Welcome to... Torchwood!

In a stunning announcement on Monday (including a BBCpress release), BBC Television announced a new television series spun off from "Doctor Who" to be aired next year on BBC Three.Torchwood, a thirteen-part drama/sci-fi hybrid, will be executive produced by Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner -- the executive producers of Doctor Who currently -- and will star John Barrowman, who reprises his role as Captain Jack Harkness from the first Doctor Who series earlier this year. Said to have an "organic link" to Doctor Who, Davies says that "Torchwood is a British sci-fi paranoid thriller, a cop show with a sense of humour. It's dark, wild and sexy, it's the X Files meets This Life. It's a stand-alone series for adult audiences which will have its own unique identity. I have just begun working on the scripts with a team of writers and cannot wait to see the results."

The series will be set in modern-day Cardiff and will segue from events seen in the Doctor Who Christmas special and second series next year; the upcoming Doctor Who episodes will feature stories involving Torchwood, "a renegade group of investigators" (and also an anagram of "Doctor Who," but that isn't a plot point) and though the new show will use these concepts, it will be independent and no stories will cross over between the two series. Says Stuart Murphy, Controller of BBC Three, "The renegades investigate human and alien crime, as well as alien technology that has fallen to Earth. Torchwood is sinister and psychological û Russell was really keen to play with your head û as well as being very British and modern and real. But at the centre of the drama are warm, human relationships and the overcoming of adversity. ... Torchwood is a massive coup for BBC Three, and a major commitment û it's the biggest drama we've ever had on the channel. It introduces a different tone into our drama, just as Russell's Casanova earlier this year brought warmth and humour. He's an absolute genius û you look at what he has done with Doctor Who - we said to him, 'What would you do with a post-watershed sci-fi?' Its subject and tone is a perfect fit for BBC Three." Says Barrowman of returning to the role, "I'm absolutely thrilled about Torchwood. It's going to be a dark, wild and sexy roller-coaster ride. Working again with Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and the BBC is like hooking up with family again. I can't wait to explore Captain Jack even more."

"Torchwood" will be aimed at adults; says Davies, "Doctor Who has a completely different feel to this kind of thing. This is set in the same place every week. It's a different sort of fun to Doctor Who ... "It's an urban series, very much set on earth. It's a Welsh series that I'm very, very proud of." He said Cardiff would be used more often as a location than in Doctor Who, and that he hoped the series would provide work for Welsh actors and directors. "With Doctor Who we often had to pretend that bits of Cardiff were London, or Utah, or the planet Zog. Whereas this series is going to be 'honest-to-god Cardiff'. We will happily walk past the Millennium Centre and say "Look, there's the Millennium Centre. It's nice to be able to say this is the city, and this is how good it looks." Davies noted that the name Torchwood was used as a security measure during the production of Doctor Who to disguise preview tapes of the first episodes: "When we were making the first Doctor Who series, television pirates were desperate to get their hands on a tape. One of the people in the office had the idea of calling the tapes of episodes, as they went from Cardiff to London, Torchwood, instead of putting Doctor Who on it. I thought: 'That's clever!' I've had that taped away at the back of my head for a good six months, and now here it is as a show.'" Davies also spoke today about Torchwood to BBC Wales (audio link: here).

PJ Hammond (creator of Sapphire and Steel) and Chris Chibnall(Born and Bred, Life on Mars) are both confirmed as writers for the series. There are rumors that director James Hawes may be involved, but nothing definite yet. Filming begins in January on the thirteen 45-minute episodes, with transmission expected for the autumn on BBC Three.

Also covered at the official Doctor Who website (which included the tagline "Prepare for a new word order" until the show was announced), as well as BBC News, Yahoo!, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Register, Belfast Telegraph, Gay.com, Digital Spy,Contact Music, PinkNews, C21 Media, Syfyportal, Playbill,Canoe.ca,Macleans, CJAD, Scoopt; other press links coming soon.