I never thought I’d enjoy the world of Doctor Who, complete with this spin-off series, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. While I don’t think “Torchwood” is as good as DW, I still really like it, even though I’m not really a fan of any of the characters. Even Capt. Jack puts me off sometimes. But the show is fun, part horror, part sci-fi, with a dash of humor and romance thrown in here and there. I’m looking forward to watching Season 2.

That passionate kiss . . . I was like ewwww, ewwww, ewwww,

lol,

there’s tongue! hahahahahahahaha

ummm, quite immature of me really, lol

Okay, let’s see… So this is Torchwood. The show has a certain Doctor Who feel to it, so it’s justifiable to call it a spinoff. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

When I realised what Torchwood was about and who was going to play the leading role, I was excited. After all, Captain Jack Harkness was quite a charmer in the Doctor Who episodes he was in – why wouldn’t I want to see more of him, whole episodes nothing but him (well, you know)? Unfortunately, what I came to notice, was that neither John Barrowman nor Captain Jack have the intensity, the appeal to keep a complete series running. He was tremendously entertaining as a random ‘quest’ in the Doctor Who series but this is just not working.

Of course, after Doctor Who my expectations were a bit too high, but this show just has nothing much to give. It seems that whenever the writers fall short on new things to write about, they try to cover it up with sex or other relationship related mumbo-jumbo. This series relies so much on sex it gets dull after awhile. At first it was kind of interesting, the open bisexuality that was going around, and I was rather ecstatic over Gwen and Owen’s little ‘relationship’ but really, too much is just too much. Got me thinking what do the writers think of us viewers, throw in a couple of snogging scenes and a lot of sexual innuendoes and we’re happy? (well, in some cases maybe yes, but this is a Doctor Who spinoff we’re talking about here!)

Gwen totally grew on me during the series but I’ve got to say she was very badly written on the first episodes. Such a nuisance, annoying and nosy, I definitely wouldn’t have hired her. Why does she get so much more priority over the others? She’s not that special in any way, yet she’s often portrayed like she was second to Jack. Of course that’s just the way her part is written but I still don’t get it.

I thought I had a huge crush on Owen but I think not, after all. He got all brooding after ‘his lover’ left him and that’s just boring. Besides, he’s sometimes a bit too vicious and quick-tempered, not sure how good a thing that is in the end.

All in all, I’m not completely disappointed but this could have been so much better. I think I’ll still watch the second season, who knows, it might surprise me. In a good way.

When I first heard there was a spinoff of the modern Doctor Who that would deal totally with the earthside efforts of Torchwood I was kind of thrilled. It had a whiff of romance, an organization founded by Queen Victoria for the purpose of keeping the Doctor and his ilk out of Britain’s hair. They had grown, it appeared, into a huge clandestine THING that had developed weapons capable of blowing alien invasion forces completely out of the sky… and I dug the idea of an agency that was keeping itself secret but not trying, really, to keep the existence of aliens or time travel or any of that lot secret because in the Whoniverse of these new series, that cat is pretty well out of the bag and it’s a big, big kitty. OK, I said, bring it on!

Then I found out it’s basically a vehicle, this show, for the ridiculous John Barrowman and the ridiculous Captain Jack. And a lot of my enthusiasm went away.

I understand the BBC operates basically on shoestring budgets and extremely limited resources — that’s part of what made the original Doctor Who, wobbly sets and all, so glorious, that they still thought big and did their best to span galaxies and tell big, big stories on a few sound stages and thinly disguised English locations. But in this show they’ve let that narrow their field down way too much. No shadowy history of Torchwood through time (we still have its founding by Queen Victoria on Doctor Who and then its sudden modern appearance as a colossus with nothing in between as its sole backstory) or stories about how maybe they’ve helped or hindered the Doctor in his past efforts on eath’s behalf… just this secret base in Cardiff that is just a high tech clubhouse for some pretty dull characters.

I don’t find much in the storylines to shout about either. Sex monster, check. Wistful time travel storylines, check. Devil-slaying climax at season’s end, check. Yawn, check.

Really, the only thing it’s shown me to spark any interest in renting the second season from Netflix is the villain-figure Bilis, whom they defeated but made a point of not killing and he’s kind of cool in a Lovecraft sort of way… so I’ll at least give an evening or two to the second season via Netflix.

But really, if you have anything better to do (I should have cleaned my kitchen and gotten my first batch of vegetable stock made for the fall soup season) you should do it.