Character Highlight: Gwen Cooper (Torchwood)

Gwen is a tricky character.  She’s probably one of the characters in the Whoniverse most ill-served by the writing (not far afterClara,) which makes it harder to connect with her and the often-contradictory things she does.  And generally, while she doesn’t quite pop the way the rest of the team does, she’s frequently at the forefront of the narrative, which leads to griping about her taking screentime away from characters we want more of.  All in all, a bit of a mess.

Gwen is framed as both the Everywoman and the Exceptional Woman.  The main show often does this with its companions – ordinary people discovering the extraordinary in themselves – but it’s kind of bungled with Gwen.  She’s our eyes into Torchwood, the lowly beat cop who stumbles upon the organization and its alien wonders.  She tenaciously follows her curiosity and pushes past attempts to throw her off the scent, and in the end, Jack is so intrigued by her and her “heart” that he brings her aboard.  It’s through her that we see the freaky alien goings-on and get to know the other team members.

For me, the biggest part of the problem is that Gwen is very much the newcomer who doesn’t know what she’s doing (in and of itself, that’s fine – to be expected, honestly,) but she tends to act like that isn’t true.  When her clumsy mistakes on her first day lead to major trouble, she insists that Owen should’ve been more careful.  When she thinks the team is acting too callously toward a civilian who’s gotten caught up in a sci-fi mess, she lectures them without knowing what’s really going on.  She charges in headfirst, she defies Jack when she doesn’t have all the facts, and she argues for a better way without having tangible ideas to offer.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with being confident and strong-willed, but when you don’t yet have the skills or knowledge needed to back that up, it’s important to play to your strengths, minimize your missteps, and acknowledge that you have more to learn.  With Gwen, I just don’t see that.

The show also doesn’t do her any favors by describing her, again, as the “heart” of the team as though it’s her actual job description.  It’s a vague term that doesn’t really speak to what her presence actually brings to Torchwood, and it can annoy fans because it seems to suggest that Gwen is the only one who cares while the others (Jack included) are just jaded bastards.  To be sure, Gwen is a caring person, sometimes to a fault.  She’s a very “heart in the right place” sort, someone who is desperate to help but doesn’t necessarily know how.  This makes it tough for her to operate in Torchwood, where tough decisions with no obviously “right” answer rule the day.  At times, it feels like the show is designed to beat this quality out of her, when really, it needs to be about recognizing that compassion and pragmatism have to go hand in hand, knowing that not everyone can be saved but that everyone is worth trying to save.  When things go badly, one has to mourn, but one also has to move on so they’re ready to try and save the next one.

That said, Gwen is concerned about the human cost of their work.  She’s often the one who thinks of the innocent bystanders, the one who reaches out to families of the victims or tries to reassure frightened people in the midst of the action.  She tends to be selflessly brave, frequently to her own detriment, in order to keep other people safe.  And while she can get caught up in the moment, skipping “practical solutions” and going straight to “noble self-sacrifice” (leaving the others scrambling to find those solutions,) she’d always rather take the risk on herself than let someone else get hurt.