Greetings programs! If you've been listening to B&B over the airwaves lately, odds are you've heard a commercial for "Torchwood: Miracle Day" which is coming to the Starz network this Friday, July 8th! I'm guessing that most of you paid no attention to the repeated commercials, but maybe a few of you have asked yourself "what the fuck is Torchwood and why should I care?"

Torchwood is an anagram (i.e. re-arranging the letters of a word to make another one, kind of like how God becomes dog and etc) for Doctor Who, and debuted as a story-arc in the 2nd series of the revived Doctor Who series in 2006. It quickly became a proper spinoff series, starring Chicago's very own John Barrowman (born and raised here, with him leaving for england some time after HS) as Captain Jack Harkness: an immortal ex-time-agent turned conman who teamed up with the Torchwood agency to help ward off alien threats to the planet earth.

The show has had two proper ~13 episode series and a 5 part critically acclaimed series called "Children of Earth" in 2009. If you haven't seen it, Children of Earth is a rare case of powerful television drama that took the form of a mini-series "event" as opposed to a proper season, and told the story of this group of asshole aliens known as the "456" who could easily destroy earth if they wanted to, but they won't if we give them something like 10% of our children for their nefarious purposes (and believe you me, they are indeed quite nefarious)

Believe it or not, you could jump into the Children of Earth or Miracle Day series knowing absolutely nothing about Doctor Who and enjoy it forthright. All there is to know is that the protagonist of the series, Captain Jack Harkness, is immortal thanks to an old Doctor Who companion, Rose Tyler, who brought Jack Back to life after he was killed in the Doctor Who Series 1 finale. A quirky side-effect of her resurrecting Jack was that whenever he died, he came back to life unscathed. This leads his enemies to think up exceedingly creative ways to try and make him stay dead/incapacitated which you'll see in CoE. Oh and Jack is "omnisexual", which means he'll fuck anything with an orifice and a pulse in no particular order (Barrowman is gay in real life, but they wanted his appeal to transcend being more than a niche gay character, even tho he'll toggle your gaydar something fierce... ask Christopher Eccleston =)

ANYHOW, the new series called "Miracle Day" promises to be some "hard" sci-fi with a simple concept: what if everyone on earth suddenly stopped dying? While on the surface this does indeed seem like a "miracle", there are all kinds of implications that you might not think of right away which this series goes off to investigate. I call it "hard" sci-fi, because instead of having a token story supplanted by giant space-ships and CGI laser-gun battles and cylons that look like tricia helfer and desire your cock, it instead explores an aspect of life, death, and makes all kinds of philosophical observations about what it means to us as human beings. Basically, it takes a rather simple concept and explores the shit out of it, as opposed to setting up a giant star-trek sized fantasy world where there's a new monster/alien of the week in little cookie-cutter disposable stories... Torchwood tried that with the first two series and did fairly well, however, it really found its stride in the CoE miniseries where it focused on one proper story over the span of 5 episodes.

Anyways, ex-Doctor-Who showrunner/writer/exec-producer Russell T. Davies is at the helm of this series, and from what I've heard about it we're in for a treat. Big Gay Russ went out and got Starz to co-produce/fund the whole endeavor, so instead of having a purely british tv show with a modest budget set in Cardiff, we've got a more ambitious larger-budget show set in america. I'm sure Starz has some sort of primer to help people get to speed with the overall story of Torchwood up until this point, but really, alls you need to know is that Captain Jack Hartness is immortal, fucks everything, and is now in america with his fine welsh piece of ass, Gwen Cooper (portrayed by Eve Miles) and basically, one day everyone stops dying. Including a super-fucked-up serial-child-killer played by Bill Pullman who was strapped to the table about to die by lethal injection when the miracle happens and it's all of a sudden like "oh shit"

So yeah, forgive me for the babble here but I'm on that ol Bart Scott "can't wait", especially since Doctor Who has that odd series split that has pushed back our last 6 proper episodes until the fall, so like, as far as the Doctor Whoniverse goes this is the only game in town at the moment. With CoE, the show has found itself to the point where it'd just feel wrong if the Doctor showed up to save the day, so I can't wait to see what Big Gay Russ has in store for us. I'll definitely smoke a burrito or two in his honor tonight!

Call it a hunch that Speeps is in with me, so who else is out there? Beebo? Btw beebs, did you ever get your account validated on gallifreybase.com? I brought it to the attention of the mods....

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I'm ALL IN with this.

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Speeps, I need you to pledge your loyalty to my thread, as it needs you as the board's #2 Doctor Who mark (sorry Beebo) to help make this the bonafide show thread. You know a thing or OVER 9000!!!!!!!!! about making show threads, and getting the all-important Speeps endorsement will undoubtedly vault this thread through he primaries and into bonafide candidacy for the OFFICIAL TORCHWOOD MIRACLE DAY THREAD FOR 2011!

So yeah Speeps, I don't ask much other than total unflinching devotion to the kind of thread you'd be proud to print out and take home to your family... you know, the kind of american-dream-success-story thread that came from humble beginnings and through hard work and sheer determination worked its way up through the ranks and eventually became the #1 Torchwood Miracle Day thread for that fateful day (July 8th) when the posters will make their choice with every post.

Oh who am I kidding, this thread is just gonna be me, you, beebo, and maybe like 2-3 other people tops... but still, it's the PRINCIPLE, dammit. This thread is as shocking as hogan making a heel turn and declaring this the new world order of Torchwood Miracle Day threads, and soon it's gonna come out in all black tights boots and leggings and grow a shit-ass brown haired beard to juxtapose with its bleached blonde mustache and remaining half-mullet of hair and come out to the ring with some anonymous jimi hendrix song playing in the beginning.

Eventually, then the thread splits up into the Torchwood: Miracle Day Hollywood and Torchwood: Miracle Day Wolfpac factions, the board will have to choose sides before the Latinwood: Miracle Day thread pops up and turns the once-amazing-idea into total trash.

That said, brother, me and all the sinimaniacs out there need you to join the winning team! Lord knows OKC is gonna don the crow facepaint and start parachuting in from the rafters, so I'm going to need all the backup I can get. As an added bonus, if you decide to play the Scott Hall role, there's a whole lot of good liquor and painkillers in it for you.

Can you tell I've been watching that "Best of WCW Monday Nitro" dvd lately? =D

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He ought to poke you right in the chest....

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

It is hereby declared from this day forth this thread shall be the official Torchwood: Miracle Day thread.

Sini, Beebo, myself - Torchwood Three
Panther - Torchwood Two
Rest of the board - Torchwood One

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Yeah, I've seen all of the Torchwood episodes, including its "charter" episode. One thing I'll add for the heretofore never-seens is, while there's a link to Dr Who, said link doesn't appear in the show. Different audiences.

Some Torchwood characters have appeared in Dr Who, though. But I don't believe this will happen anymore, with Starz' involvement (its a lot easier when both shows had the same producer/head writer, and both were made by BBC Cardiff.)

Sini told you a lot of the background. The best way to treat that background is to let it lie: it's there but kept at arms length.

The guy's immortal, (you can kill him, he comes back in a few minutes.) He'll hump anything that moves. He was a time traveler and a scoundrel, and the latter's not going away...

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

Oh, and no, no one's done squat (that I know of) for Gallifrey One. But what the hell, I got Colt Cabana podcasts to listen to! They're actually well-done...

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

The Claudio Castagnoli and Jay Lethal ones are especially cool.

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So, I just saw that all 3 series are streaming on Netflix. Being in need of a new series to watch, I'm sold.

Should I start with season 1 or season 3? Seems like from your description the series rebooted at season 3 for the better?

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You know me like that.

Torchwood sucked. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures were better. You can only watch a show for so long when you fucking hate all the characters.

Uhm, technically you'd be best suited to start with season 1, but really you could start with season 3 (children of earth) and you'll be fine. But hey, maybe you want to see alien forces who need to hump people in club bathrooms to survive? That's season 1 episode 2. Maybe you want to see Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel show up and be Captain Jack's long lost gay lover? I think he shows up near the end of series 1 and then again near the end of series 2.

As I said before, there's Captain Jack... he's immortal and fucks everything that moves.

There's Gwen Cooper, she's kind of a normal person who gets recruited into torchwood in series 1 episode 1 and is meant to be the character we can relate to.

And then there's all these other people, they have various functions... ianto jones is captain jack's gay lover.

Series 1-2 are pretty good, Series 3 is better... and Series 3 isn't as much of a reboot as they change the style of storytelling from alien-of-the-week to one cohesive story told over 5 episodes, whereas this series will be one cohesive story told over 10-13 episodes or whatever.

Can't wait to nab this one tomorrow night / saturday morning... oh shit, i've still got luther 2x3 to watch and i think 2x4 has aired by now, right? That one's proper too.

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#comeonson on twitter.

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oh yeah, and i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that torchwood isn't above the whole "tricia helfer is a cylon that desires your cock" thingy, as i'm pretty sure i've heard there's gratuitous gay sex scenes in this one.

i can't watch aasif mandvi hold a taco bell burrito and talk about how big it is without thinking about this board. good job.

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I decided to start with Children of Earth. Watched the first 3 episodes and it's very good.

I'll probably end up going back to watch the first 2 seasons when I'm done. One of the better shows I've seen in a while. Thanks for the heads up.

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You know me like that.

Sarah Jane Adventures are okay. They're meant for kids, and it worked well, because the kids did the majority of the work in that show. Of course with Lis Sladen passing, the show's been cancelled.

What else do I like that you might not have seen? "Being Human." I believe there's an American version of this somewhere, but I'm talking about the BBC version. What is it? Its a show where a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost live together. Their goal of course is to pass for human as well as possible (it's a solitary life otherwise.)

There's cute things, like the vampires having noticeable presence amongst police and hospital positions. Crash victims for you is mealtime for them.

I hear Red Dwarf is going back into production.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

The problem I had with Torchwood is I thought all the characters were total assholes who I didn't care about and wished death upon. Some people can get past that in a show, but I watch so little TV as it is I wasn't going to stick with it.

by that metric, doctor who is made "for kids" and generally does a waaaayyyy better job than the SJA. i haven't even been compelled to go back and watch the wedding of sarah jane smith to see tennant do his thing, and the last time i really watched was the death of the doctor, which was total self-serving fanwank done by the master, RTD, whose idea of epic television goes like this:

I KNOW, WE NEED MORE DALEKS! HMMM, WE'VE HAD THEM FIGHT THE CYBERMEN ALREADY? OH I KNOW, EVEN MORE DALEKS!!1 WE'LL HAVE CAMEOS FROM EVERYONE WHO'S BEEN INVOLVED IN THE NEW SERIES, AND HEY, HOW ABOUT EVEN *MORE* DALEKS, BUT THIS TIME WE'LL TOSS IN DAVROS?!?!

victory cigarette ensues.

but with SJA, i just couldn't do it. i know it airs on cbbc (not to be confused with beebies or whatever their baby-bbc channel is) and i know it's trying to pander to an even lower-aged target audience, but i just didn't give a flying fuck. doctor who is plenty childish and "for the kids" as it was, cuz whenever you're on gallifrey base (well for one, you're not beebo =) whenever people kind of sigh about the limitations of the show there's always ~5-10 people who pop up and go WELL IT'S FOR THE KIDS!

SJA was just fluff... they had some cool looking robots on the "next time" teaser at the end of the death of the doctor, and if they don't out rani as, well, the rani, then the show hasn't tried. too bad lis sladen had to soldier on with some cancer of some sorts and drop dead in the middle of filming to kind of end that show in its tracks. i like to think it usurped some of the more kiddie-ish stuff from doctor who, as it gave the farting aliens a permanent home beyond series 1 of doctor who =D

DOCTOR WHO-- SAVE FOR THOSE TIMES WHEN THEY EMPTY OUT THE COSTUME WAREHOUSES IN CARDIFF TO SHOW THAT WHATEVER CRISIS THE DOCTOR IS FACING IS SOME *SERIOUS SHIT*-- IS PROUD TO BE SLITHEEN FREE SINCE 2006!

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well ummm, doctor ken don't read beyond this point.

ok? is doctor ken gone.

[drops 58 page doctoral thesis on the role of doctor who in contemporary society]

HEY, at least with torchwood if you didn't like someone odds are they ended up dead sooner rather than later. sure they might come back to annoy you for a bit with some existential whining, but eventually they'd be dead dead dead. please keep that glove away from ianto, plz.

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Saw 30 or so peeps with signs/masks/banners etc advertising this show walking up and down Michy Ave today. Masks creeped the bluck out of me.

btw, you know you've read too many wrestling threads on here when you're scrolling down to read the new post and you SWEAR that you saw "Jay Lethal" mentioned somewhere in the thread.

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I spray to all fields.

Ianto grew on me. Hated him in the beginning and was pissed when he died.

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It's really fun to say "Ianto" though.

It sure is.

Ianto Ianto Ianto.

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I'm gonna watch this shit tonight. And so help me, if it sucks, I will be very upset with some of you...

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This is my signature...

I'm ok with that.

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You'd better be.

I see there is a goatee-less Mekhi Phifer on this show, as well. Not sure how I feel about that...

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This is my signature...

He's a serious actor now.

Gotta lose the facial hair for a proper British show.

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Yeah. Limeys are affraid of black actors with beards. Or so I've been told.

I wish the title was a little LesGay, but it looks interesting...

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This is my signature...

I've really enjoyed Children of Earth but the reviews I've seen for Miracle Day don't make it look promising.

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You know me like that.