Happy Hours

A party weekend celebrating Work Buddy’s 40th birthday. So I’m recovering from too much drink and too little sleep. Only one of which I’m used to.

After the preparation and then the party we’re in recovery mode. And damn the clocks going back one hour as British Summer Time comes to a close!

In the run-up extra pegs were required after the wind tried its damnedest to turn the marquee into a kite, and alternative arrangements had to be made when the meat supplier failed to provide the necessary croc, springbok and roo. But once everything got going it turned into a great night. And nobody toppled over onto the fire pit. Which was a bonus.

Hell, I wasn’t even put out by somebody asking me whether Torchwood was any good. Especially since the query came from H. Everyone should have a friend like H. He’s one of those people who doesn’t seem to have any axes to grind and instead simply gets on and enjoys life.

So when he asked what Torchwood was like, I knew it wasn’t because he wanted to see a rant from the performing monkey. Instead he had missed the opening episodes and, as a fan of the new Doctor Who (which I won’t hold against him), genuinely wanted to know if it was any good.

To cut to the chase and get on with the party, I cited one incident from the second episode to show how staggeringly appalling and utterly juvenile it was. Which even meant not bothering to mention that the plot ‘resonated’ with the second episode of Angel.

To set the scene, there may have been the odd aside about the Torchwood team investigating a meteor that had fallen to Earth. Especially since rather than ploughing into the ground it appeared to have settled gently onto a small mound of earth in what was an incredibly clean and tidy crash site. There were even small floating candles dotted about for mood, although they may have been a cheap way of showing burning debris.

Saying that meant explaining that Team Torchwood walk right up to the rather sizeable lump of rock and chip away at it without bothering with things like hazmat suits. And only after they accidentally crack through the surface, and a purple gas escapes, do they toss gas masks to each other.

Then came a quick mention of how the gas hurried off into town and found a host in the form of a Cardiff slapper who hurried into a nightclub, picked up a callow young youth, who would have had no chance ordinarily, and dragged him into the ladies room for a quick bunk up.

Of course I had to mention the fact that at the point of climax he explodes, even though that wasn’t the worst scene. Nor was the arrival of Torchwood, and the discovery that instead of being spattered all over the walls, ceiling, mirrors and porcelain, all that remains of the kid was an incredibly tidy pile of dust.

This was still all prologue. Because the obvious question they had to ask was, what proof was there that the kid had gone out with such a violent bang?

Luckily for Team Torchwood, the event was captured by a CCTV camera secreted in the ladies room. Unluckily for us, rather than have the club bouncer taking them back to the office and showing them the footage, we were treated to a flashback of the bouncer frantically cracking one off while he watched the couple get it on.

While this kind of thing may appeal to the Doctor Who fans yet to become intimate with female genitalia, we agreed the show couldn’t be more pathetic if it tried. Especially when compared to the scene in the first season episode of Battlestar Galactica where Six offers Baltar relief from testing blood samples only for his 'exercise' to be interrupted by Starbuck. A perfectly judged scene, deftly written and complimented by great acting and directing. Something Torchwood lacked on every count.

But since H hadn’t watched that show either (which I do hold against him), we refilled our glasses and joined the others to talk about something else.