Torchwood: The Confusion Factor

First off there are a couple of minor spoilers in the following rant, but hardly enough to ruin the enjoyment and surprise in future episodes of either Torchwood or Doctor Who. I will warn you in advance so they can be skipped. The BBC hit SciFi spinoff of "Doctor Who", "Torchwood", premiered to overwhelmingly good reviews and record ratings for the fledgling BBC America cable outlet. By the way I really love their "Closed Captioning" announcements. A couple of my favorites are: "The following program contains accents you would have heard a lot more if you hadn't thrown our tea into Boston Harbor" and "The British accent is ridiculous. So much so that I'm struggling to keep a straight face talking to you right now. Perhaps you might like to use closed captioning." But I digress. Torchwood, stars John Barrowman in a reprise of his Capt. Jack Harkness role originated in the final five episodes of the first season of Russel T. Davies revived version of Doctor Who. It's cheeky, scary, sexy and fun. It will also become confusing. Especially to those viewers who are oblivious to or have no interest in Doctor Who. First, a bit of history. The name Torchwood is an anagram of "Doctor Who", originally used as a title to disguise early tapes of "Who" shows in the first season to confuse would be pirates who might illegally distribute them before the premiere. After his five story arc on "Who", Capt. Jack became almost as popular as the Doctor himself, Davies decided to pull out his old idea called "Excalibur", a program with the same premise as Torchwood, renamed it Torchwood and cast the wildly popular Captain as the head of this alien catching troupe. The confusion lies in the fact that even though Doctor Who and Torchwood are separate entities and due to the adult nature of Torchwood, the Doctor will never cross over into that show (....spoiler alert....the sound of the Doctor's space & time ship "Tardis" appears in the season finale of Torchwood) they are joined at the hip through shared story arcs. If you are a Torchwood viewer who has not followed Doctor Who on SciFi and are following it for the first time as it preceeds Torchwood on Saturday nights at 7 on BBC America, you will no doubt notice, and later be bombarded with Torchwood references all through this second season of Doctor Who. ....spoiler alert.... Without giving away too much plot, the Torchwood in the second series of "Who" is a predecessor to the Torchwood headed by Capt. Jack. Same, but different. This was referenced in Jack's meeting with Gwen in the bar scene in episode one of Torchwood. In Britian the First season of Torchwood originally ran between the second and third seasons of Doctor Who. Not so here. Torchwood is currently running on BBC America simultaneously with the Second season of the Doctor and concurrently with the third season, which is on the SciFi channel. ARRGH!!!!! Torchwood viewers have already seen Jack's obsession with a severed hand he keeps alive in a jar at Torchwood headquarters. What they don't know is that is the hand was severed from the "Doctor" in the Doctor Who special "Christmas Invasion", which has run on both the SciFi channel last spring and a mere week ago on BBC America as the premiere of the Second Season of Doctor Who. This is never really explained, but is vaguely referenced to in Torchwood. To add to the confusion....MINOR SPOILER ALERT.... the resolution to the hand mystery will not be resolved in Torchwood. It will be resolved in Season 3 of Doctor Who, now running on SciFi. The 3 episode story arc begins at 8pm this Friday night (9/21) with the episode "Utopia". BBC America really dropped the ball on this one. In the beginning the BBC had a difficult time finding a U.S. channel to buy Doctor Who in 2005. They even planned to release the DVD box set here early because they had no outlet for the show. Suddenly, I guess, they cut their price & got DVD promotion from SciFi to get them to take the show and then delay the DVD release till after the U.S. first run. SciFi has done a pretty good job as far as running the show is concerned. Few time edits and they retain the 16:9 aspect ratio of the show, but a lousy job of promoting it. This year I have yet to see a promo for it run during their biggest hit Eureka". BBC America however, edited out 15 minutes of the Christmas Invasion to get it to fit into a one hour time slot and have decided to run the second season in pan scan format instead of widescreen as they did with series one. Shame on you. Get a clue gang. Treat your own shows with a little respect. If BBC America can't get BBC product right, who can? You don't edit down episodes of Coupling and Absolutely Fabulous. Those and other sitcoms you air always run 40 min with commercials. I don't see a problem with odd airtimes if the shows remain intact. The edits in "Invasion" really took away a lot from the charm & humor of the episode and eliminated one of Billie Piper's best dramatic scenes. I would have thought that BBC America would have taken a little more pride in Doctor Who and given it the same attention and respect that they are giving Torchwood. After all, the Doctor has been an icon of British TV since 1963 and has surpassed the Star Trek franchise as the longest running SciFi show in TV history. In my opinion, and like orifices, we all have several, after BBC America finishes their run of both Torchwood and season two of Doctor Who, they should immediately pick up their rerun option on the Doctor's third season and get the first broadcast rights to season four away from SciFi. Then they could rerun everything in the original broadcast order. First, Season one and two of the Doctor, followed by season one of Torchwood and season three of Doctor Who. This could all lead up to a great spring with the premieres of Season two of Torchwood and season four of Doctor Who first run on BBC America about the same time as their runs on the BBC. This would really cutback on illegal torrent downloads and improve the ratings of both shows. So far both programs have been hurt by downloads as there has been almost a year between their first showings on the BBC and here in the U.S. I must admit though, SciFi did pretty well with season 3 of Doctor Who, broadcasting it almost immediately after its run on the BBC. One final suggestion to BBC America. The next time you run "Christmas invasion" why not run it as a movie event as you occasionally did with the two part episodes from series one. Edit the final episode of series one, "Parting Of The Ways" where Eccleston regenerates into Tennant, into the short "Children In Need" segment broadcast on the BBC, but not here, that was a buffer between "Ways" and "Christmas Invasion". It would be a nice addition to see how Rose adjusts to the regeneration of the Doctor before they return to earth in "Invasion".