TIME MACHINE
Revisit Russell T Davies’s masterpiece. No, not The Flashing Blade – Children Of Earth!
A playground full of children, standing stock-still and speaking in unison. a hero being blown apart by a bomb stitched inside his stomach. green vomit splattering against the walls of a tank as some unspeakable alien horror thrashes about inside… a decade on, these images from Torchwood’s third season – the best-received version of the protean Doctor Who spin-off – still linger in the mind’s eye.
Stripped across a single week, with all five instalments airing on BBC one from Monday 6 to friday 10 July 2009, “children of earth” grew out of a basic idea Torchwood’s creator russell T davies had had squirrelled away for years: every child, across the world, standing motionless and saying, “We are coming.”
“it was one of those stories that was always going to come out, whether it be in Torchwood or Doctor Who,” davies tells SFX. “and actually i realised why i’d waited, because it needs five hours. it’s too big to have ended in 45 minutes, or even after a two-parter.”
Selecting collaborators for the five scripts, davies plumped for one writer with Torchwood form, and one newcomer whose work in a different genre he’d long admired.
“i was stunned,” recalls James Moran (credited as co-writer of part three), who’d already penned “The fires of pompeii” for Doctor Who, and a season two Torchwood episode. “it’s a paranoid conspiracy thriller, and because i’d done ‘Sleeper’, they thought that i’d be a good fit.”
TEN YEARS AGO, TORCHWOOD’S THIRD SEASON AIRED ACROSS A SINGLE WEEK. RUSSELL T DAVIES AND JAMES MORAN TALK TO IAN BERRIMAN ABOUT THE DOCTOR WHO SPIN-OFF’S EVENTSERIES INCARNATION
The third and final place in the writers’ room was taken by John fay (episodes two and four), a veteran of 79 instalments of davies’s favourite soap.
“i’d loved John fay because he wrote very famous episodes of Coronation Street,” davies explains. “But he also did something called Mobile on iTV, which was great: it was modern, a bit of a thriller, had cliffhangers, and people spoke like real people.” There literally was a room, too – booked for a couple of days in St david’s hotel on cardiff Bay (a short walk from Torchwood’s fictional base beneath road dahl plass).
“russell presented the basic idea,” Moran recalls, “which was: these aliens have been here before, and come back, and want some kind of terrible deal. i think he even said that they want our children, but he didn’t know why. So it was taking his quite detailed idea and going, ‘What happens in every episode, minute to minute?’ Two days of sitting there thinking up exciting, scary, cool stuff. it’s one of the most creative things i’ve ever been involved with.”
ALAS, SMITH AND JONES
originally, davies planned to include two
Doctor Who characters: freema agyeman’s former companion Martha Jones, who’d already featured in three episodes of
Torchwood season two, and noel clarke’s Mickey Smith. Both were last seen on-screen walking off with captain Jack in Doctor Who’s 2008 season finale, “Journey’s end”.
“cush Jumbo’s character [civil service temp lois habiba] was Martha originally,” davies explains. “Martha had gone back to the unit base in new york, so she was part of the global reporting of the children. Then she’d have been the government mole. and Mickey would have come into his own when they went to london, as he had a base there. So they were a huge part of it.”
Sadly the unavailability of both actors – with agyeman cast in Law And Order UK, and clarke busy on a film – torpedoed that idea.
“That’s what happens when you don’t have people under contract,” davies shrugs. “We were trying to get freema into The Sarah Jane
Adventures as well. But never mind, you just
rewrite it!”
“Mickey and Martha actually made it to draft two of my scripts,” Moran notes, having rifled through old paperwork. “Then draft three was where it all needed reworking to change them for the new characters.”
This wasn’t the only change between those brainstorms and the shooting scripts. for example: as originally conceived, part five was quite different.
“in the final episode there were lots of people in football stadiums, with lights coming down from the sky,” davies recalls. “and it became way too similar to that final
Quatermass with John Mills. i remember going, ‘ah, we can’t do this!’ i like stealing stuff normally, but that’s way too much!”
conceiving an ending was a major headache. eventually, to his chagrin, davies sacrificed another idea he’d kept for 20 years, planning to spin a separate six-hour series from it: “a family drama”, as he explained in book The
Writer’s Tale, “in which the world goes to hell, ending with our safe, comfy western society descending into anarchy”. But davies later went back to the well, drawing on the same
concept for Years And Years.
A TIME TO KILL
a decision made on day two of brainstorming was to have legions of fans up in arms. at episode four’s climax, Torchwood operative ianto Jones dies in Jack’s arms, after mysterious aliens The 456 release a virus at Mi5’s hQ. as Moran remembers it, ianto’s death felt kind of inevitable. “When we got to [brainstorming] episode four,
we needed it to be, ‘all hope is lost here.’ Which means someone has to die. it was just there. it was like, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ it’s probably one of the most beloved characters getting horribly killed, and then his lover having to wake up next to a dead body. it’s just such a gut punch. it’s like, ‘how the hell do we get out of that?’”
With all three writers originating concepts, who exactly came up with what is rather fuzzy. however, a few details can be credited to particular individuals. fay, for example, came up with a moment in episode four, in which, having submitted to the aliens’ demands that we surrender 10 per cent of our children, chilling discussions take place in Whitehall about which “units” to hand over.
“John’s greatest contribution was that dialogue where the government are working out which children to give to The 456 and a woman comes out with that fantastic line, ‘What else are the school league tables for?’” davies recalls. “i think that’s the most glorious line ever!”
James Moran, meanwhile, was the sick mind who answered another question: what exactly do The 456 want children for?
“i had a brainwave,” Moran remembers. “i went, ‘you know how foie gras is made? They overfeed geese so that their livers swell
We spent two days thinking up scary, cool stuff. It’s one of the most creative things I’ve ever been involved with
up and become really juicy, and are a delicacy. What if they do some horrible chemical treatment to these children that turns their blood into this amazing drug?’ i was delighted with myself. Then i saw their faces, and went, ‘ooh, i’ve gone a bit dark there.’ everyone looked at me like i was fucking disgusting!”
The full reality of quite how grim this idea was only really hit home when he visited the set.
“it was all a jolly jape, then [prosthetics designer] neill gorton carries out a prosthetic child looking like it’s dead in his arms, with a gas mask glued to its face,” Moran laughs. “i remember, i looked at that and went, ‘We are in so much trouble. They’re never going to show this on TV. They’re going to cancel it. and it’s my fault!’”
These sequences on the 13th floor of Thames house, in which peter capaldi’s civil servant, frobisher, communicates with a 456 ambassador, were shot on a set at upper Boat studios. one of the biggest challenges was realising the projectile-vomiting alien, memorably described by star eve Myles as, “like a really angry Valleys girl on a Saturday night, that can’t get a taxi home.” after a child visiting the set declared, “it’s a pelican!” it was nicknamed “Smokey the space pelican” by davies. a lightweight puppet with three radio-controlled heads was used for most shots, but as this was crammed with animatronics, more old-school methods came into play for the sequences where it head-butts the glass of its tank: two blokes waving about a latex head on a pole.
perhaps the production’s other biggest challenge was showing the aftermath of blowing up Torchwood’s base. Though this was mostly realised, in wide shots, via cgi, a 25-metre-wide crater lip was also created for night shooting on 7 and 8 october 2008, with twisted metal and flaming rubble laid out across roald dahl plass. Beginning in august, location filming continued through to november – mostly in Wales, with the Brecon Beacons representing Scottish moorlands, part of Swansea’s guildhall complex standing in for other parts of Thames house, and coedarhydyglyn (a private house previously seen as the Tyler residence in Doctor Who’s “rise of The cybermen”) used for the prime Minister’s office.
Though the idea of stripping the series across a week came from up on high, being first mooted by BBc head of fiction Jane Tranter, once the series was in the can, davies had a fight on his hands to keep it that way.
“By the time it came to transmission Jane Tranter had left her job, and there were many battles about transmitting it across the week,” he says. “i had to sit there and insist that i was promised it would go out daily, because people were ready to step back from that promise and transmit it once a week.”
davies got his way in the end – and was vindicated when the audience grew, kicking off on Monday with 6.47 million viewers and peaking on Thursday with 6.76 million. This prompted a last-minute panic... and an urgent phone call to davies, who by this time had relocated to los angeles.
“Because the management of the BBc had changed by the time it came to transmission, no one had watched the last episode!” davies recalls. “round about the Wednesday, when the viewing figures kept getting even bigger, that’s when the controller of BBc one went, ‘i’d better have a look and see what happens in the final episode.’ They watched episode five and were absolutely horrified by the death of the grandson!”
KILLING STEVE
in the none-more-bleak finale, Jack harkness sacrifices his own grandchild to defeat the alien threat. cue child actor Bear Mccausland shaking, fake blood dripping from his nose, as young Steven is fried operating as the conduit for a “constructive wave”.
“They phoned me up saying, ‘Please can we change this?’” davies reveals. i said, ‘Well, you can re-edit it…’ So on the Thursday i had to sit there and do a paper edit, with time codes, and send it over. it was only a few shots of the shuddering grandchild. ‘less shuddering grandchild, please!’ So yeah, that was a nice bit of panic!”
however, the showrunner wasn’t concerned about such last-minute edits making the climax less impactful.
“Weirdly, when you cut back on stuff, it actually makes it stronger,” davies notes. “The death of the child was far blunter. This happened with the sex scenes on Queer As
Folk: they said, ‘can you cut back on them?’ By making them shorter they become like bullets being shot out of the screen. i knew it would actually get stronger by being reduced in time.
The Controller of BBC 1 watched episode five and was absolutely horrified by the death of the grandson
So i very happily sat there going, ‘yes, of course you can trim it back – i don’t want to upset anyone!’”
(Watch the Blu-ray or dvd and you’ll see the original edit – with the home entertainment release going on sale the Monday after transmission, the discs had already been manufactured.)
looking back a decade on, both writers are delighted with what they achieved.
“it was such an enormous success,” davies says happily. “Torchwood had been this mad, odd little show on smaller channels, and for it to win the spot every night was absolutely astonishing. no one expected that, not even me. it was such a victory. Because it is about the ratings in the end! don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“i’m a tiny part of it,” Moran says modestly. “But because we were all there from the beginning, it feels like it’s all of us in there. it was such a fun, creative experience, building storylines and characters and exciting things, with a bunch of really clever people. it made such an impact, and i love that people still remember the show. it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Torchwood: Serenity, a new audio adventure written by James Moran, is released by Big Finish in July.