posted
Fair warning - if you haven't seen all of the new series yet, this post might ruin some of the plot points of the finale.
I'm curious about the Torchwood Institute - are they a part of the government, privately funded, or somewhere in between?
- We know from "The Christmas Invasion" that they will, when the need arises, work with the government (seemingly through a UNIT liaison) and will to a certain extent defer to the authority of the Prime Minister. After all they didn't fire on the Sycorax ship until Harriet Jones ordered it, which isn't in keeping with Yvonne Hartman's story in "Army of Ghosts" in which she cheerfully admits to shooting down alien ships to grab their technology.
- We know from "Tooth and Claw" that they were founded with a mission to defend the British Empire from alien threats, with the Doctor right up there as alien enemy number one.
- We know from "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" that they are ultra nationalist and believe in the restoration of the British Empire. Hardly the type of organisation that happily sits alongside the international effort that is UNIT.
- We know from the old series (and the appearance of UNIT in the "Aliens of Londson/World War III" two parter) that the Doctor spent a lot of time with UNIT and they even managed to track him down in his 9th incarnation to help out. So why, when UNIT had him working with them through his 3rd incarnation and into his 4th, did Torchwood not pop by to have a word? (okay, simple answer is the chicken came after the egg and Torchwood wasn't thought of back in the old series, but I'm curious if an in-continuity answer can be found).
Did UNIT hold on to the Doctor because it and Torchwood aren't close allies? Was their relationship with the Doctor perhaps based on the old adage of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? And if Torchwood Cardiff is to be shown in the upcoming series, will it have a similar relationship to the government and UNIT as it's London branch?
Apologies if some of these questions have been asked in other threads but it seems that Torchwood is here to stay so it might be interesting to see how it fits in with the rest of the established DW backstory. Anyone got any ideas?
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Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Well, the scuttlebutt on the new Torchwood series is that we'll be seeing a "reformed" organization when we see them. It's very likely that several generations of peoples-in-charge, and thus attitudes-towards-Doctors, have come and gone. Torchwood certainly must have known that the third / fourth doctors were on Earth, even trapped there at some point. But we can infer that since at that time he was actively helping the Earth and even using various alien technologies to do so, to say nothing of the wreckage of zillions of alien craft and such left behind from the glut of invasion attempts during that period. So, the Torchwood people of that time may have elected to let him be, to further the technology they can later pilfer. This would have been reversed given the more paranoid times we are in today.
Now, the "Christmas Invasion" thing may be a clever cover-up of how Torchwood works. Obviously they've had the Death Star weapon for some time and the PM had knowledge of it somehow. Could this not be a feint to make the legitimate government THINK that they have control over them? I'd figure Torchwood would have blown the Sycorax out of the sky anyway, as soon as they'd determined what value their technology would have for them. Of course, the whole blood control thing got in the way, at least temporarily...
Likewise, UNIT was founded only in the 1960s and is a global organization. Torchwood, while a national-level gig, is much older. I'd think Torchwood would have been pretty quiet during UNIT's heyday during the 60s and 70s, if only to deflect attention from themselves and pilfer the results. If anything, Torchwood would have benefitted from keeping quiet!
[Of course, TPTB have been forbidden from mentioning UNIT as part of the United Nations anymore thanks to some overreactionary sod at the *real* UN. Had this not happened, I'd suspect that this new series would have much closer ties to UNIT, if not be an actual UNIT-based or UNIT-connected show. As it stands, odds are that UNIT will hardly ever be mentioned.]
quote: I'm curious about the Torchwood Institute - are they a part of the government, privately funded, or somewhere in between?
Good point, 'Institute' doesn't seem to indicate either way. Given it was founded by Queen Vic though and the levels of funding apparently available to it I would guess it is government funded, at least to get away with the massive alien buster energy cannon thingies. But I'd guess it's some kind of covert ops thing, with the PM being informed about some of the planetary/national defence options but not really being sure as to what's actually happening or the full extent of Torchwood's operations.
As to Torchwood and UNIT, I think Mark's laying low scenario is probably the best explaination available. Having said that, it seems from the classic Who episodes that UNIT detachments within each country were made up of troops from that country, raising the possibility that the British UNIT commanders were well aware of Torchwood and keeping an eye on the Doctor/feeding Torchwood information on alien tech. According to wikipedia, the British contingent of UNIT operated under a Department C19 of the British Government and a number of the novels have this department appropriating alien technology. Torchwood's cover?
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: After all they didn't fire on the Sycorax ship until Harriet Jones ordered it, which isn't in keeping with Yvonne Hartman's story in "Army of Ghosts" in which she cheerfully admits to shooting down alien ships to grab their technology.
No that's not how it went. She just gleefully admitted that it was THEM who fired on the Sycorax - NOT that they wanted it for it's technology.
Why didn't the Torchwood personel use the particle gun etc that they had collected against the Daleks and the Cybermen?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: No that's not how it went. She just gleefully admitted that it was THEM who fired on the Sycorax - NOT that they wanted it for it's technology.
You misunderstand me - I meant that in "The Christmas Invasion" the weapon wasn't fired at the Sycorax ship until the Prime Minister gave the nod. However Yvonne Hartman's account of Torchwood activities seems to indicate that they'll shoot down any ship that enters British airspace and loot any technology they find: "if it's alien, it's ours." is how she puts it. She gleefully admits to shooting at the Sycorax, but she also admits that Torchwood will grab pretty much anything they find useful.
What interested me was that on the one hand, in "The Christmas Invasion", they held fire until ordered by the Prime Minister but in "Army of Ghosts" they seem a lot more independent, having shot down a Jaffa Sunglider (sounded like Jaffa, anyway!) and specifically referring to recovered or reverse engineered technology as being for the benefit of Torchwood only. They even seem to have their own troops.
Of course they might not have fired at the Sycorax ship over London for fear of there not being much of London that would survive the wreckage falling down on it, but it still interests me: how close are the links between Torchwood and the British establishment?
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Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It's possible that Torchwood used the Doctor as a kind of "lightening rod" to find incoming aliens and so left him mostly alone...and that UNIT's protection/alliance with the Doctor led to animosity between the two organizations.
It would be neat to see Torchwood try to pull a coup in UNIT (possibly with UNIT becoming the underground organization for a while- maybe not even being a British organization after a time! Japanese UNIT anyone?).
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Registered: Aug 2002
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If Torchwood had shot down the Sycorax ship on its own, everyone would have known about it. One assumes they usually prefer to keep a low profile about that sort of thing. I don't think they were waiting for the PM's permission. I think they were trying to avoid her finding out about them. Once they discovered that she already knew, they just played along, "taking orders" from her to keep her happy and non-interfering.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: She gleefully admits to shooting at the Sycorax, but she also admits that Torchwood will grab pretty much anything they find useful.
She also quite happily implies (if not even admits...I forget the exact dialogue) that purposely shooting down an alien craft was how they got the technology to blow up the Sycorax in the first place. Raises the question of just how they blew up that other alien ship in the first place though...if you've got one method, why argue with results.
Registered: Jul 2006
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