Also, I think that people seriously misconstrue the idea of an audience-substitute character--the character who is supposed to be the audience's "in" to the universe of the story. That's not a synonym for "self-insert" or "character with no flaws." It just means that when you're telling a story, especially a story set in a universe quite different from our own, you need to have a character who starts out "on the outside" and who's job it is to ask the questions, have the "normal life" and to be more or less "like us" in that he or she at the beginning has a normal job and a normal boy/girlfriend and normal opinions on what's happening in the story. People get this St. Gwen and St. Rose BS from the acknowledgement by the writers that those two characters were our "audience stand-ins" for these brand new TV shows set in a universe most viewers would not be familiar with. It doesn't mean they were supposed to be perfect or that the writers "favour" them in any way. It just means that they're around to ask Important Questions and to behave in ways that make the audience pause for a moment and think, "Yeah, what would, I do in that situation?"
Martha and Donna also had that role, but to not quite so great an extent as Rose and Gwen because Doctor Who/Torchwood was already rolling along and the audience was much more familiar with the world of the show by the time Martha came along.
Also, word on your last paragraph. Torchwood was a hot mess (and pretty roundly mocked by pretty much everyone). You can kind of see RTD angsting over how little control he had over it (because of his time commitment to Who) and what a mess it was becoming in The Writer's Tale every now and then. He doesn't come right out and say it, but you can read it between the lines.
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Also, I think that people seriously misconstrue the idea of an audience-substitute character--the character who is supposed to be the audience's "in" to the universe of the story. That's not a synonym for "self-insert" or "character with no flaws." It just means that when you're telling a story, especially a story set in a universe quite different from our own, you need to have a character who starts out "on the outside" and who's job it is to ask the questions, have the "normal life" and to be more or less "like us" in that he or she at the beginning has a normal job and a normal boy/girlfriend and normal opinions on what's happening in the story. People get this St. Gwen and St. Rose BS from the acknowledgement by the writers that those two characters were our "audience stand-ins" for these brand new TV shows set in a universe most viewers would not be familiar with. It doesn't mean they were supposed to be perfect or that the writers "favour" them in any way. It just means that they're around to ask Important Questions and to behave in ways that make the audience pause for a moment and think, "Yeah, what would, I do in that situation?"
Martha and Donna also had that role, but to not quite so great an extent as Rose and Gwen because Doctor Who/Torchwood was already rolling along and the audience was much more familiar with the world of the show by the time Martha came along.
Also, word on your last paragraph. Torchwood was a hot mess (and pretty roundly mocked by pretty much everyone). You can kind of see RTD angsting over how little control he had over it (because of his time commitment to Who) and what a mess it was becoming in The Writer's Tale every now and then. He doesn't come right out and say it, but you can read it between the lines.