Torchwood: The Complete Original UK Series
Glorious. Absolutely glorious entertainment; not to mention great, riveting, and compelling, as well as sorrowful. Plus, occasionally, funny. All this and heaven, too. This is what I felt watching the first three seasons of the often-extraordinary BBC/Wales production of TORCHWOOD, originally a 2006 spin-off of DOCTOR WHO, starring John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori, Kai Own and Gareth David-Lloyd.
Seemingly modeled after BBC’s other hit show, MI-5 (now in its tenth season), with noisy music and quick editing, as well as a similar idea of killing off at least one of their leads each season. Very odd and theatrically quite meaningful (“watch next season to see who has survived the blast/shots/drownings/etc”). So you tune in, in great wonderment.
But “Torchwood” itself is different from most science-fiction television: as it says before each episode: “Separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations, Torchwood is fighting on behalf of the human race.” And so they do. And it’s use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) makes it an extravaganza, with a man-who-cannot-die (Barrowman) who has recruited a small coterie of smart folks who are expert at computers (Mori), or medicine (Gorman), police procedure from a former police officer with people skills (Myles, along with her boyfriend/husband, Rys), and an all-around male factotum, butler, cleaner and being handy with a gun (David-Lloyd). It’s a lovely ensemble, as long as they last.
It would seem that Season One had to prove itself before its budget was large enough to turn to film-stock (by gathering an audience) instead of being inadequately shot on video, but then the mid-season episodes suddenly got great-looking and the CGI continues top-drawer.
The other outstanding aspect of the series has been the unabashed and brazenly-open sexuality of the lead actor. As both the series founder, Russell T. Davies and its star, John Barrowman, are openly gay, the lead character, Captain Jack Harkness, the man-who-cannot-die (after repeatedly suffering such blows as would kill any other human), in this century, at this time, prefers men. And the inexorable falling in love he does with one of the men on his team is handled beautifully. In one episode, Captain Jack is sent back in time to a war-torn 1941, wherein he helps a man Harnkness knows will be killed the next day in air battle, come to grips with his desire for those of his own gender, by dancing with him, slowly, with others watching. It is handled so sensitively that one wants desperately for history to be changed. We also, in another episode, meet Captain Jack’s daughter and grandchild, but since he never ages, she is older than he during this meet.
The first two seasons were – while wonderful – also fairly consistent with most other Sci-Fi shows: Cardiff, Wales, is on top of a time/space warp that allows the past to flow with the present. (Not unlike a previous BBC show, PRIMEVEL, in which Today battles invasions from the Very Long Ago past.) Their job is to put things to right and deflect the alien invaders. Exciting but not particularly novel.
But in the third season, “Children of Earth,” took the show in a new direction: still fighting aliens, but ones who are technically superior to ourselves, with a lack of empathy for us earthlings, especially the children they intend to use for nefarious purposes. The writing is exceptional and the heart-ache, especially for Captain Jack, is extraordinarily wrung out of us. This is what great art is about: putting you directly into the action and making you care. Desperately. And although the casting is overall outstanding, Peter Capaldi, a middle-aged character actor, demonstrates brilliantly what amazing writing allows actors to do: dig deeper internally and quietly express the needed reaction. If he weren’t already a working actor, it would be a career-making performance.
The bonus features are among the best to be found: background on who the actors are, how the scripts are written, who the technicians are and how they do what they do (special effects, makeup and wigs, fight teachers, etc.). It’s informative, witty and down-to-earth. Live and learn. And the exterior of the disk-set has been designed to look like a thick, attractive book. More wit.
Season four, “Miracle Day,” won’t be out until later this year, followed by a fifth season, “Web of Lies,” to be aired on BBC-America. But buying and seeing what the U.K. hath wrought is worth time and expense. Just buy into their reality and have as much fun with it as I have.