Gary Russel is better known as the man who novelised the Doctor Who TV movie and made it all OK again, removing arbitrary resurrections, justifying kisses and doing the best possible job with the whole half-human-thing.
With Twilight Streets, he has again the opportunity to right an injustice. Bilis Manger – the best thing ever to happen to Torchwood – creepy, subtle, perfectly embodied the high-menace, low-key threat the show should be facing every week (see Small Worlds and Adam for more of that). One of those bad guys so well drawn, that you actually want him to be more powerful than the heroes. It was all going so well, until this enigma revealed he was actually in league with a vicious piece of CGI buried under Cardiff, probably ever since being rejected by HP Lovecraft. Suddenly, the world was in that convenient sort of peril that can be solved in within minutes, which has worked on Doctor Who since the 60s because it is still, at heart, made for kids; that convenient sort of peril what should nevereverever be used on Torchwood ever again. If your hero runs around the universe in a police box, saving the world with a recorder while wearing a stick of celery, then daft is relative. What’s the point of doing an “adult Doctor Who”, if you’re effectively going to repeat the same situations with a bit more realism, bizzarely making the whole thing more unrealistic? Torchwood is at its best when doing concepts which are at their very core too adult for the kid audience, not just retreading things its parent does as well or better, while upping the violence to justify the timeslot.
It was one of those fan-hating moments I’ve just erased from my mind. The last twenty minutes of End of Days did not happen. No one minute solution to the supposedly, world-threatening special effect. No nineteen minute sequence of sobmusic with Gwen sitting by Jack’s corpse. I’ve wiped it all the way back to when Bilis’ motives were unknown, and potentially terrifying.
His face was the reason the book got bought – that, and two friends who each contributed a pound to the shared embarrassment of buying it in public, so none of us could sneer later on. It would be impossible for Mr Russell to ignore End of Days entirely, as I choose to. Initially he addresses it quite well, by turning Bilis back into the enigma he was in Captain Jack Harkness – straightening his jacket, being unreadable and running circles around the Torchwood Team, smug sods. He’s especially effective when taking nonchronological revenge for things that haven’t happened yet.
What ultimately irritated me about Twilight Streets is far from dealing with my issues, it eventually makes the same mistake – the world’s going to end, the demons that be have chosen Cardiff – but everything will be ok if I pull THAT lever.
It's a good thing when a based-on-a-series novel manages to conjure the atmosphere of a show. But maybe not this show, not all the time. I could hear Owen’s voice in his writing, see Bilis sliding between eras, imagine the Hub as something older and more complex than it is ever allowed to be on the screen and get the full impact of the Torchwood trademark “I went through the archives and pulled up some files” scene by presenting the chaos of nonchronological evidence for us to read on our own. All worthy praise. The flipside of putting me into the TV so completely was when the CG lightshow came at the end, with Mr Russell gloriously charging into the same mistake made by his predecessor, all my anger at Potentially Great Characters Ruined By Apocalyptic Plotlines came rushing back.
Meanwhile, as a subplot, he shoehorns in one of my other least favourite fictional device – the Alternate Future. I’ve always seen this as an author exercise – I wonder what X would do in Y situation? There are more subtle ways to suggest these things about your characters than putting them through scenes which eventually won’t matter.
Now Bilis screwing with Torchwood on the basis of something that might happen strikes me as exactly the type of thing this meddler in time would get up to; I also like the suggestion that the team’s minor abusing of alien tech would escalate. But I don’t buy Future-Torchwood at all, especially not it successfully toppling the governments of the world. The revelation that it was “dark lights” inside the characters instead of the characters themselves makes the whole revenge thing unnecessary for him, and pointless for us as readers.
Thank goodness for the characters then! All are well drawn – while Owen gets nothing to do, as noted above, all his lines are uniquely his. I didn’t notice Tosh, but that’s probably more tellingly consistent with her TV characterisation than anything else. It’s an absolute must-read for fans of Ianto, especially fans of JackandIanto – though the Gwen set is also rewarded with more of those bizarre “sexual tension that’s come out of nowhere since the start of series 2” scenes. Jack and Gwen demonstrate all those tics that make them so unloveable on TV – while also seeming more likeable here than ever before. I’m not sure I’ve ever spent time so willingly in Jack’s company. It’s when they get together the magic really begins – the innuendos, the teasing, all perfectly caught. Suddenly, they seem like a team, instead of an inconsistent set of people who start every episode as friends and end as mortal enemies, before making up in time for next week.
I’ve always thought past-Torchwood a far more interesting concept than the sub-Buffy, sub-CSI, sub-Xfiles, sub-Doctor Who on Contemporary Earth we usually get. Those Victorians, proving psychotic bisexuals have always been their employees of choice. The pair from 1913. So I was also happy to see Torchwood 1940 given a runaround.
Its not that I don't like Torchwood. I have a great deal of affection for it, without the true fanlove which allows me to forgive DW anything eventually, even Grace Holloway. I know what I want from that show, and when it doesn't deliver, I'm happy to scream and pull it to shreds. What I want is what it promised – Doctor Who, but for adults – that is to say, adults, not adolescents. I want Adrift or Out of Time, not a sub-UNIT story of five people preventing an invasion, with a bit more shaggin’ and swearin’.
Final analysis: just like Captain Jack Harkness/End of Days, this is brilliant piece. Just switch your brain off when Bilis starts explaining things, because the mess made at the end is made all the more frustrating by seeing a great tale go to waste for a second time…
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