beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Have finished counting characters in Torchwood season one. ETA: Went on and finished both, please read completed tables instead /ETA.
I shall do math and draw conclusions. Would be easier if I could remember how to make a table... aha, auto generator to the rescue...

Episode	Speaking Characters	Women	People of Color
1-01	20	5	2
1-02	18	4	2
1-03	18 or 26	6 or 8	1
1-04	8	4	3
1-05	19	10	2
1-06	11	4	1
1-07	28 (10+18 minds)	4+9 minds	3+2 minds
1-08	11	4	5
1-09	17	5	2
1-10	16	7	3
1-11	11	3	2
1-12	15	6	1
1-13	15	7	3

There are 5 regular characters in season 1. They're all speaking parts in every episode.
2 women, 1 person of color.

Minus the regulars, the rest of the speaking parts are:

Episode	Speaking Characters	Women	People of Color
1-01	15	3	1
1-02	13	2	1
1-03	13 or 21	4 or 6	0
1-04	3	2	2
1-05	14	8	1
1-06	6	2	0
1-07	23 (5+18 minds)	2+9 minds	2+2 minds
1-08	6	2	4
1-09	12	3	1
1-10	11	5	2
1-11	6	1	1
1-12	10	4	0
1-13	10	5	2

Percentages

Episode	Speaking Characters	Women	People of Color
1-01	20	25%	10%
1-02	18	22%	11%
1-03	18 or 26	33% or 30%	4% or 5%
1-04	8	50%	37.5%
1-05	19	52%	10%
1-06	11	36%	9%
1-07	28	46%	18%
1-08	11	36%	45%
1-09	17	29%	12%
1-10	16	44%	19%
1-11	11	27%	18%
1-12	15	40%	6.6%
1-13	15	46%	20%

I tried to color code so Green means there's at least the proportion of that group in the episode as in Britain, Orange is it's near enough, and Red is when there's not enough at all.

Since about 1 in 10 people in the UK are people of color then Toshiko all on her own makes up the numbers if there's only 10 speaking parts. If there's up to 20 then there should be one other person. On the whole, Torchwood does fine at this measure.
Average about 17% over the series. Probably. If I can do math.

Since about 5 in 10 people are women, probably, then any time there's less than 40% there's some explaining to do.
You will notice there's a lot of explaining to do.
You will also notice I never had to figure out a color for 'significantly more than 50% women'. It gets as low as 22%, but never higher than 52%. If it were random and symmetrical you'd expect a 78% female episode in there somewhere, but noooo.
Average about 37% over season 1.

There's also 5/13 Bechdel fails, and a lot of pass for only a couple of lines listened to from the right angle. Looking at the percentages and numbers of female characters you can see a lot of why - harder to have conversations when you're just not there. But that doesn't explain why the two series regulars, Tosh and Gwen, so seldom talk, even compared to any two of the men.

Dead characters are harder to count. They often happen in crowds or montages or sepia toned flashbacks. Counting all of them would be a freeze frame job. So I've counted ones that died either on screen or so we get to see their bodies on screen. This count is imperfect.
30 dead people, 10 women, 7 people of color. That's 33% women, and 23% people of color.
Dead characters are not necessarily speaking characters first, which rather messes with comparison math. I'll have another poke at that later and figure out percentage of surviving people of color.



So that's the numbers in a table with color coding.
Pretty. But revealing some problems. More with the gender than race though.

After exam, which I will clearly pass due to all my concentrating and studying and stuff, I will go and count season 2. I wonder if it's better.

ETA: Went on and finished both, please read completed tables instead /ETA.