"Torchwood – outside the TARDIS, beyond Doctor Who."

                For Christmas, I was given the box set of season one of Torchwood. It had been on my Amazon wish list, so I was very happy to receive it. (What did we do before Amazon wish lists?) The only odd thing about this was that this series began in October 2006 and it took me until December 2011 to own it. Five years. I hadn’t even recorded it onto VHS from the telly. I just watched it, then forgot about it.

                This isn’t like me. I grew up an avid recorder. I used to have boxes full of videos, which I’d rewatch regularly. One year (well, 1988, in fact) I watched two episodes of Delta and the Bannermen and two of Dragonfire on loop, because that’s what I had. In recent years, I would Sky+ every episode of Doctor Who, then VHS them all until I got around to getting the box sets. That’s a lot of stages, allowing a variety of watches. With repeats as well, I must have watched Day of the Moon five or six times since it was screened nine and a half months ago. Yet, here I am, watching Everything Changes for only the second time in five years.

                Good news, people. Torchwood is brilliant.

                I know, I was as surprised as anyone. Because it hadn’t made a good first impression. Up until Children of Earth, I viewed it as an interesting spin-off which hadn’t really found an identity. But watching episode 1, Everything Changes, in isolation – rather than in its original double bill – it struck me what a perfect debut this actually was, far better than either Rose or Invasion of the Bane (both good, but flawed). It sets up its newbie heroine, its Who veteran Captain and the rest of the gang effortlessly, utilising the Weevils and Cardiff so well that the self-assuredness of it staggers me.

                (If you haven’t seen season one of Torchwood, please take this as your spoiler warning. If you go any further, plot details will be revealed. You’ve been warned.)

                Conventional wisdom has it that, with all the sex and swearing, Torchwood tried too hard to be adult and instead came across as a teenager showing off. Perhaps episode 2, Day One, falls into this trap, with its alien-who-kills-with-orgasms plotline. But it’s just so witty and knowing and well-executed, especially by Sara Lloyd Gregory, that it gets away with it. The far darker Ghost Machine asks us to believe that Gareth Thomas from Blake’s Seven is guilty of rape (ironically, not dissimilar to the charges levelled at him in The Way Back), but the introduction of such real-world horrors seems to fit too, although I’ll grant you that the knife-in-the-street ending is a little too neat.

                Of course, there are tonal problems with the show, many of which back up this idea of immaturity masquerading as maturity – a charge also levelled at the Torchwood team by Gwen. The assisted suicide from Out of Time is morally suspect and out of character for Jack; the reactions to the deaths in Day One leave a slightly poor taste in the mouth; and Owen, in Everything Changes, is essentially using hi-tech rohypnol. Someone should have weeded this shit out. Oh, and Gwen’s affair with Owen (presumably chosen because their names are only one letter apart) is sordid and loses sympathy for both characters.

                I remembered Cyberwoman as a massive disappointment, but if you approach it not expecting a Cyberman episode, it’s actually a fantastic character episode, especially for Ianto. Small Worlds does the same trick for Jack, whilst being one of the season’s lesser episodes. You can forgive it that, though, because it takes a hideously inappropriate premise – fairies who prey on paedophiles – and manages to stop it from being embarrassing.

                And then there’s Countrycide, which I seem to remember getting a lot of flak. This is Torchwood’s equivalent of classic Doctor Who’s “pure historical”, except that it takes place in the present day. Er, let me put that another way. I love that the team spend the whole episode assuming they will come across an alien soon, and the director shoots it that way too, only for the whole episode to hinge on the fact that there aren’t any. Chris Chibnall has adapted The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the Welsh and it’s scary, chilling and very effective. I didn’t like it in 2006. What was I thinking? I must have had such a narrow view of what the so-called Whoniverse could contain.

                Tosh gets a lesbian episode with her out of My Family next, which is serviceable but only really shines with a sequence indebted to the Bruce Willis movie Unbreakable as Tosh saves a mother and child from a psychotic husband using a golf club.  From this point on, though, every episode is conceptually brilliant. They Keep Killing Suzie brings back Indira Varma’s traitor, killed in episode 1, in what appears to be a straightforward serial killer hunt but turns out to have more levels than Seven. Random Shoes channels Love & Monsters by presenting a nerdy loser who’s a massive fan of our heroes and serves as our identification figure throughout, despite being dead. The ending is contrived but I cried. Out Of Time takes three refugees from the fifties and uses them to provide character stories for Jack, Gwen and, most effectively, Owen. Not an episode for those who tune in for Weevil hunts, but worth it for Olivia Hallinan.

                Christmas Eve 2006 brought us Combat, perhaps not the best episode to watch with my in-laws. Again, though, far better than I remembered, with the Fight Club moments all occurring in the final five minutes. It’s Owen’s arc which dominates, but I had forgotten about the unbelievable selfishness of Gwen in this episode, slipping her boyfriend a retcon pill so she can own up to her affair with Owen. Finally, on New Year’s Day, we were given another double bill which isn’t really one. This began with Captain Jack Harkness, a good story about a time slip back to 1941 given unnecessary gravitas by the presence of Will Young...no, sorry, of the original Captain Jack. These scenes are the least convincing of the episode, culminating in an extraordinary kiss which defies internal logic.

                And that’s as far as I’ve got. So far, season one of Torchwood is excellent, with a few disappointments and lesser episodes, but far fewer than I remembered. I only have one episode left to re-view. I shall do so now. Bear with.

                                                                                *

                I have just watched End of Days. It’s as clumsily self-important as its title suggests. Let’s face it, it’s a big let-down. Any subtleties are lost in order to up the stakes substantially. Of course, this describes a Doctor Who season finale perfectly adequately – but since when were they the best? Who prefers Last of the Time Lords to Blink? Torchwood takes this model and executes it less well. Key plot elements are glossed over – the catastrophic time leakage is somehow “switched off” by opening the rift (or “plot cop-out generator”); the intriguing Billis Manger, potentially one of the most powerful and dangerous beings ever encountered in any Who-related show, is lost in the melee; Rhys is somehow “un-killed”; and dozens of Cardiff citizens are killed without the episode having time to even refer to them afterwards. Meanwhile, one scene – where Jack confronts his team with their individual failings – is almost identical to a scene in episode 3 of Logopolis, highlighting how these characters seem to get on about as well as Tegan, Nyssa and Adric did. (Something which, I believe, the production team rectified for season 2.)

                And then there’s the monster. Really, was that it? The season had been dropping Saxon-style hints about “something coming” – from Suzie to the estate agent, everyone seemed to know Abaddon was coming. When he did, he was a reject from the Mill’s less inspired days and took approximately 2 minutes to kill off. Simply, this isn’t right for Torchwood. End of Days becomes the season’s only real mis-step – and yet, it was the final and therefore lasting impression. Could this be why I cared so little for it?

                To summarise, then. Torchwood’s original batch of episodes was yet another indication of how creative and healthy the world of Doctor Who was back in 2006. Underrated and forced to continually reinvent itself, Torchwood – outside the TARDIS, beyond Doctor Who – was almost totally unrecognisable by its fourth outing, Miracle Day, as though The X Files had become 24. But on this evidence, no reinvention was necessary. This is one box set I’ll be happy to watch again.