This is an utterly brilliant spin-off from the new series of Doctor Who.
Only watched the first two parts but already it seems to be quite a strong show with good writing, a kind of decent theme tune and classy effects that serve to enhance rather than stick out like a sore thumb.
Its good that once again British adults in particular have a sci-fi series of their own (with Saphire and Steel being the last decent one I can think of.) with the weird added bonus of dear old Cardiff getting firmly placed onto the sci-fi map. (even if it has become 'Sunnydale')
The only thing I feel is a bit of a let-down is the 'Captain Jack' character, or rather the guy playing him, its like someone with a charisma of 8 is trying far too hard to play an 18. After asking some of the other Wholigans at work and at the pub the other night it turns out it’s not just me being fussy about the guy either, as most others who have watched the episodes don’t seem too stuck on him much either.
Still a great little show with tons of potential and strong ties to the Doctor Who stuff that’s gone before; I hope that the two cross-over like Buffy and Angel did at some point and I will continue to watch religiously.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood/
Chief Technical Officer
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I have to say that after only two episodes, it has become my current most highly anticipated show for the moment.
It's kind of like Doctor Who meets X-Files meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's all good.
One thing that's refreshing is that, while most of my current favorite shows have story arcs that project an unknown number of episodes/seasons into the future (Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica), I get to finally watch a show that's going to wrap up most of the mysteries they introduce in 13 episodes.
I wasn't a huge fan of Captain Jack on Doctor Who, but I like him a lot more in Torchwood. He kind of fills the role of the Doctor here—he's the one that knows what's going on when the audience doesn't.
On the other hand, The Unquiet Dead made me a fan of Eve Myles, and she doesn't disappoint in Torchwood. She's just so... I don't know, earnest.
And as for crossovers, I believe the Doctor has been in every episode so far... if you know where to look.
-Vic.
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I have to say that after only two episodes, it has become my current most highly anticipated show for the moment.
It's kind of like Doctor Who meets X-Files meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's all good.
One thing that's refreshing is that, while most of my current favorite shows have story arcs that project an unknown number of episodes/seasons into the future (Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica), I get to finally watch a show that's going to wrap up most of the mysteries they introduce in 13 episodes.
I wasn't a huge fan of Captain Jack on Doctor Who, but I like him a lot more in Torchwood. He kind of fills the role of the Doctor here—he's the one that knows what's going on when the audience doesn't.
On the other hand, The Unquiet Dead made me a fan of Eve Myles, and she doesn't disappoint in Torchwood. She's just so... I don't know, earnest.
And as for crossovers, I believe the Doctor has been in every episode so far... if you know where to look.
-Vic.
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Oh go on do be a devil and spill the beans!
I caught most of the bad wolf/torchwood references in the last two series of Doctor Who and felt very pleased with myself for working out the twists of the series finale before they aired so I’d love to know if the Doctor has been stood in the background or the T.A.R.D.I.S. has been parked up near the off license or some such gag.
I feel the same way about the Gwen character and for me she’s a great main character for the show.
I do get the feeling that the Captain Jack character has almost ‘become’ a stand in for the Doctor in this show; at times it feels like it might as well just ‘be’ the Doctor.
Like RTD has really wanted to just do his This Life meets Doctor Who for adults and didn’t because it obviously would be too hard to pull off and have too many confusing complications for the viewers, so he has just ‘cloned’ a Doctor for himself instead. Whether this is by accident or intentional I don’t know.
SPOILERS BELOW FOR DOCTOR WHO
Perhaps when Rose ‘went phoenix’ at the end of the first series she may have changed Jack or left him imprinted with a ‘Doctor paradigm’ from the heart of the T.A.R.D.I.S./Doctor leaving Jack a little ‘Timelordy’?
On thing I love about the new Whoverse is that RTD really knows his stuff and often drops little references to obscure things into an episode that the fans will enjoy but are still subtle or unimportant enough that the casual viewer isn’t left baffled or feeling left out.
I hope some old school Who-baddies turn up in Torchwood and it would be fantastic to have more old companions pop in for an episode or two or even an old Doctor!
Just think you could have nice, quaint little Sylvester McCoy or somebody turn up and take part in a extremely violent or body-shockingly sexual episode as a way to freak with people; showing us our innocent childhood heroes in situations that are totally opposite to the kids tv worlds you last remember seeing them in . Maybe Ace turning up with her extendable baseball bat as a serial killer who completely lost it after being left by the Doctor or perhaps the Master could make an appearance and Torchwood have to stop him from constructing anti-T.A.R.D.I.S. using the rift energies of Cardiff!
Torchwood would be an excellent place to mess with the viewers and put a twisted new slant on old things.
...On the other hand......I believe the Doctor has been in every episode so far... if you know where to look.
-Vic.
*slaps self*
So the Doctor has been 'lending a hand' to Torchwood all along! ;)
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Chief Technical Officer
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Oh go on do be a devil and spill the beans!
In a spoiler-free way, in addition to the Doctor's sort-of-presence that you've worked out, and of course the presence of Captain Jack and his version of the end of The Parting of the Ways, the other tie-in's I've spotted include mention of events from The Christmas Invasion and Army of Ghosts; the TARDIS refueling in Boom Town causing the, er... "unusual properties" of the Torchwood back door lift; and the likely connection between Gwyneth of The Unquiet Dead and Gwen of Torchwood. Yet despite all that, if you watch Torchwood without having seen Doctor Who, you miss nothing.
Like RTD has really wanted to just do his This Life meets Doctor Who for adults and didn’t because it obviously would be too hard to pull off and have too many confusing complications for the viewers, so he has just ‘cloned’ a Doctor for himself instead. Whether this is by accident or intentional I don’t know.
I don't really know anything about This Life, but I've heard Torchwood described as X-Files meets This Life before in some of the promotional stuff leading up to the first episode.
I hope some old school Who-baddies turn up in Torchwood and it would be fantastic to have more old companions pop in for an episode or two or even an old Doctor!
Judging from one of the clips I've seen, and one of the upcoming episode titles, you'll get something at least close to your wish in a couple of weeks.
I suspect we'll also see some more of the fallout of the Doctor's recent appearances in London and Wales throughout the series, but I'm also thinking the references will continue to be fairly oblique.
I'm also really glad to hear viewers are tuning in; apparently the first two episodes had the highest ratings of any show ever on BBC 3 (not that that's apparently very difficult, but it's still great news).
huuugely dissapointed by torchwood. was really looking forward to it after being a long time who fan. thought episode 1's "plot" was barely strung together, the weavel was wasted in that it had nothing to do with the story i wanted more... whoness. this should have been a show of how regular humans deal with aliens and stuf whilst the doctor isnt around and so far ive found it lacking. as for episode 2...i was bored after 5 minutes. no bloody aliens except a swirly cloud of gas. i think that rusell has swung a bit too far away from who and lost sight of where he came from. im hoping the ep.2 is the clunker episode that both season 1 and 2 of who have suffered (boom town, and that olympics one.) so ill watch ep 3 in the hope that it inproves. fingers crossed
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Chief Technical Officer
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Hey Vic (and R-Type, if you live outside the UK), what do you think of the Cardiff accent? The series does come across as very Welsh.
I'm fine until they hit a place name, and then they might as well be speaking Venusian. (Then again, whoever decided to name their town "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" probably was Venusian.)
I did notice in a publicity interview that Eve Myles' real-life accent isn't quite as, um... well, "thick" isn't quite the right word, but I can't think of a better one.
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Chief Technical Officer
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the weavel was wasted in that it had nothing to do with the story
I'm hoping that weevils show up in every episode as a combination Easter egg/running gag.
I actually think that worst moments in the last two years of Doctor Who came when Russell T Davies was writing down for the kiddies (Aliens of London, for example), and I think that him not having to worry about that in Torchwood is a very good thing.
(And I liked Boom Town, even though I hate the Slitheen.)
episode 3 was an improvement but it doesnt have the sytuff i wanna know yet. where was jack from originaly?(not 1944) howd he get a time ship? i really hoping that these and other more who-lonked questions are answered. i am a little annoyed that the whole cyberman-dalek battles throughout the world were just excused as a government ploy. hmm. thats kinda stupid that the entire population that had ghost living with them for months just dismissed the whole thing. fingers crossed for episode 4
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I haven't seen episode 3 yet, but thanks to Vic I caught the first two and I am very impressed, both as a fan of sci-fi and as a massive Doctor Who lover. As for connections to Doctor Who, I suspect very strongly that the bottled hand Jack treasures is the same one cut off the Doctor in "Christmas Invasion," and I have a strong suspicion that the "single, crazy man" running Torchwood's Glasgow branch is someone we've seen before. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd make it Lethbridge-Stewart, since he would make for a perfect cameo and seems to be a good sport.
I'm very much looking forward to the rest of this series.
--Erik
yup the hand is the doctors', hope something is made of this later. a cameo by lethbridge-stewart would be sooooo cool, he would have retired from unit by now with bambera being the lass in charge there. i must say im warming up to the series more now so hopefully by ep 13 were gonna have a great show. oh and btw... erik mona's a who fan????? wow, super cool :)
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I don't mean to brag, but a couple of years ago there was a 10-question Doctor Who trivia quiz on the BBC homepage. As I recall, I got a perfect score, Vic got 9 out of 10, and then-publisher Keith Strohm got 8 out of 10.
This is a very Tardis-friendly office.
--Erik
Am I the only man on Earth who liked Dr. Afro, and his Sheena type assistant the best?
Have they released all of them on DVD yet?
...aah...Lela...(schwing!!!)Am I the only man on Earth who liked Dr. Afro, and his Sheena type assistant the best?
Have they released all of them on DVD yet?
Know what I'm sayin'?
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Chief Technical Officer
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Am I the only man on Earth who liked Dr. Afro, and his Sheena type assistant the best?
The 4th Doctor and Leela is a very, very popular pairing. And might well have been my favorite Doctor/Assistant combo two years ago... but now I put the 10th Doctor and Rose in first place and the 9th Doctor and Rose in second.
Have they released all of them on DVD yet?
As of next Tuesday, 42 of the first 160 stories (your "classic" 1963–1996 Doctor Who) will have been released on DVD in the US.
There are also DVDs of the surviving episodes from the 12 serials that have at least half of their episodes missing. 11 other stories are completely missing, and 4 more have missing episodes that total less than half of their episodes. (The BBC did photo-based reconstructions of the missing episodes for VHS releases of two of those four; another one, The Invasion, is being released in the UK on DVD this month with new animated reconstructions of the missing episodes.)
After The Invasion comes out in the UK, they'll have three DVD releases that haven't come out in the US yet, but we've got six they haven't got yet.
However, they've ramped up the number of titles they're releasing each year—I think they're planning to release about a dozen more serials in the UK in 2007, not counting the new series DVDs.
If you include VHS releases, though, every surviving episode has been released to home video, and they've also issued CDs of the off-air audio recordings of all of the missing episodes.
As of next Tuesday, 42 of the first 160 stories (your "classic" 1963–1996 Doctor Who) will have been released on DVD in the US.
There are also DVDs of the surviving episodes from the 12 serials that have at least half of their episodes missing. 11 other stories are completely missing, and 4 more have missing episodes that total less than half of their episodes. (The BBC did photo-based reconstructions of the missing episodes for VHS releases of two of those four; another one, The Invasion, is being released in the UK on DVD this month with new animated reconstructions of the missing episodes.)
After The Invasion comes out in the UK, they'll have three DVD releases that haven't come out in the US yet, but we've got six they haven't got yet.
However, they've ramped up the number of titles they're releasing each year—I think they're planning to release about a dozen more serials in the UK in 2007, not counting the new series DVDs.
If you include VHS releases, though, every surviving episode has been released to home video, and they've also issued CDs of the off-air audio recordings of all of the missing episodes.
Answered with authority! Thanks, Vic.
i work in a store that sells DVDs so my copy of invasion is already put aside. i dont know if the guys in the US have seen how cool this release is gonna be. episodes 1+4 were lost and have been animated with the audio track. it looks really cool too.
Torchwood has impressed both myself and my non-Who wife (so that's a big plus).
Captain Jack is from the 51st Century, according to The Empty Child (Episode 9 of the Eccleston Series).
Russell T Davies is only writing one episode (the first) in the series, although he remains Executive Producer, so he probably shapes most of the stories. Other writers include P.J. Hammond (writer & creator of Sapphire & Steel), Noel Clarke (Mickey from Doctor Who) and Helen Raynor (script-editor, Doctor Who).
In fact, Ms Raynor wrote Ghost Machine (episode 3) which was, I'd say, the best of the four I've seen so far.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Captain Jack is from the 51st Century, according to The Empty Child (Episode 9 of the Eccleston Series).
Only if you take Captain Jack at his literal word. I have my doubts that it's as simple as that.
So I thought Ghost Machine came across more like a Twilight Zone script than anything else, but, to be clear, I consider that a good thing.
Cyberwoman was pretty good, but slipped maybe a bit too far into the "monster that won't stay killed" thing. (And I think it was the first Weevil-less episode.)
-Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I haven't seen last night's episode yet, but the previous two were two of the best yet.
The one two weeks ago, involving "faeries", was particularly good, and the one last week (set in the Brecon Beacons) was highly disturbing. I won't say why (so as to not spoil anything), but I can imagine it'll put at least a few people off from visiting those hills...
Events have conspired to keep me behind on my Torchwood viewing, which is especially annoying since Torchwood is still the show I most look forward to seeing each week.
The last episode I've seen is the faerie one, which is everything that "Fear Her" (the recent Doctor Who episode) should have been. The series really is getting better every week.
-Vic.
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The last two episodes debuted on BBC3 on New Year's day. Wow!
The ante is really upped in "Captain Jack Harkness" when Jack and Tosh become trapped in 1941 and have to rely on Owen and Ianto to use The Rift to get them back.
And in "End of Days" the Rift's opening has implications across the world as people are plucked from the past and leave havoc in their wake.
Watch out for the final scene, too: that's all I'll say ;)
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Chief Technical Officer
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The last two episodes debuted on BBC3 on New Year's day.
It took me a little bit longer than normal to get my eyes on those last episodes....
I was a little disappointed in them, partly because I think Torchwood had become my favorite series during the last eight or nine episodes, and partly because the two-part endings to each of the last two series of Doctor Who were so good, and I was expecting these would be as good as those. I also felt that the "big bad" was a bit over-the-top, and what we *didn't* see in the last secene was a bit of a cop-out. Still, I guess they were fine. I'm really curous about how we get from series three of Doctor Who to series two of Torchwood, though....
-Vic.
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