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Torchwood –
The Complete First Season starring John
Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, Eve Myles as Gwen
Cooper,
Burn Gorman as
Owen Harper, Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato, and Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones.
Torchwood is the spinoff series of the new series of Doctor Who starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness in charge of the
Cardiff branch of Torchwood, the secret British government agency
tasked with collecting and controlling alien activity.
The first season ran on BBC channels in the
(The second season, not in this box, has just started its BBC run and
will begin running on BBC America on Saturday nights starting
on Jan. 26 at
**Note that this is an adult series, with most episodes rated TV-14 or
TV-MA, for sexual and violent content and swearing.
This is a 7-disc set. It
contains:
On all discs, 5.1 Dolby sound, graphical
menus, episode and scene selection features, and optional subtitles for the
hearing impaired.
All but the last disc starts with an advertisement for another BBC or
Warner DVD set, but this is skippable with your
remote.
Each episode is approximately 50 minutes in duration.
On Disc 1:
- Episode 1: Everything Changes,
with optional commentary by Executive Producer/Writer/Creator Russell T.
Davies,
Executive
Producer Julie Gardner, and Director Brian Kelly.
- Episode 2: Day One, with
optional commentary by actress Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper) and Co-Producers Richard
Stokes
and Chris Chibnall
- Welcome to Torchwood. A 14-minute featurette overview of the series’ first episodes.
- Torchwood on the Scene. A 15-minute featurette
overview of the production setting up the first episodes, including footage
from
the first full cast and crew read-through.
- 2 Torchwood Out
of this World featurettes: Weevil which spotlights Torchwood’s regular aliens, the
Weevils, and Sex Gas which spotlights
the sex-craved alien gas monster from Day
One. 5 minutes each.
- Deleted Scenes. Four scenes
cut from Everything Changes, two from
Day One, two from Ghost Machine, and two from Cyberwoman.
On Disc 2:
- Episode 3: Ghost Machine,
with optional commentary by actor Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), writer Helen Raynor, and director Colin Teague.
- Episode 4: Cyberwoman,
with optional commentary by actor Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto
Jones), Chris Chibnall, and director James Strong.
- Episode 5: Small Worlds,
with optional commentary by Eve Myles, composer Ben Foster, and director Alice Troughton.
- 3 Torchwood Out
of this World featurettes: Ghost
Machine which spotlights that episode, Cyberwoman which spotlights that
episode,
and
Fairies which spotlights the fairy
creatures seen in Small Worlds. 5 minutes each.
On Disc 3:
- Episode 6: Countrycide,
with optional commentary by Gareth David-Lloyd, Chris Chibnall,
and director Andy Goddard.
- Episode 7: Greeks Bearing Gifts,
with optional commentary by writer Toby Whithouse,
Richard Stokes, and director Colin Teague.
- Torchwood: Sex, Violence, Blood
and Gore A 16-minute featurette about the amounts of each of those qualities in
these episodes.
- 2 Torchwood: The
Team and Their Troubles featurettes: Ianto and Evan that spotlights both of these
characters’ actions in Countrycide,
and
Toshiko and Mary that spotlights the
relationship between these two in Greeks
Bearing Gifts. 5 minutes each.
On Disc 4:
- Episode 8: They Keep Killing
Suzie, with optional commentary by script editor Brian Minchin, Chris Chibnall, and director James Strong.
- Episode 9: Random Shoes,
with optional commentary by actor Paul Chequer (
- Torchwood on the Road. A 9-minute featurette spotlighting the Torchwood SUV.
- 2 Torchwood: The
Team and Their Troubles featurettes: Owen and Suzie which spotlights these
two characters’ actions in They
Keep
Killing
Suzie, and Gwen and Eugene which spotlights those
two characters in Random Shoes. 6 minutes each.
- Deleted Scenes. Three deleted
scenes from Countrycide,
one from Greeks Bearing Gifts, three
from They Keep Killing Suzie, and
two from Random Shoes.
On Disc 5:
- Episode 10: Out of Time, with optional commentary by
Eve Myles, Ben Foster, and director Alice Troughton.
- Episode 11: Combat, with optional commentary by Burn
Gorman, Chris Chibnall, and director Andy Goddard.
- 2 Torchwood: Moments in the
Making featurettes: A Wing and a Prayer which spotlights the plane used in Out of Time, and
Fight Night which spotlights the location used for the fight club
scenes in Combat.
- The Captain’s Log. A 10-minute featurette based partly on a video diary kept by John
Barrowman on the final day of shooting for the season.
On Disc 6:
- Episode 12: Captain Jack Harkness, with optional commentary by actor John
Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Richard Stokes,
and
director
- Episode 13: End of Days,
with optional commentary by the same three as are on Captain Jack Harkness.
- 2 Torchwoods: Moments in the
Making featurettes: Officer
and a Gentleman about the relationship between the two Captain Jacks in
Captain Jack Harkness and Bombing the Base about the destruction
of the Hub set in End of Days. 5 minutes each.
- Torchwood: On Time A 10-minute featurette about the location used for the 1941 dance hall
seen in Captain Jack Harkness. This includes
John Barrowman singing
his own rendition of “Anything Goes.”
- Deleted Scenes. Twelve deleted
scenes from Out of Time, five from Captain Jack Harkness,
and four from End of Days.
- Outtakes. 25
outtakes from throughout the season.
On Disc 7:
- All fourteen episodes of Torchwood:
Declassified. These were
behind-the-scenes documentaries that followed each episode’s original
each is specific to the episode it originally
followed. The titles are (in
order): Welcome to Torchwood, Jack’s Back,
Bad Day at the Office, Living History, Girl Trouble,
Away With the Fairies, The Country Club, There’s Something About Mary,
Beyond the Grave, Dead Man Walking, Time
Flies, Weevil Fight Club, Blast from the Past, and To the Endi.
BBC America held a fan vote for what cover art this set uses. The choice that won includes the
(now nicknamed by locals as the
Although this series is shot in high-definition, this is a
standard-definition DVD release. BBC
Worldwide
of the competing high-definition disc formats (Blu-Ray
and HD-DVD) have enough market penetration yet to make a release of this
series on either format cost effective at this time. The high-definition versions are being shown
in the