Carrying The Torch
With the BBC’s adult-orientated ‘adult’ Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood confirmed for a second series Stephen Donlan talks to the author of a new book that takes a detailed look at the first season. Torchwood. Protecting the Earth against alien threats in the 21st Century – the time when everything changes…Created by Russell T Davies and set very much in contemporary Cardiff the first series starred John Barrowman, Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori as and Gareth David-Lloyd and has been something of a hit – transferring to BBC 2 and becoming that much envied item in television circles: water cooler TV. In this, the first factual book to be published on the series, noted television historian Stephen James Walker charts the story of the first season of Torchwood, complete with character profiles, cast and production team information. Inside the Hub also features behind-the-scenes details and a comprehensive guide to each of the show’s first thirteen episodes – looking at the key elements and the many links to the BBC’s Doctor Who series that permeate the show.
Q: Firstly, how do you go about picking a suitable subject matter to create one of these guides for – in this case – why do Torchwood?
A: “People pitch ideas to Telos for books on various subjects, and if we think there’s going to be sufficient sales potential in a particular title, and we’re confident in the prospective author’s abilities, then we will generally go ahead and commission it. There’s always likely to be a market for a well-written and authoritative guide book on series with an established fan-base, such as Stargate SG-1 and Charmed, or with a reputation as a telefantasy classic, such as Blake’s 7 and Survivors.
“In the case of Torchwood, it was I who pitched the idea for the book, and fortunately my partner in Telos, David J Howe, agreed that it would be a viable one. We knew from the outset that there was likely to be a great interest in the series, because of its status as a spin-off from Doctor Who and as a rare example of contemporary British telefantasy. I also had a feeling from the way the series was described in the earliest announcements and pre-publicity that it was going to be one that I would find particularly appealing. In addition, there didn’t seem to be anyone else planning to do a factual book about it, leaving an obvious gap in the market. So it was a bit of a no-brainer, really!”
Q: Torchwood seems to have divided the hardcore fans of Doctor Who, some loving but some really not if the message boards are anything to go by – why do you think it’s polarised opinion to the extent that it has?
A: “This is something I’ve written about in some detail in the ‘Series Overview’ at the end of the book. Basically I think it comes down to two things. First, the series wasn’t aimed at hardcore Doctor Who fans, it was designed to appeal to a wide general audience amongst the adult TV viewing population, so naturally a proportion of fans would find that it wasn’t their cup of tea. Secondly, because it was promoted as a Doctor Who spin-off, and more generally as a ’science-fiction’ series, that created a lot of different expectations – every Doctor Who fan no doubt has his or her own ideas as to what would constitute an ideal spin-off – and it was inevitable that not all those expectation would be met.”
Q: Torchwood seems to have been a pretty big hit with the wider viewing public – presumably the effect the production team was aiming for. Were you surprised by the ratings success of the show – and why do you think it seems to have captured the imagination of the viewing public – especially as it sometimes seems like a different show from one week to the next?”
A: “I’m not surprised the series was a hit, because it tells great stories, has intriguing characters, and is very well made. But I think everyone was taken aback by the magnitude of its success in the ratings. To my mind, this just goes to show how starved the viewing public has been of this sort of quality science-fiction drama up until now. And the fact that it’s varied and unpredictable – that you never know quite what type of story it’s going to tell from one week to the next – seems to me to be part of its appeal, not a negative factor at all.”
Q: Did the world really need another ’semi secret organisation investigation series post shows like The X-Files? Sometimes it seems that a modern audience might be more surprised if the protagonists on-screen didn’t turn out to be members of a secret organisation dedicated to investigating strange goings on that are beyond the scope of the normal authorities – hasn’t it been done in everything from Gerry Anderson’s UFO to Dark Skies to Stargate: SG1?
A: “There’s a chapter in the book looking at all the various ‘fictional forerunners’ and sources of inspiration for Torchwood, but I think the series presents its own unique take on these ideas. In any drama series, you’ve got to have some reason for the protagonists to get involved in a succession of interesting situations week after week, and one obvious way to do that is to make them members of an organisation – whether that’s the police force, or a hospital ward or, in a telefantasy series, a group dedicated to fighting aliens! I don’t think the public will ever really tire of series like this – and the ratings success of Torchwood supports that.”
Q: As this is a ‘unofficial’ (i.e. non-BBC) publication – in common with the other guides Telos has put out in the past for TV shows like 24, Blake’s 7 and Survivors – perhaps you could tell us a little about the process that goes into putting together such a book – without the ‘all areas’ access the staff putting together an official one?
A: “The type of books that we publish don’t suffer at all from the fact that they’re ‘unofficial’ ones. The aim is not to give a behind-the-scenes ‘inside story’ account of the making of a given series, but rather to detail how it was received by the viewing public and to present an insightful episode guide and analysis, which readers can use as a ‘viewing companion’ to the show. Having said that, we do give quite a bit of behind-the-scenes information where we think it will be of interest, and this is obtained either from published sources or, sometimes, from contacts amongst the people involved in making a series, who assist us on an unofficial basis.”
Q: So what have been the especial challenges in gathering the relevant information for Inside The Hub?
A: “Writing this type of book is a lot easier now than it was even ten years ago, because a huge amount of information is available online, if you know where to look. The advent of the internet has certainly been a boon in this respect! But it’s still quite a challenge to pull everything together into a coherent package, and of course the internet is by no means the only source of information I drew on in writing Inside the Hub. But, as I say, the aim of a book like this is as much to offer opinion and analysis as to provide information. One of the main challenges really was to get the manuscript competed by the end of January deadline, given that the series didn’t finish transmission until New Year’s Day!”
Q: Now there’s a whole season to consider in its entirety, how successful do you think the mix of character-based stories, ‘adult’ themes and more traditional ‘monster of the week’ stories in series one has been?
A: “I loved the series, and thought it worked very well indeed. Of course, it wasn’t without its faults, and any series, no matter how successful, can always be improved upon. But people will have to read the book if they want to know my views in more detail!”
Q: How do you think Torchwood fared in the tricky balancing act of individual character development against storylines?
A: “I think it worked well in that regard, although it would be good to see Ianto and, particularly, Toshiko getting a little more of the limelight in the second series. I have a feeling that the production team saw Jack and Gwen as the main characters in the first series, with Owen a little behind them, and then Ianto and Toshiko, with Rhys obviously in a more supporting role. I think there’s still a lot of unexplored potential for Ianto and Toshiko, and even for Rhys, who’s actually been rather better used in a couple of the original novels based on the series.”
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