I thought that last week’s episode of Torchwood was a bit better than the first two, but with this week’s episode, Cyberwoman, the quality plunged again.
The pitch probably went something like this: “We’ll have an attractive young woman wandering around with Cyberman technology covering as little of her body as we can get away with – it’ll be like a Cyberbikini”. Someone must have raised the objections that Cybermen are created by transplanting human brains into ready-made Cyberman bodies and that although we’ve previously seen women who have been turned into Cybermen, none of them has ever had breasts – because these objections were dealt with in a line of dialogue which went something along the lines of “towards the end of the Battle of Canary Wharf the Cybermen completely changed the way they created new Cybermen”. Hardly a well thought out plot point.
No, it’s clear that the point of this episode was the Cyberbikini and all pretence of a logical plot was swept aside in order to get it on screen. And to keep it on screen for a long as possible. Once more I can’t help thinking that when the BBC describe this as an “adult drama”, they actually mean that it’s aimed at teenagers whose idea of a good programme is one full of sex, gore and swearing.
Which brings me to the character of Owen. I suspect that the show’s target audience (the sex-crazed teenagers) are supposed to identify with him as a bit of lad. He’s the kind of bloke that would be a bit of a laugh on a night out.
But let’s not forget that in the first episode he was using alien technology to entice unwilling partners into having sex with him. And in this episode he molests Gwen in a manner which would send any sane woman running to the nearest police station. Not really a very nice bloke at all. Except last week he got so angry when he saw an attempted rape that he tracked the perpetrator and came close to killing him. That all seems a bit inconsistant to me. Or could it be that Owen is just a blank page who can be given whatever personality suits this week’s plot. If that’s true then it’s a sign of a very disjointed production team. They obviously need a better script editor.
See, now I’m in a dilemma. After four episodes, Torchwood really doesn’t seem to be good enough to keep watching. But its associations with Doctor Who mean that I’ll probably carry on watching the whole series. So currently I’m just hoping that it doesn’t get a second season.