{"id":1059,"date":"2008-09-05T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2016-05-30T16:09:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T22:09:48","slug":"the-fairies-of-torchwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1059","title":{"rendered":"The Fairies of Torchwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never joined the Doctor Who<\/em> cult, although I had friends who remembered every episode and could debate whether Peter Davison made a better Doctor than William Hartnell.<\/p>\n

At a post-INATS<\/a> dinner, however, a publisher friend said that I had to see Torchwood<\/em><\/a>, a Doctor Who<\/em> spin-off. He compared it to the X-Files<\/span>. Netflix had it, so I ordered Season One (2006).<\/p>\n

We-l-l-l. The X-Files<\/a><\/em> it’s not. Underneath the aliens and “time rifts” and occasional goriness, it’s not as dark\u00a0 \u2014 there is not the sense of hopelessness against greater forces and the personal doubts that pervade the world of agents Scully and Mulder.<\/p>\n

In fact, every time that I see the four main Torchwood operatives running down the street \u2014 they seem to run a lot, for running and frenetic music cover up plot slippages and cheesy special effects — I want to sing along, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But I heartily approved of the episode called “Small Worlds<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Every time I see someone who gets all mushy about fairies, I want to remind them, “The fairies are not your friends, anymore than the coyotes are your friends.” You can interact with them, but under other circumstances they would eat you. They are a different life form, and they are not All About Us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never joined the Doctor Who cult, although I had friends who remembered every episode and could debate whether Peter Davison made a better Doctor than William Hartnell. At a post-INATS dinner, however, a publisher friend said that I had to see Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin-off. He compared it to the X-Files. Netflix had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,37],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fairies","tag-folklore"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-h5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":0},"title":"Fairies, the Dead, and Book-Blogging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December. I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7093,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7093","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":1},"title":"Fairies Infest British Woodland, Control Measures Planned","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"From the BBC: Hundreds of fairy doors have been attached to the bases of trees in Wayford Woods, Crewkerne. It is claimed the doors have been installed by local people so children can \"leave messages for the fairies\". Can something be too twee? Yes, it can. And remember, fairies are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/81365000\/jpg\/_81365588_81365585.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10477,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10477","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":2},"title":"Bejayus, It’s the Eco-Fairies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last of the four-part post about \"the cousins\" (start the series here), I raised the question of what do fairies look like. Here is the man who knows, says the (Irish) Independent: \u201cLooking at fairies on my farm is the same as looking at traffic in Dublin. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"agriculture\"","block_context":{"text":"agriculture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=agriculture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10584,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10584","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":3},"title":"“In Ireland, fairies and demons are almost interchangeable”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This video is worth ten minutes of your time. Again we're in Jeff Kripal territory here. \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11959,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11959","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":4},"title":"Forget Ecotourism\u2014Try Fairytourism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Ecotourism often involves naturalist-guided tours of relatively wild areas, but also visits to small-scale agricultural producers, also called \"agritourism.\" Sometimes this operates in a B&B fashion. See, for example, the state of Vermont's guide. But never mind milking cows and picking berries. Suppose you could offer encounters with the Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"agriculture\"","block_context":{"text":"agriculture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=agriculture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6874","url_meta":{"origin":1059,"position":5},"title":"A New Investigation of Fairy Encounters","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This request for help with a compilation of contemporary Fairy encounters and lore comes from Simon Young of the re-launched Fairy Investigation Society. The FIS was founded in 1927, died in the early 1990s, and in late 2014 it came back to life. The survey (\u2018the fairy census\u2019) is split\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8080,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/8080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}