Torchwood: Series 3, Episode 1 – “Children of Earth: Day One” (2009)

 

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

 

Creepy images mostly, and dark subject matter.  Some violence, and a little sexual content.