I had a much longer answer, would have been two posts actually, then LJ ate the original.
but I think he's pretty unequivocally stating that handing over the children was wrong, and that Jack has to deal with the consequences.
But the thing is Jack wasn't the one who ordered the original 12 children to be given to the 456, it doesn't have to be Jack that handed them over. Jack just happens to be the one to do it and he's also end up dealing with the consequences of it. It could easily have been someone else that give the original 12 away.
So if the gay character had to die, it was at least going to matter.
Story wise it didn't matter, only the fans cared Ianto died. To look at homophobia in any story, we have to look at society or more specifically our media. Telling the audience Ianto is gay then killing him off is no difference than telling the audience a character is about to retire/have a wife back home then killing them. The new audience doesn't care or seen it coming a mile away, they don't care, so the death did not matter. Now I've read that having Gwen there with Jack she would have died, if she did, the death still wouldn't have mattered, though perhaps the audience would have felt something for the dead pregnant lady.
And just don't go there with RTD being gay so it's not homophobia, it's the message CoE sends.
And killing a whole building full of people along with Ianto, for good measure
Dood, alien in the building, what are all those non-essential personnel doing in there?
What makes this story so terrible is that in all its ugliness it essentially rings true. I suspect if something like this were to happen here, it would go down exactly like that.
The whole CoE happened because the Prime Minister, after reading the report on the 456 from 40 years ago thought "yes, I can give away 12 children for something in return." Then tried to bury the fact that he knows, because there are no reasons to believe the aliens did not come back for more children.
Ianto was the one who wanted to save the children, Gwen was going fail saving the children if Jack hadn't pulled the deux ex machina from nothing in the last half hour, the sequence of Jack going "lets defeat the 456" to "the 456 exploded and CGI back into space" was 15 minutes screen time, adding the other scenes cut into it.
In the end? Jack sacrificed Steven to save the adults from the bad decision of giving away more children. That inoculate the children story wasn't going to spin, because the characters and the audience knows completely different things. What the characters knows is aliens arrived on earth, but before that they used their children as mouth pieces. The government claimed they can inoculate the children against the aliens, the government gathered their children together and say the aliens did it.
'Based on the human infant mortality rate a child dies every 3 seconds…the human response to this is to accept and adapt.’ Which I think is one of the most chilling lines, because there is simply no arguing the truth of that, and in a way it makes us all monsters.
I still have trouble with that line, mostly because it's false. If we take the CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html) the infant mortality rate are high for countries who were in political upheaval or are still poor. I haven't calculated if the every 3 secs is true, but the second part is false. With medical advances and groups like Doctors Without Boarders, humanity are trying to help and painting us with a broad brush is just audience manipulation, I should be glad RTD didn't open the can of worms with abortion.
I'm pretty sure I had more, but I'm glad you liked CoE, for me while I can see some of the things RTD was trying to say, but with all the plot devices, plot holes and things that just doesn't make any sense, the whole thing fell apart and left me with a feeling of "he had five hours to tell the story, why isn't it better?" It also left me the feeling of wanting to throw a few criminal psychology text at RTD, but I think it's just me.
no subject
but I think he's pretty unequivocally stating that handing over the children was wrong, and that Jack has to deal with the consequences.
But the thing is Jack wasn't the one who ordered the original 12 children to be given to the 456, it doesn't have to be Jack that handed them over. Jack just happens to be the one to do it and he's also end up dealing with the consequences of it. It could easily have been someone else that give the original 12 away.
So if the gay character had to die, it was at least going to matter.
Story wise it didn't matter, only the fans cared Ianto died. To look at homophobia in any story, we have to look at society or more specifically our media. Telling the audience Ianto is gay then killing him off is no difference than telling the audience a character is about to retire/have a wife back home then killing them. The new audience doesn't care or seen it coming a mile away, they don't care, so the death did not matter. Now I've read that having Gwen there with Jack she would have died, if she did, the death still wouldn't have mattered, though perhaps the audience would have felt something for the dead pregnant lady.
And just don't go there with RTD being gay so it's not homophobia, it's the message CoE sends.
And killing a whole building full of people along with Ianto, for good measure
Dood, alien in the building, what are all those non-essential personnel doing in there?
What makes this story so terrible is that in all its ugliness it essentially rings true. I suspect if something like this were to happen here, it would go down exactly like that.
The whole CoE happened because the Prime Minister, after reading the report on the 456 from 40 years ago thought "yes, I can give away 12 children for something in return." Then tried to bury the fact that he knows, because there are no reasons to believe the aliens did not come back for more children.
Ianto was the one who wanted to save the children, Gwen was going fail saving the children if Jack hadn't pulled the deux ex machina from nothing in the last half hour, the sequence of Jack going "lets defeat the 456" to "the 456 exploded and CGI back into space" was 15 minutes screen time, adding the other scenes cut into it.
In the end? Jack sacrificed Steven to save the adults from the bad decision of giving away more children. That inoculate the children story wasn't going to spin, because the characters and the audience knows completely different things. What the characters knows is aliens arrived on earth, but before that they used their children as mouth pieces. The government claimed they can inoculate the children against the aliens, the government gathered their children together and say the aliens did it.
'Based on the human infant mortality rate a child dies every 3 seconds…the human response to this is to accept and adapt.’ Which I think is one of the most chilling lines, because there is simply no arguing the truth of that, and in a way it makes us all monsters.
I still have trouble with that line, mostly because it's false. If we take the CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html) the infant mortality rate are high for countries who were in political upheaval or are still poor. I haven't calculated if the every 3 secs is true, but the second part is false. With medical advances and groups like Doctors Without Boarders, humanity are trying to help and painting us with a broad brush is just audience manipulation, I should be glad RTD didn't open the can of worms with abortion.
I'm pretty sure I had more, but I'm glad you liked CoE, for me while I can see some of the things RTD was trying to say, but with all the plot devices, plot holes and things that just doesn't make any sense, the whole thing fell apart and left me with a feeling of "he had five hours to tell the story, why isn't it better?" It also left me the feeling of wanting to throw a few criminal psychology text at RTD, but I think it's just me.