Torchwood comes to Channel 10
March 15th 2007 23:43
Well, it looks like the adult Doctor Who spinoff show Torchwood will be coming to Australian screens after all. Originally it had been reported that the ABC had passed on this show... why, I have no idea. Perhaps the show was too adult? (Unlikely, if anything the ABC has been less strict with it's censorship and classification than the commercial channels) Maybe they though no one would interested? (Possible, the ABC aren't the smartest cookies in the jar). Either way, it didn't look good for fans of the new Doctor Who series.
The 2006 series of Doctor Who spent a great deal of it's episodes building up to Torchwood, it would be kind of slack for all this to have gone to air in Australia and then for our television stations to all refuse the spinoff. Luckily, Channel 10 have stepped in and snapped up the show. An odd and surprising move, I might say, but Channel 10 has long been the underdog of commercial television and has hence traditionally been the one commercial station open to different kinds of shows.
For anyone unfamiliar with Doctor Who, Torchwood is a spinoff from the recent revival of that show. Unlike Doctor Who though, it is aimed at a firmly adult audience and is pretty much a completely different show... it's fair to say that it's probably further away from it's parent show than most other spinoff shows have been. Whereas Deep Space Nine and Voyager were essentially aimed at the same audience as Star Trek: The Next Generation, and were (for purposes of format and feel) virtually clones of that show, Torchwood is only marginally similar to Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a family program with the emphasis on adventure and time travelling. Torchwood is full of sex and violence, and more akin to Buffy or the X Files.
Basically, Torchwood are a top secret organisation who investigate and claim alien technology for the good of the British Empire. The show follows a small team based in Cardiff, Wales... a part of the world that has recently been subjected to some kind of dimensional trauma. This trauma means that a rift in space and time sits above the city, allowing all manner of alien life to tumble down to Wales. The five members of Torchwood do their best to keep on top of it all. The whole team also happens to be bisexual, which makes for some fun and unconventional shenanigans.
It will be interesting to see what Channel 10 does with this show. Will they promote it heavily? Will they promote it at all? When is it going to air? What time will it air at? Will Channel 10 put it on late at night and screen the episodes intermittantly in the manner that most cult/sci-fi shows tend to get treated on commercial Australian television?
Only time will tell.
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