Countdown to midnight with the Captain

Those of you within viewing range of the BBC1 on New Year's Eve can see John Barrowman live on your TV screen. He will be featured as part of the televised coverage of Big Ben's chimes at midnight. And who knows, perhaps one of the hosts of the show can pry a few more goodies about Torchwood out of him.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk/

The coverage runs from 11:30 to 12:30 which of course you can tape, since the only people who are at home watching TV on New Year's Eve are those pathetic geeks who spend all their free time on the internet writing about science fiction shows.

Also, to update the John Barrowman civil partnership story, the recent news stories all stem from an interview in this month's Attitude magazine, kindly posted at johnbarrowman.net. A good read and JB is not shy about mentioning how backward religions are regarding gays. This story doesn't mention a surrogate child for the couple at all, that is something JB mentioned in a prior interview and is way down the line, he probably won't have time to think, let alone for a new kid in 2006 with production of Torchwood S1 and Doctor Who S29.

New Year's Eve is the one holiday this time of year I actually do celebrate, so no post for me tomorrow. To all Woodies, have a Happy New Year! Everybody's New Year's resolution for 2006 should be: Make more room for Torchwood in your life.

This month's Playboy pictorial: The girls of Torchwood

Other than John Barrowman we still don't know any of the cast yet for Torchwood. There has been plenty of speculation of course. It started with the Charlotte Church rumours in October, those gained some legs until RTD flat out denied them. Then we heard from Rachel Stevens in November, she started some Torchwood rumours about herself. Now in December we have the Eve Myles rumours.

Source: screen capture from TCI featuring the late Daniel Llewellyn and Sally Jenkins

It obviously is quite easy to start Torchwood rumours so lets start plenty of juicy ones for the new year! The buxom model Jordan said she wants to be a villian on Doctor Who. She has this great idea of being a killer model who uses her boobs as weapons, but don't you think that would be a much better fit for Torchwood? Jack would not be able to resist her arsenal, even after they became deadly. But we wouldn't have to worry about him, he keeps weapons in strange places as well.

File it under wishfull speculation, but Sally Jacobs, the blonde communications expert from UNIT with the A+ blood really perked my attention in TCI. She was played by the Icelandic Anita Briem and would of course make a nice addition to Torchwood. OK, so she would probably have to be demoted for some reason to end up with the rabble-rousers in Cardiff but she could always serve as a liason of some sort between UNIT and Torchwood. Or just be involved in secret liasons, either way.

Now, just like that, we have enough up-n-comers to keep us busy through the time production starts in February or so. Feel free to start your own rumours as well, lets not rest until we have a few dozen potential Gwens.

Stand back boys, Surfs up!

More TCI fallout for you today and Torchwood speculation, so just go back where you came from if that doesn't appeal. Mind you if you do leave, you will miss out on a topless Welsh lass!

During the TCI program commentary (Which I must admit took me a while to sync up with the episode. It does seem a bit odd to release a commentary on the internet for a TV show that has already aired. Do you think the BBC is just accepting that everybody has downloaded the show? . . . nahh!) the Cardiff spacetime rift featured in The Unquiet Dead and Boomtown was mentioned in connection with Torchwood. The rift would obviously provide a great way for Jack to get to modern-day Cardiff from Satellite 5. Don't forget the Captain still has that groovy pan-dimensional surfboard. He last used it to set up a forcefield around the satellite in The Parting of the Ways and it should just be laying there waiting for him, ready to hit the waves. Jack's eyes really lit up when he first saw the surfboard and It might just provide a nice prop for him throughout the new show.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk/

Also in connection with that same rift, in The Unquiet Dead we were introduced to a character named Gwyneth. She was the maid who communicated with the Gelth and stood at the rift to provide them a bridge to Cardiff. It has been reported that in the new issue of SFX Magazine they say that Eve Myles, the actress who played Gwyneth, is connected with Torchwood. Hmm . . . Gwyneth, seems like a familiar name to me, how about you?

Is this the Gwen we have been puzzling about? Logically it doesn't seem she could be since she supposedly died at the end of that episode. Well I say supposedly because she was standing on a spacetime rift at the moment of her demise. A clever writer could easily get her out of that fix.

Well we do already know that RTD likes to use the same names for different people in his writing and also doesn't that character seem a bit too virginal to be part of a Watershed show opposite the flirtatious Captain Jack? Well it could be that actress Eve Myles plays a completely different character. She is an up and coming Welsh actress after all. She currently plays a fiesty character named Ceri Lewis on the Welsh drama Belonging. You can also watch video of her online in a short called Say it with Flowers.

Coincidentally I'm sure, she made an appearance as a character on Eastenders called Young Gwen three years ago. But of most interest to Torchwood.TV readers she showed some skin on the spicy BBC2 miniseries Tales from Pleasure Beach in 2001. (Ok yes I know its the reason you read through this whole dumb post, so you can take a look at what Eve showed off during that show here, scroll to bottom. No need to thank me for doing the dirty work and finding that for you pervs!)

Welcome message for all new Woodies!

Since the broadcast of The Christmas Invasion, this page seems to be getting hit on more than Captain Jack at the beach. So for all you newcomers who are just catching up on the Torchwood craze thanks for dropping in. Keep checking in from time to time for all the latest on the Doctor Who spinoff. For my dozen or so regulars who have been with me since the beginning I apologize for this redundant post.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk

So I don't have to repeat myself on the page, follow the archive links in the column on the right to see what we have been talking about since October. They are backwards chronologically though, so scroll to the bottom and read up to avoid confusion. You probably got here from the Wikipedia page on Torchwood, so if you have read that you are already up to date on everything anyway and it basically serves as the FAQ for Torchwood. Many thanks go out to the generous people who keep up that page and thanks for linking to this site.

The only other place online I have found that is consistently updated with Torchwood information is The Torchwood Institute, it is a Live Journal community and has also been there from day one. Join them today and become a Member of the Innuendo Squad! Other names I have thrown out for fanboys and girls of Torchwood are Woodvians and Woodies. Any other suggestions are obviously welcome, then perhaps we can take a vote.

I don't claim to be objective, I don't claim to be any good, the only claim I make is that I enjoy writing about Torchwood. I have been a Doctor Who fan for over 20 years but will generally defer that topic to the thousands of sites that are already online. With Torchwood I saw an empty spot and jumped right in. Again, thanks for stopping by, now you too can help spread the Torchwood gospel throughout the countryside.

Report from the Seattle branch of Torchwood

Ok sure, there is plenty more that we can analyze regarding Torchwood following The Christmas Invasion episode. If you haven't seen it yet, you are excused from class for today.

It was suprising that Torchwood is clearly not just a half dozen or so guys and gals in Cardiff. As we saw in the latest episode of Doctor Who, they are a big organized operation. They manage to construct a super kill-o-zap ray in the middle of London for one thing. Ok, it's a bit like the Death Star in Star Wars as some fans have observed.

Source: The Christmas Invasion screen capture

If you listen to the commentary track available at the WHO official site, when RTD is asked about what Captain Jack's role will be in the show, he says Jack will be leader of the Cardiff branch of Torchwood only. So most probably the group we saw last night following the PM's orders is the London branch. Does it seem like Torchwood is just UNIT with a few more secrets?

Prime Minister Harriet Jones doesn't look like she will be around long enough to be on Torchwood as the rumours had it. The plotline that she both wasn't supposed to know about Torchwood, and also commands them seems a bit murky. Well, should be fun wading through all these new goodies for a few months anyway.

Quick TCI Spoiler

If you haven't heard what the Torchwood reference in The Christmas Invasion is yet, here it is: Torchwood is a covert operation which takes orders from the government and has access to the missile/energy weapon that The Independent had previously mentioned. Torchwood is not the weapon itself, which makes a hell of a lot more sense. The weapon is based on alien technology, which to sum it up, means that Torchwood is a covert outfit that deals with alien activity. Last I checked we already knew this!

Source: The Christmas Invasion Screen Capture

Well its a bit odd that the folks at Torchwood would have control of some super kill-o-zap gun but basically we seem to be getting the message that there is nothing more to see here, move along folks. Guess this means we can go back to the always fascinating business of Gwen speculation until the next Doctor Who episode comes out in March.

Happy Life Day!

So the big day is finally here! Let's hope the christmas episode of Doctor Who is not remembered in the same fond way that The Star Wars Holiday Special has been. I was never a big fan of Star Trek but I give them an enormous amount of credit for never putting out a christmas special. Sorry, but science fiction is about traveling to other worlds and meeting strange species. I really doubt aliens would give a damn about christmas when over 1/2 the population of this planet doesn't for starters.

I suppose the reason they might celebrate christmas on other planets is the same reason all aliens have British accents on Doctor Who or American ones on Star Wars. I hope next year's Doctor Who christmas episode is set on Skaro where I imagine they can feature some great Dalek holiday that will be far more interesting to watch. Perhaps Davros' Birthday is their one day off from exterminating every year, so they must really do it up right.

Source:http://www.cartoonstock.com

I have always liked Doctor Who in the past because it has celebrated solving problems by using critical thinking. That is the exact opposite of christianity, and no matter how secular you want to try and make christmas, it still has the word 'christ' in it, so its still a celebration of not thinking for yourself.

Doctor Who has generally treated religion with the skepticism it deserves as this essay illustrates. For a slightly different spin check out The Spirituality of Doctor Who by Phil Purser-Hallard. I will rest my judgment on The Christmas Invasion until after I have seen it of course, but the clip from the show making the chat-show rounds featuring the flying christmas tree has really turned me off. But that's fine, since this is a page about Torchwood not Doctor Who. I will try best I can to ignore the religious-holiday theme and just be watching TCI for clues about our new show starring Captain Jack.

If RTD wants to ruin WHO I suppose he is entitled too since he is the one who resurrected the show, but I would just refer him to a great quote from the Doctor in 1975's The Face of Evil written by Chris Boucher. It illustrates that skepticism has always been part of Doctor Who, and the quote also does a good job of summing up the leaders and followers of religion in a nutshell:

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views.

Wedding bells for Captain Jack

Sorry guys, and gals if you think you had a shot, but John Barrowman will soon be officially spoken for. According to Contact Music JB will be tying the knot soon in a legalized civil union in the UK with his long time partner architect Scott Gill.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk

Congratulations John! (I have heard he does actually read this page for some strange reason. When can I have an interview then Captain?) They are also planning on having a kid. How you ask? It's all quite simple and clearly explained in the article. For crying out loud, don't people ever follow links?

Today's post is just an excuse to look at Rachel in her underwear

Yes, we all know that Rachel Stevens has a virtually zero shot of landing a part on Torchwood but there is nothing else to talk about regarding the show today. So, I will fill you in on all the Rachel news in the papers, leaving out the bogus Torchwood rumours. (Well, I have had virtually nothing to talk about for over two months now and it hasn't stopped me yet.)

Source:http://www.wrc-wallpaper.de

My first question is, Do all Welsh gals have boyfriends named Gavin? Stevens has been seen cavorting with another athletic Gavin, not Charlotte's, according to the Daily Record. Rachel has been busy this month, she recently performed at a swanky private Merseyside christmas party according to IC-Liverpool.

Even though her latest CD bombed and her recent college tour went horribly according to the Mirror, none other than the NY Times says Stevens is an overlooked gem. (By the way, if you want a password to read the NYT or other newspapers and don't want to give them your bra size and other personal information to get it, you can always get passwords at Bug Me Not.)

Perhaps the Times article will jumpstart her staggering CD sales, you might still have a chance to place a bet on Rachel having the christmas #1 song at 200-1 odds! But the smart money these days is of course on The Christmas Invasion being the most popular christmas day TV program at decent 11-4 odds.

The reviews are in!

If you don't pop by Wimbledon soon you won't get a chance to see John Barrowman in the flesh for the forseable future. After the completion of his Cinderella run on January 15th, he will be camped out in Cardiff through at least March of 2007 working on Torchwood season 1 and Doctor Who season 29.

Source:http://www.thestage.co.uk

The reviews of Cinderella in the Evening Standard, Wimbledon Guardian, British Theatre Guide, Indie London, LastMinute.com and in The Stage Online are good and it sounds like you could do a lot worse than bring the kids to see JB in the panto.

On his one night off from the panto last week Barrowman popped up to Birmingham to sing christmas music with Elaine Paige. You will be able to listen to the whole show on BBC2 radio this friday night, or on their website for a week. If your quick you also still have a few days left to listen to Doctor Who:Regeneration on the BBC2 site, featuring interviews with many of the parties involved in bringing the show back last year including RTD and James Hawes.

Enjoy your large dose of WHO this week, once its over the countdown clock will be reset for March.

The auteur of Torchwood

All this time and I have barely given a mention to the one person who will probably be the most responsible for the Torchwood vision. Sure, RTD is listed as the creator, executive producer and head writer for the new show. However you must admit the guy has his hands full these days with Doctor Who and it could just be that we see his name plastered all over Torchwood for its marquee value.

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk

James Hawes will be the lead director and producer on Torchwood and for all we know is running the whole show. He directed the two-parter that marked the debut of Captain Jack on WHO last season and is doing a few more episodes for Season 28. His 2006 work calendar looks like it will be all Torchwood. So far no other directors have been announced for the program.

Hawes has directed a large variety of TV dramas and documentaries over the past decade. One of the most interesting things on his resume is Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World. You can see him interviewed about making this documentary look at T.E. Lawrence at the film's PBS site. Before it was trendy, he dealt with terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in the middle east in his thriller A Line in the Sand.

For those of you who enjoy supernatural crime dramas, he directed the first few episodes of the BBC Scotland's Sea of Souls. Shows like that certainly aren't my cup of tea but its good to see that the BBC has included a skeptic's response to the show's ridiculous subject matter on its official site. Unlike American networks who tend to promote their fictional shows by sending out press releases claiming their imaginative tales are based on reality.

Well the reality is that we are now just a few days away from the Hawes-directed Christmas Invasion, which will obviously give Woodvians loads more to talk about. Whether anybody wants to listen, that's another story.

A Halloween premiere for Torchwood?

Kind of a busy weekend, will be heading out on a roadtrip to a friend's wedding so no reports for a few days.

But before I pop off just wanted to throw out a few more things about the Guinevere One mission discussed yesterday and stir the pot a bit more. In the About page, it says the probe was launched on October 31st 2006. Seems to me to be as good a date as any for the premiere of a certain show starring Captain Jack. On that same page it has another date listed: August 1, 2003, it is the date when work commenced on the G1 project. That is roughly the date that the return of Doctor Who was announced.

Source:http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov

The man in charge of the project involving Mars is one Daniel Llewellyn, is it coincidental that just a few months ago a Daniel Llewellyn in Georgia took an outstanding photo of mars? Ok probably, but the Torchwood.TV rules state that I am required to give you a few pointless things to think about until I get back.

Gwen the Great

Move along if you don't want any more hints about Gwen. But today we have something new to add to the mix.

Recapping what we know so far:
1. RTD says the following in DWM on November 9th, "The Doctor will be striding into 2006 with some truly astonishing adventures, with Jack and Gwen and the team following right behind!"
2. The Daily Mirror reports on November 21st that Rachel Stevens has auditioned for the part of Gwen on Torchwood opposite John Barrowman. (Interesting only for the Gwen reference)
3. John Barrowman tells fans backstage after opening night of Cinderella on December 9th that "Gwen isn't who you think she is."
4. The Independent's review of The Christmas Invasion on December 13th says that in the show Torchwood is a missile defense system.
5. Now today on the BBCs page dedicated to TCI there is a link to something called the Guinevere One Project which comes from the British Rocket Group. In the About Guinevere section we learn that a Welshman named Daniel Llewellyn named the Guinevere probe after Gwen the Great, the queen consort of King Arthur.

Keira Knightly As Guinevere in a King Arthur film in 2004.
Source:http://www.moviecitynews.com

Regular readers may remember that I speculated on November 11th that investigating Guinevere might provide some clues. So might Jack pick Gwen up in his time travels? Perhaps Jack masqueraded as Lancelot in those missing two years and he rescued Gwen from being burned at the stake for adultery. Having Guinevere and Jack together on Torchwood would make a decent poker hand, a pair of queens!

Torchwood pantomime episode announced

Now that panto is supposedly respectable, it is even attracting snobby types and drawing some of the biggest names in the business. There is a star-studded wax panto on display at Madame Tussauds this month, featuring Brad Pitt, Ant & Dec (Doctor Who's competition on ITV) and Bush and Blair teaming up as a pantomine cow. (Pictured here, no additional comment needed)

source:http://news.bbc.co.uk

A Few Good Men has wrapped, and without as much as a night off, JB headed across town and slipped into the Prince Charming tights. Barrowman continues in the Cinderella Panto in Wimbledon through January. At opening night there was the gift from the Innuendo Squad as mentioned earlier, but there is also news and some pictures up now at jb.net about the unique gift given to JB and his charities from the Barrowman Online group.

Doctor Who and Panto are certainly not strangers with one another. Right after leaving the show William Hartnell joined a touring Puss in Boots pantomime. Prior to appearing on the show Jon Pertwee was in a televised Mother Goose panto on BBC1. Colin Baker has done them on occasion and Sylvester McCoy usually pops up somewhere each year. This year he is at a panto at the zoo. Of course, they are just a few of the WHO actors who have dabbled in the december artform. That's not to mention most of the monsters on the old show of course, who looked like they had their premiere on the pantomime stage alongside the pantomime cow.

In need of an editor

Script editors may not do as much writing on TV shows as they did in the past, but they are still the bridge between the writers and the producer on a program and s/he helps work on the submitted scripts so they all flow together and fit within the show's format and continuity.

According to IMDB, Brian Minchin will be Torchwood's script editor. The Welshman has a few writing credits on his resume including several award winning short films. He is currently working as a script editor on the BBC Wales production Belonging. This soap/drama is entering its seventh season and chock full of Welsh culture but a bit hard to find outside the confines of Cymru.

Minchin was also a producer on the well-received film Dead Long Enough. The film, shot in Wales and Ireland, will get wide release in March 2006. The 26-year-old may not be one of the giants of the TV industry yet, but as we all know, Torchwood has always had a way of making or breaking a career.

Hmm just throwing out a thought, but do you think they are intentionally f-ing with us?

For spoilerphobes you might skip this post as it has to do with a few recent morsels of information about Torchwood, nothing too exciting mind you, but you have been warned.

The Christmas Invasion was screened for the press recently (no clue why I didn't get a copy) and some reviews have come out in the past day or so. The review in The Independent is the only one where a Torchwood reference has been spotted so far. They report the episode is anti-Bush and Blair, which clearly means we are in for a good episode, but it also says, "There is a plot line involving a new secret missile defence(sic) system called Torchwood."

OK, this reference not only gives us nothing really juicy, it makes absolutely no sense at all. Russell and others have been prepping us up for The Christmas Invasion for months, saying that Torchwood would be alluded to in the episode. Is this all we're going to get? Well considering that TCI was shot before Torchwood was officially announced, this little "Bad Wolf" type reference might be all we'll have to chew on until the spring.

Another revelation of sorts comes from John Barrowman himself. Folks at The Live Journal Torchwood Institute had a meetup this weekend and went to see JB in the Cinderella Panto in Wimbledon. They gave him a special "Captain of The Innuendo Squad" polo shirt after the show and tried to pry some Torchwood information out of him. According to this report he said he has read the first script and told those talking with him backstage that Gwen isn't who we (the live journal community, I assume) think she is. *(Uri Geller will be 'performing' at the same theatre in Wimbledon in February. I would love to present him with a polo shirt backstage after the show reading, "Captain of the Litigious Scumbag Charlatans Squad." Who wants to chip in?)

So that means Gwen is definitely a character on the show and that she is a "she." It also means, I think, that she is not some sort of partner or companion of Jack's on the show as many of us had assumed. In the articles discussing the Rachel Stevens Torchwood rumors they refer to Gwen as a character opposite Barrowman but those all originated from an unreliable story in The Mirror.

In the light of these revelations I now see that it is quite obvious that 'the powers that be' are just messing with our minds! So I am swearing today that I will no longer try to dissect every little morsel of minutiae that comes along about Torchwood. I will put my energies toward more productive and rewarding endeavors from here on out. Watch out for a K9 & Company blog in this spot starting tomorrow.

Come visit the Flydell Caverns

Flydell North is a nice spot from everything that they say. It's the home district of the UK's current Prime Minister Harriet Jones. We got our first glance at the right-honorable Ms. Jones during Aliens of London and WWIII. If you have visited the BBC site lately you may have watched the trailers for The Christmas Invasion where it looks like Harriet will take charge.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk

Now of course we can all see that Harriet would do a much better job than Tony Blair has, but I have a more important reason for writing this post today. No, it's because there has been a good deal of speculation that the PM Jones will be a regular on Torchwood. I suppose for no other reason than people think the PM would be informed from time to time if aliens are constantly riding ramshackle through Cardiff.

Well in the brief trailer for the next WHO episode it looks like Jones is consorting with an officer of UNIT and it is good to see the taskforce is keeping her in the loop these days. However, I suspect that the PM will not approve of the Torchwood Institute and she will be the last person on their speed dial. Plus, to quote Cardiff Mayor Margaret Blaine Slitheen, "We're in Cardiff. London doesn't care. The South Wales Coast could fall into the sea and they wouldn't notice."

PS - There is an article in the independent just out with spoilers from The Christmas Invasion including a Torchwood reference. More on this as it breaks.

Shaken not stirred

Well it looks like Torchwood and the new James Bond movie Casino Royale are having tryouts in the same place. Back when Charlotte Church was rumored to be on the show, there were odds on her as a potential Bond girl. Rachel Stevens, the most recent Gwen wannabe has also been connected with the juicy role in the 21st Bond film. Plus there is Billie Piper, you know the girl from that other show Russell T Davies works on, she has reportedly scored an audition for the role of Vesper Lynd.

source:http://en.wikipedia.org

It sounds like if you are British and a babe you get on the Bond list. The producers of Casino Royale, and of Torchwood for that matter, seem to be in no hurry to end the speculation of who their respective female leads will be. Once they announce that, what the hell else are people going to talk about.

Not suprisingly, there have been several actors who have crossed between Doctor Who and the James Bond films before. Long before he was the Master, Anthony Ainley was an extra in You Only Live Twice. And the Black Guardian himself, Valentine Dyall was in the first version of Casino Royale as none other than Vesper Lynd's assistant.

Honor Blackman, played Proffessor Lasky in WHO's season 23 story Terror of the Vervoids. But Blackman is better known for portraying a certain Bond girl in Goldfinger with one of the most memorable names in the history of cinema. So whatever lucky actress ends up with the new role of Vesper, she will undoubtedly be dissapointed that she didn't get a better Bond girl name such as the eternal Pussy Galore!

Lancaster, born and bred

Chris Chibnall, next in our running series on Torchwood authors, doesn't have as long a resume as Peter Hammond but does have a variety of credits to his name. He has been involved in a few television projects in the past, most notably the BBC drama Born and Bred.

Source:http://www.artscouncil.org.uk

Chibnall is now a very busy writer, in addition to working on Torchwood this winter he is also working on the Torchwood spinoff Life on Mars which is also due in 2006. Well at first glance the show looks like a Torchwood spinoff, as it centers around a time-travelling police detective. However, Life on Mars (scroll way to the bottom) will be set primarily in '70s Manchester (apparently the closest location to Mars the BBC could come up with) as opposed to modern-day Cardiff.

I have been able to find next to nothing as far as Life on Mars is concerned on the web. Perhaps some clever person out there can cash in on this and be the first to start a fansite for the show? Chibnall is also connected with a show called Merlin which is rumoured to fill the 7pm Sat. night slot on BBC1 following the next series of Doctor Who.

Like John Barrowman, Chibnall has a background in the theatre. He was involved for several years as a playwrite with the experimental theatre group Complicite. Chris has come a long way since he first broke into TV cataloging old football games for SKY sports. Let's just hope that the huge job of helping launch three new BBC shows in a single year won't drive him back towards a quiet lonely gig deep in the recesses of SKY's video vaults.

It all starts with the script

As we speak, the Torchwood writers are hard at work on the 13 scripts for the new show. We know so far that RTD is the head writer and will be doing two full scripts. Also on board are Chris Chibnall and PJ Hammond.

PJ Hammond is no spring chicken, he has been writing for TV since the late '50s. His first big break was as a contributer to the classic BBC police drama Z-Cars. Perhaps of most interest to us Woodvians is that he was the creator of the ATV show Sapphire and Steel. S&S ran from 1979 to 1982 and has been referred to as ATV's version of Doctor Who. The recent DVD release of the series has brought the show to a new audience and the boxset even includes some commentaries by PJ. The show has also recently been revived as a Big Finish audio production.

Source:http://www.davidmccallumfansonline.com/

The daring show included nudity and some taboo topics, it is summarized at Amazon as a, "Complex, involved science-fiction series about a special force of interdimensional operatives whose task is to protect the universe from evil forces trying to gain a foothold by disrupting the timeline." Remove the word interdimensional, and swap the universe with Cardiff and it sounds like you have Torchwood to me.

Hammond has had a brush with WHOness before, he wrote a story outline called Paradise Five which was planned as part of The Trial of a Timelord season in 1986. Eric Saward had given the go ahead on the story which had the Sixth Doctor and Mel on a holiday planet but Saward later resigned during production and then producer JNT decided not to continue with PJ's idea.

If Sapphire and Steel is anything to go on, expect some enigmas and tricks to be peppered throughout Hammond's scripts for Torchwood. Stop back tomorrow for the scoop on Chris Chibnall.

PS - A sharp-eyed member of the Innuendo Squad noticed that the BBC Bad Wolf site's bio on the guy in the Big Brother house on Satellite 5 notes that he is from a place called Torchwood! The same page also says Captain Jack's favorite TV show is The Two Ronnies, so I don't know how much stock we should take in this information.

The Moffat Show

First he wrote the hilarious Doctor Who satire Curse of Fatal Death, then he penned one of the scariest and most highly-regarded stories in the history of the show, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, what will Steven Moffat do for an encore? Write for Torchwood, we hope.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk/

Moffat has taken full credit for creating Captain Jack so what better fit for the new show? He is interviewed in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine which hits the newsstands thursday and the advance word is that in addition to the story he wrote for the forthcoming season of WHO he is also doing a story for season 29.

Well obviously Moffat is quite in demand and a very busy guy. He is also working on a new BBC production of Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. But one just has to look at some of the dialogue he wrote for Coupling to see that Torchwood would benefit from his brilliant wit.

You know, I have never understood the male obsession with lesbianism - a whole area of sex with nothing for them to do . . . Just answered my own question, haven't I?

Sally in Coupling - S1E4

Torchwood Web Pioneers

Torchwood still has a relatively small presence on the World Wide Web. I suppose it is a rare breed who dedicates a page to a show that is still in pre-production. But of course I am not the only trailblazer out there who is already providing a site where Woodvians can surf.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk/

All the established Doctor Who news sites are now covering Torchwood news as well. Outpost Gallifrey and UNIT News have both setup special Torchwood sections.

There are a handful of other Torchwood fansites around including The Institute, http://www.sylvestermccoy.com/torchwood/, and Torchwood.org.

The most thriving Torchwood community is perhaps at The Torchwood Institute on Live Journal. There is also some Torchwood talk at Torchwood Online plus chatter at all the usual Doctor Who forums.

My favorite of the batch however, which will no doubt provide months of entertainment until the show premiers is YTMND:Torchwood. Feel free to post any sites I may have missed in the comments below.

Sweet Charity

Even though I have been in bed all weekend I certainly don't need your charity, but there are a lot of folks who could use an extra Farthing if you are in the giving mood. John Barrowman has consistently been involved in helping out charities. He has done a lot of work for Crusaid and Theatrecares who raise funds to support people with HIV and AIDS. JB also consistently performs in concerts where proceeds go to folks like Red Cross, Oxfam, and Amnesty International.

Source:http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk

Barrowman has also been involved with a Dreamers Acting Workshop. He has gone back to his old high school in Joliet Illinois and a few other schools around the US and worked with aspiring young performers. He provides several scholarships for the workshop where he provides constructive criticism to the kids such as, "You don't come to the audience. You bring the audience to you. You do it by refining your movement."

Some other performers who graduated from West Joliet High School include Andy Dick and Anthony Rapp. Over at rival East Joliet High on the other side of town they must have taught 'Dancing on the Ceiling' as that's where Lionel Ritchie got his diploma.

PS: According to IMDB Brian Minchin has been signed on as script editor for Torchwood. Minchin has been involved with many BBC Wales productions over the past few years.

Remember the Titans?

Aaron Spelling is in the news again, which admittedly I found quite shocking since I thought he was dead. He is suing his nurse as he was none too happy that she was about to call a press conference discussing the special services she had provided for the TV producer over the years.

One of Spelling's lesser known shows was a nightime soap filled with handsome actors called Titans. The show was trashed by the critics and public and lasted less than a season on NBC. Apparently Tori Spelling's father had gone to the Dynasty/Dallas well one too many times.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com

However, in 2000 what Titans did provide to folks in the USA was a glimpse of John Barrowman on their TV screens. JB played a malicious lush called Peter Williams in the soap, in this TV guide interview he relished the role saying, "Good guy parts are unmemorable."
Interestingly enough one of the couples on that show was named Jack and Gwen!

Titans wasn't Barrowman's first exposure in a primetime soap. In 1995 he starred in another short-lived show called Central Park West. It was received well at the time by people who enjoy that sort of thing. In this interview that JB gave about the show, he was asked who was his type, he played it straight and responded, "Joan Collins." But John was able to slip in some innuendo even back then. After telling a story about running naked down Fifth Avenue, he told the reporter that his favorite pickup line was, "I'm your racehorse. Come ride me."

PS - I am a bit under the weather this weekend, so no new posts until I recover.

Just another Jewish English Princess (JEP)

Now of course I am always looking for any excuse I can possible find to put a photo of Rachel Stevens up on this page. Well I really don't have much of one today but there isn't anything else to talk about so I will fill you in on what our latest "Gwen" hopeful has been up to lately.

Source:http://www.grin.nildram.co.uk/

Last week Stevens turned on the christmas lights in Belfast which apparently caused quite a riot. Rachel then started a tour of universities around the UK. She will be at the University of Wales in Bangor next week. (Maybe this show will coincide with her supposed final Torchwood audition) According to Mykindaplace.com her tour has not been going well and she has been playing to half-empty arenas.

Since Rachel's singing star has faded she will have to give up on the pop tunes and flaunt her other obvious assets on a small or large screen near you. But can she act? Well sadly I missed her cameo in Deuce Bigalow 2, but I heard she really showed her dramatic range in the film with her portrayal of a mud-covered character called "The Dirty Girl."