Me and my big mouth

Aaand the latest fun with sleep apnoea: presumably because of the dental splint I'm now wearing to stop me grinding my teeth in my sleep, my mouth keeps falling open. The CPAP mask is attached to my nose; with my mouth open, it doesn't work properly. In fact, it creates an amazing snoring sound loud enough to wake me up, which is how I realised. I've been suspiciously knackered during the last week or two, and I think this is the explanation. I've ordered a chin strap to keep my big mouth shut. :D

(no subject)

3750/4000 words of Red-Handed. Dear story, in the immortal words of Eric the Cavalier: "C'mon! Take your best shot! Put up your dukes, let's see what you've got. Only one of us will survive this fight, and it's not gonna be me!... That's not right."

(no subject)

Draft Zero of Red-Handed at 4000 words. I die nao.

The Trouble With Lisa

Just re-watched the first season Torchwood episode Cyberwoman. What a cracking action piece. Once again, I got rather misty at the tragedy and romance. GDL goes no-holds-barred for the emotion - as with From Out of the Rain, I was struck by how young Ianto is. Gwen and Tosh are both moved by the strength of his loyalty and love; for Jack, though, it's more about whether Ianto will switch his loyalty from Lisa to Jack his new team. Ianto does do this in the end, trying (but failing) to kill Lisa, which is probably why Jack doesn't boot him out - that and the enormous resources he's shown in hiding and protecting Lisa. The story's driven by these clashes between the team; Gwen and Owen provide the only real comedy (Gwen's peep of 'Shit!' still cracks me up).

Two things struck me about the Cyberwoman herself. Firstly, Lisa only goes all robotic and evil when she's separated from Ianto. We get just a glimpse of the Torchwood operative she once was; she tells Dr Tanizaki that Ianto is her boyfriend, and that they decided 'together' to bring him to the Hub to try and save her. The last we see of this, the real Lisa, is when she exclaims, 'I'm alive!' Caroline Chikezie shows us lively human, ruthless Cyberman, and the conflicted being in between - all distinctly, which is not a bad accomplishment given the amount of plastic glued to her.

Which brings me to my second thought: the script makes a point of the way Tanizaki treats Lisa as a thing, and Ianto's revulsion at the way the scientist talks about and touches her. (Lisa's attempt to turn Tanizaki into a fellow machine is poetic justice.) This idea is reflected in Jack's insistence that Lisa is an alien threat which must be destroyed, and Ianto's insisting that she's still human and could be saved.

It's a shame, though, that both costume and direction let this point down: Lisa looks neither like a woman nor a machine, but like a fanboy's wet dream (in the bts thingy, designer Neill Gorton jokes about male fans wanting a pin-up of the 'Cyberbabe') and the camera is not keen to let us forget it - eg the shot where Lisa blocks our view of Tanizaki's demise with her cyberarse. For me, it wasn't the design which sold the Cyberwoman as a threat, but Burn Gorman's acting - in particular, Owen's barely controlled panic at the discovery of the conversion unit!