Sunday 22 October 2006

Torchwood: Everything Changes

Paul Kasey in a Halloween Mask

New Beginnings, Episode 5
Sunday 12 May 2024.

It’s 2006, which is just the time to launch a gritty and adult Doctor Who spinoff — Torchwood, a show with an immortal lead character which is basically about the finality of death. But has Torchwood learned anything from its parent show’s many, many launches and re-launches?

Notes and links

James compares Torchwood to the Virgin New Adventures, a series of original Doctor Who novels launched in 1991, after the cancellation in 1989 and once the full set of novelisations had been all but completed. Like Torchwood, the VNAs initially featured lots of sex and swearing, before settling down a bit and discovering that there were other ways of being adult.

Joseph Campbell was a writer and narratologist who codified the main features of what he called the Hero’s Journey, a narrative framework which is exemplified (he believed) in heroic myths across a range of cultures. He’s a big source of inspiration for George Lucas’s Star Wars films.

One we missed: India Varma played Tala Durith in Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), blowing herself up (inevitably) in her third episode. (Spoilers, sorry.)

Cucumber was a 2015 drama by Russell T Davies about a gay man in his forties who discovers, after the breakup of his long-term relationship, what gay life is like for young people in their twenties. Its sixth episode focuses on the brutal murder of one of the main characters.

Flight Through Entirety hasn’t covered any Torchwood at all, but for a fresh take on this episode, take a look at this review by friend-of-the-podcast Michael O Sullivan. His blog, Angst and Death and Random Shoes, will be covering as much of the show as he can tolerate watching.

Follow us

Nathan is on X as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, James is @ohjamessellwood and Todd is @toddbeilby. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

For now at least, 500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety. So you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll break into your house and use your flatbed scanner to create PDF copies of the complete works of Herman Melville.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.

The latest episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire is probably out by now, or if you’re a particularly keen 500 Year Diary listener, it will be out in just a couple of hours. In it, we talk about the two new episodes released on 11 May — Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord. The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be covering the whole of the new series, releasing an episode a couple of days after each new Doctor Who episode comes out. Like and subscribe.

Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we marvelled at the superb Roxann Dawson, as B’Elanna went for another round of overwrought self-examination in Voyager’s Barge of the Dead.