How Torchwood Changed British TV

Recently I've found myself re-visiting a lot of TV. There are a few shows especially which I go to in times of stress or uncertainty, usually based around sci-fi or fantasy which act as escapism.

I've always loved science fiction and its ability to tackle intricate and complex themes in ways other genres can't. Not only can both comedy and drama be mixed into a sci-fi story but it can also explore dark hypotheticals and cast an interesting light on society through an exaggerated lense. While this brand of sci-fi can hardly be branded as "comforting" I've always found catharsis in watching it. In many ways the portrayal of society, leadership, government and state of mind through the metaphor of aliens, robots or other creatures feels more realistic than any plain drama.

In my opinion there is no show which handles all these elements like Torchwood does.

Torchwood is a show I can never seem to escape. As soon as I think I'm over it I'll remember a brilliant line of dialogue, feel a need for alien escapades or a desire to see LGBT+ representation done right. There's always something that brings me back to this show but I've never thought to analyse why it's so special to me.

Simply put there was no other show like it when it aired and I don't think there's been a show like it since.

There's plenty of shows that look like Torchwood but what the show was, what it represented and the characters it was about was groundbreaking on multiple levels. 14 years since the show aired and fans are still just as passionate about it now as they were back then. There's still a shrine in Cardiff bay to one of the central characters!

It's a spin-off that became a separate entity from its mother show, aired on every channel of the BBC (Except BBC Four), had a pansexual hero at the helm with a supporting cast of deeply flawed characters. It was gory, sexy, wasn't afraid of dark storylines that dealt with themes like mental health, mortality and faith, gave us one of the most celebrated gay couples on television and did it all with a twinkle in its eye and a smirk on its lips.

When Torchwood was at its best it wasn't just peak Torchwood, it was peak television!

1. What is Torchwood?

2005 saw the return of the classic sci-fi series Doctor Who, with writer Russell T Davies at the helm. Despite a low budget, the show became incredibly popular and arguably hit its stride with the season 1 episode, The Empty Child, where the Doctor and Rose travel to WW2 Britain and discover a child who's gas-mask is surgically melded to his face. Even more terrifying is that the child apparently died in a bombing raid, and more of the dead are waking up with the same features. Along with creating one of the shows most memorable monsters, the episode also introduced the dashing Captain Jack Harkness.

Jack was a different kind of character than the two main leads. A time agent (a kind of bounty hunter) looking for a quick score. While most of the Doctor Who episodes had a very clear good vs evil narrative, Captain Jack created a grey area that challenged viewers. He was responsible for the problem but he had never intended for it to happen. He was intriguing, cocky, a bit cowardly and during his five initial episodes in the TARDIS, he became a firm fan favourite.

At the end of the re-boots first season Captain Jack was made a fixed point in time, when Rose Tyler, after looking into the heart of the TARDIS brought him back to life. However not being able to control her powers she didn't just bring him back once, she made him immortal.

Showrunner Russell T Davies didn't want Captain Jack to appear in the next series however. He thought having a strong leading man already established in the series would make it hard for the new Doctor, David Tennant to establish himself.

But Davies also didn't want to just leave Jack. The character's popularity, not just as a fantastic character but also an LGBT+ icon made him hard to ignore and who would want to!

So, plans were made for a spin-off series. During David Tennant's first series, the Torchwood institute was set-up to play a huge part in the series arc.

Originally created by Queen Victoria, Torchwood was a secret organization designed to protect the world from alien threats including the Doctor themself. Unlike the Doctor they were not afraid to go in guns first. The moral duplicity made Torchwood the perfect home for Captain Jack.

And thus the Torchwood TV series was born. Rated 15 and stuffed to bits with all the stuff you couldn't put in Doctor Who (swearing, sex, violence, gore) it became a new playground for the writers to explore the darker more psychological elements of the Doctor Who universe, and Captain Jack was at the centre of it all.

2. Channel Hopping

Torchwood is unique in that it is the only BBC show to have had series premiers on BBC Three, Two and One.

BBC Three was the natural home for riskier shows. With its mature content Torchwood fit right in. Despite mixed reviews the show was a success. It was so successful in-fact that the BBC decided to move it to BBC Two for its second season. However, BBC Two is a very different audience to BBC Three. The grittiness of the first series was toned down for season 2 with more comedy added to balance out the darker moments. Season 2 of Torchwood is one of my favourite series of TV.

After series 2, fans were still hungry for more but the writers weren't sure where to take it. After the big crossover event with Doctor Who, Davies didn't want to go back to the "monster of the week" formula of season 1 and 2. So he wrote something different. A 13 episode continuous story.

The BBC told him they didn't have the budget. So Davies reduced his story to a 5 episode mini-series called Children of Earth on the condition that it would air on BBC One and it would be an event week. Over the course of a week the series ran an episode daily.

Children of Earth is not just considered by many to be the best Torchwood story but also one of the best pieces of television the BBC have ever produced.

I have to agree. As much as I love the second series, Children of Earth pushed the boundaries of science fiction television with its dark themes, brilliant characters and daming depiction of of the British government.

Torchwood proved that shows and audiences were transferable and could survive a change of primary channel. It helped to blur the lines between what kind of post-watershed content could be placed on which channel.

If you're a Being Human or Orphan Black fan, you have Torchwood to thank.

It proved that mainstream BBC One audiences were excited for darker, more experimental work and you only have to look at the trend of shows preceding Children of Earth to see the tonal impact it made on post watershed BBC One.

3. Children of Earth

As I previously mentioned Children of Earth was event television. It was marketed and released as a BIG deal and written so new audiences could enjoy it without having much prior knowledge of the series.

Children of Earth is a slow burn sci-fi/ political drama where all the children in the world stop and speak the same words at the same time "We are coming".Shortly after an alien race arrive, requesting 10% of the Earth's children to prevent the genocide of the human race.

Nobody knows why they want the children and it turns out the government may have had dealings with this species before.

What works so well in the series is the political aspect of it. The scenes where government officials are trying to figure out which children should make up the 10% is chilling. Their priorities to make their own children exempt and the rush to cover their own backs from the public feels terrifyingly realistic. If our world governments really where in this position, this feels very close to the mark on how they might react.

Torchwood has to figure out how to stop it but their resources are bleak, their numbers are low and tragedy lurks at every corner for Captain Jack Harkness. This series pushes his character to places nobody would ever expect from watching his light-hearted antics on Doctor Who.

4. Representation

For many fans representation is what brought them to the show and representation is one of the reasons they stayed. This show is one of the best examples of good LGBT+ representation.

It's never addressed, never focused on but all the characters are fluid sexually. Tosh has a relationship with a woman in one of the episodes although short lived. Ianto goes from being in a relationship with a half converted Cyber-woman to being in a relationship in Captain Jack himself. Owen and Gwen get a few bisexual moments and Jack just flirts with anybody and anything.

And it's never a big deal.

The relationships are never really a focus, they're just there in the background. The relationship between Jack and Ianto especially resonated with fans because they were passionate and physical with each other but neither of them was a cliche. In Children of Earth when asked about his sexuality Ianto says "It's not men, it's just him" they were all characters first, not just written to pander to an LGBT+ audience.

This casual, more realistic approach to LGBT+ representation was groundbreaking especially since it was the main character, the dashing hero who was in a loving relationship with a man, not just the supporting cast.

There'd been LGBT+ characters on TV before of course but not heros, not in an action series.

Torchwood normalised sexual fluidity and it without a doubt started to change the BBC's attitude towards casual representation, not just on BBC Three where it usually was anyway but throughout all of its channels.

It was also brilliant for female characters. Women often get a raw deal when working for secret organisations or fighting aliens. They're usually either damsels in distress, stereotypes or overly sexualised at every opportunity. In Torchwood there's Gwen Cooper, a bad-ass cop who you can believe is a cop with a steely resolve and no-nonsense attitude. Tosh is a genius who's not afraid to get her hands dirty in the field and both of them have senses of humour! If there's one thing I despise it's when male characters can be charming, funny and serious but the female characters are only allowed to be one of those things. In Torchwood every character gets to be more than one thing.

5. Legacy

Almost 15 years since it first aired and Torchwood still lives on in the hearts of fans. Doctor Who fans have been asking for Captain Jack to return for years and they were finally rewarded with a surprise re-appearance in season 12. Ever since its final series aired, audio drama producers Big Finish have been keeping the show alive through brilliant stories that rival the quality of the show itself.

John Barrowman (Captain Jack) also writes Torchwood comics and books along with his sister Carole Barrowman.

The whole Torchwood cast are so passionate about the series they keep returning for full cast audios and contribute to the extra media. That's a rare thing, especially if their characters were killed off a long time ago!

I'd obviously love to see another series of Torchwood. It may have had teething problems early on but the show developed into something so polished and enjoyable that at times its quality exceeded that of Doctor Who.

Whether my wish comes true or not, Torchwood will forever live with the fans and the impact it made on British television is a lasting one. Not just pushing the gore content boundary but blurring the lines of expected audience and bringing a new kind of LGBT+ representation to the fore.

It also had an awesome theme tune... Just putting that out there.