Here’s
another PC role that I saw a few years ago.
I was consuming Who and Torchwood at the time, and imagine my
surprise when, a few short weeks after I saw PC as a Pompeii granite merchant
on Who, he popped up again in Torchwood – as a major player of series
3, no less!
Torchwood is, of course,
a Whoniverse show spun off from the mother ship. Former companion Captain Jack Harkness,
everyone’s favorite time-traveling omnisexual with a penchant for World War II
fashions, heads the allegedly-elite, alien-fighting Torchwood team (although
his group, Torchwood Cardiff, has always seemed more than a little ragtag). Series 3 finds a short-staffed team facing a
global alien threat, and “CoE: Day One”
kicks things off creepily.
For
one minute, every child in the world has gone blank, standing stock-still and
dead to the world – no warning, no reason.
Clearly, something has the ability to control the children, and it’s up
to Jack and co. to figure out who and why, not to mention how to stop them.
Torchwood
aren’t the only ones on the job, however.
Outside-the-government-beyond-the-police organizations are one thing,
but the civil service is another. Enter
John Frobisher, played by PC. Frobisher
is the Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, which, among other things,
handles the U.K.’s response to its ever-increasing number of alien attacks and
infiltrations. Unlike the average
British citizen, who insistently denies alien existence, Frobisher has the
inside scoop – by all accounts, he spends his days up to his eyeballs in
alien-related paperwork.
Episode
1 shows Frobisher to be an unassuming man with a mundane attitude about the
extraordinary nature of his work; when he finds a UNIT colonel waiting for him at
the office, he just groans and hopes it’s a simple
extra-terrestrial encounter for once. It’s
actually the more human aspects of his job that get to him – the Home Office
has a rather extreme response to personnel issues – but he quietly does as he’s
told with a pit in his stomach and a stiff upper lip.
Accent Watch
RP,
pretty sure. Some Scottish bleeding into
the vowels, but the ‘R’s decided it for me.
Recommend?
In
General
– Hard to say. Torchwood’s third series is a huge point of contention for fans,
and I know I have some definite issues with later episodes in this run. Still, I have a hard time not recommending something in the
Whoniverse. Captain Jack is Captain
Jack, after all.
PC-wise – He hasn’t had
too much to do yet, but I’m gonna say yes.
Frobisher is a civil servant PC played during the Thick of It era, but he’s so
different from Malcolm Tucker, and that’s fun to see. (Plus, having seen this before, I know what
fantastic work PC does later in the series!)
Warnings
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