I very much enjoy watching Doctor Who, so I was pleased when they announced a more adult spin-off series. Sadly, though, Torchwood is turning out to be really rather odd and quite disappointing.
All through the last series of Who, we had to put up with the name Torchwood being shoved down our throats during almost every single episode. In the rather excellent showdown between the Daleks and the Cybermen, we even got to see the London branch of the organisation - a rather intriguing collection of people with departments for studying alien artifacts - it all looked quite impressive, and I was hoping for something a bit like that in Torchwood. We're even introduced to the organisation as the Cardiff department, with offices all over the place, which reminded me a lot of Wolfram and Hart from Angel. Sadly, this particular office was rather undermanned, with the only members of staff having about as much chemistry or history as a bunch of people who were just dragged in off the street. It's more like a soap opera about Five People in a Basement than about a cool organisation who get to play with alien toys.
Each time they find something cool, they just lock it up and swear never to touch it again, completely missing the point that these devices could be used for all kinds of purposes - surely a big organisation like Torchwood would have people climbing over each other to play with these "toys" and find out how they work? No, this grand beast that we were promised is just Five People in a Basement. No politics between these guys and a head office, no chain of command, no Big Cheese at the top of the corporate food chain. Just Five People in a Basement.
The worst thing is that the biggest part of the hype was that this show would include "sex and swearing". Ok, fine, but at least make it part of the plot! Random snogging between all the cast members does not constitute chemistry. None of the characters seem to have met before the first episode - I get no sense that there's any bond between any of them, no history, no on-going sexual tension. There's not a single case of "will they, won't they" between any of them, and I really don't seem to be caring much about what happens between them. Sex and swearing are all very well, but plot is way more important than that.
I guess that's where the real problem lies; the plots are all very weak, and the endings are just disappointing. The last two episodes left me scratching my head and asking "why the hell did they bother getting involved?" They're halfway through the series now and I'm beginning to think it's too late to salvage what was supposed to be a grand and exciting show. Instead, all I can imagine we'll get is more alien technology that gets hidden away and not used again, and more random snogging between those rather uninteresting Five People in a Basement.