Torchwood premieres on Starz

The BBC’s popular Doctor Who spinoff, Torchwood, is making a move to the Starz network premiering this Friday, July 8th at 10PM ET. The move took me a bit by surprise, and the press release for the premiere described the new show as a “reimagining of the original UK sensation.” I’m happy to say that this is not entirely the case as the show’s history is being preserved, but early indications suggest it will be very different in tone and presentation from earlier episodes.

We were recently given access to an 11-minute preview online of the new series titled, Torchwood: Miracle Day, but it was really nothing more than a behind the scenes “special look” commercial style presentation. The video primarily featured interviews with the cast and the show’s original creator, Russell T. Davies, who serves as executive producer along with show-runner for Miracle Day. That particular preview was available by media request only, but I found the following publicly available video far more interesting given the amount of footage it shows:

Fans and critics will have an opportunity this evening to get a look at the full first episode before its world premiere on Friday. The sneak preview will be held locally at the Landmark Theatres, Ritz 5 in Philadelphia. Ticketing begins at 6:00pm on a first come, first served basis. This screening is rated TV-14 and attendees must be 14 or older to attend.

I haven’t watched every episode of Torchwood with the same dedication I have Doctor Who, but the episodes I have seen have been enjoyable. They run a bit scarier than the parent series and that has certainly put Angie off (much like Fox’s Fringe). The show moved away from the traditional 13 episode format after 2008 when their facility in Cardiff was destroyed as part of David Tennant’s final full season on Doctor Who. Torchwood returned in 2009 and aired a five-part series on five consecutive nights titled Children of Earth. The move from the BBC to Starz was particularly surprising after the show stopped regularly airing episodes. The inclusion of show creator and former Doctor Who executive producer Russell T. Davies is even more surprising, but it gives me hope that Miracle Day could be something great.

The cast is a mix of new and old as John Barrowman returns as Captain Jack Harkness alongside Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper. Mekhi Phifer is perhaps the most interesting addition to the cast as CIA agent Rex Matheson. It could be a very fitting role for him given his enjoyable stint as an FBI agent on Fox’s Lie to Me. Bill Pullman will also appear on the show as an antagonist named Oswald Danes who is a former death row inmate taking advantage of a deathless world. Dichen Lachman, Sierra from the short-lived science fiction thriller Dollhouse, also appears in some capacity based on other previews despite not being listed in the cast.

With the recent announcement that Doctor Who would not air a full season season in 2012 (although this was refuted by current executive producer Steven Moffat over the weekend) and the suggestion that something big was in store for the show’s 50th anniversary in 2013, the seed was planted in my mind that a similar network move could be in store for The Doctor. My initial reaction is against this type of thing, but it could open up a potentially larger worldwide audience for the show, even more so than airing episodes on the SyFy network or the emergence of things like BBC America. There’s actually some precedent for a change of network looking back to Fox’s 1996 Doctor Who pilot starring Paul McGann. The announcement about the schedule for 2012 is similar to the one made leading up to David Tennant’s (and interestingly Russell T. Davies’) exit from the show, although I don’t see the BBC letting go of Doctor Who under any circumstances given its current popularity.

The particulars of the move from the BBC to Starz aside, Torchwood: Miracle Day looks like an exciting new chapter in the show’s history. The mystery surrounding the end of death on Earth is intriguing and draws to mind stories like Brian Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man and Children of Men with unexplained losses of life being replaced with the problem of life never ending. As with those stories, the impact of this change on global society appears to be as much the focus as solving the mystery and that makes Miracle Day something I’ll certainly be checking out.

From the Starz press release:

STARZ’ newest original series is a reimagining of the UK sensation, which originally debuted in 2006 on BBC One. The show’s original creator, writer/producer Russell T Davies, serves as executive producer along with BBC Worldwide Productions’ SVP Julie Gardner, with Davies also serving as show-runner. “Torchwood: Miracle Day” is produced by BBC Worldwide Productions for Starz, BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Worldwide.

PREMIERING JULY 8, 2011 TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY

One day, nobody dies. All across the world, nobody dies. And then the next day, and the next, and the next, people keep aging — they get hurt and sick — but they never die. The result: a population boom, overnight.

With all the extra people, resources are finite. It’s said that in four month’s time, the human race will cease to be viable. But this can’t be a natural event – someone’s got to be behind it.  It’s a race against time as C.I.A. agent Rex Matheson investigates a global conspiracy.  The answers lie within an old, secret British institute.

As Rex keeps asking “What is Torchwood?”, he’s drawn into a world of adventure, and a threat to change what it means to be human, forever.