Series 1 Catch-Up

New to Torchwood?

Get up to speed with our guide to the characters and the storylines you've missed so far...

What is Torchwood?

The Torchwood Institute is the name of a secret organisation set up to combat alien threats to the human race. Initially founded by Queen Victoria herself, Torchwood's head office was based in the Canary Wharf tower in London's docklands. However, a devastating alien attack [shown in the Doctor Who episode 'Doomsday'] left virtually the entire staff dead, the organisation without a leader, and the tiny Cardiff field office left to defend humanity on its own. Well, almost on its own...

Torchwood's small Cardiff office (known as 'The Hub') was established at the end of the 19th Century, on top of a rift in space and time. People, objects and creatures from across the Universe and from all periods of time often find themselves 'washed up' in Cardiff - and it's Torchwood's job to assess if they pose a threat to humanity, and to either capture or destroy them if they do or to take care of them if they don’t. Torchwood often works in partnership with UNIT, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce - a large-scale international armed force with many decades of experience in fighting alien invasions of Earth.

Captain Jack Harkness

The mysterious Captain Jack is the leader and longest-serving member of Torchwood in Cardiff. Jack is, in fact, a human from the 42nd Century, where he worked for a shadowy organisation called the Time Agency. In this point in Earth's future, people no longer consider themselves defined by old norms of sexuality such as 'straight' or 'gay'. Instead, they just fall in love with and have sex with people (or aliens!) they find attractive. Jack can best be described as 'omnisexual' - as he once said, "so many lifeforms, so little time..."

Jack's own personal history is equally confusing - for instance, he lost two years of his memory whilst working for the Time Agency. Having left the Agency to go 'freelance', Jack took up a new career as a bit of a rogue and a conman, travelling to different periods of Earth's history to perform classic money-making scams on the unwitting locals. Oh, and Captain Jack Harkness isn't even his real name - we're yet to discover what it actually is!

It was during the German bombing of London in World War II that Jack met the alien time-traveller known as 'The Doctor' [see the TV show 'Doctor Who' - specifically the episodes 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances']. Jack began travelling in time and space with the Doctor, getting a taste for righting wrongs and defending the weak - in short, learning how to be a hero. After several terrifying adventures, Jack's life came to a brutal end on board a space station in the distant future when he was killed ('exterminated') by the most evil creatures in the Universe, the Daleks.

However, Jack was brought back to life by one of the Doctor's friends, who had temporarily been invested with almost god-like powers. Sadly for Jack, he was left behind by the Doctor - unaware that his resurrection was rather more complicated than it first appeared.

Jack used an unstable and dangerous personal time machine (a 'vortex manipulator') to travel back in time to present-day Cardiff, hoping to bump into the Doctor again. However, he overshot his intended destination and ended up in the late 19th century. It was during this time he discovered that he hadn't just been brought back to life - somehow he had become immortal.

Since that day, Jack's been waiting to meet the Doctor again, hoping against hope that his friend will be able to give him some explanation about what exactly happened to him. In the last scene of Torchwood Series 1, Jack heard the familiar sound of the Doctor's time machine and raced to jump on board, abandoning his Torchwood colleagues without giving them any idea about when or where he was heading to. With a few answers from the Doctor under his belt (and having made a new friend in the shape of the Doctor's latest travelling companion Martha Jones), Jack headed home to his team in Cardiff…

Who are the other main characters?

Jack's second-in-command in Torchwood is ex-police officer Gwen Cooper. Gwen had a solid, if unspectacular, career working as a uniformed police officer in Cardiff, patrolling the city streets with her colleague PC Andy Davidson. One day, Gwen stumbled across Jack and the rest of the Torchwood team when they were both investigating a series of brutal murders which turned out to have an unearthly connection.

During that very investigation, one of Jack's team went rogue when trying to uncover the secrets of a dangerous alien artefact called the Resurrection Glove. With a vacancy in his team, Jack brought Gwen on board, recognising that she possessed the compassion and humanity that was perhaps missing from the other members of the team.

Gwen's other half is ordinary Welsh bloke Rhys Williams, who works as a transport manager for a road haulage company. As far as Rhys is concerned, Gwen still works for the police, but in a "special operations" division. He's getting increasingly worried that the stressful work and the long hours are driving a wedge between him and Gwen, but poor Rhys has no idea that Gwen has actually been having an affair at work.

The pressure of feeling unable to tell her boyfriend about her new life drove Gwen into a brief, ill-advised affair with Torchwood's resident medical officer, Dr Owen Harper. Though the fling ended soon after, Gwen felt compelled to confess all to Rhys... shortly before she wiped his memory of the conversation: she wanted to know she'd told him, but didn't want to face the consequences of him actually knowing about it.

Owen could actually find true love a bit closer to home - if only he realised it. Torchwood's computer expert, Toshiko Sato, has a massive crush on the confident, cocky doctor. However, he can't see it, and poor Tosh is far too shy to say anything that would either embarrass her or jeopardise their working relationship.

The final member of the team is general helper-out and team assistant Ianto Jones. Ianto was one of the few staff members to survive the alien attack on Torchwood's headquarters in London. He then moved to the Cardiff branch, bringing with him his girlfriend Lisa, who had been partially converted into a lethal robotic lifeform called a Cyberman. He hid Lisa in the basement of Torchwood Cardiff, trying to find a way to reverse the cyber-conditioning and bring his girlfriend back.

However, the alien technology was too strong and Lisa the Cyberwoman ran amok in the Torchwood Hub, killing several people. Since the death of Lisa, Ianto has gone through a period of intense grieving and has fallen in love with someone else - Jack, to the surprise of both of them. Neither Ianto nor Jack are sure whether they're actually in a relationship yet, and Jack's sudden disappearance at the end of Series 1 has left Ianto feeling very insecure about what's actually happening.

So will the Torchwood team welcome Jack back with open arms? Can they forgive him for just running off and abandoning them? Will Jack and Ianto's relationship flourish? Will Owen ever fall for Tosh? And will Gwen and Rhys finally settle down? All will be revealed in the exciting second series of Torchwood...