Torchwood season 2 overview

I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed the second season of Torchwood.

There's clearly been a big rethink on the show since its first studenty series. Owen's character has lost his sad short temper, while Tosh has become a bit of a loser. Ianto spent the first few episodes as the wisecracking joker of the team, but that hasn't really lasted.

The swearing and sex has thankfully been toned-down too, although I think that's just so that the show can enjoy a pre-watershed repeat each week. As it is, these scripts appear to have been written as clean, and then had post-watershed content wedged into them, in an easily cutable way. You'll be watching a good, story-related scene, and then that scene will finish. Except that then it'll continue, with the conversation subject suddenly changing, and Ianto and Jack kissing open-mouthed suddenly, for example.

Here's my own pretentious contribution – the high percentage of shaky handheld camerawork this season is so shaky and distracting that I don't think it's even real. No-one handles a camera that badly. If it's a computer-driven editing effect, and the shaking is so consistent that that seems likely, then it's not one that works. Please stop adding it, or buy a tripod.

I'm glad that there actually was a storyline for Gray this season, although it didn't amount to much. The idea (in Exit Wounds) that he hired Hart to do his dirty work without realising he could do it himself, is the same sort of non-objective writing that also saw neither Jack nor Helen realising that they might well dissuade Gwen from her investigation by just telling her about Jonah's compulsive screaming. (in Adrift)

Like its parent show Doctor Who though, Torchwood's strength seems to lie with all its guest writers.

Individual Story Reviews:

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Sleeper
To The Last Man
Meat
Adam
Reset
Dead Man Walking
A Day In The Death
Something Borrowed
From Out Of The Rain
Adrift
Dark Talk (game)
Fragments / Exit Wounds