Sex, Violence and Swearing and That's Just the Aliens! (Torchwood)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Torchwood
Date:	22/12/06 (1360 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engaging to watch, some strong characters

Disadvantages: Limited plots

As a kid I was never that big a fan of "Doctor Who". Sure, I liked it but I can’t recall raving about a programme that had Styrofoam monsters and really tacky sets. Even the actors that played Doc Who were never particularly good although I did become very fond of Tom Baker’s eccentric version of the Time Lord. Russell T Davies changed all that when he reinvented the franchise with the excellent Christopher Eccleston and the impressive Billy Piper bringing the Dr Who dynasty into the 21st century. With David Tennant taking things forward after Eccleston’s departure, the Doctor Who phenomenon had become so successful that it spawned the spin-off series “Torchwood” as well as the children’s programme “The Sarah Jane Adventures” due to start after Christmas.

With the Doctor Who series 2 finishing with the monumental “Doomsday” and the defeat of the cybermen and daleks, “Torchwood” picks up in the present day. Set in Cardiff, the Wales branch is Torchwood 3 of the covert Torchwood operation first alluded to in the Doctor Who episode “Tooth and Claw”. A top secret organization operating outside the mandate of the authorities, Torchwood’s modus operandi is to investigate extra-terrestrial incidents on Earth whilst scavenging for alien technology for human use. Torchwood 1 in London was destroyed during the Dalek – Cybermen altercation whilst Torchwood 2 is in Glasgow. Torchwood 4 is supposedly missing.

As the first series draws to a close, the general consensus is that the programme has been a success although Internet chatter hasn’t always been quite so kind to the fledgling offshoot of the omnipresent Dr Who. Where “Torchwood” has succeeded is in applying a more adult theme to the shows, hence it being shown after the watershed. Scenes of violence have been graphic and the episode “Countryside” underlined this in a big way with a story that amounted to a horror flick about cannibalism rather than anything more science fiction. Russell T Davies has maintained the premise contained within the Dr Who ethos of strange things happening in a street rather like the one ordinary folks live on as opposed to the more pan-universal aspects featured in the American sci-fi world. Day to day notions like sex and swearing are weaved into the plots to add realism in a way familiar to soap operas taking the out of this world science fiction into a more mainstream fold.

For me, the characterizations have been the strongest aspect of the show. John Barrowman is a dominant figure as the leader of the team. His Captain Jack character first appeared in a number of the recent Dr Who series; most notably in the episode “The Doctor Dances” set during the Blitz of World War II. Belonging to a different time and place, bits of Captain Jack’s past are drip fed into each episode although the notion that he can’t die adds an odd dimension to his profile. Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper is another “fish out of water” character having been drafted in from her police job during the first couple of shows. Gwen adds the extraordinary versus the very ordinary juxtaposition with constant references to her struggle to maintain an every day life with her boyfriend whilst balancing the demands of her secret life as a member of Torchwood. Burn Gorman as Dr Own Harper is the philanderer of the team, bedding women left, right and centre which is bizarre given his curious looks. Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato hums in the background for the most part given her role as computer specialist although she did come to the fore in “Greeks Bearing Gifts” in which she had a lesbian relationship with an alien attempting to infiltrate Torchwood HQ. Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones is the gatekeeper of the operation and had his fifteen minutes of fame in a poor episode about a cyberwoman being kept in the basement. I still haven’t recovered from seeing Captain Jack pour barbeque sauce over the cyberwoman in order to coax a pterodactyl flying creature into eating her!

With generally successful characterizations, the shows have been hit and miss at times. They certainly deal in some esoteric subjects with the vagaries of death and the after life a popular theme that runs beneath a lot of the stories. In the most recent episode “Out of Time” Captain Jack is seen sitting next to a man committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his car. This is all the more controversial given their conversation during which Jack declares that there is no afterlife or re-union of deceased family. Instead, there is simply darkness although this conflicts with a previous episode where the darkness is inhabited by an unseen malevolence of some kind according to one of the characters who has come back from the dead. It’s the variance in story quality together with the unnecessary sexual references where the show falls down for me. With a number of different writers contributing individual episodes then you are bound to get some variances around quality but the derivative nature of some of the shows has undermined the series’ authenticity. Drawing on familiar plot lines of fairies at the bottom of gardens, vampires and the like then the fact that the stories are confined to the geographical area surrounding Cardiff takes away some of the potential mystique of the show. With a rift through which aliens and alien artifacts are constantly drifting to Earth, material is manufactured for the stories but the scope seems restricted by this localized aspect.

I really and truly haven’t been able to work out what the multiplicitious sexual references and innuendo add to the plot. We’ve had homosexuality, lesbianism and even omnisexuality brought into the series but it seems to be forced in there for the most part. The idea that Burn Gorman can be taken seriously as a playboy seems incredulous although the Gwen Cooper character does add a certain Welsh glamour to proceedings. The “Day One” episode featuring an alien addicted to sex bumping off unfortunate locals who have had the misfortune to copulate with the creature was fair enough but the other plot strands that include bonking just frustrate me mainly because my 11-year-old lad wants to watch it but these scenes make it a difficult call as a parent.
Where the show is at its weakest is through the unconvincing nature of the top secret notion of Torchwood and, at times, the dull nature of its setting in Cardiff. The fact that pizza gets delivered to the ultra secret HQ and the ubiquitous black van has the name “Torchwood” stenciled on its flank makes it rather laughable that this organization is beyond the remit of everyone including the government. The way the van charges around advertising the organization’s moniker whilst lots of frustrated plods step to one side to hand over investigations to the onrushing Torchwood crew (as yet another flatfoot scratches his/her chin wondering whether it’s a coincidence that Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who) detracts from the dour Englishness of the Doctor Who franchise in favour of a more “24” like dynamism that just doesn’t fit our brand of sci-fi in this country.

Despite its shortcomings, I have really enjoyed “Torchwood” and suspect it will get better with a new series and the characters more developed. It’s a shame the plots can’t be widened with a facet of outer space added somewhere that makes the better science fiction programmes so attractive. Maybe that will come in the future and take us beyond the successfully redeveloped but not really that interesting aerial shots of Cardiff Bay. I’m looking forward to the final episode and with the franchise established, it looks like “Torchwood” is here to stay for a while yet.

Thanks for reading

Mara

“Torchwood” is shown on BBC2 and BBC3 at various times between Sunday and Wednesday each week. Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood/ for more details.

Summary: Overview of "Torchwood"