Why Russell T. Davies Sucks

The Church of the Orange Sky has expressed severe concern about the increasing non-religious content of this site, particularly in the recent series of "why * sucks" posts, and has threatened disciplinary action if this disturbing trend continues.

Why the hell is Torchwood still on the air?

After expressing sympathy for porn addicts in my last post I thought it was important to balance this with some good old-fashioned grouching about hypersexualized pop culture. I've been considering this for a couple of weeks, since a friend - a religious one, incidentally - complained that he didn't like to go to video rental stores anymore because of the increasingly revealing covers on the front of DVD boxes. I thought this seemed somewhat silly at the time, a hypocritical stance given that the day before that, with other friends, I was sarcastically decrying the increasingly soft porn-ish tendencies of modern television shows for the hoi polloi.

Which brings us to Torchwood. The BBC just started airing the second season, and what with the writers' strike and the Christmas break combining to give me very few original shows to watch in the middle of January, like a sucker I decided to give Russell Davies another chance. Despite the fact that he doesn't hold a candle to some of the better writers on Doctor Who, Davies's resurrection of the oldest surviving science fiction serial in television history apparently bought him enough street cred that he was able to embark on asinine side projects.

Torchwood is the "mature, gritty" version of the revived version of Doctor Who, which unfortunately is Newspeak for "the soft porn version." Most of the basic plot seems to have been developed by undergrads in a college pub. The underlying theme of the show is that everyone is three drinks (or less) away from being bisexual. Sometimes they try to integrate this into the plot: in the second episode, for example, an attractive, college-aged alien-possessed girl becomes a serial nymphomaniac-murderer - well, rapist-murderer, really - who seduces half of the returning cast along with an impressive list of nameless extras, though only the latter end up being killed in the process, thus bringing new meaning to Joss Whedon's quip that killing extras is always fun. Most of the time, though, there's no real significance to the story, thus proving that the standard formula for making a "gritty" version of a show is that you add sexual innuendo and stir. Not that Doctor Who was really in need of more innuendo, between Martha Jones telling the doctor he "should be used to [fitting into] tight spots by now" and an apparent threesome between two chicks and a human-sized cat in Gridlock. (See? I can meet the qualifications of being a wannabe censor for the Parents' Television Council!)

The chief manifestation of Davies's grand vision is lead character Capt. Jack Harkness, a bisexual cross between Angel from, well, Angel, and Shane McCutcheon from The L Word. Harkness was imported from Doctor Who, where he flirted incessantly with the Doctor, the Doctor's chick of the year, and a few robots for good measure. In this year's pilot episode, Harkness flirts with most of his employees, arranges a date with his male secretary, and re-enacts Bond's and Xenia's makeout/fight scene from Goldeneye with yet another male ex-partner, after which they spend most of the episode comparing the size of their "stopwatches." Harkness's self-proclaimed willingess to fuck anything that moves is apparently shared by everyone from his distant home time, since the latter ex-partner similarly expresses sexual interest in men, women, and at one point a poodle. If the show wasn't so earnest about being serious and original, I would think this was supposed to be ironic.

Like Harkness, Torchwood borrows most of its best ideas and actors from Doctor Who, where skilled writers other than Davies have spent much time developing them. That will continue to be true, given the content of the list of upcoming guest stars. This is probably necessary because recycling characters lets Davies save money, after blowing most of the show's budget on useless CGI gimmicks, like a CGI Pterodactyl the team inexplicably keeps as a pet, a magic gauntlet which has grown slightly less impressive since its previous appearances in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Witchblade, ridiculously implausible Godzilla-sized demonic foes, and repeated aerial shots of Harkness perched atop half the skyscrapers in Cardiff.

It's also necesary because of Torchwood's single redeeming feature, which is that it's efficient television for the sexually frustrated sci fi addict. It's basically the investigating team from Angel, in the universe of Doctor Who, operating off of stolen alien technology like some renegade Welsh Stargate team, solving cases lifted from shows like The X-Files if not from Doctor Who itself, with the juvenile hyperssexuality of Lexx (though without the benefit of cruising around in a planet-destroying phallus, I'm sorry to say), all mixed together with the gender-bending intricacies of The L Word (admittedly, not sci fi, but at least there are lots of exposed breasts, which must count for something). Most of the episode plots are also recycled from other shows, and most of the characters are flat, predictable clichés, which means that instead of catching up on a dozen different shows, you can just watch Torchwood and giggle at the writing team's crude efforts at innuendo. It's ten shows for the cost of one!

Unfortunately, even the concept of plagiarism isn't very original in sci fi. Torchwood is proudly continuing the tradition of shows like Threshold, a sadly short-lived American series which crossed The X-Files with Stargate SG-1 and, for its final episode, courageously lifted a script from Stargate, dropped the complexity of government conspiracy, switched alien names where appropriate, and then re-enacted it with different characters. About the only benefit is that when the show reaches the States, Davies can make his first entry in the competition for the prestigious red-light trifecta - three consecutive TV shows to earn a triple-red rating from the Parents Television Council.

I'm grateful that the amount of time I've wasted while supposedly writing my thesis has enabled me to draw comparisons between some of the most hideously badly written TV shows of all time.