Ah, Torchwood. It seems a long time since the heady days of October 2006 when I sat down to watch this with Doctor Carrie Dunn. There we were looking forward to seeing The Barrowman in action.
I'm not going to dwell on how Torchwood came to be. This was the red heat of the return of Doctor Who when RTD could do no wrong and a spin-off series starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack, a character introduced in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, seemed like a no brainer. Captain Jack was sexy, cheeky and maybe they could pursue more adult themes in Torchwood than they could in Doctor Who.
However, particularly in Series One, they were to make the same mistake that the Virgin New Adventures did in the nineties: swearing and sex do not adult themes make. Especially if you have a very poor grasp on consent and turn your series into something that might, just, be a bit rapey. But, I'm leaping ahead of myself. At least a little bit.
We're in Cardiff. Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is a PC in the Welsh Police. She's at the scene of a murder when a gang turns up from an organization called Torchwood. They proceed to mess about a bit on the murder scene, then disappear. This leaves Gwen all a bit curious. From here on in we get the story of Gwen's discovery of Torchwood, who they are and what they do, which is hunt aliens. In Cardiff. Because it turns out, Cardiff is built on a ruddy great rift in the space-time continuum and as a result, a lot of intergalactic, timey-wimey flotsam and jetsam turns up to cause trouble and/or be cannibalized by Torchwood to protect the world. After all, as Captain Jack says: "The Twenty-First Century' is when it all happens. You've got to be ready."
Gwen's been involved in investigating a serial killer in Cardiff, who it will turn out has links to Torchwood. And we'll end up with a stand-off, two shots, and a resurrection before the end. Gwen is our intro to Torchwood as a fairly ordinary person. She's our companion figure. At least in this episode. She asks lots of questions.
We meet the rest of the team: Owen Harper (Burn Gorman), Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori), Suzie Costello (Indira Varma) and last, but not least Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd). None of them is really given much character at this point because our story focuses on Gwen and Jack.
I like Eve Myles as Gwen. I think Myles is a great actor. She's particularly good here when terrified. The Barrowman is The Barrowman. I'll probably talk more about that as the series goes on. Gwen's coming aboard the good ship Torchwood, although how she'll explain that to her husband, Rhys (Kai Owen - who is brilliant btw) may become an issue.
Hopefully, the next few episodes will broaden out the characters a bit and drop the unnecessarily creepy sexual stuff. There is definitely an unnecessary light-hearted approach to sexual consent in this episode that seems to say that using alien pheromones to get two people to sleep with you isn't rapey at all. O, no. It's just a wee bit of high-jinks using office equipment. Like borrowing a piece of tech that allows you to read a book pretty much instantaneously. As I said all this stuff is a misunderstanding of what 'adult' means. It's a problem I remember Torchwood suffers from.
That and the spectacularly stupid idea of a top-secret organization that drives around in bloody obvious vehicles and is known to half of Cardiff's police force and orders pizzas to its top-secret headquarters under the name of Torchwood. I think Torchwood could be creepier. There are hints at it when Tosh talks about the porter who died in the hospital and whose body they dispose of. This is an organization with frightening powers, which no one ever really talks about. Except for Gwen.
So, it's not a bad introduction. It's entertaining enough. But there's problems in the initial episode that might be fatal if not dealt with at some point. I mean who wants a heroic team of rapists?
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