Torchwood is a science-fiction television drama created by Russell T. Davies. It is set in Cardiff¹ and features a top secret organization who work to broaden human knowledge of alien life and technology, while protecting us all from an uncertain and dangerous future.

Torchwood Institute

'If it's alien - it's ours.'

Queen Victoria founded the Torchwood Institute at the Torchwood Estate in Scotland, in 1879 - as recounted in an episode of long-running sci-fi drama Doctor Who, entitled 'Tooth and Claw'. Queen Victoria declared its purpose as to protect the British Empire from enemies 'beyond imagination'.

Surviving throughout the 1900's, four versions of the Torchwood organisation were operating at the turn of the 21st Century. Torchwood One was destroyed by the Cybermen and Daleks during the Battle of Canary Wharf in the final episodes of Doctor Who Series Two. Torchwood Two is a one-man operation run out of Glasgow, while Torchwood Four has gone missing altogether. The organization featured in Torchwood, the series, is Torchwood Three, based in Cardiff.

The Doctor Who episode 'Bad Wolf' features the first mention of the Torchwood organisation as the answer to a question in the futuristic version of 'The Weakest Link' - hosted by the murderous Ann Droid.

The Team

• Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) - An ex-time agent² from the 51st Century, he assumed the name Jack Harkness as an alias following a career-transition to conman and a chance meeting with a World War Two American pilot, living in London during the Blitz, who died on a training mission.
  
  Captain Jack is the leader of Torchwood Three and was first introduced in Doctor Who during the 2005 series. At that time, he was attempting to con the Doctor and Rose into buying a uesless space capsule.
  
  He continued to travel with the Doctor until the end of Series One, where he died on Satellite Five in a last stand against the Daleks. However, Rose, through the phenomenon of Bad Wolf, used the channelled power of the time vortex to bring Captain Jack back from the dead. For reasons that remain unexplained³, Captain Jack's resurrection means he can now never die. The Doctor left Satellite Five without Jack, but the resourceful ex-time agent used his personal Vortex Manipulator to make a single desperate leap into the past - travelling from the 1,002nd Century and overshooting to 1869 - and then living through the intervening years through a combination of luck, bravado and miraculous resistance to death and personal harm. He reunited with the Doctor again in the Series Three episode 'Utopia'
  
  As a result of Jack's apparent immortality, some evidence exists that he will ultimately become The Face of Boe, who has played a pivotal role in the ongoing arc of the Doctor Who storyline.

• Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori) is the computer and technical specialist of Torchwood Institute. Analytical and by-the-book, she sometimes comes across as aloof. 'Greeks Bearing Gifts' showcases Toshiko's frustration with her role within Torchwood after receiving a pendant which enables her to hear people's thoughts.

• Dr Owen Harper (Burn Gorman) is the medical specialist, and second in command. Cynical, sarcastic and a little cold hearted, he leads a promiscuous lifestyle with little concern about the outcome. In the episode 'Out of Time', he falls in love with a woman from 1953, who arrived in the present day due to a fault in the Rift. This is Owen's darkest and most moving hour, which colours his outlook and personality for the rest of Series One.

• Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) is in charge of administration. He largely deals with the paperwork and makes coffee. He enjoys a special relationship with Captain Jack, one which frustrates them both⁴. Ianto comes close to leaving Torchwood Institute in the episode 'Cyberwoman', when he puts the team and the city of Cardiff in danger from deadly Cyberman attack - and his relationship with the whole team subtly shifts to the negative as a result.

• Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is Torchwood's newest recruit. Promoted from the police force to Torchwood in episode one of the first series, she brings a certain wide-eyed wonder and naivety to the team, and - to some extent - serves as the confused and questioning mouthpiece of the viewer. Gwen has a long-term partner, Rhys, who knows nothing about her 'day job' since she transferred out of the Police Force into Torchwood - other than it seems to necessitate her keeping very strange hours.

• Suzie Costello (Indira Varma) is Torchwood's technical expert and second-in-command⁵, with a keen interest in the study of the various artefacts recovered by the team during their investigations. Suzie's insatiable curiosity leads her down a dark path, however, and her actions put her at odds with Captain Jack and the rest of the team. Events in the first episode, 'Everything Changes', lead to her killing Captain Jack in cold blood, before taking her own life with a bullet through the head.

The Hub

The headquarters of Torchwood Three lies beneath the water tower opposite the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, Wales. The existence of the facility is a guarded secret, though some non-members certainly have clues to its existence (like the local pizza delivery lady... though she certainly isn't in any condition to divulge any information following the events of 'Cyberwoman'). The Hub seems cavernous in proportions, with extensive connecting corridors and rooms, both artificial and natural.

Some evidence seems to suggest that the Hub has existed as a base for Torchwood for a very long time - with an archaic Underground-style appearance to some parts of the facility, with 'Torchwood' picked out in meticulously crafted mosaic, as well as a train turntable in the morgue. However, while Cardiff has a very active overground rail network, no underground service has ever existed.

The Hub has at least five means of access (maybe more):

• The Tourist Office - A disguise for the front door, manned by Ianto. The Tourist Office sports a whole array of leaflets, posters and guides to Cardiff. Deliveries comes through the Tourist Office - whether post, invited guests or fast food.

• The Lift - A complex lift mechanism incorporating a stone slab that forms part of the step next to the water tower. Contact with the TARDIS during the events of 'Boom Town' appears to have imprinted the slab with some aspects of the perceptive filter of the time machine's chameleon circuit⁶. As a result of this imprint, anyone standing on the slab cannot be perceived (seen or heard) by anyone not on the slab until they step off it - though physical contact remains possible (Suzie knew this when she shot Captain Jack, who was standing on the slab at the time).

• The Garage - Inferred, rather than specifically mentioned or seen, Torchwood maintain an imposing, customised, black Land Rover that positively begs well-protected garage space⁷.

• The Millennium Centre Roof - Torchwood team members have been known to go up on the roof for a relaxing retrospective moment or two, and what would assume - as a result - that some easy and concealed route exists from within the Hub to somewhere inside or on top of the Centre.

• The Dino-Flap - The Hub provides a resting place for a pterodactyl, which - as seen at the end of 'Day One' - has some means to come and go as it pleases into the sky over Cardiff.

In addition, the Hub contains a whole range of additional facilities to support the day-to-day activities of the team (and some purely for colour and entertainment value!):

• The Medical Facilities - The Hub contains facilities for autopsy, forensics and cold storage, primarily utilised by Owen Harper, though everyone seems to take turns at introducing new residents to the morgue.

• The Rift - "There's a rift in space and time running right through the city..." - The Hub sits at the nexus of a rift in time and space, suppressed and controlled by a device - called the Rift Manipulator - possibly devised or salvaged by Captain Jack. Fluctuations in the Rift allow egress through time and space by all sorts of "flotsam and jetsam" - as evidenced by the passenger plane in 'Out of Time' and the Gelf in the Doctor Who episode 'Unquiet Dead'. It would be purest speculation and conjecture to suggest that Captain Jack's malfunctioning Vortex Manipulator may have aggravated the Rift into it's current state of instability, as in the final episode we learn the Rift has existed since the Dawn of Time and Cardiff probably wasn't knee deep in Weevils and other alien scum prior to 1869.

• The Safe - Situated in Jack's office and fitted with an alphanumeric combination⁸, the safe holds many of the most powerful artefacts discovered by Torchwood.

• The Armoury - Torchwood has access to a phenomenal amount of alien technology, a signficant proportion of which falls into the classification of 'weaponry'. The armoury provides a locked storage facility for these varied weapons of massed construction, with only Captain Jack in possession of the key.

• The Cells - Secure holding facilities in a 'Silence of the Lambs' style, the cells, of which there are nine maintained areas and many more untouched for a long time. The cells usually serve as home to an expanding population of Weevils; but, they do see general use throughout the series and seem fairly suited to the task (i.e. not many people manage to escape from them). It would seem that the different cell areas sit adjacent to one another, accessible from the main Hub by a ladder. Each area, as you enter, contains viewing windows on the left and access to the next row of cells, through very heavy wheel-locked doors, on the right.

• The Basement - Revealed in 'Cyberwoman', the Hub has an extensive basement, composed of a multitude of rooms, cells, storage areas, alcoves, cubbyholes, and lots of corridors with visible pipework.

• The Dinosaur - As previously mentioned, the interior of the Hub serves as a home for a pet pterodactyl. The fact that it isn't always inside the central Hub proper, and likely isn't allowed constant free-range to menace the skies over Cardiff, would certainly suggest access to extensive underground caverns for sleeping and feeding (unless it subsists entirely on left over pizza).

Creation and Production

Torchwood is the brainchild of Doctor Who producer Russell T. Davies. Davies claims he had the idea for the programme long before the plans to bring back Doctor Who in 2005, but the return of such a sci-fi classic provided the perfect setting for a newer, darker, more adult drama for the BBC. With an excellent group of writers, and executive producer Julie Gardner, who had also worked on the new series of Doctor Who, Torchwood was created.

The programme began filming on May 1, 2006, with filming continuing until just before the first episode was aired, according to John Barrowman. The project was to be produced originally by James Hawes, previously a director on Doctor Who. However, Hawes decided that directing was his true passion, and so turned down the role as producer, leaving Richard Stokes in control.

Episode Guide

The first series, aired from October 22, 2006, began with a double-bill and ran for a total of 13 episodes. Each episode was aired on BBC Three on a Sunday evening, repeated during the week on BBC Two.

Everything Changes

Captain Jack: "This is Torchwood Three. Torchwood One was London, destroyed in the battle. Torchwood Two is an office in Glasgow, very strange man. Torchwood Three, Cardiff. Torchwood Four's kind of gone missing but we'll find it one day."

• Broadcast: 22 October, 2006
• Writer: Russell T. Davis
• Director: Brian Kelly

The first episode focuses on Gwen Cooper, a Cardiff Police Constable. At the scene of a brutal murder, Gwen witnesses Torchwood, known only to her as "special-ops", bring the victim back to life. She is determined to find out more about the mysterious organization, but soon regrets her persistence after meeting Captain Jack Harkness, who tricks her into imbibing a drink laced with an alien drug that induces amnesia. After discovering a series of clues which jog her memory, she meets Suzie Costello and Captain Jack in a revelation-filled climax that results in the Suzie shooting Jack through the head... and then shooting herself when Jack refuses to stay down!

Day One

Captain Jack: "Put your trousers on and get out. NOW! ... It almost breaks my heart to say those words."

• Broadcast: 22 October, 2006
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: Brian Kelly

Gwen faces her first official case with Torchwood. While carrying out tests on a comet, which has landed just outside the city, Gwen damages the surface of the comet, releasing an unusual gas. The gas, in fact a sentient alien entity, flies across the city and possesses the body of a young girl in a busy Cardiff nightclub. The alien feeds on sexual energy, forcing its host to engage in random sexual acts with strangers to satiate its hunger. However, the girl leaves a trail of victims across the city - including some very telling CCTV footage - and Torchwood engage in a desperate race against time to stop the killings.

Ghost Machine

Captain Jack: "The problem with seeing the future is you can’t just sit and look at it. You have to try and change things, make it happen differently."

• Broadcast: 29 October, 2006
• Writer: Helen Raynor
• Director: Colin Teague

Chasing a hoodie through the lamp-lit streets of Cardiff, Gwen seizes the jacket of Sean "Bernie" Harris, a teenager who found alien technology in the garage of an old man. In the pocket of the jacket, Gwen discovers the Ghost Machine, which gives the team a startling series of visions of the past and future. Owen witnesses the scene of a murder in the 1960s, and takes it upon himself to bring justice to the villain. Meanwhile, the team track down Bernie Harris, who has been experiencing the same haunting visions of a violent past. Outside Bernie's flat, it looks like Gwen's vision of a murder that night is to come true. In stopping one murder, she becomes responsible for another.

Cyberwoman

Lisa: "Together? Yes! Transplant my brain into your body, the two of us together, fused, we'll be one complete person, isn't that what love is?"

• Broadcast: 5 November, 2006
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: James Strong

At the end of Doctor Who, series two, Cybermen attacked Torchwood One in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Ianto Jones, who was working at Torchwood One at the time, saved his girlfriend during her 'upgrade' from human to Cyberman. Ianto has been secretly keeping his unconscious Cyberwoman girlfriend, named Lisa, and the cyber-conversion unit in the basement of the Torchwood Hub. After a visit from a Japanese doctor, Lisa is revived and begins attacking the doctor, attaching him to the cyber-conversion unit and starting his upgrade. The resulting power drain forces the team to put the Hub into lockdown to contain Lisa.

Small Worlds

Captain Jack: "She was seventeen years old and she was beautiful. I loved her at first sight. But nothing lasted back then. Promises were always being broken."

• Broadcast: 12 November, 2006
• Writer: Peter Hammond⁹
• Director: Alice Troughton

Jack is reunited with an old friend of his - he first met Estelle during his life in London during the Blitz. Now, in the present day, Estelle is told that the Captain she meets is merely the father of the Jack Harkness she befriended all those years ago. The pair meets at a lecture given by Estelle, detailing her belief in fairies. An intelligent but secretive girl, named Jasmine, is being protected by the fairies, which punish her playground bullies and kill a man who attempts to kidnap her. As Torchwood investigates, Captain Jack realises he has seen the symptoms of fairy attack before - asphyxiation by red petals. The fairies reveal that they need Jasmine to become one of them; and despite the fear and anguish of her family, Jasmine leaves her mother to join the group of fairies.

Countrycide

Captain Jack: "No other species in the universe goes camping. Celebrate you own uniqueness."

• Broadcast: 19 November, 2006
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: Andy Goddard

While investigating the disappearance of a woman in the Brecon Beacons, Gwen, Jack and Owen discover a terrified teenager hidden in a farmhouse, hiding from certain death. Meanwhile, Ianto and Toshiko discover a farmhouse full of human corpses, and are captured by villagers who intend to make the Torchwood team their next victims. The villagers turn out to be a group of cannibals who have harvested visitors to the area once a decade for generations. The terrible events bring Owen and Gwen closer together, despite Gwen's long-term relationship.

Greeks Bearing Gifts

Owen Harper: "D'you know what, Tosh? Sometimes I think even that stick up your arse has a stick up its arse."

• Broadcast: 26 November, 2006
• Writer: Toby Whithouse
• Director: Colin Teague

Toshiko is given a pendant which enables her to hear the thoughts of other people. Her new gift forces her to delve into and analyse the morality of the power, as well as her own sexuality and position within the group. After Toshiko confides in a girlfriend, who is revealed to be an alien using her to get into Torchwood, the issue of mistrust and privacy causes divisions throughout the group. Gwen has to question her relationship with Owen.

They Keep Killing Suzie

Suzie Costello: "You're being shot in the head... slowly..."

• Broadcast: 3 December, 2006
• Writer: Paul Tomalin, Dan McCulloch
• Director: James Strong

After being called to the scene of a gruesome movie aimed at Torchwood, the team are forced to bring Suzie, who was killed in episode one, back from the dead, to question her on the murder. It is revealed that Suzie 'hypnotized' a man to perform the murders on her death, meaning she would be brought back to life in desperation by her colleagues. However, to keep her alive, the life is being drained from Gwen, and Jack steps in to save Gwen from losing her life.

When Jack faces Suzie at the end of the episode, she makes the first mention of the series about the darkness that waits beyond life intent on getting its hands on Captain Jack. This terrible darkness finally becomes manifest in the final episode of the series.

Random Shoes

Eugene's Brother: "He may have been able to square the root of the frigging root, but he couldn't cross the frigging road."

• Broadcast: 10 December, 2006
• Writer: Jacquetta May
• Director: James Erskine

Eugene wakes up to find himself both dead and invisible, and believes only Gwen Cooper can help him sort out his strange problem. Eugene discovers more about his own fate as Gwen investigates his death and the strange alien artefact that seems to have come into his possession during his childhood. A series of random clues and some very unhelpful ex-friends of Eugene lead Gwen toward an entirely unexpected revelation...

Like the Doctor Who episodes 'Love & Monsters' and 'Blink', 'Random Shoes' provides a regulars-lite story that focuses instead on someone entangled in the world of the main character without directly being involved.

Out of Time

Gwen Cooper: "It’s like two separate worlds. There’s Torchwood. Then there’s real life."

• Broadcast: 17 December, 2006
• Writer: Catherine Tregenna
• Director: Alice Troughton

A 1950s passenger flight lands in present day Cardiff. Torchwood meet the plane, alerted by disturbances in the Rift, and try to look after the plane's three passengers and help them adapt to a frightening, modern world. A ballsy pilot, a young girl with a hankering from personal freedom, and a middle-aged man comfortable with the values of his own era - each finds the opportunities and differences in the modern world very different to adjust to. The Torchwood team, while seeking only to provide support at this difficult time, find themselves inexorably drawn into the lives of these stranded travellers and face very tough decisions of their own.

Combat

Owen Harper: "You shouldn't have. No, really, you shouldn't. I hate grapes."

• Broadcast: 24 December, 2006
• Writer: Noel Clarke¹⁰
• Director: Andy Goddard

Weevils, an alien introduced in episode one who live in the sewers of Cardiff, are being abducted by humans across the capital. When Torchwood investigates, Owen gets dragged into a secretive extreme fighting club where men face-off against the feral Weevils in one-on-one combat. Powerfully affected by the loss of Diane, the pilot from 'Out of Time', Owen takes a near suicidal path into the fight club, ultimately facing a Weevil himself and caring little if he lives or dies.

Captain Jack Harkness

Toshiko Sato: "Why does that man have your name? I'm lost enough here without you holding back on me."

• Broadcast: 1 January, 2007
• Writer: Catherine Tregenna
• Director: Ashley Way

Investigating weird time anomalies in an old dance hall run by the mysterious Bilis Manger, Jack and Toshiko get stranded in 1941 and meet a handsome young American squadron leader who goes by the name of... Captain Jack Harkness. While Jack and Toshiko desperately try and find a way back into the future, Owen decides to use one of Tosh's formulae to force open the Rift to rescue them, triggering a power struggle in the Hub.

The start of the episode features the first appearance of a 'Vote Saxon' poster - central to the story arc of Doctor Who Series Three.

End of Days

Captain Jack: "You wanna know the secret? There is no solution. I can't fix this. Because this was never meant to happen. The first thing you learned when you joined Torchwood is 'don't mess with the Rift'. But you disobeyed those orders, and now everything that's happening is down to you."

• Broadcast: 1 January, 2006
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: Ashley Way

Opening the Rift may have saved Jack and Toshiko from the past, but things rapidly take a turn for the worst. Expansion of the Rift threatens the whole world, as people and objects fall through it from across time and Bilis Manger, present in 1941 and the present, sets in place the final pieces for the release of a terrible darkness. Can Captain Jack save the world or will he finally die for nothing?

Torchwood and Doctor Who

Torchwood has been closely linked with Doctor Who since the conception of the return of the long-running sci-fi series in 2005. Indeed, it was due to the success of Doctor Who's return that the BBC commissioned the series, attempting to create a more adult sci-fi programme in competition with other popular, yet largely American, programmes such as Battlestar Galactica.

Captain Jack was first introduced in the episode 'The Empty Child' of the 2005 series of Doctor Who, where, as an intergalactic conman, he posed as an American fighter pilot. Trying to sell a useless spaceship to the Doctor and Rose, he becomes enlightened to a new, somewhat more selfless, way of life during his dealings with the benevolent Time Lord. He continued to travel with the Doctor and Rose throughout the first series, and finally left their company in 'The Parting of the Ways'.

Abandoned in the future, Jack used his Vortex Manipulator to travel into the past, overshooting his target and ending up in 1869. Jack discovered the truth of his new undying condition over the next century and ultimately appears to have either adopted or founded Torchwood Three in Cardiff at the beginning of the 21st Century. The Torchwood series included many passing references to Jack's time with the Doctor, as it would seem he had a strong bond with the Time Lord and felt he may be the only person who could answer questions about his unkillable condition. At the end of Torchwood Series One, Jack disappears following the familiar sound of a materialising (and then de-materialising) TARDIS¹¹.

Captain Jack next appears in Doctor Who during the episode Utopia of the 2007 series. He is shown running in front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay towards the TARDIS, where the Doctor has landed in order to refuel from the Rift. While lacking some aspects of continuity, these events seem to follow on directly from the last episode of Torchwood. On arriving at the TARDIS, Jack clutches to the exterior and rides the time vortex to the planet of Malcassairo in the distant future.

Events lead the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack back to the present, where Torchwood gets a brief mention from The Master - the only other living Time Lord and arch-enemy of the Doctor. Intent to remove any possibility of support for the Doctor in upsetting his evil plans, The Master tells Jack he has sent the Torchwood team off on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas¹². When The Master finally receives his just desserts at the hands of the Doctor, Captain Jack returns to Cardiff, and Torchwood, with renewed hope for the future and his remarklable revelation about The Face of Boe.

Trivia

• Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who, and the title was used to label tapes of future episodes of Doctor Who in order to put would-be plotline thieves off the scent.

• The hand, kept in a jar in the Torchwood Hub, is the severed hand of the Doctor, cut off during a sword fight with the leader of the Sycorax during 'The Christmas Invasion'. Jack kept the hand as a kind of Doctor detector until The Master stole it and used a sample of DNA from it to perfect the time-controlling effects of his laser screwdriver.

• The opening episodes of Torchwood on BBC Three attracted over one million viewers, beating the record for highest viewing figures of a digital-only broadcast.

• The programme will return for at least a second series, airing in 2008, with a temporary additional member on the team - ex-companion Martha Jones. The new series will be aired on BBC Two.

Other Torchwood Publications

The first series of Torchwood has been released on DVD, with special features including behind the scenes footage and cast interviews

A series of novels based on the main characters of the series, have been published by BBC Books - Border Princes by Dan Abnett, Slow Decay by Andrew Lane and Another Life by Peter Anghelides - with audio versions and more novels to follow with the second series.

On the internet, the official Torchwood website has an episode guide, pictures, videos and special features. The website torchwood.org.uk enables fans to explore the mainframe of Torchwood's intelligence system, and was created by the BBC as promotion for the series.