For the second year running, I have the great honor of presenting Torchwood with the "most improved television show" award. Three-ish years ago now, the BBC debuted the first season of Torchwood promising us a darker, sexier, more intense, more adult version of Doctor Who. What we actually wound up with as an inconsistently uneven show filled with Cybermen in bondage gear, aliens that lived on human orgasm energy, same-sex snogging and boatloads of swearing. It's was like if Torchwood was a teenage boy who's parents have gone away for the weekend for the very first time, and it invited all of it's randy friends over, threw the biggest house party and dropped cherry bombs in all the toilets. Frankly the only reason I mad it half way through the season was out of loyalty to the parent show.

Season two was a vast jump in quality. Gone was the fetish fuel Cybermen, gratuitous swearing, and silly sex aliens. Suddenly we got crazy things like character development and plot! Mind you, it wasn’t up to the dizzying heights of Pure Awesome that Doctor Who managed to reach on a regular basis, but at least it wasn’t a painful chore to slog through anymore. On the other hand, Torchwood: Children of Earth not only blew my socks off, it dragged my socks kicking and screaming out into the street where three large men in white suits and bowlers savagely beat them with baseball bats. It's that good.

Torchwood, for those of you who don't know, was founded in the year of our lord 1879 by Queen Victoria after an encounter with the mysterious traveler in time and space known only as The Doctor. The Torchwood Institute was tasked with researching and combating any and all alien threats to the British Empire, and using their findings to restore the Empire's former glory. To those ends, it acquires and reverse engineers alien technology by any means deemed necessary.

The Cardiff branch of Torchwood is a team of five operatives, led by the debonair and omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness (the dashingly good looking John Barrowman reprising his roll from Doctor Who), with former police constable Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) as the "heart" of the team, acting as a point-of-view character for the viewer and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) the team's general support, gopher and boy-toy for Jack. Unofficially rounding out the roster is Rhys Williams (Kai Owen), Gwen's long suffering husband who gets caught up in Torchwood incidents on an all too regular basis.

So, why the vast improvement? A couple of reasons, I suspect. For the third season, the show run was cut down from thirteen episodes to five, shown on consecutive nights on BBC1, allowing for a single, tightly focused arc instead of a season 60% good stories, 20% middling stories and 20% crap. The other reason? Executive producer and script writing god Russell T. Davies finally gets his hands dirty writing for Torchwood, again demonstrates that when he gets his game face on, the man can write big, dramatic event television like nobody's business.

The story here is a much more global event than we usually see on Torchwood, with every single child on Earth possessed by an alien race known only as "The 456" and chanting "We are coming! We are coming!" over and over again. This, understandably, is upsetting to a great many people - and so Captain Jack and the Torchwood team leap into action getting to the bottom of matters. Meanwhile the upper echelons of the British government, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce and the United States all find themselves working on the world-wide problem. But what starts out as a seemingly routine alien invasion is soon reviled to be much more sinister as the 456 demand that humanity turns over 10% of all the children on Earth to them. . . .

So a story that usually gets 45 minuets (or perhaps 90 if it's a Doctor Who two parter) is spread out over five hours and five nights. In the old days of Vintage Who, an epic story like this usually means that the story was padded out with a couple of episodes of running up and down corridors or being captured and escaping again. However with this five hour Torchwood story, the reverse is true. The show is allowed to breath, building the scenario slowly, developing secondary characters and properly setting the tone for a climax that is best described as downright heart breaking.

Of course the best script in the world isn’t worth jack if you don't have performances to back it up - and the regulars rise to the challenge with great skill. Gwen and her "The Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame" monolog is downright brilliant, and her and Rhys have some great, quite moments - Eve and Kai have some great chemistry together. Meanwhile Gareth David-Lloyd is stunning as we find out exactly how far Ianto has come from being the wallflower office gopher. Even bit character PC Andy (played by Tom Price) gets a "fist pump in the air" moment as he Does the Right Thing.

And then there's Jack.

I've been critical of the decisions taken with John Barrowman's character when he made the leap from Doctor Who to Torchwood, from charming Han Solo-ish rogue to total dick. He soften a bit in season two, but had moments of dickish-ness at times that still didn’t sit right with me. In Children of Earth, John proves that with a good script, he's one hell of an actor. He goes from confident and randy rogue that we all know and love eventually winding up emotionally broken after having to make quite possibly the hardest decision in his (very, very long) life. It's amazingly good stuff from the man who started his career in Shark Attack III with likes like "I'm a little wired. What do you say I take you home and eat your pussy?"

But of all the performers in the show, the break out thespian is Peter Capaldi as Permanent Secretary Frobisher, a middle management government bureaucrat that is forced to deal with a situation far beyond his station and forced to fall on his sword for an corrupt and self serving political body. He goes from Smarmy and ineffectual to manipulated and used and helpless and his final scenes are downright heartbreaking. His scenes with the sinister Prime Minister Green (Nicholas Farrell) and his ministers as they debate how best to determine which 10% of children they will deliver to the 456 are chilling. In fact, the true villains of the piece are not the 456, but the cold and self serving politicians to seek to stop Torchwood while they prepare to deliver the children into the hands of the aliens.

Every episode of the previous two seasons of Torchwood open with Jack telling the viewers that "The 21st century is when everything changes". After Children of Earth, I can't see how the series can possibly be the same ever again. . . .

THE DVD -
Season three of Torchwood was in production just earlier this year, so the A/V quality of this two disc package is outstanding, with a nice sharp picture and sound. In fact the turn around time from broadcast to DVD release was SO fast (the matter of days, in fact), that the broadcast masters were still in the process of being tweaked and adjusted. There are a couple of minor music cues in episode five that were changed at the last moment, after the DVD replication masters were sent to press. Tiny moments, really - but it is a change from what was broadcast.

THE EXTRAS -
The classic Doctor Who DVDs are an embarrassment of riches, with lovely restoration and commentaries and news pieces from the day and clips from Blue Peter and brand new documentaries. Season 3 of Torchwood, on the other hand, is disappointing, sporting only one feature: Torchwood Declassified, a half hour behind the scenes feature. It's not bad, but I'd like to get the full package deal here. Barrowman is always a blast to listen to on the Doctor Who commentaries, it's a shame we don't get to here from him here.

Oh, and whatever you do, do NOT watch Torchwood Declassified first. It's got some mad crazy spoilers contained within.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
I find myself shocked. For the first time in three years, I find myself desperately craving more adventures of Jack and his team after the end of the series - NOT exactly what I was expecting from the show that gave us sexy Cybermen. No, Children of Earth was some downright breathtaking television, easily rivaling some of the best episodes Doctor Who has to offer.

Coming from me, that's high praise indeed.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older