No, you're right, no one should be accusing RTD of homophobia per se, but he's a professional writer, and he needs to take his audience into account. There ARE homophobes in his audience, and his writing - perhaps too subtle or perhaps too riddled with holes, depending on your viewpoint - did not make it clear where people should fall on the issue. Clem being able to "smell" gay, and Gwen and Rhys' tacit approval of his homophobia by saying nothing, for instance (after assuming the role of his parent, for all intents). How are we supposed to take that scene?
And I don't believe Ianto died because he was gay. On the contrary, he died because he was stupid. He and Jack were dumb enough not to use the resources at hand - Lois's knowledge, Torchwood's knowledge, JACK'S DIRECT EXPERIENCE - to better prepare themselves to confront the 456. And having BBC auto-responder e-mails tell me about the tragedy and the necessity of his death to atone for JACK'S sins is insulting. It was bad writing, lazy writing, out of character writing. Pick one. They shoehorned Torchwood into a pre-existing idea that RTD had for an entirely different show.
They also proved, beyond a doubt, that the opening credits of S1 and S2 were a lie (no wonder they skipped them for S3!). Torchwood was not ready. Torchwood had no backup plans, no disaster recovery solution, and for an organization whose job it was to save the world almost every day, you'd think they'd have had something better than "steal credit cards and computers and break into an old warehouse" as their Plan B. The Torchwood method, in RTD's vision, is to throw bodies at the Rift and hope one sticks. And I'm no longer interested in watching a show with that philosophy.
Homophobia, no matter the amount, really doesn't play into it. And it's frustrating that one of the biggest voices to revive my favorite character is clinging so hard to that cause.
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Date: 2010-01-13 10:23 pm (UTC)And I don't believe Ianto died because he was gay. On the contrary, he died because he was stupid. He and Jack were dumb enough not to use the resources at hand - Lois's knowledge, Torchwood's knowledge, JACK'S DIRECT EXPERIENCE - to better prepare themselves to confront the 456. And having BBC auto-responder e-mails tell me about the tragedy and the necessity of his death to atone for JACK'S sins is insulting. It was bad writing, lazy writing, out of character writing. Pick one. They shoehorned Torchwood into a pre-existing idea that RTD had for an entirely different show.
They also proved, beyond a doubt, that the opening credits of S1 and S2 were a lie (no wonder they skipped them for S3!). Torchwood was not ready. Torchwood had no backup plans, no disaster recovery solution, and for an organization whose job it was to save the world almost every day, you'd think they'd have had something better than "steal credit cards and computers and break into an old warehouse" as their Plan B. The Torchwood method, in RTD's vision, is to throw bodies at the Rift and hope one sticks. And I'm no longer interested in watching a show with that philosophy.
Homophobia, no matter the amount, really doesn't play into it. And it's frustrating that one of the biggest voices to revive my favorite character is clinging so hard to that cause.
Thanks for listening :)