TORCHWOOD - CAN IT MAKE THE BRITISH EMPIRE GREAT AGAIN?
Torchwood is the BBC's new 13-part sci-fi series. It is a spin-off of Doctor Who - in fact, "Torchwood" is an anagram of "Dr Who" and its name featured in a few episodes of the brand new series of 2005.
The star of the series is John Barrowman who plays Captain Jack Harkness. He was also the male sidekick of Dr Who in the brand new Dr Who series of 2005. Torchwood will soon be shown on BBC3.
[SIZE=-1]Coming soon to BBC Three - a new British sci-fi thriller by Russell T Davies.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Separate from the Government; outside police jurisdiction and beyond the United Nations: Torchwood sets its own rules. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Torchwood will follow the adventures of a team of investigators as they use alien technology to solve crime; both alien and human. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]This new British sci-fi crime thriller, from Russell T Davies (the creator of the new Dr Who - the new series of which is currently being filmed) and set in Cardiff, will see them delve into the unknown.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]They are a group of people fighting the impossible while having to keep their everyday lives going back at home. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]"Torchwood is a British sci-fi paranoid thriller, a cop show with a sense of humour," says Davies.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]"It's dark, wild and sexy, it's the X Files meets This Life. It's a stand-alone series for adult audiences which will have its own unique identity."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The cast includes John Barrowman as the enigmatic Captain Jack Harkness - the ever watchful heart of the Torchwood team, guarding against the fragility of human kind. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Eve Myles plays Gwen Cooper - initially an outsider whose first meeting with Torchwood sparks a burning curiosity to get to the truth, throwing her into an unfamiliar but exciting world.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Burn Gorman plays the raw but charming medic Owen Harper and Naoko Mori is Toshiko Sato, the team member who specialises in all things computer, surveillance and technical. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]BBC Three Controller Julian Bellamy announced the series as the "centrepiece" of the channel's 2006 autumn schedule.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]"Torchwood is just the sort of cutting-edge, ambitious drama of real scale we're seeking on BBC Three," he said.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Torchwood is a production for BBC Three written by Russell T Davies and Chris Chibnall, with contributing writers including PJ Hammond, Toby Whithouse and Helen Raynor.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=-1]WHAT IS THE TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE?[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=-1][SIZE=-1]The Torchwood Institute is a fictional organisation from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. Its purpose is to research and combat paranormal threats to Great Britain, and use their findings to make the British Empire great again. To those ends, it acquires and reverse engineers alien technology by any means deemed necessary. According to its director Yvonne Hartman (played by Tracy-Ann Oberman), its nationalist attitude extends to refusing to use metric (Napoleonic) units.[/SIZE]
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HISTORY
(Episodes that will not be shown until a few weeks' time are being metioned)
[SIZE=-1]1879–2006[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The Institute was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879, following the events of the Doctor Who episode Tooth and Claw. While staying at Torchwood House, the Scottish estate of Sir Robert MacLeish, the Queen was attacked by a werewolf, in reality an alien intelligence that planned to infect her with its consciousness by biting her. The werewolf was ultimately dispelled, thanks to the efforts of the Tenth Doctor and the sacrifice of Sir Robert.[/SIZE]
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[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Torchwood House, after which the Torchwood Institute is named (click on it for larger picture).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Having discovered that Great Britain had enemies "beyond imagination", Victoria decided to establish the Torchwood Institute in memory of Sir Robert. She also decided that the Doctor was dangerous, and declared that if he ever returned, Torchwood would be waiting. The Doctor's name was written into the Torchwood Foundation's charter as an enemy of the Crown.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The activities of the Torchwood Institute in the 20th century have not yet been revealed, although the organisation was public enough in 1953 for a police Inspector to be aware of it (The Idiot's Lantern). By 2006, the existence of Torchwood was apparently a secret known only to the British military, one that was kept even from Prime Minister Harriet Jones and the United Nations.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]However, she knew about its existence anyway, and ordered Major Blake of UNIT to prepare Torchwood for the impending arrival of the Sycorax.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Torchwood had installed in London a massive energy weapon, which it had adapted from alien technology that had fallen to Earth ten years previously. On Jones's command, Torchwood used the weapon to destroy the retreating Sycorax ship (The Christmas Invasion).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]2007[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details about Army of Ghosts and Doomsday follow.[/SIZE]
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[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]The interior of the Torchwood Tower, as seen in the trailer for Army of Ghosts (click on it for larger picture).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The Doctor discovered the existence of Torchwood in the 2006 series' two-part finale, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday set in 2007. At this time, Torchwood operated software which blocked access to Internet searches about UFO activity (School Reunion). The TARDISODE for Army of Ghosts showed Torchwood agents abducting a journalist who was investigating the Institute and arranging to admit him to a psychiatric institution.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]While investigating the manifestation of "ghosts" on Earth, the Doctor traced their origin back to Torchwood Tower (known publicly as Canary Wharf), where, Hartman placed the Doctor in custody and confiscated the TARDIS. She revealed that the technology that destroyed the Sycorax spaceship was gained from a Jathaa Sunglider that Torchwood had deliberately shot down and stripped down.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Torchwood Tower had been built to reach a spatial breach 660 feet above sea level, but unbeknownst to Torchwood it had been caused by the entrance into the universe of a "void ship", a vessel designed to travel through the void between parallel universes. Torchwood had been conducting experiments on the breach, in an attempt to harness its energy and reduce Britain's reliance on Middle Eastern oil, but these experiments had caused the breach to widen. The "ghosts" turned out to be Cybermen from an alternate universe, which were using the widening breach to travel between universes.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]A small advance force of Cybermen infiltrated Torchwood, upgrading or subverting Torchwood personnel, before eventually seizing control and opening the breach wide enough for "ghosts" around the world to manifest fully as millions of Cybermen.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]However, the void ship was nothing to do with the Cybermen, and had in fact been created by the Daleks, four of whom had used it to escape the Time War. Caught between warring Daleks and Cybermen, many Torchwood workers were either killed, or "upgraded" by the Cybermen (including Hartman herself - although she retained some semblance of her identity), and at the end of Doomsday, the future of Torchwood is unclear.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][edit][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The future[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]In 2012, Torchwood is public enough to be mentioned in a television broadcast during the London 2012 Olympics (Fear Her).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]By the 2002nd century, the Great Cobalt Pyramid has been built on the ruins of the Torchwood Institute (Bad Wolf).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]In the distant future, the Torchwood Archives sent a group of explorers to investigate a mysterious power source that kept a planet in stable orbit around a black hole (The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]wikipedia.org[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=-1]Torchwood cast - Burn Gorman as Owen, Eve Myles as Gwen, John Barrowman as Captain Jack and Naoko Mori as Toshiko.
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John Barrowman as Captain Jack, who was originally Dr Who's sidekick in the 2005 series of Dr Who
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Burn Gorman as Owen meets a Weevil
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Eve Myles as Gwen and Sara Gregory as Carys
news.bbc.co.uk[/SIZE]
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