Blog: Articles filed under review

Major spoilers ahead.

Torchwood Day Two was even better than Day One, and so far Day Three has topped both of those combined. Davies successfully manages to raise the stakes in each successive episode, which can only mean a massive climax on Friday night. I can’t wait!

Day Two was definitely Gwen and Ianto’s moment to shine. Jack blew up at the end of Day One, so with him (temporarily) out of the picture, Gwen and Ianto are on their own and on the run. Gwen and her husband, Rhys, stowaway on a potato truck on its way to London. There, they meet up with Lois Habiba, a new girl in the Home Office who’s starting to wonder for which side she’s working. With a little help from her, they go off to rescue Captain Jack, only to find that he’s been imprisoned in a block of concrete.

Cue Ianto! He decides to steal the entire concrete cell with some heavy machinery conveniently left behind by the people who poured the concrete. Oh, and Gwen blows up the concrete mixer to cover their escape. They toss the concrete block off a cliff, and Jack emerges … naked, of course.

We get to see Ianto and Gwen out of their element; Gwen in particular steps up and becomes an action hero. I loved every moment of it. And we learn more about the nature of the 456—such as their atmospheric gas requirements, how romantic—but not much about what they want. The scientist—I forget his name—supervising the construction of the atmospheric tank for the 456 is very creepy; he has a very amoral attitude toward this whole situation and is more excited by the prospect of these aliens coming than the implications of their arrival for Earth and its children. We learn more about these implications in …

… Day Three. In which Gwen uses her knowledge from her days as a police officer to teach Ianto, Jack, and Rhys how to steal. In addition to stealing a nice car, Jack, who evidently feels that track pants are not for him, steals clothes identical to his trademark clothing (or maybe he has secret clothing caches hidden around London?). I love the idea that by forcing Torchwood underground, the Home Office has forced them to become criminals as well. The moment where Jack walks back into their comfy warehouse digs wearing his comfy digs was poignant: as he said it, he’s back. And it’s time to kick some ass.

Frobisher discovers that Jack has a daughter and grandchild and orders them brought in. This continues to emphasize the idea that he’s the villain, but it soon becomes clear he’s just as uncomfortable in what he’s doing as his subordinate, Lois, who continues to help the Torchwood team. Eventually we discover that Frobisher and Jack share complicity in whatever happened in 1965, the first time the 456 visited Earth.

This appearance of the 456 was sublime. The moment where we get to stare into the tank and see just the slightest hint of something in the fog was like a scene from a good suspense—not horror—film. The somewhat hesitant nature of the 456’s communications only adds to the creepy atmosphere their lack of appearance evokes.

Then there’s the twist at the very end, and you realize everything you believed is now suddenly so much more complicated. The somewhat insane Clem McDonald, a child present for the 1965 appearance of the 456, has been referring to the impending return of “the man,” whom we naturally assume is some sort of alien. But no, it’s Jack, and the moral ambiguity quotient gets ratcheted up….

Monday signalled the beginning of a week of mass mayhem, Scotland versus England humour, and alien threats to the security of our planet. Yes, I‘m talking about the American and Canadian premiere of season 3 of Torchwood, aka Torchwood: Children of the Earth. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, this is a five-part miniseries format change to accompany Torchwood’s move to BBC One.

For those of you in Canada who missed the broadcast or who don’t get Space, you’re in luck! You can watch Torchwood online for up to seven days after it airs on television. Now, the CBC has also been good about making its television shows available online; they‘ve shafted Doctor Who and Torchwood over and over, however, so I’m happy to see them finding a new home on Space. Space will also be showing the Easter Doctor Who special, Planet of the Dead, this Saturday.

I must confess that I‘m not in love with Torchwood the way I’m in love with Doctor Who. I watched the first two seasons sporadically. The only character who really fascinates me is Captain Jack, with his TARDIS-conferred immortality. Beyond that, the storytelling was inconsistent—just like the storytelling on Doctor Who, but without the compelling character of the Doctor to pull you along anyway. And the set for Torchwood looks like a melange of steampunk and James Bond villain base of doom.

That being said, Children of the Earth “Day One” was pretty good. Not awesome, but satisfactory television. Russell T. Davies has worked in his usual humour—you know things are bad when the main characters begin making jokes, and things are worse when they stop making jokes because they’re running for their lives. My favourite line was probably when Gwen has to run back inside the Torchwood complex after talking to a new potential member of Torchwood. He asks, “What’s in there?” and she replies, “A science fiction superbase … seriously.”

People who are unfamiliar with Torchwood in general will miss a lot of the subtext, particularly when it comes to Jack and Ianto’s relationship. There’s a couple of new twists that address Jack’s immortality, one from a characterization point of view that shows why it sucks, and one from a plot point of view that shows why it makes him vulnerable. However, there’s still plenty of a self-contained story to keep viewers interested. When all of the children on Earth (hence the title) just completely stop for several minutes and begin speaking in a weird alien voice … well, that may just be suspicious enough for Torchwood to investigate.

I get the idea that we aren’t supposed to like the people at the Home Office. In addition to the fact that Mr. Frobisher orders government officials to kill Captain Jack (because, you know, that’s going to work…), they’re pretty useless. The Prime Minister is even more useless, refusing to get involved in a threat to international security and instead saying, “You never told me this” and telling Mr. Frobisher to deal with it.

I like how as an organization Torchwood has become a non-secret and fairly run down. Considering Davies killed off its three other main characters last season, it’s a good symbol for what has happened to the show too—always a bit experimental, Torchwood has taken risks that didn’t pay off (and some that did). I’m just glad it’s not on Fox; they would have stuck it in a Friday night time-slot and then cancelled it for poor ratings….

In related news, io9 has plenty of photos of the new Doctor’s look and the redesigned exterior of the TARDIS (no word on what the interior looks like yet). Also a tip about who will be coming back to guest star. Fun fun! Be careful when browsing the site though, since they have some Torchwood-related spoiler articles.

I just finished playing Mass Effect, a Bioware science fiction role-playing game for Xbox 360 (what I played) and now PC. When I bought my Xbox back at Christmas, I knew that Mass Effect was on my short list of Games I Wanted. It had received high praise and excellent reviews; the commercials made it look like the sort of game I would enjoy—I like science fiction, and I like combat as long as the game isn’t all combat. So a couple of weeks ago, I bought Mass Effect at about half price on eBay and began playing.

Many reviewers hailed Mass Effect as the best game of the year. I wouldn’t go that far, but then again, I‘m not a gamer, and my experience in games this year hasn’t been all that much. It is definitely one of the best games I have ever played; however, it does have several weak points that prevent me from enjoying it as much as I would like. I’ll cover those later.

Mass Effect may have the best story of any game this year. As a RPG, you get to play a character and make decisions that affect the story and the character’s development. In Mass Effect, you get to customize your character’s sex, appearance, first name, and military training. My character, Lance Shepard, was a vanguard. I felt this would give me a nice balance—I‘m not good enough at combat to be a soldier, but I didn’t want to fully devote myself to something like a technical or biotic role. Vanguard seemed to be a good “best of both worlds” choice. Of course, I can always play the game again, with a different character class, make different decisions, and see how the outcome goes from there. This is definitely one of Mass Effect’s strengths.

The story is classic science fiction space opera. It does use the old “ancient enemy returns after millennia” plot, and the enemy does happen to be a species of sentient machines (that seems rather popular these days—that isn’t our immersion in technology talking at all…). So it isn’t too original in that respect. However, you have to give Bioware points from the sheer depth of the Mass Effect universe. There are several distinct species, each with a clearly-defined culture, history, strengths, weaknesses … I don’t know how many people worked on the writing and arts for the game, but they went all out. Each of the planets visible has a little description of it, and sometimes a little relevant history. They’ve thought out how the eponymous technology works, what other technologies we have; they named the various weapons and ammunition upgrades … the amount of information packed into that game boggles my mind.

So it comes as no surprise that there will be spin-off novels and sequels—the universe of Mass Effect is too rich to not do that. It would be such a waste. Apparently Bioware’s got Mass Effect 2 in the works, with more planned after that. And I will buy them, as long as they continue to be this good. Because it’s enjoyable. And hopefully, each one will improve on the parts that hindered my enjoyment.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of a tutorial. Not being a very experienced gamer, tutorials are helpful to me. Some people may not need or want them, which is why having optional tutorials is a fair compromise. Mass Effect just throws you into its combat interface, and it took me some time to get used to it. Oh well.

Some portions of the game got very repetitive. Now, I went all out and did almost every possible side assignment. Had I not done that, maybe it wouldn’t have felt so repetitive. I am, of course, talking about the Mako vehicle used to get around the terrain of alien planets. That was boring, and in some cases, rather difficult. There were also some combat situations in which I repeatedly died, causing me to get frustrated, but that isn’t so much bad game design as my own ineptitude.

But please, please, please, Bioware … please release the next game with a way to skip cutscenes. I can stomach the corny dialogue, but the fact of the matter is simple: I do not need to watch the same cutscene several dozen times over when I die and my last save point is before the cutscene. Since you don’t let me save during combat, I cannot save after the cutscene, so I’m forced to watch it over … and over … and over. It also harms the replay value of the game, since I don’t necessarily want to watch a cutscene now that I know what it says.

Apparently the PC version corrects some of the game’s flaws, and hopefully Mass Effect 2 will have smoothed out any other bugs (parts of the physics engine kind of seem weird; I occasionally got stuck in spots I shouldn’t have). Mass Effect is, overall, a great game with a couple of serious flaws (did I mention I’d like to be able to skip cutscenes?). It’s not for everyone. If you dislike RPGs in general, this game isn’t going to change your mind about them—your ears may start to bleed from the almost endless expository dialogue. But if you like RPGs, and if you especially like science fiction, Mass Effect promises you adventure.