Torchwood

For plants known as torchwood, see Burseraceae.

Torchwood
The logo announcing Torchwood on the BBC Doctor Who website
Created by	Russell T. Davies
Starring	John Barrowman Eve Myles Burn Gorman Naoko Mori
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	13
Production
Running time	45 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC Three

Torchwood is a British television science fiction and crime drama created by Russell T. Davies and starring John Barrowman and Eve Myles. An initial 13-part series was commissioned by the BBC as a spin-off from the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who. An in-house BBC Wales production for digital television station BBC Three, it is the first television spin-off of Doctor Who since the unsuccessful pilot of K-9 and Company in 1981 and the first to be commissioned for a full series. The Canadian network CBC is co-producer of the series, with exclusive rights to broadcast the North American premiere of the show.

The title "Torchwood" is an anagram of "Doctor Who". BBC Wales Head of Drama Julie Gardner will serve as executive producer alongside Davies. Torchwood is set to premiere in October 2006 on BBC Three.

Overview

Torchwood is to be set in contemporary Cardiff, and features a group of "renegade" criminal investigators. Aside from investigating human and alien crime, they are also charged by the British government to covertly investigate alien technology without the knowledge of the United Nations. The Doctor Who episode Tooth and Claw establishes that the fictional Torchwood Institute was commissioned in 1879 by Queen Victoria.

The main writer alongside Davies will be Chris Chibnall, creator of the BBC light drama series Born and Bred, and other confirmed writers include P.J. Hammond, creator of the cult 1980s ATV series Sapphire & Steel, Toby Whithouse (No Angels and Hotel Babylon), Doctor Who script editor Helen Raynor, Si Spencer, and Doctor Who cast member Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), who gained acclaim for his screenplay for the film Kidulthood. According to the December 2005 issue of SFX and Doctor Who Magazine #368, Russell T. Davies will write just two of the thirteen episodes, including the first.

In the announcement, on October 17 2005, BBC Three controller Stuart Murphy said, "Torchwood is sinister and psychological... as well as being very British and modern and real." Davies himself has characterised the series concept as "a dark, clever, wild, sexy, British crime/sci-fi paranoid thriller cop show with a sense of humour — The X-Files meets This Life."

According to Davies, the name originated during production of the new Doctor Who series, when television pirates were eager to get their hands on the tapes. Someone in the production office suggested that the tapes be labelled "Torchwood" instead of "Doctor Who" to disguise their contents en route to London. Davies thought it was a good idea and remembered the name.

As it is scheduled to be shown post-watershed — that is after 9.00 pm — it is also expected to have more mature content than the parent series. Davies told SFX:

"We can be a bit more visceral, more violent, and more sexual, if we want to. Though bear in mind that it’s very teenage to indulge yourself in blood and gore, and Torchwood is going to be smarter than that. But it’s the essential difference between BBC One at 7pm, and BBC Three at say, 9pm. That says it all — instinctively, every viewer can see the huge difference there."

Davies also joked to a BBC Radio Wales interviewer that he was "not allowed" to refer to the series as "Doctor Who for grown-ups".

Cast and crew

File:Torchcast.jpg

John Barrowman as Jack Harkness and Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper

The series will star John Barrowman as Jack Harkness, one of the Ninth Doctor's companions from the 2005 season of Doctor Who. Issue 363 of Doctor Who Magazine, published in November 2005, revealed that the series will feature another regular named Gwen, and reported that Doctor Who director James Hawes would produce. The series will also share Doctor Who's production designer, Edward Thomas. In an interview with the magazine TV Zone, Hawes announced that he would be the lead director for the series.

However, in January 2006, it was announced that Hawes would in fact not be producing Torchwood, and another producer would be assigned in his place. According to Doctor Who and Torchwood executive producer Russell T. Davies in Doctor Who Magazine #366 (dated March 1 2006), Hawes's direction of the BBC Four drama The Chatterley Affair had led him to change his mind about producing the series. "James Hawes has been having such a good time... that he's decided directing is his greatest passion, and as a result, he's stepped down." The same magazine also announced that Helen Raynor and Brian Minchin would be the script editors on the programme. DWM #368 announced that the first episode of the series, written by Davies, would be called "Flotsam and Jetsam", and that Brian Kelly would be directing the first block of episodes. Issue 370 of the magazine announced that Colin Teague would direct the second block of episodes, which would include Helen Raynor's "The Ghost Machine".

Tabloid newspapers The Daily Star and the Daily Record both reported that singer Charlotte Church would be making an appearance in the series as a "raunchy, Satan-worshipping character", but this was denied by Davies in DWM #363. On 11 November 2005, msn.co.uk reported that singer Rachel Stevens had auditioned for a permanent role in Torchwood. This has not been confirmed by any official source.

On February 23 2006, news leaked that the role of Gwen Cooper will be played by Eve Myles, who previously appeared as Gwyneth in the Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead; this was later confirmed in a midnight release. It remains to be seen if Myles's two similarly named characters are linked in any way. It was also announced that Richard Stokes would produce.

Commenting in The Western Mail, Myles describes her character:

"Gwen starts off as a police officer in Cardiff and then gets involved in the Torchwood team.

She's a very down-to-earth girl, kind and generous, but extremely ambitious, feisty, intelligent and witty. But she's also very human - she's really the girl next door. Because I'm playing her, I put a lot of me into it and I take a lot of my own characteristics."

In an April 10 2006 interview with Davies in The Independent, it was mentioned that actor Burn Gorman would be appearing in the series.. This was confirmed by a BBC press release on April 24 2006, which stated that Gorman will play the role of Torchwood medic Owen Harper. The same release confirmed that Naoko Mori will reprise the role of Toshiko Sato that she originally played in the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London. Gareth David-Lloyd has also been cast, as the Cardiff office's receptionist Ianto.

Production

In an appearance on BBC One's New Year's Eve programme, John Barrowman told an interviewer that he expected to begin filming for Torchwood in April; on 17 January, 2006, fan site Outpost Gallifrey reported that the start of production "has been delayed until the summer, likely June or July." On 22 March 2006, Russell T. Davies told Sci Fi Wire that filming would begin in May, for a planned broadcast in October. On 13 April 2006 during magazine show This Morning, which he was co-presenting, Barrowman reported that he had visited the set and that filming would begin "next week".

On 6 April 2006, it was announced that, like the new series of Doctor Who, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would be a coproduction partner.

Interviewed on ITV1's afternoon chat show Loose Women on 18 October 2005, Barrowman suggested that the series might be repeated on BBC One sometime after its initial BBC Three airing. He also stated that it will not be revealed in the series how Jack Harkness has arrived in the early 21st century.

The programme began filming on May 1 2006.

Setting

Torchwood will be filmed and set in Cardiff. The team's headquarters (referred to on Doctor Who Confidential as the "Hub") will be beneath the Oval Basin of Cardiff Bay, a.k.a. Roald Dahl Plass. (This was where the TARDIS landed in the Doctor Who episode Boom Town.) Russell T. Davies told the South Wales Echo, "With Doctor Who we often had to pretend that bits of Cardiff were London, or Utah, or the planet Zog. Whereas this series is going to be honest-to-God Cardiff. We will happily walk past the Millennium Centre and say, 'Look, there's the Millennium Centre.' "

References in Doctor Who

• The word "Torchwood" first occurred in the 2005 Doctor Who episode Bad Wolf, during a deadly version of the game show, The Weakest Link. One of the answers was that the Great Cobalt Pyramid was built on the ruins of the famous Old Earth Torchwood Institute. (The fact that the covert "Torchwood Institute" was established on Earth in Tooth and Claw implies that by the time Bad Wolf occurs, the year 200,100, the existence of Torchwood has become common knowledge.) On the Doctor Who homepage for the week preceding, one of the contestants (Strood) is said to be from "Torchwood".
• In The Christmas Invasion, Prime Minister Harriet Jones asks Major Blake of UNIT to contact Torchwood for aid in defending Earth from the Sycorax. Jones claims she is not supposed to know about them and that not even the United Nations is aware of their existence, though they have ties to the British military. Jones takes responsibility for authorising Torchwood and eventually gives the final command for them to fire on and destroy the Sycorax ship; they have access to an enormously powerful energy weapon adapted from alien technology found ten years ago in a spaceship crash. The nature and normal authority of Torchwood are left vague.
• Also in the commentary for The Christmas Invasion, it was revealed, cryptically, that Torchwood was in some way related to the Cardiff-based Time and Space Rift established in the Doctor Who episodes The Unquiet Dead and Boom Town.
• The majority of the episode Tooth and Claw takes place in a Scottish house named "Torchwood House", and at the end of the episode Queen Victoria announces the foundation of an institution known as the Torchwood Institute to research and fight threats to Britain "beyond imagination" as well as to watch for the return of the Doctor. It is mentioned on the fictitious website for Torchwood House set up by the BBC that the name "Torchwood" was derived from the wood from which the staircase was made.
• In the episode School Reunion, when Mickey is telling Rose on the telephone how he keeps being blocked while doing research on military websites, the viewer sees the words "TORCHWOOD ACCESS DENIED" flashing across his computer screen. The episode's TARDISODE details Mickey hacking into these websites, and him being blocked by Torchwood.
• The organisation was mentioned by a senior officer in the U.S. Navy in the Tenth Doctor Adventure novel The Feast of the Drowned.
• In Rise of the Cybermen, a news broadcast on Rose's mobile phone refers to a survey carried out by the Torchwood Institute, and Pete Tyler asks his friend Stevie about his work at Torchwood (implying that in this parallel Earth, Torchwood is not as much of a secret as it is in ours).
• In The Idiot's Lantern, the possibility of Torchwood getting involved is mentioned by police officers while discussing the people affected by The Wire.
• In The Impossible Planet, the doctor says "Let's throw some light on the subject. A torch would do it. Or the sonic screwdriver."
• In The Satan Pit it becomes clear that the crew are working for 'The Torchwood Archive'

References

• Burrell, Ian (2005-10-17). "BBC to screen 'Dr Who for adults' as new spin-off show". The Independent. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• John Barrowman. "CAPTAIN JACK IS BACK!!!". Retrieved 2005-10-17. — press release on Torchwood
• "Doctor Who spin-off made in Wales". BBC News. 2005-10-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "Captain Jack to get his own series in new Russell T Davies drama for BBC THREE". BBC. 2005-10-17. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) — press release

External links

• Torchwood organisation
• A Torchwood blog
• The Institute - A Torchwood Fansite
• An American Torchwood blog
• Torchwood House website