary-circumstances thing.
The problem was that Torchwood didn't need that. Jack was the only "paranormal"member of the team, so the "human" perspective was still available through Ianto, Owen and Tosh. Again, I think that RTD was hoping to duplicate the Doctor/Rose dynamic. But it failed on several levels.
For starters, pairing Jack with a woman essentially negates his vaunted "omnisexual" coolness factor. If he were ever to find one true love with a woman then he would effectively become "straight". Jack and Ianto were not originally a planned major pairing, and indeed options for killing Ianto off were floated several times supposedly. But to the complete astonishment of a lot of people working Torchwood, what started out as a few instances of slashy flirting provded hugely popular with audiences.
The second problem was the way Gwen was written. She comes across as someone who is outrageously lucky, yet is always greedy for more. There was no good reason for Jack bringing her into Torchwood. She was a beat cop, not a detective and didn't even have any firearms experience. She's not at all technical nor does she have any other remarkable skills. Yet Jack brings this entry-level gal into Torchwood, based purely on a whim and perhaps the fact that she managed to partially shaked off the retcon he gave her.
Once she's in Torchwood Gwen becomes like a kid in a toy store screaming for her parents to buy more toys. She has a slavishly devoted boyfriend but she clearly wants a piece of Jack, and she actually has a torrid affair with Owen. She is demanding, lectures people who are smarter than her and often puts other people in danger whenever she disagrees with something she's been told.
So I think that in audience identification she comes up short. Fangirls see her a pretty girl who gets what she wants and is still never happy about it. Gay fanboys don't see the point of her and Jack, especially when he has better chemistry with Ianto and we've been waiting too long for gay characters on sci-fi shows as it is. Straight fanboys probably don't care who she shags so long as her knickers get pulled periodically.
This is why I loved the episodes where they brought in Martha. An experienced companion of the Doctor now working for UNIT, she just oozed competence. So there was none of this clueless-waif-trying-to-provide-audience-perspective-on-weird-happenings nonsense. Martha had a better personal dynamic with everyone else (I loved her conversation with Ianto about Jack).
Somehow, during her tenure on Doctor Who Martha developed into the kind of competent person you'd expect working for some government anti-alien organization (although I suppose it helps that she's also a physician). In contrast Gwen still comes across as a random adrenaline junkie who still barely knows what she's doing and mostly gets by with luck and the support of her teammates.
They totally wanted to
At least Rose worked for it
One thing that I consider as a standout difference between the Doctor/Rose and Jack/Gwen is that the latter was rather more flagrantly contrived.
When they rebooted Doctor Who the initial chemistry between the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose was not at all romantic. It was very much more a camaraderie of two people having fun adventuring, one of whom just happened to be a time-traveling, hyper-intelligent alien and the other a cute London chav.Of course this made some sense. Orthodox Whovian's have a near-religious obsession with the Doctor's chastity and any early romance would have been mega-controversial.
Developing the chemistry on a romantic level took more time and it really wasn't until after David Tennant took over as the Doctor that romantic tension began to filter in over the course of the second series. But again, this took some time to develop, even though the Tenth Doctor is strikingly handsome. So fans had some time to build up acceptance, and eventually enthusiasm for the idea.
But on Torchwood the attempt was much more heavy-handed. Gwen was dropped in on the very first episode as a prospective love interest for Jack. The writers were very unsubtle in trying to automatically inject the kind of chemistry that had taken a couple of series and two different Doctors to create on Doctor Who. Unfortunately that made it seem very fake. Because while Jack definitely comes across as the kind of guy that will shag at first sight, he doesn't seem like one who falls in love at first sight.
Which leaves me wondering if that is part of the fangirl rebellion against Gwen and in favor of Ianto. Gwen seems almost over-privileged. She's dropped into the midst of Torchwood and it seems like the whole thing is hers.
Ianto, in contrast, was sort of the underdog. The early subject of Jack's flirtatious interest he didn't seem like much more than decorative background. In series one he and Jack don't actually even kiss onscreen until the very last episode. But in series two his relationship with Jack develops (possibly fuelled by untold gigabytes of online slashfic, photo-manipulations and YouTube clips). The underdog comes out from behind and becomes increasingly Jack's primary romantic interest. He's practically Cinderella, doing all the chore, while Gwen is a wicked stepsister who thinks everything should be her's by right.
This left me wondering if perhaps this was linked to something in fangirl psychology. Like maybe they disliked Gwen's extreme entitlement and were rooting for Ianto to win the prize. As I've said a lot of times, Gwen is like the most popular girl in school who everyone secretly hates but doesn't dare say so. She seems like things are just handed to her by everyone around her. Such characters are usually the villainesses of chick flicks and romance novels, not the heroines.
That's my theory anyway. It may be utter toss, but make of it what you will.