The retconning of Torchwood (no spoilers please)

Cafe Society
21

What’s never established is that if Torchwood is “beyond the government”, what weight exactly do their badges hold?

Jack “Step aside officer, this is Torchwood territory”

PC Plod “Torchwood? Never heard of it”

Jack “We have jurisdiction over this kind of thing, I can’t go into any details though so move aside”

PC Plod “I’ll have to check with my superiors”

Jack “We above the police, beyond the government, your superiors won’t know who we are”

PC Plod “Well in that case neither do I, and you can stay on that side of the do not cross barrier”

Jack “Bum”

22

I think this is a point where the show is unintentionally self-consistent - a lot of the local police do know about Torchwood; however, in episode one, it’s all news to Gwen.

The explanation for this is simple: Gwen is phenomenally stupid and obtuse. And this is entirely consistent with her characterization throughout the series …

23

But I think the conceit is that the more we, as an audience, learn about Torchwood, the more the locals do too. Especially as the things they investigate get larger in scale with how many people they affect.

24

By the start of the second season, they’re so well known that a random woman waiting for a bus says “Bloody Torchwood!” after they roar past in their SUV.

25

Torchwood used to be secret and subtle. Captain Jack is now running things. You can say a lot about Captain Jack but subtle ain’t one of them.

26

Well, that, and a 200-foot-tall demon rampaging through the city might make people more open to the possibility of supernatural stuff running around. Makes the weevils seem almost normal, eh?

-JOe

27

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

28

Babylon 5 joke there, actually.

29

I thought that as soon as I originally heard it. However I doubt the reappearance of Torchwood 4 would be as elaborate as that of Babylon 4.

30

Well, no, see, obviously!..what will happen is that Captain Jack will find the “lost” Torchwood and, after sneakily offloading all the current/past employees, will guide it back in time to the point where the 10th Doctor met Queen Vicki and prevent that meeting, thus ensuring that HIS Torchwood is the ONLY Torchwood (and coincidentally causing the Cybermen/Dalek invasion to not happen at all, since the Canary Wharf Torchwood didn’t ever exist and therefore could not have been giving them all openings into the world).

Okay, I’m done…I want royalties from Russell Davies when this airs, btw…

31

I wouldn’t want the Battle of Canary Wharf not to have happened, but if all this hopping about in time and space results in retconning out residue that originates from nothingness, I’ll be happy. How many years later and that still bugs the piss out of me.

32

i had such a crush on sgt. benton… :smiley: