Torchwood; an impression rather than a review

I've hummed and hawed quite a bit about writing an early review of Russell T. Davies' Dr. Who spin-off.  This has been largely because while I thought his Christmas Invasion was some of the worst TV ever made, I eventually came to appreciate its technicolour campness and Davies' annoyingly cunning decision to outsource the writing to people more capable than him (most notably Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat).  As a result, I'm not yet willing to completely condemn it.  Having said that, after watching three episodes, it doesn't look good.

The Bait and Switch.
Ever since the first series of the new Dr. Who revealed itself to be a success, rumours started to abound about a spin-off series.  BBC Three Controller Stuart Murphy described the series as "sinister and psychological... as well as being very British and modern and real", Davies himself was also quoted as saying Torchwood was a "British Sci-fi paranoid thriller".  All in all, the series has been billed as being an adult drama as opposed to the more "family friendly" nature of Dr. Who necessary for it's Saturday tea-time slot.

However, so far we have had a bit of blood, some gratuitous swearing, a cast of characters who are seemingly all bisexual,  endless talk of shagging and snogging and the trailers for episode four feature what can only be described as a woman in a metal bikini.  Seemingly, what was meant when the series was billed as adult drama was not "mature" drama that was more complex and challenging than the day-glow accessiblity of the parent-series, but the same gurning campness as the original series only with added sex and violence of the most sophomoric and low-brow kind imaginable.

Clearly a bait and switch has been pulled here.  People expected  an heir to Ultraviolet, a British Buffy or Angel, the X-files meets This Life (a comparison initially attributed to Davies but later rejected) and instead have got  Footballer's Wives meets Plan Nine From Outerspace.  Compared to the grown-up sci-fi produced by our American Cousins, Torchwood is idiotic, sophomoric and puerile.  Where American genre writers have been pushing the production and creative values of genre further and further until series such as Battlestar Galactica, Firefly or Buffy can be compared to highbrown mainstream dramas such as Deadwood or the Sopranos, Russell T. Davies thinks that the height of adult genre drama is gay kisses and an unconvincing will-they-won't-they subplot.

When judged as an adult drama, Torchwood is ridiculous.  When seen as a British version of Buffy or Angel, it's insulting.

The Setting.
It is interesting to note that, like Dr. Who, Torchwood is set in Cardiff.  However, unlike in Dr. Who, here Cardiff plays itself instead of pretending to be the infinitely more interesting and beautiful London.

It's also worth noting that not only are both Dr. Who and Torchwood both produced by BBC Wales, but Torchwood is produced not only by Welshman Russell T. Davies but also Julie Gardner who is both a TV producer AND the head of Drama for BBC Wales AND Controller for Drama Commissioning for the whole of the BBC.

In other words, if this series is set in Wales it's because of BBC internal politics and the fact that that the person in charge of commissioning new drama for the BBC has commissioned HERSELF (which is surely a conflict of interest) to make a sci-fi series set in Cardiff.

Straight off the bat, there's a problem casting here.  In choosing to set your drama in a real place, you're effectively granting some of a place's atmosphere to the place where it is set,  to whit; imagine LA Confidential set in Scunthorpe or Chinatown set in Sheffield or even Cracker set in Dorset.  Each of these pieces shows that the right setting can grant your piece atmosphere simply by playing off the things that spring to mind when the audience think of L.A., San Francisco or London.  Even genre TV obeys these rules as Angel was set in LA and Buffy was set in the kind of fictional Californian town that once formed the basis for Scooby Doo.  Torchwood, on the other hand, has Cardiff... a city that's famous for a rather ugly opera house (which spends more time on screen than any of the actors).  Even within the UK, Cardiff has no cultural resonance whatsoever.  Despite this, the series is FULL of shots of Cardiff including a completely ridiculous shot of Captain Jack standing on top of a building for no reason.

As a result, trying to sell Torchwood as a dark and angsty thriller is an uphill battle, and it isn't one that the creative team seem to be winning either.  The bizarre choice of setting and the production credits speak of a series that is creatively compromised by internal politics and sleazy production deals.  The people who have to pay the price, of course, are the viewers.

The Writing.
Thus far, the writing in Torchwood has been sub-par.  Sub-par by the standards of genre TV in general, Sub-par by the standards of genre TV in this country (lest we forget, Nigel Kneale died recently), sub-par by the standards of drama and sub-par even when compared to the simple-mindedness of Torchwood's parent series Dr. Who.

The characters are mono-dimensional.  There's an asian computer geek, a welsh police woman, a creepy english guy, a handsome Welshman and Captain Jack who is smarmy and wears a long coat.  Davies' attempts to grow these characters have been as trite as they are unambitious, seemingly limiting himself to sophomoric comments about their sexuality and will-they-won't-they relationships that not only ape Dr. Who but ape the likes of the X-files.  Simply put, these are poorly written characters that lack depth and they are in the hands of a creative team that seem to lack any desire to add any depth to them.  Even the main character's relationship problems are banal and mundane as they centre around the fact that she works late and rarely gets to see her boyfriend.

For a series that is supposed to be aimed at adults, Torchwood shows an amazing lack of emotional complexity or maturity.  Indeed, watching this series one might well be tempted to think that Davies has never actually had a relationship, or if he has, he clearly has nothing of interest to say about them, leaving us to wonder why he should choose to include them at all.  To speculate for a minute, the reason why they're included is that From Buffy to BSG, you can't make a modern genre series without dealing with relationships.  But Davies has no stomach for the emotional politics of BSG and lacks the eye for subtext and lightness of touch displayed by Whedon's writing on Firefly and Buffy.  Rather than insightful commentaries or bold melodrama, Torchwood gives us adolescent sexuality.

The Ideas.
One of the pleasures of Dr. Who's return to the airwaves is the fact that it is undeniably a series that is all about ideas.  Each week there's a new setting and a new challenge that, if not always original, is undeniably effective.  Consider the creepy ghost story The Unquiet Dead from series 1, the touching relationship between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour in series 2 or even the idea of an alien pretending to be Satan in series 2.  All of these are nice ideas and are deep enough to sustain an hour or two's drama.

Torchwood has yet to sink its teeth into any interesting ideas at all.  The closest it has come is a machine allowing you to relive old memories and see the future, but despite a large canvas to play with Torchwood disastrously chooses to make the episode about the personalities of the different characters and the relationships between them.  Seeing as no work was done on either of those areas, Torchwood's attempt to pluck at our heartstrings fails utterly, the predictability of the plot and the familiarity of the ideas only serving to drive home how sub-par the writing is for this series.

The lack of emotional depth to Torchwood and the paucity of its ideas combine with its adolescent and inept attempts to be "grown up" to produce a series that is utterly underwhelming.  Unless the quality of the episodes improve drastically as the series progresses, Russell T. Davies is not only dragging the Dr. Who brand through the mud, he is also endangering the future of genre broadcasting in this country, because if a large budget, a successful brand and an award winning writer cannot pull in the punters, then why should the BBC bother commissioning any new series from anyone else?

This series is not only poor, it's intellectual and creative bankruptcy are actually dangerous.

Comments

[Enish]

Nice review. As an American who has recently discovered a remote fondness for the new Doctor Who (I was a tom baker man originally), this has quenched my curiosity about Torchwood. Perhaps later, but I'm in no rush.