Blogs / Science Not Fiction

The release of the Torchwood Series 2 DVD gave us the opportunity to watch (in some cases watch for the first time) every episode of the second season.

And the verdict?  In the immortal words of Ed Grimley, “totally decent, I must say.”  John Barrowman still rocks.

With that out of the way, I’ll add that the show is also showing troubling signs of flaming out after the upcoming mini-series. Series Two had at least one genuinely terrible episode (”From Out of the Rain”) and a few marginal ones (”Something Borrowed,” “To The Last Man”).

Unlike Doctor Who, Torchwood doesn’t have a multi-decade reserve of goodwill and nostalgia to fall back on.  Unlike Buffy, Captain Jack isn’t a teenager whose adolescent angst can be mined for a season’s worth of new story arcs.

Here are five things we’d like to see more (and less) of in the Series 3 mini-series that would improve the prospects for the show to live on.

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Next month, BBC Video is releasing the box set of Torchwood: The Complete Second Season. Available on September 16th, and retailing for $79.98, this series chronicles the further adventures of the staff of Torchwood, an organization set up to protect the Earth from any aliens or advanced artifacts that might wash up on our shores. Set in Cardiff, Wales, (the location of a rift in time and space) Torchwood is a spinoff of Doctor Who, and in this season it really finds its stride as its own show with its own sensibilities. Intended for older audiences than the family-friendly Doctor Who, Torchwood is darker and more introspective, themes which are counterbalanced by humor and a high quotient of action-adventure scenes, as well as a fair amount of sex, on- and off-screen.

Season Two was 13 episodes long, and while this may seem short in comparison to most U.S. programs, a hell of a lot of material gets packed in, and every character is developed in some depth. The series builds up to a shattering finale, and on the way manages to extract some terrific, and surprising, performances from guest stars like James Marsters (best known for playing the character of Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.)

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First of all, an insight (and some elementary logic) about Comic Con: Everybody loves Japanese stuff. Everybody loves porn. Everybody loves Japanese porn.

And onto the Torchwood panel:

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… or if you prefer, “The UK X-Files.”

The British government has opened its archive of UFO files to the public.