Torchwood Cardiff is supposed to independent from Torchwood London and any other Torchwoods (Torchwood Scunthorpe anyone?).
I can only assume that Jack and Co get their cash from selling alien artefacts on Ebay.
As to why are the police so deferential to Torchwood if it doesn’t have government sanction, I guess this is a bit like American detective shows. You ever watch Murder She Wrote or Monk? That’s my bet anyways, they know something funny’s going on and they don’t have a clue how to investigate it themselves. So it’s a case of shifting a crappy case on to someone else.
Also, I suspect Jack may possibly be bumming the Chief of Police.
Jessica Fletcher never detained people in her basement without a warrant and tortured them, tho. Captain Jack does that sort of thing.
I think Torchwood is a renegade former government agency that needs to either be brought back under proper government control, absorbed by U.N.I.T., or disbanded.
Ah, but maybe Torchwood was never under complete government control! Torchwood, if you remember, was created by Queen Victoria (in “Tooth and Claw”) to deal with the investigation of strange happenings. My guess is that like U.N.I.T., Torchwood does answer to someone, probably even the government (they are called upon by Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, in "The Christmas Invasion), but with certain allowances that take it outside complete government control. U.N.I.T.'s job is the protection of people from alien threat, and Torchwood’s is the gathering of intelligence and technology, which tends to put the two agencies at cross-purposes sometimes.
I think you might be right that Torchwood was always an out-of-control secretive organization abusing people’s civil rights with little or no oversight by elected officials. It reminds me of the CIA program in the Bourne movies, and the solution needs to be the same: public hearings, exposure, possible indictments for the leaders (Cpt. Jack, whose real name we don’t even know).
These people are dangerous! Last season Captain Jack took it upon himself, on his own authority, to shut down a government research program that was well on its way to finding a cure for all disease! They just needed to work out a few bugs. Think of the damage Jack has done: cancer, diabetes, halitosis, irritable bowel syndrome, restless leg syndrome – they all could have been eliminated (once the aforementioned bugs were worked out). But nooooooooooo, Captain Jack and the mouseketeers had to ruin it all.
Yes, they say they will will be a five-part miniseries airing over a period of a week. Link . Looks like a very little Who-Verse content in 2009. But some is better than none.
“Real World” Torchwood was used as a Doctor Who (same letters) code word to keep people like us finding out what was going to happen next on the show. U.N.I.T was not used since the United Nations did not like their name being used in fiction. Then someone bright just change the name but kept the same letters so U.N.I.T. is back. United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, later the Unified Intelligence Taskforce.
“Doctor Who world” Torchwood sometimes seemed good other times bad. Jack deals with them in the past and seemed to want to set up a better group himself. U.N.I.T. returns with a change in name but is still a branch of the military seen in Doctor Who.
Jack just seems to want to do his own thing and maybe since he takes in a policeman the police give him space. There maybe some Royal mandate for all I know.
Keeping up with Jack is hard since he bounces back between Doctor Who and Torchwood so if you do not watch both it can be confusing. I hear that both shows will be a bit sparse next year. :eek: There maybe only specials for both shows.
Considering that in the season finale of Doctor Who [spoiler]Ianto and Gwen appear and don’t die[/spoiler] we can assume that they’ll be back in some fashion.
That’s one way to describe it.
Queen Victoria started the Torchwood Institute. Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister, utilized them to destroy the Sycorax. So it’s probably safe to say that their orders come from the highest echelons of power.
Oh pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease bring my Torchwood back!!! Okay yeah, it’s gonna be mighty darn hard to replace Tosh and Owen but it can be done! I know it can!! Okay, there might be issues with no King of the Weevils about to control them and no one will ever be able to hack like Tosh but there’s simply GOT to be more Torchwood!
In BBCA’s defense - it was a BBC (the UK one) decision to only order 5 episodes that they are talking about running in one week. No work on whether BBCA will run it.
In fact Dr Who is being limited to I think 3-2 hour specials next year.
They are both supposed to return to full seasons in 2010
A great deal of problems with getting BBC television is that it is paid by U.K. taxes. We do not pay for them so we often do not get to see BBC programs to some time later. Someone in the U.S. has to pay for them or we do not get to see them.
The ball is in Russell T Davies’ hands for new torchwood. Eve(Gwen) said this, “John [Barrowman](Jack Harkness) is very much on the same page as me, in that if and when they need us, they can just pick the phone up and we will be there before they’ve even put the phone down, because it’s something we love doing.” http://screenrant.com/torchwood-season-5-delay-scott-163133/
I know I am late to the party but just saw Children of Earth. For some reason I skipped seriesm3 and have just gotten around to watching it when screened recently.
Jaw droppingly good. The most I have been engaged with TV sci fi for a loooong time. The plot is so evil and yet…so believable.
