Torchwood

BBC Three has announced that it will make a Doctor Who spinoff, Torchwood, the centrepiece of its fall schedule, launching the sci-fi crime thriller series in October 2006.

Spinning off of one of Doctor Who's most memorable characters, Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), Torchwood will be set in present day Cardiff (that's Wales to you lot) and will surround a group of covert criminal investigators called the Torchwood Institute, an organization commissioned by Queen Victoria and tasked with investigating alien technology. The team will be headquartered at The Hub, located beneath Cardiff Bay, the site of the TARDIS' landing in Boom Town and the location of the rift discussed in The Unquiet Dead.

Created by current Doctor Who writer/producer Russell T. Davies, Torchwood stars John Barrowman as bisexual time traveller/con man Jack Harkness and Eve Myles as former police officer Gwen Cooper. Astute Doctor Who fans may remember Myles from the Who episode The Unquiet Dead, where she played the role of the similarly named Gwyneth. (Whether Gwen and Gwyneth are the same character has yet to be confirmed, but the fact that Myles' previous Who episode dealt with the rift adds credence to that theory.)

Joining Barrowman and Myles are Bleak House's Burn Gorman, who will play Torchwood Institute medic Dr Owen Harper, and Absolutely Fabulous' Naoko Mori, who will reprise the role of Dr Toshiko Sato from the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London.

Doctor Who writer/producer Russell T. Davies has written the first of thirteen episodes. He'll be joined on the series by writers Chris Chibnall, co-creator of Life on Mars, and P.J. Hammond, creator of 1980s cult classic Sapphire & Steel (which starred Mori's Absolutely Fabulous castmate Joanna Lumley), among others.

Torchwood is, of course, a clever anagram of Doctor Who and was originally used as a codename for the current incarnation of Doctor Who, before taking on a life of its own during the series. Also of note is that all the characters have already shared a same-sex kiss, in one way or another, indicating that the show moves into the bisexual realm, making it ground-breaking on TV, at least in the UK, I seriously doubt it will ever be shown here.

Already the seven episodes till now have shown some fascinating developments with the team. However, there are sources and forums that rate the series as a no-brainer, stating that the characters have no depth, this is complete hogwash. Each episode develops the characters brilliantly, their humanity, how they deal with the unknown and aliens being on Earth, the alien tech that they find. Although it looks like they're fumbling through it all, making it up as they go along, they do go on along nicely, making mistakes as humanly possible and learning and evolving in the process, that's the beauty of this series, the stories have twists and turns, unlike the typical American series that have a fixed way in which things must happen and the eventual outcome.

So, it's farewell to Mulder and Scully from The X-Files' brand of sci-fi crime thriller. Enter Torchwood, where anything and everything mysterious and alien doesn't have to be a government conspiracy that hinders your investigations over and over again till the end of nine bloody seasons. This series is at least a team effort, real-imaginative story-telling, light visual effects and closure at the end of each episode.

9 out of 10 stars