Need Your Passport : Torchwood

BBC Torchwood's Jack Harkness

Series Name: Torchwood
Television Network : BBC
Running Time : 50-60 Minutes
Broadcast Run : October 26th, 2006 - Present (60 Episodes)

Not many shows out there star a homosexual character as it's lead. Even fewer have bi-sexual leads or in the case of Jack Harkness, omni-sexual, considering all the various alien races out there. Jack Harkness, a modern day Captain Kirk, leads a rag tag group of individuals tasked with explaining the unexplainable in Cardiff. Very similar to J.J. Abrams Fringe, this Doctor Who spin off has all the dramatic weight and resonance it's parent show wishes it had.

Let's play a little word association, get ready for some SATs. Doctor Who is to Torchwood as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to Angel. Show creator Russell T. Davies even calls Joss Whedon's Angel inspiration for the series. 1 

Viewed as the more adult version of it's longer running Doctor Who program. (Side Note: seriously, Doctor Who has been around so long that they used to tape over old episodes because, well, who'd wanna watch the past? Just like what happened with the first ten years that Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show, I'd say a lot of people) It has no qualms or reservations about offing main characters. The cast list is a revolving door of potential bodies, but each one is more interesting than the last. When Torchwood returns next Summer, expect only one or two layovers from the first series, with Captain Jack Harkness at the epicenter.

See, during a random adventure with the Doctor on mother program Doctor Who, Jack Harkness found himself immortal. Not that he couldn't die, but that even if he did, he would just be resurrected moments later, feeling all the pain and anguish of both death and rebirth. Let's just say in Torchwood, you get a fair amount of Jack Harkness resurrecting from the grave. Such as scenes where interrogators Jack Bauer Harkness to death, only to see him return and be promptly killed again. Jack's ultimate fate was shown in an episode of Doctor Who, where he's become an enormous disembodied head in a jar and gives his last bit of strength and power to save a distopian future society from wallowing in darkness for all eternity.

Listen, I know the stigma that Doctor Who derives from modern television viewers. That it's camp, it's for kids, the monsters look like something from Plan B from Outer Space. But the re-imagining of the series, and the subsequent spin off Torchwood, has been able to avoid such misnomers. Legitimately creepy villains and good special effects, and Torchwood uses less of the Doctor's Deus Ex Machina sonic screwdriver. While we can't ever see Jack Harkness bite the big one, that doesn't stop the emotional suspense of seeing those he loves and those he care for, along with the entire human race at times, in jeopardy.


Plus. James Marsters as a time traveler from Jack's past who's basically a shiftless layabout. Sure, this next clip may be filled with fake science and technobabble as the team attempt to save the day by killing one of their own, but it's no worse than Fringe. Well, okay, that's a lie. But it's still way better about it than your Star Trek, it's parent show Doctor Who, or insert any other sci fi series with a serious stigma surrounding it. And if you can't fathom going through a large backlog without checking out some of the best that Torchwood has to offer, I'd say start with the Season 3 series, the five episode mini-movie "Children of the Earth." In it, Earth had given an alien species 12 children in 1965 for a cure to a flu that would have wiped out 25 million. Forty years later, the aliens return, demanding ten percent of the entire world's population, by having every single child chant a number over and over in English, regardless of nationality... That number is exactly ten percent of the world's children.

Click read more for the video. I promise, no more reading there.

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