Torchwood - The Complete First Season

Torchwood - The Complete First Season

Torchwood - The Complete First Season
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DVD details

Actor: Burn Gorman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, John Barrowman, Naoko Mori
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 650 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner

DVD Reviews of Torchwood - The Complete First Season

DVD Review: One of the Best Series in a Long TIme
Summary: 5 Stars

You have to see this if you are a new Dr. who fan or not. Its just plain great stuff for everyone to watch.

DVD Review: Torchwood DVD Season One
Summary: 5 Stars

Yes, this is worth the money. Yes, I was pleased with the dealer -- speedy shipment, packaged well, dvds in excellent condition. Yes, I would purchase again from this dealer.

While the main character appears from time to time in Dr. Who episodes , you don't have to know anything about Dr. Who to enjoy Torchwood. It's so good, and I heartily recommend this dvd collection. For fans of mystery, sci fi, detective movies, Torchwood is that and more.

DVD Review: Leeks and Daffodils
Summary: 3 Stars

Too often an episode of Torchwood reaches its climax with Captain Jack standing in a column of irradiated light, his handsome features contorted in pain, screaming either, "?pen the Rift!" or "Close the Rift!" Since we never did figure out what the Rift was nor why it should be either opened or closed, we haven't yet come close to the ideal experience of Torchwood which, on the face of it, should be one of our very favorite shows.

It has, seemingly, everything, an unusual location, a provocative theme, some passable acting, a good looking cast, and that Doctor Who pedigree. And how many shows use anagrams in their title, so that's cool! And yet whenever it begins, I get distracted, looking at Owen's unappealingly foxy face; the little twerp is supposed to be the sexyboy on the show, but to me he looks like a pocket version of the late Don Knotts. Then there's Eve Myles, gorgeous and gaptoothed as Gwen. In Season One she quits her job on the regular police force to join up with Torchwood, the secret branch. Either they present some episodes out of order on the DVD, or Gwen forgets she's married whenever it's convenient for the writers (if she's not married to the guy at home, forgive me for not understanding the Welsh).

Torchwood's mission, to repel aliens, seems boring after a bit. And xenophobic and nationalistic. Why are the aliens uniformly presented as unattractive, in fact evil freaks? Is this how outsiders are welcomed in Cardiff? Then excuse me if I stay home, despite the way the city skyline and marina have been photoshopped to picture postcard perfection for the filming. As for Ianto or whatever his name is, on any other show he'd be an extra; here requiring him to memorize and say lines smacks of exploitation.

Still we're sort of hooked and have started Season Two with hopes still high.

DVD Review: An utterly miserable and joyless experience
Summary: 2 Stars

When Doctor Who - The Complete First Series introduced Jack, he was charming and fun. He flirted with everyone and had a great time doing it. Of course, they were going to make a spinoff.

And then the spinoff came and it turned Jack into a dull school marm in a classroom full of bland creeps. The first four episodes are pretty good but eventually it becames too apparent that Gwen, a miserable Mary Sue character, is going to be the center of the show. And she's awful. She has to always be on some kind of sermonizing moral trip. When she "accidentally" kills someone (who by the plotline fully deserves it) she gets weepy. When she is in a situation where it's kill or be killed - she decides to drop her gun and wait for Jack to rescue her.

And then halfway through the season the show decides to explore the rest of the cast. And they are even more boring. Tosh is sad. Owen is a jerk. Ianto has a sexy cyberwoman girlfriend. He's been hiding her in the Torchwood basement for over a year and somehow no one has noticed.

Even more fun, RTD just hits us over the head with his two sermons - pacifism and atheism. The former is typically hypocritical since he can't seem to write a character that might NOT deserve death to save his life. The latter is just irritating. How many characters can die and come back to life and go "There's NOTHING out there"?? Got it. The only difference between this series and Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1) is that I EXPECT to be preached at with Left Behind. With this show I expect entertainment.

And then just as things can't get any worse, Gwen admits to having an affair (everyone is having sex with each other on this show) and then knocks her boyfriend out with Space Roofies (yes, I know the name is Retcon, but I'm calling them space roofies) and DEMANDS that he forgives her. He doesn't. But that doesn't stop this narcissist idiot from yelling at him. At this is when I realized that I was watching Grey's Anatomy - The Complete Third Season.

Stupid. Boring. Obnoxious. This is NOT what I expected out of a show that's built around Captain Jack.

I hear the second season is better. I don't see how it can be any worse.

DVD Review: Could be A Lot Better
Summary: 2 Stars

I am a huge Doctor Who fan for over 30 years and just started watching the first few episodes of Torchwood. I was warned about its edge and sexuality, so was not surprised at some of the content. Overall the series could be a lot better. I agree with most reviewers about the homosexual and athiest overtones. I don't have a problem with gay characters or references, but in Torchwood's first few episodes all the gay and bi-sexual content does nothing to advance the plot. The atheism in the first episode also serves no purpose. I have heard that Russel T. Davis is gay and watching this almost feels like him saying "I am gay and an athiest and am going to work that in wherever I can." Mr. Davis did a wonderful job of reviving Doctor Who, but I think Torchwood should have undergone a few more rewrites. The show is entertaining, but would be a lot better if I didn't feel like I was constantly being slapped in the face with Russel T's personal messages. If you are a big Dr. Who fan I would not automatically recommend this. Check it out before you buy it.

Description of Torchwood - The Complete First Season

Separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations, Torchwood sets its own rules. Led by the enigmatic, ever watchful Captain Jack Harkness, the Torchwood team delves into the unknown and fights the impossible. Everyone who works for Torchwood is young. Some say that's because it's a new science. Others say it's because they die young.
More than a spin-off of the Russell T. Davies incarnation of Doctor Who, the BBC series Torchwood is a wholly enjoyable blend of drama, science-fiction thrills, and mature subject matter that never fails to deliver its main purpose: to entertain on a weekly basis. John Barrowman, who captured the imagination of Who fans during the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant eras as 51st-century adventurer Capt. Jack Harkness, returns as the dashing, immortal time traveler; here, he's the head of Torchwood, a covert organization that investigates extraterrestrial and supernatural events on Earth without the help of the British government or United Nations. Eve Myles is a police constable who joins the team after discovering them in the middle of bringing a stabbing victim back to life (in the debut episode, "Everything Changes"), and she brings a decidedly human touch to the Torchwood team's tech-driven investigations. Among the mysteries encountered over the course of the 13-episode series: an alien gas that absorbs humans during sex ("Day One"); a half-human, half-Cyberman female with a connection to Torchwood support man Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) in "Cyberwoman"; a rash of cannibalistic murders ("Countrycide"); a very different kind of fairies than the ones of legend ("Small Worlds"); and most impressively of all, a skyscraper-sized demon that threatens to plunge the Torchwood team--and the world itself--into chaos ("End of Days," which features an off-screen cameo by a certain Time Lord). What separates Torchwood from the most modern television science fiction (save, say,

Heroes and Battlestar Galactica) is the frankly adult tone of the series: The violence is plentiful and occasionally graphic, and there are frequent bedroom couplings between the team members and supporting players. There's also a maturity to the relationships that exceeds the usual scope of sci-fi, most notably in the affecting "Captain Jack Harkness," which sends him back to the London Blitz, where he meets and falls in love with a handsome American pilot who happens to share his name. Their love affair, like the majority of Torchwood's "grown-up" storylines, is handled with taste and real emotion. Extras on the First Series are remarkably plentiful; six of the seven discs include entirely new behind-the-scenes featurettes that explore the main characters and their major story arcs, location shooting, the impressive SUV that the team drives, and the show's extensive special effects and alien creations. Barrowman also contributes a very funny "Captain's Log," which invites viewers to join him on one of the final shooting days of the series. The entire seventh disc is given over to Torchwood Declassified, the 13-part program which explored each episode on BBC Three and the BBC's Torchwood website. Commentaries are offered for all 13 episodes, with Davies, Barrowman, Myles, Burn Gorman (who plays Torchwood's medical officer, Owen Harper), David-Lloyd, producers Richard Stokes and Julie Gardner, and various episode writers, directors, and producers all lending their voices. A small battery of deleted scenes and outtakes, as well as previews for DVD releases of other BBC programs, including Doctor Who and MI-5, round out this impressive set. --Paul Gaita

Stills from Torchwood (click for larger image)









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