RTD creates "Torchwood" The Captain Jack Series

[tallorder]

This would seem to be real and not a wind up. Captain Jack, alien investigations set in modern day Britain (well, Cardiff). An adult themed spin off to the sucessfully re-launched Doctor Who. Announcement on the BBC site backed up by an article in the Independent. http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article320110.ece
All set to kick off on BBC Three after S2 has aired.

Blimey! I always said the licence fee was well worth the money.

[Adam J Purcell]

Is this for real? Certainly sounds real from that article but it's all just words right now.

Could be quite good. What I've seen of Casanova was quite amusing, certainly a lot better than, for example, Aliens of London. So there is, I think, hope. 13 episodes, though?! When will RTD get the time? Presumably he'll insist on writing a large number of them as he has with these two seasons of Who. That and executive produce them both. I can believe he'd want to do a series with this sort of premise but, short of picking up a time machine, where will he find the time?! If he can get the likes of Joe Ahearne aboard in a significant capacity it could work quite well, though (clearly I'm thinking Ultraviolet here).

I'm not so sure about the 'adult' label - are they going to get old Captain Yates into the team with Captain Jack?! That could be... bad! "The people have affairs with one another. There will be sex and swearing, I assume" Does anyone else fear this might turn out to be some kind of soap opera? And Cardiff?! Won't we have had enough of that city by the end of the second season of the second Who television series? I suppose we had to put up with Vancouver for longer in various 'US' series.

I'm sure these worries will be unfounded and, worse come to the worse, nobody will have to watch it to enjoy the new Who. So long as it isn't just the 'Captain Jack show' and has a decent premise it has good potential.

[tallorder]

Did you also see that P.J. Hammond (Sapphire & Steel) is confirmed as a writer for this! Also Chris Chibnall who created/wrote the Beebs 'Born & Bread' and has done some sitcom work.

[macfadyan]

heh, didn't I say that word would be important, didn't I? Didn't I?

ahahahahahahcoucghcoughsplutter


water...




What the hell..The Men From UNIT for the Naughties. Might be fun.

[tallorder]

heh, didn't I say that word would be important, didn't I? Didn't I?

ahahahahahahcoucghcoughsplutter


water...




What the hell..The Men From UNIT for the Naughties. Might be fun.

You say that - there's a guy called 'sparacus' on OG who claims that it's his continual criticsm of the Series and his posts on the forum there that have driven Russell Tea Lady to creates this new series!

[macfadyan]

yes, and I invented doctor who ....back in the nineteen forties...it was all me...and I invented ...everything.....

theres always some prat out there claiming this that or the other...see above...




plus, if Im correct, sparacus is not to be taken seriously.....popular opinion has it that its one big wind up.......


by the way, tallorder....are you coming to the charity concert on the 30yth of this month, hmm????????

[Adam J Purcell]

Did you also see that P.J. Hammond (Sapphire & Steel) is confirmed as a writer for this! Also Chris Chibnall who created/wrote the Beebs 'Born & Bread' and has done some sitcom work.

Interesting. I didn't know Hammond was still working! Looking at his IMDB entry he worked on a few murder/mystery series in the mid 90s (Midsomer Murders, Wycliffe, Dangerfield (was this a whodunnnit?)) I'm sure IMDB must be lacking in detail as he appears to have done nothing since 1997 if that's to be believed. Obviously he can work on modern 45 minute programmes, at first I wondered how his Sapphire and Steel padding style would work in Torchwood!

Never heard of Chris Chibnall or 'Born & Bread' - or, indeed, any of the three productions against his name on IMDB.

All in all, jury still out of both of those for me. Hammond has potential to do some good spooky stuff but I know nothing of this other chap. I think it's fair to say RTD hires good writers, though - I still think the weakest stories in Eccleston's Who run were written by RTD!

"Whereas this series is going to be 'honest-to-god Cardiff'" In other words, BBC3 budget. Somewhere yesterday (digitalspy forums, I think) I saw someone say that BBC3's entire annual budget was £96 million. I've no idea if that is true but I think it at least plausible. If Torchwood had an RTD Who budget 13 episodes will eat over 10% of their entire budget for the year! Perhaps Grade will up their budget a bit, being such a new Who convert! I'm sure in reality Torchwood will be lucky to get a third of Who's budget. That's not necessarily a bad thing though - if it forces them to concentrate on story over effects. Either that or we get vintage Who wobbly sets and bubblewrap monsters...!

[lordsummerisle]

Adult themed, eh? There's no doubt that Captain Jack is a decent character and provided they try and write him a show of his own and not an obvious Doctor Who spin-off it'll probably be OK.

On the subject of K9 and Company, I downloaded it the other day (only for completeness' sake, honest) and found I'd forgotten just how totally diabolical the title sequence was. For John Nathan Turner, the independant woman of the 1980s was one who jogged in the freezing cold wearing a cheerleader's outfit and Ian Levene's theme tune still makes me wish the Tweets hadn't split up at their peak. In fact the theme song is so bad it's probably on MacFadyan's "Greatest Tunes of the Eighties" tape

Whatever Torchwood has to offer, they'd need to try exceptionally hard to make it worse than K9 & Co.

[macfadyan]

k9 and co..hmm......not sure, have to check the playlist....but yes, your quite right, the theme is diabolical - though levene did say, in between dusting off the corpse of hartnell in his celler, that it was supposed to have an orchestral arrangement rather then synthed....its still awfull though...and that title sequence.....I howl....I really do...soooooo funny. (Hmm...I wonder if they were actually trying to get the same effect of the dr who title sequence and just got the term 'howlaround' wonky?lol)