Torchwood Series 1

[Deadman97]

A preview scene, leaked from who-knows-where, went up on a certain torrent site today.

[Brutus Beefcake]

the directo may be trying (rightly or wrongly) to be trying to use this  to 'normalise' ?  attitudes to such things. If so (speculation on speculation here) is this the right sort of thing to be going about doing with tv licence cash or any public tv show?

Fuck yeah.  Remember the impact the original Star Trek had with it's interracial kiss.

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

I'm I right in thinking that dude from Hollyoaks is in this?  Yantob Jones.

[Marv Orange]

Review from the Fat GinGer Dudes site

Hi,
   Longtime reader, etc.

   Last night there was a special advance screening of Torchwood, the new Doctor Who spin-off, in Manchester and I was there.

   The basic premise of the show is that there is a secret organisation, Torchwood, who work outside the Government protecting against alien threats and scavenging any technology left behind. They are led by Captain Jack from Series 1/27 of Doctor Who, whom we last saw being resurrected by a superpowered Rose and abandoned in the 50th century.

   The episode we saw last night was the first one and it did all the jobs a pilot should do - introduced the set-up and the characters and added enough mystery to make you want to keep watching.

   The action in the episode is all from the POV of Gwen, a WPC in the Cardiff Police Force who witnesses Torchwood briefly resurrect a murder victim one night and then becomes obsessed with them and tries tracking them down, to eventually be recruited into their ranks.

   The cast are all very good and Davies' script is full of his trademark humour and is more adult in nature than Who. There's more blood and swearing and the teaser for future episodes implies more sex too, so much more like Davies' other adult dramas.

   My one criticism would be the music which, although good, does become repetitive and intrusive. Every time someone does some running the same music blasts from the soundtrack and almost drowns out any dialogue.

   I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free, but I will say that there is a revelation about Jack which should make things interesting and there are some nice visual and dialogue references to Who which some may spot.

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

a revelation about Jack

gay?  bisexual?

[Jack Shaftoe]

Back to an earlier point, why *is* the lighting in BBC shows almost always so rubbish?

Neverwhere was the worst I've ever seen, but apparently that was because it was supposed to be graded, but wasn't due to lack of cash or summat, so that makes sense. But Who always looks rubbish to me, and the bits of Torchwood look equally bad in the lighting sense. Well, in every sense, but the lighting particularly.

Do the BBC need new bulbs or something?

Caveat: if you are a lighting engineer for the bbc, please don't be cross, you probably did State of Play or something, that was fine.

[wheatgod]

The lighting in I'm Alan Partridge is second to none.

[waste of chops]

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/blog/2006/10/youre-not-journalist-so-fuck-off.html

Dateline: 18 October, 2006, The St David's Hotel & Spa, Cardiff. Russell T Davies and Chris Chibnall are hosting a Q&A session, following a press screening of episode one of Torchwood.

IAN LEVINE: Russell, if Captain Jack is coming back to the last three episodes of season three of Doctor Who, what happens when ...

RUSSELL T DAVIES: [Cutting him off] This is a Doctor Who question.

IAN LEVINE: It's not about Doctor Who! It's a Torchwood question! What happens if you go to Torchwood series two - which I hope you will - and he's in Doctor Who?

RUSSELL T DAVIES: I can't tell you that now! [Laughs] You'd wouldn't ask Agatha fucking Christie whodunit! Next question!

IAN LEVINE: But in Torchwood series two ...

RUSSELL T DAVIES: Ian, no offence, you're not a journalist, so fuck off.

Anyway, the news is, Torchwood is ace. And there was I expecting not to be wowed by the notion of a Cardiff-based killing-aliens division - assuming a homogenous line-up of square-jawed heroes would leave me cold (too macho, too clinical, too goal-orientated). But not a bit of it. The team of characters just feel right. Aside from there being a finely judged mixture of archetypes, we're also shown insights into their personal lives pretty much from the off. And that's maybe where the This Life references have sprung from. This is an ensemble show, populated with interesting people the viewer wants to be with.

If I had one reservation - and, contractually, I must - I'd say it's a shame the show hasn't been pitched at a family audience. Why? Simply because some of the concepts (a particular "magic" paving stone outside Cardiff's Millenium Centre, for one) are exactly the right mix of the mundane and fantastic to excite a child's imagination. The eight-year-old me would have gone nuts over some of the ideas here.

But then, the thirtysomething me is going nuts too, but that's because of the news Chris Chibnall reads OTT. Not just that, he actually looks in on this blog. Regulary. Quick, everyone, look busy! Truthfully, though, I dunno what's more gob-smacking - the fact he was kind enough to tell me so at the post-screening shindig (and secure his mention here today), or that I was actually standing in a room with two people who read this thing!* To me, that's science-fiction.

* Nick Setchfield from SFX magazine, your continued patronage is also greatly appreciated.

# posted by Graham Kibble-White : 3:15 PM

[Frinky]

If these people don't start acting soon, I'm turning this off.

[Frinky]

Eurgh. Tata.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

It didn't show the bit where she went and made some incoherent posts on CaB after the amnesia pill kicked in, ending them all with "Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I've just done an amnesia pill...".

[Catalogue Trousers]

Oh, nice one, RTD. Dei ex machinae in excelsis.

So Torchwood isn't the X-Files that I'd feared - it's Captain Scarlet with less convincing acting.

A pretty average piece of work - but then, so was Rose. Although great to see RTD's body-fascism continuing - can't we have a fat and/or ugly and/or old Torchwoodian? Please?

Certainly worth keeping up with for a little while at least, in the final analysis.

Edited to add:

Although you may wish to bear in mind that I've also said that about Beeb One's Robin Hood.

[Frinky]

It just read (and looked) like a fanscript. A really shitty bit of fan fiction about a minor character that some lonely bedroom-dweller had a crush on.

The set design was completely awful.

[Marv Orange]

BUMWOOD MORE LIKE.


hahahaa ahem.

Edit : erm Tush wood would have been better.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Woo, clubbing stuff, 'cos, that's like what all the "young adults" want, innit.

Christ. Bring back the Brig and UNIT. In fact, make Lethbridge-Stewart that "strange guy" in Glasgow and I might just forgive you.

Sod it. I'm giving up on this second one for now - will watch it again when I feel less churlish. Off to watch some soothing and dramatically well-crafted SpongeBob SquarePants instead.

[Marv Orange]

Attack of the welsh slag.

[Marv Orange]

Huh has he got some of the heart of the tardis shite in him as well?

[Deadman97]

Haha- I appeared in a drama on BBC1 Wales about eleven years ago with the Torchwood guy in the suit, the driver-type fella who didn't say much.

FWIW I quite enjoyed that, although Captain Jack having indesctructiblism from the vortexes was a mmmmmmassive cop-out.

[benthalo]

Awful.

First ep I slowly realised was basically 'Rose' on auto-pilot without the usual redeeming element of an incoherent RTD script: decent jokes. Even Captain Jack isn't funny, and that's THE WHOLE POINT OF HIS BEING.

Also, what was all that pheremone spray stuff with the Lock Stock refugee all about? Two scenes for no purpose at all as far as I could see.

In fairness, episode one wasn't as saggy and rubbish towards the end as most RTD scripts. It moved in slightly different ways, but it generally felt like the lovechild of Afterlife, Sea of Souls and arse-end Buffy.

We just shouted at episode two. Several Captain Scarlet "du-du-duh-dum-dum-de-duh"s from our wine-ridden mouths. Drivel of the highest order and I can't conceive of lasting three months of this cobblers. The idea that its author Chris Chibnall has written several episodes fair chills the blood. I'll pay attention to the others and sleepwalk the rest.

Re the exploding animal. I couldn't help but anticipate the following caption in the closing titles: "No animals were harmed in the making of this programme - because it was fucking obviously an effect".

By the way, I held sufficient optimism to think that new Who might open the way for truly wayward telefantasy - and is this it? Lots of redundant "fuck"s and plots based around spunk? I despair. At least if the gay bloke at the sperm bank survived I might just have forgiven them.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

Haha- I appeared in a drama on BBC1 Wales about eleven years ago with the Torchwood guy in the suit, the driver-type fella who didn't say much.

Oh right, that explains what happened to me the other day. I was watching an eleven year old BBC1 Wales drama and one of the people in it seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite work out who he was. In the end I just kept shouting "Who the fuck is he?".

[Frinky]

Speaking of Captain Scarlett, wasn't that remade as a live action thing recentley? Or did that come to nothing?

[Deadman97]

It was definitely resurrected via CG, a la Reboot, don't know about live-action though.

EDIT: Sutton, in the credits I was just listed as "??!?!!"

[The Duck Man]

Well I thought that was pretty damn good. A bit too obsessed with sex, perhaps a few too many shots of Cardiff (although it didn't really bother me) but otherwise, yeah, really good.

Russell T. Davies obviously felt far more confident outside of Doctor Who, his script was far better. The first one was really excellent, a great opener to the series. Rather liked how they included Indira Varma as a series regular in all the press, I presumed that that was some kind of dream world test to see how good Gwen was.

The second episode perhaps wasn't as good but still a nice, solid episode.

Thumbs up from me.

[benthalo]

Yes, The All New Captain Scarlet CGIorama on CITV. Quite good actually if a liitle George Lucas in its morals.

Torchwood's 'maturity' simply called to mind the early Nineties New Adventures novels or Bill Baggs dramas which no one remembers the plot to. Basically, fandom got over the f-word and s-s-s-s-s-e-e-e-e-e-e-x-x-x-x-x-x a long time ago. I had a distant hope that mature/adult might mean assuming more of your audience. Seemingly not.

[Sheldon Finklestein]

I liked it. Sharp scripts, high production values and a generally fun atmosphere. The Indira Varma bit surprised me, too. I kept thinking "how can they have a series regular who is a murderer? When's the twist coming?" Must admit, though, the second episode stank of "this is post-watershed, look at what we can do!" Anyone else catch the faint snatch of the Bad Wolf theme when Jack was holding the Doctor's hand? I'll be watching next week.

[Catalogue Trousers]

benthalo wrote:

Torchwood's 'maturity' simply called to mind the early Nineties New Adventures novels or Bill Baggs dramas which no one remembers the plot to. Basically, fandom got over the f-word and s-s-s-s-s-e-e-e-e-e-e-x-x-x-x-x-x a long time ago. I had a distant hope that mature/adult might mean assuming more of your audience. Seemingly not.

The resounding thwack of a nail being struck squarely on the head as if by a laser-guided hammer augmented with top-secret alien technology. Well said, squire.

[Deadman97]

Did anyone spot any major blatant Who references? There was the hand, of course, and a nod to the TARDIS, but I didn't spot anything else.

[Catalogue Trousers]

The first episode rabbiting on about the events of The Christmas Invasion and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, maybe?

[Deadman97]

Oh yeah, obviously. Cuh.

[Marvin]

The second episode felt like one of those dodgy late-night Hollyoaks at times. Just with an alien.