WATCH ALONG | TORCHWOOD | 2x7 | Dead Man Walking
Added 2022-11-17 15:00:09 +0000 UTCA Few Notes:
- Please no spoilers beyond this episode unless you see that later episodes have already been released. In that case, no spoilers beyond those episodes.
- This video is in a watch-along format. This means you'll need your own copy of the episode to watch alongside my reaction. This is in an effort to avoid copyright infringement.
- If you're based in the UK (or using a UK streaming site), here are instructions for how to get your copy to sync with mine.
- The show footage will play for the first 30 seconds with both video and audio. After that, the show footage will be silenced, and the video will be blurred for the remainder of the episode. There is also a count-up timer that begins once the episode has started. These things will hopefully make it easier for you to keep your copy of the episode synced with mine.
- This episode was viewed on HBO Max.
- If you want to know what’s coming up, check out the schedule here.
*****
*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. All rights belong to their respective owners.
Comments
This episode has never worked for me; not only is the plotting hopelessly incoherent (as you point out), but tonally it's all over the place. The weird young girl at the beginning pretty much *has* to be the "Faith" mentioned later, the one who died and was brought back to life -- otherwise that whole opening section means nothing at all and is totally unconnected with the rest of the story. But the episode never bothers to actually tell us so. And the script is full of stuff like that -- Martha's aging is an irrelevant bit of jeopardy which gets reversed at the end with absolutely no consequences for the character. It's just a "cool" sci-fi plot element being thrown in for its own sake, with no connection to the main story. It took a couple of viewings for me to catch it, but when Owen is possessed, the line he repeatedly growls is "Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill khabaal!" Anyone who's read Stephen Donaldson's "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" fantasy novels will immediately recognise this phrase. I suppose the intention was just some sort of in-joke (like Gwen's "I have a bad feeling about this"), and it's hardly going to bother the vast majority of viewers. But to those who've read Donaldson it's somewhat crass and distracting, since in the original it's an important, powerful invocation of law used by the good guys, and its misuse here for no good reason is another mark against the episode for me.
Steven Cooper
2022-11-17 23:38:16 +0000 UTC
