I have just been watching Pat Buchanan on the Rachel Maddow Show and literally had to leave the room.

I know its wrong to stereotype one group of people based solely on the actions of a couple of individuals. However, my overriding view of Americans has always been this conservative, loud, I can yell louder than you so I am right, cherry picking and distorting facts and history, combined with the arrogance of people like Bush.

My apologies to my American friends, I know this is a bad stereotype of what it is to be American

There was magnitude 7.8 earthquake here last night. Well not here here, but close enough that I felt it. I haven’t seen the news reports about it yet. I was sitting at the computer when it happened, it was one of those rolling ones, made me feel queasy, like an inner ear problem, rather than the harsh jerking ones. I thought, oh my earthquake, but then wondered if it was just me. I mean my cat slept through the whole thing, so much for animals being hyper-aware or maybe its just my cat is too damn lazy to be bothered waking up. There were no causalities because of the remote area the epicenter was in, which is good.

Earthquakes always give me a buzz, no idea why.

Ok, so I know the only person that is probably going to read this that is a Torchwood fan hasn’t seen season3, so shouldn’t read this because its full of spoilers. The other people that read my journal probably don’t have the faintest clue about the show and couldn’t care less. So really I’m only rambling for my own sake, but hey I suppose that’s what a journal is for.

Ok one last time: There are HUGE Torchwood 3 SPOILERS ahead. If you don’t want to know do not read.

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Season 3 of Torchwood, Children of Earth was dark, horrendously gut wrenching, full of contradictions and consequences. Jack was a complete self bastard and people died because of him and there was no simple happy ending. Basically everything I love about that show. It was, in my humble opinion as just one fan among many the best season ever.

Season 1 was, well, disjointed at best. There were some brilliant episodes and some suck awful ones. I gave it a bit of leeway at the time, it was a new show, a branch off of a pre-watershed show, so different time slot, different audience, it was feeling its way. It didn’t stop me bitching at some of the episodes. I’m a fan, its what we do.

Which leads me nicely to my first topic, what I have deemed fanwankery. I don’t deny anyone has the right to express their opinion about the shows they love, or the shows they hate. And I know from experience online fan communities can be, well fanatical. Now for the record, I read fanfiction, I write fanfiction, I am a geeky fan that gets obsessed about the shows I love, hell I am writing an entry (edit: a long entry) about one now. So I accept a level of hypocrisy here.

I, against my better judgement went and read a lot of the reviews of Children of Earth, especially after Ianto’s death. I wasn’t at all surprised with what I read. Ianto Jones, like Rose Tyler before him, were raised in the fandom to god-like standards. To me this has done both characters a major injustice. They were meant to be, or at least how I saw them were as the common man, the average person swept up in events beyond their imaginings. Now I know average has become some sort of insult to a lot of people, but to me it doesn’t mean that. To me, well most people are average, they fit in that biggest part of the bell curve, they are you and me and my neighbour. That is what makes them fascinating to me, they do not have super intelligence or abilities beyond the norm, they are also not dullards or imbeciles. They face such horrifying experiences but they come back, they don’t run away, ok they might be sick to their stomach, question their place in the world, but they don’t throw it all in and bury their heads in the sand. They are inspirational because they are the average person.

Ok before I continue let me just take moment. I would like it read that everything I write comes with the disclaimer that these things are just my opinion. Everything I write unless I quote from somewhere else, reference someone else is simply my opinion. I am entitled to them, as is everyone else. I don’t expect anyone to change their views to match mine. I would like to hope that sometime something I write might inspire someone to think differently, but I doubt it, and especially about this topic because it is only Torchwood after all. So for t he record all of t his is just my opinion, and although I may not agree with other people’s opinions they still have a right to voice them, even the people written that Ianto isn’t really dead because all this time he’s been a secret TimeLord… hmm… anyway………………

ok back to my ramblings. When they killed off Ianto there were cries to lynch RTD, creation of online petitions, which I have to say is even less effective than paper petitions. People said they would never watch the show again. Which of course is their right, but for me, for my interpretation and love of the show, overlooked an integral part of what made the show so damn good.

(points to the above disclaimer)

I have two shows at this moment in time I am obsessed about. Torchwood because season3 has just been on and I got a 5 day run of it, and Spooks, which is an ongoing show on NZ tv right now. Both shows have something in common for me, even though they are different types of shows, one a fantasy, the other a spy drama. Both have a hard edge to them, a feeling of realism, even in fantasy. With both shows nothing is sacred, nothing is beyond tragedy. A lot of shows I watch the main characters you fall in love with you will know no matter how much jeopardy they are in, they will be there in the end. The sacred still stands, you don’t kill off loved characters. I don’t believe the world works like that, I don’t believe the good always win and there is no price to pay for that. I understand television is about entertainment, not about reality, but I like a touch of reality in my entertainment. And yes I know I’m talking about Torchwood here, it’s not exactly a documentary, but still.

Torchwood has always made it known that people that work for the organisation do not have long life spans. There are sacrifices, and sometimes that’s your life. Of course you would do everything to prevent it, but unless you have your head deep in the sand you wouldn’t sign onto Torchwood without realising an old age pension isn’t in your future. When Owen and Tosh died last season it ripped me apart, I think that had most to do with one line, spoken with such class and emotion from Tosh. It shocked me and I swore at the tv. Sidenote: the fandom didn’t do the public outcry over that, but that I believe had more to do with the super!Ianto fixation and I’m trying (believe it or not) to avoid that discussion.

Ianto’s death in CoE was sad, it didn’t though have the same emotional resonance as the other two for me. There was this sweet moment, the death scene and I moved on. I feared the dreaded use of the reset button, but thankfully it never came. I will miss Ianto, the rather dry asides he sent Jack’s way, I’ll even miss him emo-ing all over the place. At the end of Day4 I thought, they needed it, they needed that loss, the price. And unfortunately it had to be Ianto to pay the price, the cost of Jack’s previous deeds. Jack Harkness is central to Torchwood, events play around him, his decisions, good, bad or indifferent are what drive the show. Ianto’s death was the cost he had to pay for his decision to send those children off in the past, to believe it was a “small price to pay” at the time. Unfortunately for Ianto, those 12 children were just the first instalment of a much larger price.

I know for a lot of my fellow Torchwood friends, Day4 was the height of the pain of Torchwood. The death of Ianto was what they focused on. For me Day5 was the day when the real hurt came. When I struggled with the choices and decisions. I know it is only a tv show, and I know I have a habit of getting far too deep into such things. But that’s me, people tell me I’m too serious, that I think too much and too deeply on things. I’m trying to learn that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it may be different, it may even be odd, but its me.

So now some of the things that got to me about Day5. The fact that the kids were being used to get high, that they were being used to harvest chemicals that the 456 were using as some sort of drugs was an important issue in the story. It was quickly glossed over in the show but it hit me. I think if they had been a necessary biological need, if without the children the 456 couldn’t have survived as a race, or couldn’t reproduce, or something significant, there would have been an out. Yes this is a terrible thing they are asking us, to sacrifice our children, but we did it not only to save the population of earth, but even the 456 didn’t have a choice. But it wasn’t that. We are choosing to sacrifice our children not for some higher cause, we are giving them over to junkies so they can continue to get high. I am not saying that the children’s lives would have been less important if they were given to endure the lives of another race, that the horror wouldn’t have been the same. But I do believe it underscored the selfishness, the “turning a blind eye” of the actions of those in power.

In the beginning of Day5, Gwen says something on camera, about the Doctor, how she often wondered why there were so many times when he didn’t intervene, when he didn’t come to rescue them, and now she knew why (a really bad paraphrase there). Part of that was answered in the Fires of Pompeii story, about fixed points in time. But I also think there is another part, for me, the thing Gwen was talking about. The Doctor isn’t from Earth, he’s not human. He has an affinity to the place, an affection. But he’s also judgemental, almost arrogant about his view of the planet. About halfway through Season3 I wondered where the Doctor was. Ok he wouldn’t come into the show, it wasn’t a crossover, but the crisis seemed so big, seemed like something the Doctor would have noticed.

My personal opinion is we, the people of Earth were responsible for the return of the 456. We tried to pay them off once upon a time. As Gwen (I think it was her) pointed out, we gave into extortion once, why wouldn’t they come back for more. We, ok the UK government, once said, hey take this small group of children, we won’t fight you, we will cover it up and no one will care. And now, no one else cares. So like Ianto was the price Jack had to pay, I see the return of the 456 and their demand for 10% the price of past actions. We showed ourselves to have no honour, why would they expect anything different now.

So here’s the thing. I hurt to one is a hurt to all… one life to save millions. Which one stands true, which one has more weight? Sacrifice 10% of the children of the planet to save all of the people of the planet. Sacrifice one boy to save millions of children. Can we really praise Jack’s action for saving all the children but at the same time condemn the politicians for sacrificing the 10%. In many ways they were doing the same thing. Jack wasn’t the hero in this piece. He made the choice in the 60’s to agree to lead the children off to a future that was unknown, but no one would have believed was an unending paradise. He kept that secret all those years. As families all over the world fought to save their children he made a choice, reluctant that it was, to sacrifice his own grandson.

Again this is part of my love of this show, the tarnished hero. He doesn’t ever come out of things smelling perfect, often he comes out smattered with the shit he was fighting. He made the choice to kill his grandson. It wasn’t a shock, it was hinted at when he first went to visit them, he was willing to experiment on the boy but his daughter forbid it. His daughter knew the type of man Jack was, she knew the good he could do, but at the same time new the danger that he would bring. In many ways there is a mirror to the Doctor, or perhaps its simply because both are written by the same people. You can not fight the evil without being touched by it. When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you – Nietzsche

Did Jack leave because he lost Ianto? Perhaps, at least a part of it was. But he said the names of all he had lost, well, not all, just going back in cannon knowledge, hmm, now I think of it there were even many left off that list. Jack’s life has been one of loss, living forever is not a blessing, it’s an unending curse of watching those you love or care for die and leave, or having to leave them. I think Jack ended up losing himself. He started Torchwood Three in a way to do some good but all he could see was unending despair in his wake. In some ways Jack got broody and went off to sulk and I don’t feel sorry for him. As I have said I don’t see Jack as a hero, a good guy. I see him as someone that does the tough shit without the moral conscious most of us will have, and sometimes that ends up biting him in the arse.

Ok this as I warned is a major rambling rant about something that is simply a television programme meant to entertain and amuse. Jack has left, Torchwood no longer exists. Do I hope there’s another season, fuck yes. Davies is quoted as saying…that although a fourth series is “ready to go”, its airing is entirely dependent on the performance of the third series. And since it is reported that season3 got very good ratings I remain hopeful that I will have another season to get all obsessed over.

I’ve been dealing with my social anxiety issues. Basically I don’t want to be seen, to be real, so posting online sort of goes against that, hence the no posting. But University starts back next week and I have to do it for that, so I thought I’d get into practise by writing here. There’s probably a lot of personal shit I could post but I’m not ready to jump right into that yet, so we’ll start with more intellectual and well frivolous. Oh and I’m also getting addicted to Twitter, god help me.

I’ve become really addicted to Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show. Both of which have free podcasts which I am downloading. They are both American News/Politic Shows. I still pay close attention to New Zealand news, but find myself getting to know a lot about American politics too, which is odd, but I like it. Both shows are probably classed left wing, but hey I’m a lefty tree-hugging socialist liberal, so it’s not like I’m going to be watching Fox. So be warned I’ll probably begin to rant about American politics.

I’m getting really ranty about the Dunedin murder case that’s in the news a lot lately. The guy is defending himself against murder by basically claiming it was the woman’s fault. He admits to killing her, but that it wasn’t really his fault because she was a bitch. You know I’m used to the whole it’s a woman’s fault that she’s raped excuse, its bullshit but you hear it a lot. I have never, I admit heard murder being justified because the woman wasn’t nice, and therefore provoked it. If he gets away with it I am so going to start spitting tacs.

Tomorrow I’ll probably end up writing a big rant about TorchWood so be worried.