I haven’t technically finished Torchwood’s weird mini-3rd-season yet, but I feel like I’m ready to give my opinion on the Doctor Who spinoff. My friend Jaron’s been telling me about it for over a year. His one sentence summary? “Doctor Who plus tons of sex.” Mine? “John Barrowman makes out with everything and sometimes shoots aliens.”
That’s basically the entire premise of the show. It takes the mysterious and occasionally troublesome Torchwood from being a side-story to a main one. We learn more about everyone’s favorite Captain Jack and see a more cop-style take on aliens without the Doctor’s tiresome “no killing” rule. Overall, it’s an interesting concept and a fun watch, but I do have some issues.
First of all, the most obvious problem I have is the lack of the Doctor, ever. I thought for sure he’d make an appearance during the season finales, but nope. Every once in a while Jack or the couple episode guest star Martha Jones will make a reference to the “right kind of Doctor”, but that’s about the only time he even comes up. Considering he and his ex-companion Rose are the whole reason Jack is basically immortal, I would have thought there’d be more crossover. But no, nothing. In fact, Jack never actually reveals how/why he became the way he is during an episode (although it was revealed over on the main show), nor does he ever make a definite statement on who this “right kind of Doctor” is. I get that it’s just a sideshow for Doctor Who, but I feel like it should also stand up on its own better, which is most assuredly doesn’t do. If you didn’t have a Doctor Who background (ie if you haven’t watched since the 2005 series reboot) you would have no idea what was going on for a lot of the time.
Second, the characters kind of annoy me sometimes. In particular, Gwen and Owen. I know Gwen’s supposed to be the female lead, but GOD does she have to be so annoying? She’s so whiny and tiresome and I just want to throttle her sometimes. She’s in love with just about everyone but her boyfriend/fiance, and then she gets all angry when people talk badly about said boyfriend/fiance. She’s a hypocrite and a coward and is sort of useless in the end. Like, what does she actually do? Tosh is the computer/technology expert, Owen is the doctor/medical examiner, Jack is the leader with all the excess knowledge that comes with his immortality, and even Ianto has background with Torchwood and cleans up after all their messes. Gwen’s thing is that she’s compassionate. Ooooooooo. BORING. Also, useless. Somehow she also became the second in command even though prior to Torchwood she’d never shot a gun or heard of aliens and she doesn’t even have seniority.
Then there’s Owen. Awful, weird looking, selfish Owen. I didn’t even realize until a couple episodes in what his worth was. He doesn’t strike me as a doctor at all. He’s also obnoxious as crap. He had more moments of good then Gaius Baltar of the Battlestar Galactica series (who I hate with every fiber of my being), but I still found myself wishing he was dead.
That all being said, I still really enjoyed this series (if only because of my Doctor Who background and my very obvious love for Captain Jack). I liked that we got this insight into Jack’s past, even if a lot of it seemed random and not very revealing in the end. I like the science fiction cop show feel, because I also love cop shows (I regularly watch The Mentalist, Castle, NCIS, NCIS:LA, CSI: NY, Psych, and NUMB3Rs when it was still on air).
Overall, if you have seen the last five and a half seasons of Doctor Who and you’re looking for something similar but a little more grown up (because I don’t think I’ve seen this much sex in a TV show since Daniel Meade from Ugly Betty), check out Torchwood. It just got picked up for another season, too, so look forward to that!
PS. The Ianto-Jack relationship, while ultimately anticlimactic as far as screen-time goes, is ADORABLE.
