THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS

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Torchwood Everything Changes

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Story No.	1
Production Code	Series One Episode One
Dates	October 22 2006

With John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd. Written by Russell T. Davies Directed by Brian Kelley Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner.

Synopsis: There's a Special Ops organisaton on the streets and it's bringing people back to life.

• You don't know Jack by John Nor
• Pilot by Joe Ford
• Nine Reasons Why I Should Win the Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing in Television and One Reason Why I Won't by Daniel Saunders
• A Review by Finn Clark

You don't know Jack by John Nor 10/11/06

The first episode of any show has a complex set of tasks to perform.

Normally, it has to introduce the main characters, explain us to the central premise of the show, while having enough mystery and suspense to keep us tuning in for the next episode.

One of the intriguing things about this first episode is that while the characters are established and we definitely want to find out what happens next, one of the mysteries we will be tuning in for is to find out more about what the central premise actually is. What IS Torchwood? (If you think you know already from watching Doctor Who think again.)

The episode begins with a murder crime scene in Cardiff being cleared of police to allow a shadowy team to take over. When we first meet the Torchwood operatives, as Police Constable Gwen Cooper spies down upon them from a rain-lashed balcony, it appears they are using their fantastical technology to solve a murder. So far, so "Cardiff CSI". Gwen gasps in disbelief as a man is brought back from the dead for two minutes using a mysterious metal glove. (She encounters Captain Jack and Torchwood again, this time up close, as they bundle a monstrous being away from her as she stumbles upon it in a hospital.) Gwen investigates further, finally tracking Captain Jack and company down to their secret base. When confronted they reveal that far from trying to solve the murder they are just testing the unearthly glove's powers.

The monstrous being they show Gwen in their cells is described as an alien being, and the Cardiff rift that allows these otherworldly things through is explained. Gwen is still trying, along with the viewer, to define what this organisation does: later with in a bar Captain Jack, she asks if he is some sort of "alien catcher".

In this bar over drinks Captain Jack mentions Torchwood 1 (destroyed in "the battle of Canary Wharf"), Torchwood 2 in Glasgow, Cardiff being Torchwood 3, and Torchwood 4 which has gone missing. Jack explains that no government has control over Torchwood, to prevent them from using alien technology for their own purposes. Separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations. (If the viewer has seen The Christmas Invasion, Tooth and Claw or Army of Ghosts/Doomsday this does not quite tally with the "for Queen and Country" aspect of Torchwood that has been presented so far. Without Torchwood 1 out of the picture, have they gone rogue?)

So far from explaining what Torchwood is for the first episode, it intriguingly muddies the waters.

The shock ending nicely underlines the idea that they have lost their way somewhat: will the new girl give them some direction?

Torchwood has elements that we have seen in other shows: the script self-mockingly has a character imagining a "CSI Cardiff" that I mentioned earlier. With the alien Weevil the idea that this is the Angel to Doctor Who's Buffy is reinforced, but comparisons to the X-files are kept at bay with a strong ensemble cast instead of a duo.

The one show in my opinion which seems to be the biggest influence, especially in terms of production design and the look and style of the show, is Ultraviolet. This is no bad thing as this was a magnificent series of several years back (1998 to be exact).

Created by Doctor-Who-director-to-be Joe Ahearne, this saw a shadowy team of operatives working outside the law, except the secret fight was against not aliens but vampires. They too had a Hannibal-Lector-style glass-fronted cell in their secret base. They too were decked out in a wardrobe of charcoal and steely blues and greys. (Jumping ahead to the next episode, the gases and powders of an violet hue complete the main color palate of Ultraviolet while further recalling its imagery.)

All in all, a great start.

Pilot by Joe Ford 21/11/06

Well, here is a series with a massive personality crisis. I can see all the elements for a GREAT series from watching the opening episode but in order to get there it needs to show a little more restraint and a LOT more originality. I wanted to enjoy this more than I did because it is clearly the work of lots of talented people but the overall feeling of something awkward being brought to life where it could (and should) have been very natural.

Let's start with the steals which are as transparent as crystal the second you see them. It almost feels as though Russell T Davies has taken all the best bits of his favourite shows and mushed them together to make Torchwood. Angel is a pretty big influence (the opening scene sees the Torchwood crew strolling down a dark, rainswept alley in trendy clothes, which is pretty much where we left the Angel crew when their series was cancelled; plus, the shock death of a regular so early in the show's run is a shock tried and tested in David Boreanaz's series). I spotted some whopping great Alias steals too (all these stylish swoops over Cardiff are directly lifted from that show but also the sequence where Gwen walks along the secret corridor towards the Hub is very reminiscent of Sydney Bristow strolling down a similar sort of secret corridor towards APO at the opening episode of their fourth series). And of course The X-Files has to be mentioned, the mixing of paranormal in ordinary surroundings is something they perfected in their better years. Torchwood will get there and it also has the same adult nature too. Then you have a camp car with flashing lights down the side (Knight Rider), the SF exit ascending from the base (Thunderbirds), the Weevils (very similar to the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the holding cells (which are similar to those on Star Trek: Voyager) and you have a show which, even if none of this was intentionally stolen, has elements that feel mighty old already.

To add to this schizophrenia you have a show which is frightened to break away from its roots, steeped as it is in Doctor Who lore. Jack is of course the biggest link, having been a companion in the first series and his immortality is a direct result of the events in The Parting of the Ways. The perception filter is due to the TARDIS landing in Cardiff in Boom Town, the battle for Canary Wharf and the Sycorax Invasion are mentioned and we even get a glimpse of the Doctor's hand, revealed in the next episode. If this show is going to weave in and out of Doctor Who these links are fine, but if this is just the writer trying to pull in viewers of the mother show it reveals a lack of trust in the audience. I hope it is the former, as Stargate has recently proven having two separate shows that have their own identity but merge for special occasions has proven extremely rewarding viewing. At this point in time it feels as though these elements of Doctor Who are here as a security blanket.

I don't want it to sound like this pilot is without merit; there were many great things about the pilot. Eve Myles in particular is an absolute triumph; she has the unenviable job of having to play the everyman on the street who stumbles on to Torchwood but thanks to a very honest and likable performance she steps outside the script and gives her character some real warmth and personality. She will definitely be one to watch. John Barrowman is also very confident in his role, naturally because he has played it before but rather than camping it up and playing for laughs (which much of his work on Doctor Who consisted of) he gets the chance to prove he's equally adept at playing the mysterious, slightly callous hero. It helps that these two have a natural chemistry from the start; I can see an interesting relationship developing here.

I loved the Hub too, what a fantastic set and unlike anything we have ever seen before. At first it feels claustrophobic, but the camera is soon swinging around and you can see how detailed the set is: on different levels, stacked with equipment, artefacts and interesting things to look at. It contrasts beautifully with all the luxurious, spacious starships we are used to in science fiction by being dirty and lived in. Nice work. Oh and the Pterodactyl is a lovely touch.

The direction is very polished too; the whole episode is fast-paced, slick and full of eye-catching images. Whilst the content is a mish-mash of lots of other TV shows, it really doesn't look like anything else on the telly, being an unusual mix of soap domesticity, police drama, science fiction, horror, comedy and action adventure; it's a pretty attention-grabbing brew, it presents all of these genres with absolute conviction, helped by a sympathetic director.

Aside from Myles and Barrowman, the rest of the cast are pretty unmemorable. Based on episode one Toshi, Owen and Ianto are all pretty faceless, none of them getting a moment to shine or be anything but a peripheral character to the plot. It doesn't help that the whole setup of Torchwood is skipped over in a few lines. There seems to be no structure to the organisation; who are they answerable to? Who set them up? Whilst their special access to crime scenes, amnesia pills, faking people's deaths and hacking into people's computers is very cool and makes them seem unstoppable, there seems to be no idea who punishes them if they step out of line and abuse their powers, such as Suzie here. These questions need to be addressed soon if the series is to retain its credibility.

As for its post-watershed opportunities, well let's just say I'm one the fence with this one. I am all for gore and swearing and violence when a script demands it for storytelling reasons but can't abide gratuitous content just for shock effect. I think we will see both in this series and the most "adult" moments aren't really needed at all. The date-rape scene is appalling, lowering the moral standards of the piece considerably and to make it worse along comes the boyfriend screaming "fucking tosser" this and "fucking" that and then Owen uses the drug on him and turns it into gay date-rape too!

Other thoughts:

• Inklings of a back-story are intruiging. "The 21st Century is where is all starts. And you've gotta be ready."
• The hospital scene is beyond silly. There has to a million ways in which Russell could have written Gwen's first encounter with alien life. Plus that is sprayiest, reddest blood ever!
• Jack rising from the floor in the dramatic conclusion is super camp. Hilarious!
• "Is all alien life filth? This planet is dirty; all we get is the shit."
• Shooting Jack in the head is a great shock.

Nine Reasons Why I Should Win the Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing in Television and One Reason Why I Won't by Daniel Saunders 5/12/06

1. I know that if you want to make the first episode of your new series full of suspense and mystery you should not have a huge advance publicity campaign revealing virtually every detail that the script tries to hide. You certainly should not plot your popular day job TV series around it, explaining the supposedly secret premise in detail to a large chunk of your prospective audience, if you know it will air three months earlier.
2. I know that if you want your new series to be full of excitement and danger you should have lots of action, chases and explosions. The story should not end before it has seemed to start. You certainly should not waste valuable time with helicopter shots of people standing on buildings (unless you're being paid to do so by the Welsh Tourist Office).
3. I know that if you want a character-, rather than a plot-based programme, you should have interesting, rounded characters in the first episode, or at least ones with the clear potential to develop along those lines. You should not just have cliches like the naive rookie; the Jack the Lad; the geek; the ruthless, idealistic "end justifies the means" scientist; and their leader, the wise man of action. It is a slight innovation to cast attractive, young, cool people in all these roles when they usually only play the Jack the Lad and the rookie. However, it is not an interesting innovation.
4. I certainly would not make the viewpoint character (the intelligent rookie who gets accepted on her merits by solving the case) look like a stupid, unprofessional bungler who solved the case Inspector Clouseau style: by chance, without realising what she was doing. Likewise, if I wanted to make all the characters responsible for the death of an innocent man early on in the episode (because they didn't seal off their quarantine zone securely), I would make this the pivotal event of the episode, illustrating the nature of all of the characters through their reactions, whether guilty, upset, angry or blase. I would not ignore it.
5. I think things through. As soon as an invisible paving-stone lift in the middle of a busy street is introduced, I wonder what prevents pedestrians falling down the hole. The most recent winner of the Dennis Potter Award also thought about this. He told the audience they were silly for worrying about it. He thought he was being clever, funny and postmodern. He was not. I also wonder who pays the wages and bills of a secret organization responsible to no one, and who gets them access to crime scenes controlled by the police force they scorn.
6. I am willing to draw on my experiences and the work of other writers, and to do some basic research. For example, I remember from my time as a student at Oxford (at the same college as the current holder of the Award, incidentally), that as the Bodleian Library is a Copyright Library, no books could be removed from the premises and people leaving had their bags searched by staff. I also remember similar precautions in secret service archives in John Le Carre novels. This would make me believe that a top secret organization storing sophisticated, dangerous alien technology would have a tight security system to prevent staff stealing any artefacts. I would at least assume that all alien technology would be registered and locked away at night. I would not write about such an organization working on a trust system, which allowed employees to remove whatever they were able to hide about them. I would research, as far as is possible, the type of precautions taken by real intelligence agencies in similar situations, so that I would have an idea of how far I could use dramatic license before I destroyed the air of verisimilitude I was attempting to maintain.
7. If I made an adult spin-off from a popular family programme, complete with swearing, sex, violence and gore, I would not include extremely specific references to the parent programme ("A Cyberman in every home."), as this might cause adult viewers to wonder if they were watching a children's programme and possibly stop watching, and make any children who heard about it want to watch. I would certainly not base the hero of this adult show on the main character of another fondly-remembered children's show, as this would be bound to lose adult viewers, especially as it restricts the type of stories that can be told about him.
8. If I did give this spinoff strong links to the original, I would not make big pointless continuity errors, which would only irritate the viewers to whom they are supposed to appeal. I would not have a character who conducted an autopsy on an alien in the parent series and appeared to be a doctor with no knowledge of aliens suddenly become a computer expert. While the different levels of knowledge might simply indicate research or training in between the stories, it is difficult to imagine a doctor or coroner retraining so quickly in a totally unrelated field.
9. I know that it is a cliche that new shows set in an organization such as the police or intelligence services start with the first day of a new recruit, allowing the writer an easy way of introducing all the characters and the set-up of the show. I would therefore try and avoid using it. I would certainly not think it such a good idea that I would use it for the first two episodes of my series.
10. I know that to win any award in the television industry at the moment you need to be named Russell T Davies.

A Review by Finn Clark 22/3/10

The best Torchwood comment I know comes from the wise and perceptive Wesley Osam:

"The Torchwood team are idiots. Just absolute dopes." [...] "And yet none of this is a problem, because this is exactly the kind of thing I watch Torchwood for. It's like watching hamsters. Crime-solving hamsters. Hamsters who constantly screw up and get people killed, and have a Guantanamo Bay in their basement. But hamsters."

It's funny! The gags are often bleak and nasty, but they're definitely gags. I like the comedy of Gwen's pizza delivery, for instance. The conversation with the dead guy at the beginning is appalling but also funny, in a "you have got to be kidding me" way. The baddie's murder attempt at the end is an absolute scream.

As for their amateurishness, it's clearly part of Rusty's plan. Look at the montage of Torchwood regulars taking alien equipment outside, straight after Captain Jack's been assuring Gwen that this never happens. "All alien technology stays on the base. No one's allowed to take anything outside." Yeah, right. Besides, look at what they then do with it! Toshiko does something boring, while Owen goes off for a bit of date rape. Does the fact that I laughed at the follow-up scene make me a bad person? It helps of course that Owen is paradoxically the most likeable character of the three, since he's open and honest about what he's looking for, while Blonde Girl only seemed interested in making him look stupid without ever bothering to pass on important information like, say, "My boyfriend's going to be here in a minute."

Mind you, I don't know if the Weevil encounter was meant to make even Torchwood look that stupid. On first viewing, the scene's sinister. However if you're watching in Hamster Mode, it's hilarious. There's a Shaun of the Dead gormlessness to the way Gwen keeps walking towards this thing and asking it questions, as a direct result of which someone dies. There's blood and biting, but only at this point do the Torchwood crew jump out of their hiding places and grab the monster.. Why didn't they act earlier? Why sit on their hands and let a man get his throat torn out? If they were trying not to let Gwen see too much, you can't exactly say the scene's outcome was optimal. Like I said. Hamsters.

Like Voyage of the Damned, it's subverting its genre. Note the way we begin with an X-Files-a-like bloody corpse, but then pull back to rain, Welsh accents and Eve Myles with coffee. That's the first subversion in itself. "The X-Files, but in Cardiff." It might not sound like much, but if you're as steeped in TV (in this case genre TV) as Rusty is, you'll know that's not the way the world used to work. That's even before we get to the hamsters. There's another wink to the audience later with "a dash of amnesia and a touch of retcon."

Pulling back to a less sardonic level, I like the way Rusty humanises the police. There's the coffee business at the beginning, "it's a fucking disgrace" and "I have bloody walked." Captain Jack's habit of standing on very high places is also clever, being a striking visual image, characterisation (of a show-off and a twat) and subtle foreshadowing of the episode's big shock reveal. All that in one shot. Rusty's good at things like that. I like the Doctor Who references, especially since the biggest one of all isn't a reference but instead a logical development. I admire Suzie's speech about why Doctor Who is all about optimism and a sense of wonder while everything in Torchwood is slimy and horrible, which manages to plug a semi-plot hole while also being a great speech delivered by a good actress in a strong climactic scene.

More fundamentally, I like the characterisation of Torchwood itself. They were testing the glove? What a bunch of bastards.

Unfortunately there's the problem of the regulars. I like Burn Gorman's Owen. I like the way he doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's slime. More importantly, I like the fact that he's being played by the show's one proper actor, which makes such a difference. However, John Barrowman and Eve Myles are poor, while the only reason I'm not saying the same of Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd is the fact that they don't get much to do this week. Indira Varma's good, though. With Barrowman, we have a performer who's obviously bursting with charisma and energy, but doesn't necessarily have much acting range to fall back on. This show's meant to be Doctor Who's dirty, lowdown, realistic cousin, but unfortunately realism requires subtlety and Barrowman isn't the man for that. Particularly bad are his "contraceptives in the rain" speech and "that couldn't be me, could it?"

Meanwhile, Eve Myles fares no better, e..g. the "you're an alien catcher" exchange and "I remember." I don't even like her character! Gwen has a boyfriend and they appear to love each other, but the very first words she says to him are a lie. She doesn't even think about it. Lies are easier than truth. It's not even as if she's got involved in Torchwood and has anything to lie about yet!

However, on the upside, that's a painful-looking crack on the head she took in the pub. I also like the incongruity of Ianto's suit and tie. I think that's it for the cast-related good stuff.

At the end of the day, this is the first episode of Torchwood. Culpability must be borne. However one has to wonder what a more Rusty-driven version of the show would have been, with more jokes and genre subversion. It would have been funnier, that's for sure. Imagine a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek ironic version of Torchwood which, on that level, could be said to work. It probably wouldn't have got as many viewers. I'm sure many people would have hated it. Nonetheless, this episode at least comes close to being parody, even if the production's macho tone is tending to hide that, and it's an amusing thought experiment to imagine what might have been had the entire series gone down that path.

I enjoyed this episode more than I thought I would. Mind you, having seen it twice before already, I think I'd have been bored silly if I hadn't made the leap into Hamster Mode. I like the way it's subverting the often-po-faced "torches and trenchcoats" genre. Rusty isn't taking it entirely seriously, which is refreshing. I laughed at the way Gwen tracks down Torchwood. I also like the Twilight Zone details, like the pterodactyl. I admire the way it works on the two levels I've been talking about, which is approximately two more than usual in this series. If I had to rank it alongside Rusty's Doctor Who episodes, I'd put it as high as somewhere in the middle.