BBC Announces Adult Doctor Who Spin-Off

Dogtanian writes "The BBC has just announced a new 'Doctor Who' spin-off called 'Torchwood'. It is intended to be more adult in tone, and will follow a team investigating alien activities in modern-day Britain. Described as a cross between 'The X-Files' and 'This Life', it will feature Captain Jack, the bisexual time-travelling conman who featured in a number of recent Who episodes. The BBC are likely hoping that this spin-off will be more successful than 'K9 and Company'. The title is an anagram of a popular British sci-fi series, by the way."

Comments

Re:The Anagram is....

[Onan]

Okay, it's been about twenty years since I've seen any Doctor Who, so I can't comment specifically on this character, but...

How does having a bisexual character constitute an "agenda" or "uncomfortable sexual baggage"? Isn't that just sort of a fairly realistic inclusion of the fact that actual people are sometimes gay or bisexual? In much the same way that people are sometimes female, or tall, or left-handed, and thus characters in stories sometimes also have these traits?

Were you made similarly uncomfortable by Tom Baker's curly-haired-people agenda and baggage?

Re:First "Bad Wolf" post

[SeanTobin]

Actually, I rather enjoy the writing. As you said, the interpersonal elements are very well done. As far as any perceived problem with "some kind of big beam from the sky hitting the Tardis as a way of resolving the plot" you need to realize that that particular part isn't as important.

Take what is quite possibly the world's greatest plot device - the Sonic Screwdriver (tm). There are many things that get in the Doctor's way. People, Daleks, the gap of the emotional understanding and motivations of the human species. Those are interesting challenges and make for good television. Opening a locked door isn't as interesting.

The Bad Wolf plot was not a let down for me. Remember the episode where Rose saved her father and caused a temporal paradox (sorry if there is a better term, years of Star Trek have embedded that one in me.)? It showed that normally there is a limit that you can mess around with the timeline at. Again, it wouldn't be much of a show if you could just go back in time and accidently land the TARDIS on top of the creator of your greatest enemy before he creates them. What the Bad Wolf episode also showed is that those paradoxes can be resolved. What can be more dramatic than Rose desperately trying to get the TARDIS flying on what she knows may be a one-way trip to her death for the slight chance that she can do something to save "her Doctor."

Again, simple matters of how to open a door don't make for good drama. Telling a crazed, alien-nanite infused, scared, lethal, 6-year old to go to his room in a convincing manner... Sacrificing yourself to time-eating demons to defend your (relatively) innocent companion... Flying the TARDIS into a Dalek ambush to turn certain death into a fighting chance for life... brilliant!

Re:The Anagram is....

[MenTaLguY]

Speaking as someone who's seen the series, new and old... we don't even need to bring homosexuality or bisexuality or whatever into this...

Tom Baker's characterization didn't totally revolve around the curly hair. Captain Jack, on the other hand, had very, very few scenes that weren't heavily sexualized.

You could forget, sometimes, that Tom Baker had curly hair. By contrast, the way Captain Jack was written, it was pretty hard to forget, even for a moment, that he was continuously randy for anything vaguely warm and moving.

It's even more glaring given that Doctor Who has historically been a show so foreign to sex that fandom has long speculated that the main character's species reproduces asexually.

Now, that was a writing problem too, but I would have preferred something in the middle rather than having a main character almost totally dominated by his sexuality at the expense of other aspects of his development.

Re:The Anagram is....

[Dogtanian]

I predict that this spin-off wouldn't do well here in the U.S.

I've said this before but... Doctor Who will *never* do well with mainstream US audiences. Period.

They tried it in 1996 with the Fox/BBC co-production, made a number of compromises for the American market, and it still didn't do very well.

Put simply, if it were possible to make something called "Doctor Who" that did well in America, it wouldn't be Doctor Who. The BBC seemed to realise this with the new series, and didn't try to repeat their 1996 mistake (which isn't to say it was flawless, but not for that reason).

Doctor Who will never be more than cult in the US, and it's unlikely that Torchwood would be either, with or without openly bi and/or gay characters.

Personally, I'm not convinced about Torchwood; I felt the Captain Jack character was symptomatic of the (intentional) cheesiness running through the new series, but I'm not a rabid Who fan, so if it's crap I'll just not bother watching it. If it's good, then... great :)

Re:The Anagram is....

[pm_agapow]

Would you complain so loudly if the character was randy and heterosexual ...

... like many (if not most) mainstream sitcom characters?

Re:The Anagram is....

[SquadBoy]

And you have no idea how much that cracks me up. But PLEASE mod it down.

I should have my browser taken away if I've had less than 2 hours of sleep in the last 36. :)