more torchwood thoughts
Dec. 4th, 2006 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violaceaMore rambly character type thoughts ... it's bad, you know, that I don't get to watch this show until late on a Sunday evening. I have enough trouble falling asleep on Sunday nights as it is, without having my brain racing a mile a minute. ;)
So, for most of the episode, we're led to believe that Suzie and Gwen are similar personalities - that they serve a similar function in Torchwood. They're the heart of Torchwood, the ones who feel the most human emotions. But, if that is, in fact, true, then that means Gwen is even more fucked that originally thought. Was it the compassion, the feeling, that drove Suzie mad? Did her emotions turn her into a sociopath, or did everyone just mistake Suzie's particular psychosis for compassion?
The thing is, I can see where compassion would be a very dangerous thing to have in Torchwood. Real, one-on-one human compassion, I mean, as opposed to a more overall sense of compassion for the human race. This is why Owen is probably best suited to this job out of all of them - doctors have to be able to function with both compassion and a ruthless practicality. (Owen needs some compassion lessons beat into his head sometimes, true, but go with me here for a second. ;)) Doctors can't get overly emotionally involved with every patient they treat - it would drive them mad. So, most of them develop a clinical detachment that helps them keep their heads above water, while at the same time caring enough about people in general to keep doing what they do. It's a peculiar skill, very difficult ... and probably just as necessary when employed by Torchwood as it is when practicing medicine.
That having been said ... I don't actually think that Suzie and Gwen are all that similar, in the end. Because a woman who had enough thought to install the lockdown commands in the computer was probably never that compassionate about other people to begin with. I think Suzie was probably just good at acting like a normal person. I also don't think the glove relied on compassion, per se, much as the rest of them thought so. I think it relied on will - on personal reasons for wanting the dead to come back to life. Suzie was emotionally invested in the glove, what it meant to her, what she could do with it. The whole process meant something to her as a person, not just as a tool to do her job. Obviously, she was lying about wanting to use it on her father (as she led Gwen to believe), but the fact that she tried to escape with it in the first place meant that the glove meant more to her than the job at Torchwood.
I think, actually, that Tosh is - or was - more similar to Suzie than Gwen. Suzie got caught up in the technology they found, thought it could save the world, thought they could do more with it than just sit on it and catch aliens. Tosh showed signs of those thought processes in "Greeks Bearing Gifts" ... Tosh, however, had the chance to see how negatively these things can effect other people; she wasn't as far gone as Suzie, so she brought herself to a halt.
I wonder if this episode will serve as Gwen's wake-up call. She looked into what she thought might be a mirror - the 'heart' of the Torchwood team, the one with compassion, Owen's lover, someone driven mad by the thing's she's seen - and I wonder how much it scared her. The thing is, while the rest of the Torchwood team does need to learn a little more compassion, Gwen could use a little less. Otherwise, will she go as mad as Suzie?
And now that I've spent far too much time on that this morning ... happy Monday, y'all!
So, for most of the episode, we're led to believe that Suzie and Gwen are similar personalities - that they serve a similar function in Torchwood. They're the heart of Torchwood, the ones who feel the most human emotions. But, if that is, in fact, true, then that means Gwen is even more fucked that originally thought. Was it the compassion, the feeling, that drove Suzie mad? Did her emotions turn her into a sociopath, or did everyone just mistake Suzie's particular psychosis for compassion?
The thing is, I can see where compassion would be a very dangerous thing to have in Torchwood. Real, one-on-one human compassion, I mean, as opposed to a more overall sense of compassion for the human race. This is why Owen is probably best suited to this job out of all of them - doctors have to be able to function with both compassion and a ruthless practicality. (Owen needs some compassion lessons beat into his head sometimes, true, but go with me here for a second. ;)) Doctors can't get overly emotionally involved with every patient they treat - it would drive them mad. So, most of them develop a clinical detachment that helps them keep their heads above water, while at the same time caring enough about people in general to keep doing what they do. It's a peculiar skill, very difficult ... and probably just as necessary when employed by Torchwood as it is when practicing medicine.
That having been said ... I don't actually think that Suzie and Gwen are all that similar, in the end. Because a woman who had enough thought to install the lockdown commands in the computer was probably never that compassionate about other people to begin with. I think Suzie was probably just good at acting like a normal person. I also don't think the glove relied on compassion, per se, much as the rest of them thought so. I think it relied on will - on personal reasons for wanting the dead to come back to life. Suzie was emotionally invested in the glove, what it meant to her, what she could do with it. The whole process meant something to her as a person, not just as a tool to do her job. Obviously, she was lying about wanting to use it on her father (as she led Gwen to believe), but the fact that she tried to escape with it in the first place meant that the glove meant more to her than the job at Torchwood.
I think, actually, that Tosh is - or was - more similar to Suzie than Gwen. Suzie got caught up in the technology they found, thought it could save the world, thought they could do more with it than just sit on it and catch aliens. Tosh showed signs of those thought processes in "Greeks Bearing Gifts" ... Tosh, however, had the chance to see how negatively these things can effect other people; she wasn't as far gone as Suzie, so she brought herself to a halt.
I wonder if this episode will serve as Gwen's wake-up call. She looked into what she thought might be a mirror - the 'heart' of the Torchwood team, the one with compassion, Owen's lover, someone driven mad by the thing's she's seen - and I wonder how much it scared her. The thing is, while the rest of the Torchwood team does need to learn a little more compassion, Gwen could use a little less. Otherwise, will she go as mad as Suzie?
And now that I've spent far too much time on that this morning ... happy Monday, y'all!
