So explain to me... (Part one)

[laligin]

In a desperate attempt to improve my Torchwood-writing, and because I have a fanfic100 claim on the entire Torchwood team, not just those members I like/understand/have a million plot ideas for, I'm asking you for help.

Explain to me, please, as politely as you can manage (I'm not here for a fight), exactly why Gwen is a good/useful/likeable character.

Because I don't quite get it. Up to... oh... about Small Worlds (episode 5) I quite liked her. Beyond that...

So, anyway. Gwen fans. I need you to tell me why she's a vital part of the team, and why I'd actually enjoy writing her if I got it right, so I can stop coming up with excuses for her absence in my fic. (Seriously. I don't really give her a starring role (or even a mildly vital role) at any point. I feel guilty.)

Help?

(Also, convince me Jack/Gwen can work.)

Comments

[shadowhwk.livejournal.com]

Hi back! Nah, I haven't been chased off yet.

Hm. I can understand why you thought it was going to be Jack's show, given that he's the cross-over character, the one we already know, etc. It would make sense that he's the one who drives the action, since he's the one we theoretically care about.

But he's not one of us, if you know what I mean? Obviously RTD and the BBC were counting on DW fandom to help carry the show to success, as not all of the things in TW make sense to someone who never saw DW (am I using enough initials? Sorry!), but if you're looking to *build* your viewership, not just have one core group of viewers carry two shows, which could in theory diminish the audience for each, then there has to be something that will draw in people who *don't* know the world too.

And that pretty much means you need an accessible, understandable character. We think, as fans of the universe, that Jack is accessible because we know him, we've seen him in action, but to someone brand new to the franchise, he's another time traveling "alien".

So yes, for someone familiar with the concept of the show, maybe following Owen or Ianto or even Jack himself into work and figuring out what they do day to day based on clues and the character's familiarity with the creatures/gizmos/etc. would work for one of us. Not so much for Joe Average.

Please note, I'm not trying to say that viewers are stupid, but that that's the way TV works. In the 60s, when Star Trek first aired, they could very well have given us Spock as a primary POV character. Instead, they gave us Kirk who, despite being a man from the future, is human, for example. Viewers didn't, then, have to work on figuring out both the world *and* how to relate to the green dude with pointy ears.

Shows that do "throw the viewer in at the deep end" tend not to do very well. And by deep end, *I* mean (to make it clear that I'm not saying this is what you meant), headlong into a world not only full of exciting, actiony things happening, but also with new rules to the world itself. The example I give for this one?

Firefly. I don't know if you watched it or were a fan, but that's a show that was ensemble. There was no introductory character. Viewers were expected to leap into the story and buy into wholesale. Yes, they were introduced to the characters and how they arrived on board, but there was no one character who could learn with them and be guided through this new universe. Even Simon, the most fish-out-of-water character on the ship still grew up in this odd (for us) world and understood rules that we the viewers knew nothing about.

...wow. Spam. But I hope that makes sense.