Thank you so much for the wonderful write-up. It's amazing how many of your theories are right on the money without having seen the series. The "trade-off" aspect is at the very heart of the vid and it's just so wonderful to see it so succinctly summed up here.
The tree is a very prominent symbol in the show and I'm not sure what it's actually supposed to stand for, although in this vid it was very firmly entrenched in the Tree of Knowledge idea - knowledge, and reason, and technology... all these things become necessary, but they also bring ruin. It doesn't bear too much thinking about.
I'm going to go against the grain a bit and say I really enjoyed Torchwood. (Although perhaps my recollection is coloured by the fact that I most vividly remember the final two episodes, which were great.) Toshiko isn't one of the main characters, but she gets a plot now and again and there was one episodes toward the middle in particular which I found myself relating to. In there she was portrayed as the uptight geeky Asian girl, unloved and unpopular and always overlooked. That really struck a chord with me because well, that was me back in high school. Although in hindsight I think that kind of social treatment hardly ever stemmed from the fact of being Asian as much as it stemmed from the fact that I was uptight and geeky. And then there a whole deviance/rebellion thing went on in that episode, which I also strongly identified with. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, but I liked the way the episode was set up.
And, yes, I think the show is very grim. It's not as depressing as Doctor Who - I think when you dig deep enough there's nothing more depressing than Doctor Who - but where DW masks a lot of the unthinkable with the frivolous and the shiny, TW just lets it all out onto the surface. And I like Jack's haircut much better.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-25 10:56 pm (UTC)The tree is a very prominent symbol in the show and I'm not sure what it's actually supposed to stand for, although in this vid it was very firmly entrenched in the Tree of Knowledge idea - knowledge, and reason, and technology... all these things become necessary, but they also bring ruin. It doesn't bear too much thinking about.
I'm going to go against the grain a bit and say I really enjoyed Torchwood. (Although perhaps my recollection is coloured by the fact that I most vividly remember the final two episodes, which were great.) Toshiko isn't one of the main characters, but she gets a plot now and again and there was one episodes toward the middle in particular which I found myself relating to. In there she was portrayed as the uptight geeky Asian girl, unloved and unpopular and always overlooked. That really struck a chord with me because well, that was me back in high school. Although in hindsight I think that kind of social treatment hardly ever stemmed from the fact of being Asian as much as it stemmed from the fact that I was uptight and geeky. And then there a whole deviance/rebellion thing went on in that episode, which I also strongly identified with. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, but I liked the way the episode was set up.
And, yes, I think the show is very grim. It's not as depressing as Doctor Who - I think when you dig deep enough there's nothing more depressing than Doctor Who - but where DW masks a lot of the unthinkable with the frivolous and the shiny, TW just lets it all out onto the surface. And I like Jack's haircut much better.