The thing is that Torchwood has been ticking along rather nicely on BBC3 for some time now but, as with all things that attract a rating, it's seen itself pimped up through the channels in response to it's success. Series One was only on BBC3. Series Two migrated to BBC2 and now, here we are, premiering the third season on BBC1. Except it's only a five part series and there have been a few modifications that pretty much migrated me from the "regular viewer" category to the "devoted upset fan" box.
The first thing to say - and this is free from spoilers - there have been a few changes to Torchwood that are welcome. The budget seems to have ballooned for a start and that's no bad thing at all when you're looking for glossy sci-fi (though I'm not entirely sure why BBC1 viewers must have glossier than BBC2 viewers or BBC3 viewers... are they broadcasting different formats?!). However when Series One began it was clear the writers wanted to set Torchwood fairly far apart from Doctor Who and it primarily achieved this through a huge abundant amount of sex. Straight, gay, alien, even a beastie who shagged drunken Cardiff drinkers to death. And lo, it was rocking. A bit one dimensional but super dirty because Dr Who-niverse plus sex is a pretty exciting little combination, particularly if you were always into the mind-fuck of the immortal traveller more than the tacky plastic of the aliens encountered in abandoned Welsh slate mines. And Jack was gay and Ianto was heading that way and Tosh was falling for that alien/girl from My Family and they killed someone off in the first episode. Wow. Anyway...
That was on BBC3. When things migrated to BBC2 the sex seemed to morph into a sudden incestuous obsession: all the Torchwood team members were still bonking like rabbits but only each other. But that was OK as Captain Jack started more explicitly hanging out with Ianto, Gwen's dull hubby Rhys almost ended up slaughtered (that was an episode full of the hope of escaping suburbia I think) and Owen ended up the weirdly grey-skinned zombie we'd always suspected he was.
So to BBC1 and do we get less violence? Well not really (and here we will have spoilers). We had a man shooting his whole family dead, we had a child melted by weird noise, Jack died 6 times (thanks to You Have Been Watching for the body count) and they debated slaughtering 10% of all children. Also there were some quite nasty gory bits. So no less violence then and actually a welcome blast of tension and cynicism. But where had all the boffing gone? OK it was a week long run and, though not a real-time experience, it was supposed to be taking place over a few days. So that's probably OK. Although the resurrection of attempts to make Gwen and Jack glance sexily at each other continue to fail big time for me. The idea of them as a fake couple is too, well, improbable I think. John Barrowman, cheese-ter that he is, is quite frighteningly turned into a passable actor when faced with a believable love interest, so long may he be written as a character that will flirt with anything but has a particularly eye for the boys. But I digress.
There were four things that made me badly want to scream with annoyance in the week (bigger spoilers ahead):
- Gwen's pregnancy - childcare just isn't exciting telly. And if you're cynically killing kids in the week why suddenly get fluffy? There was a super flexible option - leave Gwen pregnant and alive at the end of the episode but don't assume she safely makes it to full term (as that atrocious coda did). With all that explosive traumatic jumping about there was plenty of opportunity for chaos there. If Torchwood comes back for Season 4 and the baby is just an excuse for Rhys whimsy I will be pissed. If it's a horrible alien manifestation I'll be just about amused but I still think they missed the subtle open ended sane option to not commit...
- The Rift was exactly where please?! You see the thing is that if you set up a universe and it's silly and full of aliens and such you better bloomin' make it make sense. It's like the Buffyverse: it doesn't have to make sense in the real world but it always has to make sense in the fictional universe you are in. So when Torchwood was blown up on Day One what exactly happened to Cardiff? Overrun with Weavels? Alien influx? Dark paramilitary forces running in to steal control of the Rift? You can't blow up a fictional piece of physics that easily Mr Russell T. Davies. It belittles all those who have already seen the show. And it actually mocks Doctor Who fans who also require that part of the Torchwood Universe to work - it's effectively the Tardis charger...
- The Adventures of Captain Jack is the fear I have for Season 4 of Torchwood. After the shows had gone out someone tweeted that the show would be about "Captain Jack bumming his way round the universe. Literally". It's a comment I'd like to call homophobic but frankly the way the week was completed there was little left but Jack being the sexed up Who. Maybe that means Who is turning all suitable for the under 5's but with Stephen Moffat in charge there and Russell T. Davies still involved in Torchwood I have my fears far more about the latter than the former. Davies seems bored of Torchwood before it's barely begun. It's something he's done before: After an amazing cultural phenomenon with Queer as Folk he absolutely devalued that series with the shockingly rubbish Queer as Folk 2. It was like he'd shown up but couldn't be bothered to follow through with believable characters he'd initially set up. The self-destructive tone of Torchwood Season 3 makes me wonder if he's doing the same thing: deciding he likes the telly slot he's managed to open up but he'd rather do a new show instead. File this little rant under "deeply concerned at the ceasing of fun unwholesome Torchwood fun".
- Ianto - why? Why why why? Why kill off just about the only sympathetic and complex character in the show (Gwen is complex but hardly sympathetic; Jack is complexly background-ed but his core personality seems pretty fixed; Ianto was confused about his sexuality, his place professionally, his class role, his relationship). And worse still why did we need to see his family as a sort of excuse for his dead: the gay brother sacrificed for a chavvy family of four. I'll be honest I was ready for the kids to be destroyed but in no way ready to give up a well written and acted character. It's a strangely homophobic move for me - you've had your coming out moment, you've had a relationship and now we have nothing left to write for you. That's a fairly bleak picture of inclusion in mainstream drama if ever I saw one. Maybe Russell wanted to reduce the amount of slash fiction out there... I suspect the opposite will be the outcome. As much of a feminist as I am I'd rather have a man-who-sleeps-with-men, a feisty woman and a pansexual alien as my leads. Not one depressed alien and a mommy. Gah!
- Take a more Buffy view of your universe. There are no sacred cows but a relationship that's stable across two or three series and then goes badly wrong is much more interesting and surprising than one that is stable only for a few months. You can't keep all characters happy but you should let a bit of stability amek for plain fun episodes short on soap factors. Otherwise you should be writing "continuing drama" instead.
- To help you tie things up sensibly why don't you do something outrageously unusual: hire some writers who actually did science at A-level or at university. It would give the show a short of Star Trek-like big ideas + vague plausibility that would help tidy those endings up no end. What is actually happening and being researched is far more thrilling that what sits in the mind of a writer on their 20th plotline for a sci-fi format. So, subscriptions to New Scientist, Nature and Wired and a few accessible but informative tech/science mags would be a start. Some actual science journals would knock your socks off and a scientist on the writing team... well that might just flip you over the edge so that 100% of a series could be good, not just the first 70% of it!
