Torchwood Appraisals

Well I am a little surprised, as Torchwood has been renewed for a second year. I found the first series (with the obvious exception of tonight's not yet seen final two episodes) pretty ordinary in the main, where the ideas have been strong, the writers have forgotten about characterisation and in general it seems they are incapable of building a story where at least one major cast member doesn't get sidelined and poorly written.

I worry that like other popular series, the spinoffs drain creative talent from the main (read successful) series and generally contribute little back in return. So far we've not seen much creative drain in the writing department! However I do worry about the producers/executives spreading themselves thin over the franchise. This is going to continue as we see another spinoff launch tonight - the "Sarah Jane Adventures" (SJA). Obviously looking at the target market, SJA doesn't look like it holds much interest for me, but it will tax the executive producers involvement in the main series even more. To a degree I'm ecstatic that Doctor Who has returned from it's near two decade TV death to it's fantastic resurgence and popularity now. However I hold my doubts that "cashing in" whilst the interest is high will benefit this series in the medium or long term. One simply has to look at the dalekmania period of the 60s to see how easily this can turn into kitch/trash.

On the characterisation side of Torchwood, Little Storping-in-the-Swuff writes about how he perceives the Torchwood annual review should go, this is generally on the money but doesn't always mirror my opinion.

My viewpoint: I think more should be done to properly deal with Owen's date-rape/misogynist behaviour in the early episodes, the writers need to be sacked if they don't attack this dangling plot thread promptly. Also I would keep Toby Whithouse on the writing team, and would like to see Noel Clark given another opportunity. The writer i am most unsure about is Chris Chibnall, as lead writer and co-producer, his involvement in Torchwood extends beyond writing eps and the quality of his scripts has been very erratic. On the flip-side, outside of Torchwood I enjoyed the script he wrote for an episode of Life on Mars.

Torchwood struggles between it's made for family-tv ties to Doctor Who and it's aim to tackle modern adult drama and 21st century values head on. So far it feels like it's failed in both, with the adult elements gratuitously tacked on to a family-tv chassis. It doesn't yet hold a candle to the shows it's inspired by (Buffy/X-Files) and at best feels like Angel, which forever suffered in the shadow of it's parent show.

Little Storping-in-the-Swuff's onions:

Torchwood Appraisals