Torchwood Season 2

The boys and girls from Torchwood are back. Now that news either fills you with joy or dread, depending how you reacted to last year’s series. A series that got great viewing figures, beating Doctor Who in the US, but which also got some venomous reviews online and some prolific ranting.

However, it’s back on BBC television and Sci-Fi Channel with new purpose, and hopefully some of the old problems solved in order to lessen the cries of anguish on the internet.

So far so good, and with 3 episodes done it does look like a lot of the problems that beset Torchwood season 1 have been addressed to at least some degree.

Picking up some time after the disappearance by Captain Jack, who went off gallivanting with the Doctor again, the new series opens with Gwen in charge of the team and them in hot pursuit of an alien Blowfish. It’s probably the most fun Torchwood has ever been and there’s some verve to proceedings that was sorely missing last year. Then Jack’s back and it’s the proper Captain Jack. The fun one, not the one that was seen last year in Torchwood.

What about the rest of the team? Well Gwen in charge leads to some friction with Jack in episode 1 and then it’s forgotten for the next 2. So continuity between episodes is still pretty poor. Ianto has developed a personality, but still no actual purpose on the team, and picks up where he left off with Jack. Their scenes together have actually been some of the better ones for this season, along with, scarily, Owen and Toshiko. In a monumental shift from season 1 Owen has now turned into a human being who actually talks about having a relationship. Once the epitome of all that was wrong with Torchwood, Owen’s character shift bodes well for the future. When Torchwood started we were promised adult relationships and instead we got prepubescent antics. By pairing off Owen and Toshiko it gives both a chance to develop rather than leave the fantastic Toshiko in the background.

As for the lovely Toshiko, we have to really wait until a bittersweet episode 3 for her to shine, just as she did in every spotlight last year. More screen time for her this season can only be a bonus as she is one of the true stars of the show, and we’re promised that her past and how she came to Torchwood will be addressed. For those of you who don’t know, that will mean explaining what she was doing in the Aliens of London episode all the way back in the Christopher Eccleston Slitheen two parter from Doctor Who Season 1.

And the episodes themselves? Well generally they’ve been ok. Far better than most of season 1, but not without fault. The first episode with James Marsters’ Captain John was an exercise in flash and little substance, but had energy and you wanted to see more of Captain John, which bodes well for his reappearance later in the season. It, like the second episode had plot holes the size of Cardiff in them, but you were still entertained. On the other hand, Helen Raynor’s episode 3, with the tale of a man frozen by Torchwood in 1918 and woken up for 1 day a year every year since, was a great character piece that worked despite a mcguffin device. All in all the episodes showed promise and with Freema “Martha Jones” Agyeman due to join the cast for a brief spell soon it seems that lessons have been learned, no matter what the producers might say. It’s still not perfect and it still needs tightening up, but you don’t hate the characters now and that’s a huge step forward from last year.

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