Torchwood episode 4: Cyberwoman (5/11/2006)

‘I was on top of you, I could feel your hard on.’ Chris Chibnall’s first pass at writing a partly-converted Cyberman abandons the body horror of the concept in favour of a CyberBikini with focus drawn to the breasts, lower belly and pubic area – and to make sure we can’t miss it, James Strong includes shots of Dr Tanizaki eagerly caressing them while eulogising Lisa’s ‘bare flesh’. It would be an uphill struggle for the episode to overcome the tastelessness of this, and sure enough it doesn’t. Instead, it unfolds into a standard “lockdown” episode with a hungry Pteranodon and a last minute brain transplant that’s so half-bothered the makers genuinely seem to think accents are hard wired into the body rather than the brain as the English Lisa suddenly turns Welsh.

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Torchwood episode 3: Ghost Machine (29/10/2006)

‘I know what you did.’ This is more like it, mature where Day One was just aiming to be “adult”, and with a righteously angry edge to about the way men abuse women and get away with it. It’s also the first episode to expand the characters beyond Gwen – and surprisingly, Owen is the focus, which is good because Burn Gorman is excellent. The reveal is that behind the cynicism and laddishness, he has the strongest sense of justice in the team. His instinct when confronted with an image of rape and murder is to hunt down and confront the perpetrator while the rest of Torchwood is more interested in the stolen ‘ghost machine’.

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Torchwood episode 2: Day One (22/10/2006)

‘Woman possessed by gas knobbing fellas to death.’ This doesn’t feel like the same programme as the first episode; of the uncanny intruding into real life, and it’s disheartening that we’re already into the kind of “monster of the week” procedural that took Doctor Who a series and a half to get to. Gwen’s clearly still meant to be our Rose character, but this manifests through her being outraged or disbelieving about pretty much everything she sees (CRIMINT, photo IDs, dead bodies), and being a bit useless even at standard police work (letting a suspect run past her). No wonder most of the team seem to view her as a bit of a liability.

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Torchwood episode 1: Everything Changes (22/10/2006)

‘Is that what alien life is? Filth? But maybe there’s better stuff out there, brilliant stuff, beautiful stuff. Just they don’t come here.’ From the off, this is meant to offer a very different take than the parent show. That was all about seeing the wonders and terrors of the universe; this is set in amongst the detritus, the things that fall to Earth. It’s rooted in death, and sex, and filth, and the worst of human nature. It ends with one of the team outed as a killer, committing suicide and her body being shoved inside a wall of freezers – the implication being, you work for Torchwood and this is where, sooner or later, you end up.

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Doctor Who episode 737: Doomsday (8/7/2006)

‘The one adventure I can never have.’ At no previous point in the series could the first encounter of the Daleks and the Cybermen be treated as the B-plot to Jackie and Pete being brought back together while the Doctor and Rose are torn apart. The point is, only a double-global apocalypse is enough to separate them. You could argue there’s a lot more to explore in the similarities between the two monsters, both augmenting themselves to survive but one convinced it’s a gift to be shared with all, and the other a means to segregate them from the lesser species, which deserve only extermination. But that misses the point.

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Doctor Who episode 736: Army of Ghosts (1/7/2006)

‘This is the story of how I died.’ The pre-credits sequence is among the best ever: a potted history of the show since Rose, and a promise that this is not going to end well. And all the way through the episode there’s a sense of the Doctor and Rose having to pay, in some way, for their carefree adventuring. Torchwood was set up because Queen Victoria was not amused by their blasé attitude towards the supernatural threats to her realm: ‘You’re actually named in the Torchwood foundation charter of 1879 as an enemy of the Crown.’ In contrast to the Doctor’s improvised approach, Torchwood is a slick and professional operation highly proficient at reengineering alien technology for the benefit of the Crown (as Yvonne is keen to point out, ‘not the general public’s’).

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Doctor Who episode 735: Fear Her (24/6/2006)

‘Does this mean that the Olympic dream is dead?’ Another Series Two episode with a pretty pungent reputation. There are obvious comparisons to be made with The Idiot’s Lantern as both feature abusive fathers and supernatural abductions in Union Flag-draped suburbia, with one of the leads got at halfway through. But the most cringe thing about the episode has to be Huw Edwards’ running commentary on the Olympic opening ceremony, which sounds like a man having a breakdown live on air. Still, one of my most sensible friends once rated this as the best-ever episode so it’s worth looking past the things that don’t work to the things that do.

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Doctor Who episode 734: Love & Monsters (17/6/2006)

‘Let me tell you something about those who get left behind. Because it’s hard. And that’s what you become: hard.’ The audience appreciation score of 76% is one of the lowest of the new series which just goes to show some people have no taste. Squinting, you might make an argument that the Abzorbaloff is a bit of a silly monster (although that would make you a bit mean, as it was designed by a child), or that the Doctor and Rose only appear for about five minutes.

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Doctor Who episode 733: The Satan Pit (10/6/2006)

‘But I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her.’ After complaining she’s been given little to do this series, I eat my words. This is easily the strongest Rose episode since The Parting of the Ways. Perhaps more impressive because she doesn’t possess the powers of a god, she just engineers the death of one. Having apparently lost the Doctor to the pit, Rose decides to fill in for him, mobilising the survivors of the Sanctuary Base, inspiring them to find a way off Krop Tor, and ultimately sending the Beast plunging into the black hole. ‘We stopped him. That’s what the Doctor would have done,’ she declares. But this is all Rose Tyler and I love it.

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Doctor Who episode 732: The Impossible Planet (3/6/2006)

‘He has woven himself in the fabric of your life since the dawn of time. Some may call him Abaddon. Some may call him Krop Tor. Some may call him Satan or Lucifer.’ A 21st Century reimagining of Pyramids of Mars with an even more intricate trap for an imprisoned elder god, and Lovecraftian slave monsters instead of mummy servitors. After a series and a half that largely hewed to the Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks model of day-after-tomorrow invasions of Earth and a universe full of exotic aliens, not all of them bad, this is surprisingly refreshing. It’s a shame Sarah Jane didn’t stick around – this is right up her street.

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