Torchwood Season One

An Abridged Look at the Series. Certain Episodes I Don't Really Think I Have Much To Add On (Mostly the average ones, like Small Worlds) Are Excluded

Everything Changes

Torchwood, as a series, is the ultimate guilty pleasure.
No, the start isn't very good...Well, Everything Changes, this one is fine, but then on, for most of Season One it flounders, attempting to decide what to be. But by Season Two, it really understands what works, and delivers one of the best tv seasons ever, and I am not emotionally qualified to talk about Season Three.

As a pilot, Everything Changes is clever. It shows you the world of grit that this really astoundingly real Cardiff setting of the show, and when you see five people in leather longcoats getting out of a black van to investigate a body, you think you know exactly what kind of show this'll be. (This may depend on what kind of person you are, some of you may just break down laughing at the cliches)

And then they show the Weevil. Up until that point, it feels safe, normal television, and the Weevil is perfect for shattering any illusions you may have about the show.

And then they kill Suzie. Possibly my favorite trick a pilot has pulled on me.

It's a really bold move, Suzie has any first time viewer tricked. Her name is in the titles, she's given as much depth as say Tosh or Ianto in this one, and then, whoops? Like that, the show pulls the rug out from under your feet and as a thing a pilot can do, it's hard to get much better.
There are very few pilots that I feel adequately show what a show is. Writing a pilot is incredibly hard.
But Torchwood is deftly delivered, and incredibly smart, for the first episode. Minus some unfortunate scenes involving Owen that put me and many others off his character till season two. You can see the show it's gonna be in the second and third seasons, trying to break out. 
Episode Two is another story. 8/10

Day One

Day One is pretty terrible, like objectively. Everything I can say about it, as a piece of writing, is a bit failure-iffic.

I mean, this is something they really shouldn't have tried. It's B-Movie garbage.

It is incredibly entertaining, however. The thing is about Torchwood as a show, is when it flops, it flops bad.
And a bad flop from Torchwood is about as amazing as a great episode of television, for completely different reasons. So Bad It's Good is a debatable thing for a reviewer to say, So I won't bother trying to defend it. Wait, that's a lie. Torchwood was a new series, and it was being experimental and trying new things, something a show needs to do to find success. Big Finish produced an early audio called The Rapture that reminds me of Day One a lot. It's pretty terrible. But it's so entertainingly terrible, you can't look away. (Ignore the fact it's an audio, I'm trying to metaphor here) And it's like, the show would never have reached the highs it did if it didn't try such bafflingly terrible stuff.

So thanks, Day One.
You brought us Countrycide, and Adrift, and all sorts of lovely bits of telly.
Now get out of our face. 4/10

Ghost Machine

Ghost Machine is a very good story. It tackles adult themes in a creepy, unsettling and mature way unlike many other Torchwood stories. It's clearly the template for some of the series' most gorgeous outings, like Adrift, later on, but it failed to connect with me deep down like Adrift did. That's not Ghost Machine's failing. It has a brilliant concept, and comparing most things to Adrift will end up with Adrift laughing at how pathetic they are in comparison.
All the same, It's good that this sort of thing came soon after Day One. I'm not sure if people could have coped without it. I'm sure it helped people join the series with a lot less effort. Especially after Day One. And hey! They probably stayed and saw how amazing Torchwood got later on!
What's the next episode?
Cyberwoman?
Oh dear 

7/10

Cyberwoman

It's Day One with the Cybermen.
One wonders how Torchwood survived. Cyberwoman suffers from pretty much every problem Day One had, it's just definitely not as horny which sort of decreases it's so Bad It's Good Qualities and leans into bad.
I'm not going to rail on Cyberwoman, enough people have done that. It's the Orphan 55 of the Torchwood fandom.
It's so infamously terrible, and just...fails to understand what makes the Cybermen so brilliant, and scary, even if it does have admittedly a few good horror moments, they're more of the gory kind.

I do wonder if Torchwood S1 Chris Chibnall and S2 Chris Chibnall are different people at times.

3/10

Countrycide 

This show is brilliant when it bears its teeth and Countrycide is the first example of a "This isn't your Papa's Doctor Who" that actually works in the series, and certainly is one of the better introductory episodes. The episode brilliantly works off the conceit of the genre that you expect some fricked up aliens to be commiting this kind of stuff, and then whooosh, the episode kicks you in the crotch. Looking outside of that aspect, Countrycide will seem somewhat generic on a second watch. Of course it will, it's a generic hillbilly horror movie that's gonna seem cheap as a lot of other stories in the genre have kind of mastered this. BUT. Countrycide isn't meant for your second watch, it's meant for the first one, where it whooshes the rag over your eyes and really shows you the quality of what this show can do. It may seem normal in retrospect, but that's because Countrycide changed the game. 

9/10

Greeks Bearing Gifts

That was definitely some television I experienced. It doesn't exactly give confidence in Tosh's character, as in season one, along with Ianto, she's dreadfully underutilized. Her arc in this one is "have lesbian affair, oh, it's an alien, and Jack killed it, that's traumatising, let's never bring this up again and have Ianto be more affected by it in Broken then Tosh is in any other media" 

So like oof

Oh yeah and some of it is transphobic thats fun

Listen to Broken instead

(As a side tangent, if you're going through season one, it is highly recommended to listen to Broken after Greeks Bearing Gifts, as RTD forgot to give Ianto any meaning in season one outside of Cyberwoman) 6.5/10

They Keep Killing Suzie

I kind of love the cheese of this one's opening where the writer was just like "Ehhh let's write TORCHWOOD on the wall in blood and leave it at that" but besides that, They Keep Killing Suzie is another great outing for one of this series' most ignored characters. It's a fun runaround with a nice way to bring back Suzie in a realistic way that feels like Suzie actually could have engineered. It's realistic in the way it brings her back. It's also incredibly bleak, but it's also real, real, fun. Once again, it's probably even better with the Big Finish retrospective of Moving Target and Sync, but it's a nice ol' runaround, and those are kind of necessary for a Who spinoff. 

8/10

Out of Time

No, it's not the Tom Baker/David Tennant one, but unless that one turns out absolutely perfect then I don't think it's gonna meet the standards of this little Masterpiece, another utterly fantastic episode. This one is just brilliant in that it's just a realistic story. What if people from the past were here today without a way back? How would they react? What would they do? And it helps that the three characters are so drastically different and because the story focuses on little else but character drama, all incredibly well written, and just darn gorgeous. They all get different reactions, different endings, everything about Out of Time is geniunely moving, and it's definitely a sleeper hit for me, as, it's even stronger than Countrycide, and possibly Captain Jack Harkness (haha no I lied) 

The open ended ending is somehow even more of a gutpunch (reminds me of the Rob Shearman story Luxembourg). Its realistic in that few would be able to adapt to the now. And Owen's character work here is exquisite, it really begins his amazing arc of development from here on out. God, I'm making this show sound better than it is like this

9.5/10

Combat

Okay I initially wasn't going to review this but let's talk about this

Combat is like the most forgettable fricking thing 

My evidence: All I can remember about this story is Owen attempting to fight in a Weevil cage out of trigger warning reasons, declaring himself the "Weevil King" and punching some other guys I think

Okay so it's like no Day One or Cyberwoman, few things are but jeez this is forgettable and perhaps I should rewatch it for a review but here's the thing: When you're thinking of episodes you'd like to watch from Torchwood, your first thought is never Combat.

5/10

Captain Jack Harkness

I shall speak of little, but Captain Jack Harkness is another time travel episode from Torchwood that's brilliantly affecting, super gay, and also gives Tosh her best season showing as lets be honest it wasn't Greeks Bearing Gifts as well as Jack's best material in perhaps the entire series haha I don't know

The villain, Bilis Manger, is essentially like top tier who villains, I absolutely love him and that Big Finish have given the guy some love, but Jack is the spotlight, and his relationship with other Jack is like, so important to have on television, much less in 2006. Jack may not be the best example of a LGBT character ever, (I'm sorry that honor goes to Mr. Colchester) but he's well written here more than he's ever been before and look

Let's be fair

I may be biased but If I am subjected to good well written gay drama I am going to give it a 10/10 and no I don't have a problem go away don't judge me 

End of Days

Looking back on it (Stubagful gave it a great review for Snuggly Chibnall time) End of Days is a bit of an unfiltered mess with no budget and this is incredibly true

Also however it is very fun and has some great drama, even if like, it's pretty much ignored the team just did a reinactment of Mutiny on the Bounty while unleashing an alien god that killed at least a minimum of a few hundred people.

I love torchwood, I love it so much, but theyre hacks, get them fired.

7/10