To commemorate and join in the collective mourning that Torchwood is coming to a conclusion (or hiatus, I expect it’ll be back in some form, everything does eventually), I thought I’d take a look back at my own, extremely minor contribution to the legend.
To begin with; A
couple of times in 2006 I was sounded out by editors at BBC Books about my
availability to write a novel “to tie-in with a TV series” at short notice,
only for plans to change – I have always wondered if the series in question was
Torchwood, I’m not sure what else it could’ve been. But it never got as far as
thinking up any ideas.
Fast forward eleven years, and I’ve finally badgered James Goss into letting me write a Torchwood audio. I come up with five pitches. Four of them are reproduced below (the fifth is so bad and potentially offensive I can’t bear to share). You’ll note that the third pitch is the one that eventually became Instant Karma, although with some fairly big changes - the religious group became a left-wing political group that were effectively "cancelling" people they disagreed with... to death! It was released in 2018 but will forever be associated in my mind with a horrendous bout of norovirus which meant I had to hand over the writing to James and David Llewellyn (it was one of those situations where it was quicker, easier, and less painless for the script editor to do the rewrites). Anyway, the end result was excellent, it was still mostly my work, I still got paid in full, you’ll hear no complaints from me. Apart from about the norovirus which was horrendous. I have never been in so much pain.
Of the three other
ideas; despite it having (NOT A COMEDY) in brackets and capitals I’m pretty
sure that’s how the first one would’ve been received, though I'm mildly proud to have anticipated the rise of OnlyFans. The second one was
probably my favourite; back then, whenever I went to Something Fishy in
Lewisham for my battered sausage somebody would try to sell me bootleg DVDs, so
this was me tapping into the zeitgeist. But you don’t get bootleg DVDs any more
so that idea is kind of dead (hence me being willing to share it). As for the
fourth idea, I had the feeling that, as my knowledge of gay nightlife is somewhat
limited, it could go terribly wrong in the wrong hands and that my hands were not the right ones. Did Torchwood ever do a vampire story, though?
Seems an obvious thing to do.
(Oh, and also
frequently pitched doing a 1950s Torchwood series with Ray out of Delta and
the Bannermen. I think James thought it was a joke. I would never joke
about Ray out of Delta and the Bannermen).
(Art concept by Matthew Purchase, with permission)
IDEA 1: WEBCAM
Men are disappearing all over Cardiff. Torchwood
investigate. The link is that all the men were users of a porn webcam site
(Torchwood have ways of recovering deleted internet histories). It turns out
that one of the women performing at the Cardiff sex webcam centre, based in an
out-of-town business park, is, in fact, an alien who possesses the ability to
mesmerise members of the opposite sex into a submissive cataleptic trance (some
spiders can do this, nature is weird). It is then luring them to its lair to
encase them in cocoons and impregnate them with eggs. The Torchwood team must
face the creature – but will they be able to resist its hypnotic powers? (NOT A
COMEDY). A Torchwood version of Under The
Skin?
IDEA 2: DVD
Destitute rough-sleepers in Cardiff are making some money by
selling bootleg DVDs. However, when people get the DVDs home and play them,
there’s a Ring-style video, and they
get a phone call saying they need to pay to have the curse taken off, or they
will die in seven days. The Torchwood team investigate; it turns out that the
video isn’t cursed, it’s just a student film. But the students who made it have
all been killed, and people are dying
if they don’t pay up. They discover that the truth is even more deadly; the
blackmailers have got hold of a gadget that means they can kill anyone they
like, remotely, at the push of a button. All they need is a DNA sample. This is
only the start; they have ambitions to use the gadget to gain real power.
Unfortunately they have a sample of Owen’s DNA, so his life is in their hands.
IDEA 3: PRAYER
An evangelical religious group in Cardiff has started
finding that its prayers come true; they can heal the sick, they can influence
the weather etc. Tosh is a member (a cover for her investigation, or maybe she
is just feeling lonely and unloved and they offer her companionship?). The
truth is that the group’s proximity to the time rift has given the group
psychic powers and they are now forming a gestalt – but soon they won’t be able
to control their powers, as their anger and paranoia takes over and they lash
out at their enemies...
IDEA 4: VAMPIRES
Has Torchwood done a vampire story yet? I have an idea of an adult take on the ‘lost boys’; vampires preying on the young, beautiful boys in Cardiff’s gay nightclubs, offering them immortality, eternal youth and endless, consequence-free hedonism. Maybe Captain Jack has tolerating their activities as long as their recruitment process is consensual. I am probably not the best person to write this, though!
