Yes, a pointless, fairly nonsensical episode. They seem to have drawn up
a list of the most creepy, eerie imagery & half-formed concepts they
could come up with, and then just sort of thrown them all on the screen
in the least effective way possible. I know this is a ghost story and
isn't really supposed to make actual scientific sense, but when your
main method of trying to "explain" what's going on is to have Jack just
out of nowhere declare that the reason images of people who were on the
film before appear to be "missing" now is that they somehow came to life
and stepped off the screen, or that the way to stop them is to film them
then expose the film to light which will make them disappear, while the
rest cast go "Of course, that makes perfect sense". rather than "and
just where the hell are you coming up with this crap?", that's just a
writer who can't be bothered to make any effort to make this ep. even
seem like it makes sense.
The first time I saw this ep. something about the scene where Torchwood
were screening the film in the hub really bugged me, but it's only now I
think I really understand the reason for it. Jack's watching as they're
running the film clips of all the circus people, when he suddenly sits
up with a start & tells Tosh (who *of course* is the AV geek running the
projector) to rewind to a particular scene, then says "The Night
Travelers, so they *were* real!" But the shot he tells Tosh to go back
to is just a group shot of all the same performers they've all been
watching all along (including at least one of the clowns Jack claims to
have known) waving to the camera. Then tonight I realized that a lot of
the commentary about the film doesn't seem to match the actual footage
we see; right after Jack cops to being one of the figures in the film
and trades snark with Owen, Owen looks back to the film and says "Look
at the state of him!" and Gwen says "but I do love his leotard." If you
just listen to the dialog, it sounds unequivicably like they're still
taking about Jack's appearance in the film, but when they cut to the
film it's showing the strongman.
It would seem they filmed the hub scene and the rest of the principle
photography for this ep. before they shot most of the "old" carney
footage, and then they must have been rushed for time or something
because they didn't wind up shooting nearly enough "old" footage to
cover everything the script describes being in the film, it's just the
same four or five shots of the same people over & over again. (Plus the
"old" footage of Jack doesn't match the dialog as he's not wearing a
leotard, so they had to cover that by throwing the footage of the strong
man on the screen at that point instead). It seems the second unit crew
really dropped the ball when it came to suppling the carney footage. Or
else, since *all* the old carney footage seems to be of the same people
we see as the "Night Travelers" in the flashback sequence and who come
off the screen at the end, maybe the original intent was mix this
footage in with genuine old carnival & freak show kinoscope footage, but
in the end they couldn't find any actual footage to use and were stuck
with just the fake stuff of the Night Travelers they'd intended to be
sprinkled in among the genuine circus freaks.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
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