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Lighting Torchwood's Fire
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The series, which debuted on these shores on BBC-America in September, follows the exploits of the Torchwood Institute, an organization that copes with aliens, devices and anomalies that come through a rift in space and time located in Cardiff, Wales. “Torchwood first appeared in the first season of Dr. Who in the werewolf episode (#11),” explains Gardner. “That Torchwood was an arrogant group; on the series, it’s very different--a renegade, smaller, more reflective organization.”
Gardner stresses that Torchwood “works as stand-alone viewing for those unfamiliar with the Dr. Who universe, while Dr. Who fans will see some crossovers.” The show is unique for several reasons, chief among them its setting. “Cardiff is going through a renaissance at the moment, and it makes a good ‘modern city’ backdrop for the series.”
A factor that sets the show apart from its American counterparts is its blatant sex appeal. The second episode of the first season finds the Institute trying to capture a young woman possessed by an alien that lives off the energy from male orgasms. “We deal with adult, romantic, emotional issues on the show — it’s never just sex for sex’s sake,” says Gardner. That said, she is proud that the Institute’s leader, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), an American pilot with a mysterious past, “is possibly the first openly bisexual character on a sci-fi series.” Harkness undergoes an attraction to the show’s “touchstone character,” Welsh policewoman Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles), but also is revealed later in the first season to have had a previous affair with a man. Gardner ascribes the show’s open sexuality to the characters’ mission: “when you’re facing life and death situations, everyone’s going to fancy everyone.”—Ed Grant
Posted by Laurence Lerman on December 5, 2007 | Comments (0)