![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well, I rather enjoyed that, particularly the first few minutes when Lisa's personality remained human. They traded on the viewer's apprehension that the Cyber-conditioning was lurking below the surface, which of course it was, the second alarm bell (after Lisa's appearance) being that Lisa had known how to assemble a conversion unit. The way that Lisa's human personality was manipulated by the Cyberman beneath reminded me very much of the final breaths of Lucy Westenra in Dracula; but while Arthur Holmwood is well advised not to kiss Lucy on the lips, Ianto has an inadequate Van Helsing to guide him.
Once Lisa was marching around as a metal-clad evangelist for Cyberconversion, and the Torchwood team were huddling in corners evading her, or not, I felt that the episode was largely marking time. There were a few gratuitous lines of dialogue - the line where Ianto tells Jack that he's the worst monster in the base seemed to push a point too far, and calcified the thematic parallels between the Doctor as he's been portrayed in the last two series of Doctor Who and Jack as he appears in Torchwood which would have been better being left implicit. I hadn't expected the nature of the grisly conclusion to Lisa's afterlife, though, and it was appropriate and right in character terms that Ianto should not be able to pull the trigger. I wouldn't have given him ten minutes, and I don't think Jack and co did either.
I'm sure that Torchwood must recruit people who have been implicated along the course of their investigations in some way, because it's the only reason I can think of for their being such a rag-bag of doubtful competence. Spooks's Harry Pearce would have sent Ianto to Chile at the end of the episode. Jack is forgiving, but then he probably has an incipient god-complex feeding from that of his TARDIS-travelling role model. Do any of the rest of the team, especially Owen, now have questions about Jack's resilience?
I'm inclined to be indulgent to the series so will allow for Ianto somehow transporting Lisa to Cardiff complete with parts for a Cyberconversion unit without his colleagues noticing.
Oddly jarring, but satisfying, to see credit given to Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis in the closing credits; I think this episode would have met with their approval.
EDIT 23:43 and 01:21
Once Lisa was marching around as a metal-clad evangelist for Cyberconversion, and the Torchwood team were huddling in corners evading her, or not, I felt that the episode was largely marking time. There were a few gratuitous lines of dialogue - the line where Ianto tells Jack that he's the worst monster in the base seemed to push a point too far, and calcified the thematic parallels between the Doctor as he's been portrayed in the last two series of Doctor Who and Jack as he appears in Torchwood which would have been better being left implicit. I hadn't expected the nature of the grisly conclusion to Lisa's afterlife, though, and it was appropriate and right in character terms that Ianto should not be able to pull the trigger. I wouldn't have given him ten minutes, and I don't think Jack and co did either.
I'm sure that Torchwood must recruit people who have been implicated along the course of their investigations in some way, because it's the only reason I can think of for their being such a rag-bag of doubtful competence. Spooks's Harry Pearce would have sent Ianto to Chile at the end of the episode. Jack is forgiving, but then he probably has an incipient god-complex feeding from that of his TARDIS-travelling role model. Do any of the rest of the team, especially Owen, now have questions about Jack's resilience?
I'm inclined to be indulgent to the series so will allow for Ianto somehow transporting Lisa to Cardiff complete with parts for a Cyberconversion unit without his colleagues noticing.
Oddly jarring, but satisfying, to see credit given to Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis in the closing credits; I think this episode would have met with their approval.
EDIT 23:43 and 01:21
Tags: