Nat

The following post doesn't go into details about Children of Earth (Torchwood series 3) but the resulting comments almost certainly will...

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not keen to see Torchwood continued after the ending the series was given during Children of Earth: Day 5.

However, after discussions with some friends, I have an idea for the continuation of Torchwood which I would absolutely LOVE to see.

Now Torchwood has been around since the Victorian era and Captain Jack has been a member of Torchwood Three since it was run by two Victorian lesbians. That's a century of Torchwood and Captain Jack continuity that's completely untapped.

So let's treat present day Torchwood as finished, leave the modern Doctor Who universe free for Steven Moffat to play with and instead explore Torchwood's shady past!

There are some options for how this might work:

You could have series 4 set entirely in the Victorian era with Captain Jack working as a junior member of a steampunk Torchwood, hiding secret knowledge about Torchwood's arch enemy, The Doctor. After that, series 5 could be in, say, the 1920s, as previewed in The Golden Age, then series 6 could be in the 1960's, series 7 the 1980's and so on. Each series would move on enough that we have a completely different team with very few characters crossing between. Eventually this would have the nostalgic appeal of Life On Mars or Ashes To Ashes and it could even feature ongoing threats and big bads that persist or develop through the decades.

Alternatively, the story could follow Jack working on some sort of shady quest (looking for something to travel in time to change events perhaps?) alone before the CoE epilogue while flashing back Lost-style to related stories that occured at some point in Torchwood's past. Not only could this give us more of Torchwood's missing past (and that steampunk Victorian Torchwood) but it could include missing stories from Torchwood's recent past, even including characters that died in past series.

Or you could ditch the framing story and just have an anthology series exploring different Torchwood stories set in different time periods and different locations. We know from The Golden Age that Torchwood has a base in India, for example, so why not all over the empire? Then you'll have a series with lots of different stories in which anything could happen with only Captain Jack as the main recurring character.

A series set in Torchwood's past could be pretty dark, because we know for a fact that Torchwood in the past was an unethical organisation willing to do anything to protect the country and the empire. We also know that they used to treat Jack more like an abomonation who could be used to do dirty jobs almost certain to result in death. We'll also see an ongoing dynamic where Jack's position in Torchwood gradually changes going from a dispensable and untrusted pawn to eventually leader of Torchwood Three.

So what do you think, is this a good idea? Which option would you prefer? Or would you prefer to see a present day series 4?

Planet of the Dead was this year's Doctor Who Easter special, the first of four 'gap year' specials taking us up to David Tennant's Tenth Doctor's regeneration into Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor. Billed as the Tenth Doctor's last hurrah, we were told during Russell T Davis' interview on BBC Breakfast to expect a fun romp before the dark end - and that's exactly what we got, lots of fun! I let the story flow over me, had fun and found I laughed more often watching this than I did during the first episode of the new Red Dwarf premiered the night before. It seems that this episode went down extremely well with the non-fans, the 'not wes'. I was surprised by how many people on Twitter were saying this was the best Doctor Who they'd ever seen, and I heard later that this episode had one of the highest audience appreciation figures ever recorded for a Doctor Who and the highest for a New Who special. This was also the first ever high definition episode of Doctor Who. I signed up for a HD service on the promise of this episode and I wasn't disappointed - it looked absolutely amazing! Details like the pores on the doctor's face, the amazing sand dune vista, and the detailed CGI Tritovore ship were all crisp and stunning on my HD TV. It seems I wasn't alone; this episode also gave BBC HD their highest ratings figures to date. Supposedly this was the 200th Doctor Who TV story (if you ask Doctor Who Magazine), if you count The Trial of a Timelord as 1 story and not 3 and count Utopia as the 1st part in a 3 part adventure and not a standalone (as the production crew did), you reach 200 at this episode (if not, you reach 200 at Midnight or The Next Doctor). ( Spoilers for Planet of the Dead... )

But this is still a 4 out of 5 story for me as I had fun and didn't let the details worry me while it aired. It's a very enjoyable, witty story with lots of rewatch value due to the sparkling dialogue. It looks stunning on a 42" TV. I think we may have seen a template for what a big screen Doctor Who blockbuster movie might look like.