Torchwood: Fanfic: Only in the movies

[m_findlow]

Title: Only in the movies
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, any, it was hard not to laugh at sci-fi films" at fic_promptly
Summary: Date night wouldn't be complete without a trip to the cinema.

Ianto loved date nights with Jack. It was that little slice of normality that was usually so elusive that he couldn't help but overplay the importance of it. Even so, date nights were perpetually riddled with interruptions, since the rift didn't care much for social lives.

Even so, they did what they could to make the most of it, either heading out for a night on the town, dining at the latest and greatest culinary hotspot, or perhaps a fancy French restaurant. Sometimes it was just their local Chinese, where they could enjoy the plain formica tables covered in the best comfort food a ten pound note could buy, snapping prawn crackers over cans of soda without glasses. Other times it was just a simple home cooked dinner, or perhaps a good takeaway curry.

When date night didn't get interrupted by the rift, that left them time after dinner to entertain themselves. Most often that meant heading out to the movies. Fortunately it wasn't hard to decide on what movie they should pick. Neither of them were all that enthused by Nordic murder mysteries, romantic comedies were cheesy and overdone, and period films were quickly dismissed. Most of the time that left action films or sci-fi. There was really no argument. A good night out meant having fun and having a laugh, and nothing was guaranteed to generate more giggles than science fiction.

It really was impossible not to laugh at most of what was portrayed on screen. It was all wrong as far as they were concerned. Who the heck was writing the scripts for these films?

They always began with a mysterious signal picked up by some government agency that gave them forewarning of the impending alien invasion. That never happened. For starters, Earth technology wasn't that good, and secondly, any alien race worth their salt would not give off a detectable energy signature that would announce their presence, giving the invadees sufficient time to mount a defense.

In the next scene there was always some big meeting that involved the American president. That never happened either. America didn't even have a Torchwood base, or any equivalent organisation. If there was going to be an intergalactic invasion, no one was getting the president involved. If anything, that was likely to only make matters worse. Plus aliens always invaded the USA in movies. The reality was that a spaceship was just as likely to land in the middle of Siberia or get lost in the jungles of deepest darkest Peru.

The protagonist was always some disenfranchised former government employee who'd been secretly keeping their own eye on the sky, having cobbled together alien detecting technology in their garage, made from bits of toasters and microwaves. Most of the time, if you took a toaster apart and tried to put the constituent parts back together, you'd be lucky if it could even make toast, let alone analyse the minute fluctuations in the outer rings of the Earth's exosphere.

Which brought them to the aliens themselves. Always little green or grey men, with big black eyes, and spindly little arms. Why did filmmakers insist on using the same template for every alien film ever made? You could get a five year old to draw up something entirely crazy and it would still be closer to the real thing. So much wonder and variety in the universe, and these people had absolutely no imagination whatsoever.

Laser weapons to obliterate major capital cities? Yes, please. Lasers were so three millenia ago. There were a hundred ways to take out the human population that were a whole lot easier. None of this "armies invading and shooting up people" business. The only aliens who still did that were Sontarans, and they did it simply because they loved killing people.

And as for the whole enslavement thing? That was just silly. Nobody invaded to enslave. What was the point of that? If you wanted someone to do your laundry and mow the lawn, that's what they invented robots for. Humans were pretty much the bottom of the food chain when you boiled down the universe into its various classes of species. Humans were boring and not very physically useful. Two arms, two legs, one head and no tail. That didn't give you a lot to work with. They were kind of like the ants of the universe. Millions of them everywhere, scurrying around doing their own thing, and basically it was best to just leave them to it.

Jack heard Ianto giggle once the army were sent in, guns blazing. Because nothing said "intergalactic conflict resolution" like sending in a battalion of guys with guns. Engaging with violence was the absolute last course of action, and even then, things had to be pretty dire before it came to that.

By the time the credits were rolling, the underdog ex-employee, having saved the planet with nothing more than a garden hose and his pet dog, the pair of them weren't able to contain themselves, laughing loudly, much to the disgust of the other people in the cinema. It was one of the reasons they usually waited until the movie was almost at the end of its showing - to reduce the number of people they'd annoy with their hysterics.

'God, that was priceless,' Jack said, walking out of the cinema hand in hand with Ianto, still trying to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes. 'I haven't laughed that much in weeks. What a pack of clowns.'

'It does make you feel a lot cleverer,' Ianto agreed. And with Jack's propensity for doing stupid things, that was saying something.

'We should get that one when it comes out on DVD,' Jack said.

'Do you think aliens ever watch these films?'

'Oh, I've no doubt. That's why so few of them bother coming here,' Jack replied.

'Why, because the Earthlings always defeat them in the movies?'

'No, because they realise how dumb we are and can't be bothered.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

*giggles* If you want to make a realistic SF movie, talk to Torchwood; they know the truth! The result might not be such good, if improbable, entertainment though.