Remember When Stephen Moffat Said There Would Be More Doctor Who In 2013 Than Ever?

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Remember When Stephen Moffat Said There Would Be More Doctor Who In 2013 Than Ever?

Post by inflatable dalek »

Turns out he was right, he just didn't mean new episodes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24448063

yes, it's an announcement of an announcement, but I'm rather excited.

The big claims by various papers and fans who turned out to be right all along are:

Whatever is going to be announced will only be the tip of the iceberg, for whatever reasons various episodes that are now located are having trouble being returned to the Beeb (including, supposedly, the first appearance of the Brig). The most persistent version of this is the owner of the tapes wants huge sums of cash for them, conflicting with the BBC's own "We don't pay for things that technically belong to us anyway" policy. Some skulduggery and moving about of funds have resulted in money changing hands without them officially having paid for episodes (BBC4 for example have contributed as part of a repeat run of some episodes for example).

At least two missing episodes (possibly two stories) will be released on Itunes at the end of the week (according to the "Demands for money" version of the story how well these do will decide for the Beeb if it's actually worth paying even more for the "More important" episodes being held back).

Some (all) of that may be vary dubious, but if nothing else Steve Roberts of the restoration team has admitted that the reason he and others In The Know had been lying about missing episodes so firmly in the last few weeks is that the people working on getting the tapes back had been doing so in a place where their lives were in constant danger (Wolverhampton?) and no one wanted to draw any attention to their presence.

As I'm at that point in my own rewatch (and it, along with Web, has been part of the claims since this story started back in the Summer), here's hoping for some Enemy of the World by the end of the week.

Considering the Moonbase with animation DVD has been put back to early next year, I'd assume that was part of the find as well. Here's hoping Ice Warriors and Tenth Planet aren't as that makes the release of those DVD's a bit dickish.

As for Itunes... how easy is it to use? And is the stuff on there DMR protected?
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Post by Cliffjumper »

inflatable dalek wrote:conflicting with the BBC's own "We don't pay for things that technically belong to us anyway" policy.
Whereas when these things come out they'll happily charge over the odds for stuff that's been funded by other people. If I found missing Who eps I'd be pretty tempted to be a prick about it considering what those ****-rags at 2Entertain have been up to.

EDIT: Fingers crossed for the Massacre as it's one of the few with little surviving visual material. Surprisingly unbothered about the rest beyond making them more accessible to non-lunatics, but it'll take more than moving pictures to make Space Pirates, Moonbase, Wheel in Space, Galaxy 4 etc. any good.

I'm guessing a spot is being cleared for a three-hour special on Saturday so Freema Agyeman and some twat who used to be on Newsround can dramatically unveil the film drums?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Cliffjumper wrote:Whereas when these things come out they'll happily charge over the odds for stuff that's been funded by other people. If I found missing Who eps I'd be pretty tempted to be a prick about it considering what those ****-rags at 2Entertain have been up to.
Yeah, I'd generally be of the opinion the Beeb should just take their medicine and pay up, but I realise there are several factors that work against that.

I mean, with every penny Aunty currently spends being scrutinised they'd be hard pressed to justify to their critics throwing money at something that traditionally rewarded with a hearty thanks and a free VHS/DVD (well, at least officially. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of "Consultant" role on the eventual home media release is arranged as well, or at least a decent appearance fee on documentaries and commentaries). Letting the commercial arm of Worldwide take care of things with money spent recouped from further sales is probably the lesser of two evils on that score.

Plus, the no money changes hands thing is, I believe, an industry standard. I doubt other film and TV companies would be happy with a precedent being set for paying big money for returned material, especially as one of the more persistent parts of the rumour is various other, and non-BBC, missing episodes have turned up as well.

It's not ideal, but I can see it's a politically charged situation. And that's without factoring that the possibility of a really stupid amount of money being asked for (with anything between 17 and 90 episodes supposedly returned that would soon add up as well).

Mind, another really persistent part of the rumour during the Summer was the money being asked for wasn't the problem so much as all their other Doctor Who related demands (sack Moffat, script approval on the next series...). Which sounds bollocks, but then, if Ian Levine was in that position there's no way he wouldn't push to get his Shada/Downtime released as payment, so I suppose you never know.
EDIT: Fingers crossed for the Massacre as it's one of the few with little surviving visual material. Surprisingly unbothered about the rest beyond making them more accessible to non-lunatics, but it'll take more than moving pictures to make Space Pirates, Moonbase, Wheel in Space, Galaxy 4 etc. any good.
The most likely Hartnell is going to be Marco Polo, it's been a part of the rumour along with Web and Enemy pretty much right from the off (and is the only 60's Who story to have been brought by everyone who broadcast the show, it's almost perverse none of it has turned up already). Mind, there was a lot of talk of Sierra Leone and they had most of series 3 right up till the end of the '90's (and were illicitly repeating them in the '80's, which is mind-blowing really).

Watling and Hines are taking part in the announcement, so presumably whatever they're announcing/releasing first is series 5 (or Evil of the Daleks, which is one I'd be really keen to see. The fact they repeated it implies a production as confident as the one existing episode suggests).

Most wanted, Web stands a very good chance of living up to expectations (Camfield direction, the one episode looks damn good, plots nonsense but the atmosphere could well overcome that). The Massacre of course would be lovely, and the Myth Makers would be pretty awesome as well.

I suppose the more action orientated missing Troughton's would probably benefit more from returns that the more talky Hartnell's though. It'd be great to know what the hell is going on in most of the Macra Terror for starters.

If there are any orphan episodes from stories, another part or so of Master Plan would be interesting as well, pretty much everytime another bit of that turns up it totally changes the perception of it because Camfield and the cast are always doing something that just doesn't come over in the audio.

I suppose there's always the possibility, if it is a large find, of better versions of some of the existing material being found, unedited versions of The War Machines and Time Meddler, just better quality on the two Crusade episodes and so on.
I'm guessing a spot is being cleared for a three-hour special on Saturday so Freema Agyeman and some twat who used to be on Newsround can dramatically unveil the film drums?
Be more entertaining than I Love My country.


EDIT: And don't try and pretend more Space Pirates and Zoe in those obscenely tiny hot pants would not be the best thing ever.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Ohhh, Anneke Wills has tweeted she's attending a "Secret" screening in London tomorrow. Assuming it's not a completely unrelated event (about the only thing it could be is a press screening for the Hartnell docu-drama surely?) that seems to be firm confirmation some Ben and Polly is back in the archive as well. With the Monbase DVD delayed I'd say the odds are pretty good on that (or maybe whatever odd episodes from other stories that have been found will be packaged with it?).

Shame Peter Purves doesn't know anything about any recoveries, looks like Stephen has lucked out.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

So it turns out Anneke actually was going to a screening of An Adventure in Time and Space after all.

Still, Enemy of the World and everything Web of Fear bar episode three. Bloody awesome. With all the conspiracy theories that have been going around all year people have been deconstructing every single line of the press conference ("The episodes we are announcing today...") to look for signs they'll be more to come as and when they're ready for release, but if this is it, that's still bloody good.

So we've got the single biggest haul of lost episodes since 1978 (the first year the Beeb actually went out looking for what they'd destroyed), more episodes found than have been discovered in the last 25 years combined, less than a 100 missing for the first time ever and we now have more than half the Troughton's back. Hell yeah.

I'm going to go give Itunes a go now (mainly so I can carry on with my rewatch, otherwise I'd wait for disc), but the DVD of Enemy is out on 22nd November, whilst Web will be early next year. No word on how the missing episode will be handled for that, but the Itunes version has a telesnaps reconstruction (I'm going to guess animation for DVD because otherwise that would have been the more obvious choice out of the two to do as the anniversary release).

Both have a new, rather funky cover design, though the spines will match and presumably the reverse covers will keep the grey roundels, two discs as well so the part of the rumours that all the documentaries and commentaries were already done turned out to be true as well.

It's actually impressive they've managed to put out a surprise DVD as there are people who go through every part of the BBFC website looking for classifications like a Transformers fan going through barcodes in a store catalogue. I don't know if they've snuck it in under another name (would the BBFC let you do that?) or are just leaving it much closer to release than normal, but that's a pretty cool thing to have managed.

Web of Fear trailer:



My mother actually pissed herself laughing watching that ("That's a yeti?!", mind, she did get excited when the Brigadier Colonel turned up) but I think it actually looks pretty good, those shots of the Yeti on the street should be terrible but they're nicely batshit insane instead.

Enemy of the World trailer:



Slightly duller as you'd expect from Enemy, but it's probably not helped by trying as hard as possible to include the bare minimum of the main source of entertainment, Salamander's accent. The shot of Trought looking into Trought's eyes is impressive in a "I didn't think Doctor Who would manage that" way.

At least being B&W, Letts can't have snuck any CSO into it...
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Post by Sades »

So if they've found any Hartnell episodes... I can consider my "Bring Back The First Doctor" campaign a success!

Edit: There's probably a bunch of people putting the finishing touches on their Yeti Halloween costumes right now.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I hear they're cloning Hartnell just for you.

Random Enemy of the World thoughts:


The direction was probably Letts best for the show, I think not being the producer and thus not having free reign to do whatever he likes coupled with not being able to carry out his strange obsession with CSO (I think even George Lucas at his worst would baulk at using greenscreen to do an ordinary living room as happens in Terror of the Autons) in black and white helped there.

Though we do get the monochrome equiverlent in a back projected garden (and even though the trick used is quite smart- when Jamie's walking towards them in the distance he's on the back projection before a couple of cuts let him sneak into the set, creating the sense of depth) it does feel like a slight waste of location filming when they could have just had a set with a bush.

Overall though, a nice fun and surprisingly pacey story. The confrontation at the end, however brief, is well done as well. IIRC I once read claims that the one shot of Troughton looking at Troughton was done by superimposing a picture of the still Doctor over the scene after the spit-screen had failed, but no, he's clearly moving and the fact the split is done at an angle makes it feel nice and different from the usual ITC stuff.

It does make me smile though that Salamander's accent is exactly the same one Troughton uses in shows like Danger Man and The Saint whenever he's playing a swarthy foreigner of any nationality.

And that scene of him casually smoking his giant cigar, very proto-Delgardo isn't it?

The sheer, delightful, silliness of the opening beach scene really makes me want to see the very similar one that opens Fury From the Deep now.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Holy crap, UNIT dating just got permanently solved. A poster for the 1967 film In The Heat of the Night in the underground means Mawdryn Undead and the new series were right all along and all the Pertwee stories (plus Sarah Jane's "I'm from 1980") that acted as if it was the near future were wrong.

Other than that, not as many surprises in Web of Fear as Enemy of the World, we know what Douglas Camfield could do and had a much fairer idea of how good the story would be. Which is very good indeed. Tense, well acted (you can see why Nick Courtney was able to turn his four week job into a four decade career and he's never better than when the then Colonel has his breakdown after all his men are killed) and generally, odd dodgy model shot of the BBC foam machine filling tunnels, looks great.

The two Yeti going at each other looks like a hairy version of the end of the first Cybernauts episode of The Avengers though.

Oh, and love the completely gratuitous way that when Victoria is being led down the tunnel by the possessed Travers the camera stays on her legs for most of the walk.

And actually, you know what's interesting, over the years the argument has been made that the reason so many people found Tomb of the Cybermen disappointing was because after being missing for so long and being bigged up for so long there was no way it could live up to its reputation.

But every missing episode that's been found since has either elevated the reputation of its story (you might not be able to polish a turd, but Derek Martinus is doing his best Mr. Sheen with the direction on Galaxy 4) or, in the case of the equally much loved and well remembered Web of Fear, confirmed it. Maybe it's simply the case Tomb of the Cybermen just isn't all that good?
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

inflatable dalek wrote:But every missing episode that's been found since has either elevated the reputation of its story (you might not be able to polish a turd, but Derek Martinus is doing his best Mr. Sheen with the direction on Galaxy 4) or, in the case of the equally much loved and well remembered Web of Fear, confirmed it. Maybe it's simply the case Tomb of the Cybermen just isn't all that good?
Not having seen "Tomb of the Cybermen" I'm not going to judge it, but your suggestion that the lost episodes being hyped up because they're lost and no one has seen them for decades is right on the money. There is a lost silent film called London After Midnight with Lon Chaney Sr while photos of his second or third most famous make-up design (following The Pantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notra Dame) of a weird looking vampire kind of character is impressive and what is known of the film's plot it sounds pretty stupid. I recall watching a documentary about it and/or Chaney Sr. and they interviewed a man who clamied he saw the film when it was orignially released as a kid and he said that he thought it outside of Chaney's performance and make-up he thought it was pretty awful, but still my dad would probably buy a DVD of it if a copy of it was ever found and released on DVD. Just because of the myth built up around it by monster maginizes and books about classic monster movies he's read all of his life.

So yeah, the myth, reputation, hype, legend, status, or whatever you want to call it surrounding the lost episodes of Dr. Who some fans will be disappointed by these episodes because they are just awful, however some will live up to the hype and maybe a few might actually be better than the hype but those are extremly rare however.

A quick question: What is the status of Torchwood? Has it been cancelled?
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Torchwood is on 'indefinite hiatus', so yeah, basically cancelled.

The show was a hit on BBC3 (one of the beeb's digital channels) and earned itself a slot on BBC2 for its second series. It doesn't seem to have done quite well enough for the BBC to commission a full third series (and, IIRC, there was quite a gap between series one and two) with maximum ratings of around 3 million.

The third series 'Children Of Earth' was a critical success, but the BBC perhaps made a mistake by promoting it as 'event television' (something I hate, personally) and running it over five consecutive nights (or whatever it was) for maximum impact. Or something. Either way, it didn't do whatever the BBC wanted from it (Life On Mars and its sequel Ashes To Ashes in the same slot brought in similar ratings) and wouldn't finance another full series. Davies then took his baby to America to seek funding for a fourth series.

The fourth series seemed a massive step back from 'Children Of Earth' and even series two, being the same bizarre mix of adult drama and CBBC sci-fi ideas. It ending with a giant vagina probably did for the shows credability too.

I found Torchwood a difficult show to enjoy. It was all over the place with its tone and what it wanted to be for much of its life. Probably not helped by Barrowman's lack of subtlety. Children Of Earth was great though.
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Post by Heinrad »

Just downloaded Enemy of the World, and it's great. The editing in a couple of spots seems odd, but great fun to watch all the same.

I enjoyed Tomb of the Cybermen when it finally got released on VHS, but I hadn't really seen anything pre-Tom Baker when I got the book back in the early '80s. The fact that the Cyberman head on the cover was an Invasion-style didn't help. Any time I read the book, I was hearing David Banks as the Cyber Controller. So when I finally saw it, it was a bit of a letdown. Still good, but not quite as deep as the book that was based on it.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Starz were apparently interested in more Torchwood, but RTD's boyfriend's cancer had him relocate back to the UK and semi-retire from TV for a bit, putting the kybosh on the whole thing.

The Beeb's attitude towards the show has always been a bit baffling, "It's done really well for us! Lets not make anymore!". Though the series perhaps didn't help by killing off all but two of the main cast and then blowing up Cardiff bay.

That "Five night" mini-series thing was briefly very popular (I think there was one about a car-crash as well), but seems to have fallen out of favour (Broadchurch would have been a shoe-in for it had it been done five years ago). I guess the cost of making TV means that channels would rather give up the potential buzz of an event in favour of not having all that cash be over and done with in a week.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

I think Torchwood's big problem was that the BBC could manage similar success with stuff that was a lot cheaper to make (Ashes to Ashes being a prime example). Unlike Who it didn't have any real merchandising potential (they made loads but no-one bought it) but it did require a similar effects budget...

That said, a lot of damage was done by it being so dreadful, at least for the 2-3 episodes I stomached. Off-hand I can't think of too many programmes that have been quite so arrogant; it had this general feeling that all it had to do was be a Doctor Who spin-off and everyone should be happy with that. I'm assured it got better, but there wasn't really another direction available and by then the chance of finding an audience had been scuppered.

It got dicked around with a bit (being used to justify BBC3 with all that guff about it breaking station records - making it more popular than Two Pints of Lager and a Bag of Shite, big woo) but it didn't help itself by just assuming sex jokes made it a bonafide adult show.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Thats the nail on the head being hit right there :lol:

The misfire of Torchwood is probably why The Sarah Jane Adventures turned out so well.

On topic...I never know how I feel about the missing episodes. Perhaps because I'm not hardcore enough to feel the pain of their loss. DWM did a quite fascinating article on why the Beeb scrubbed swathes of tapes and where overseas copies may have gone and so on. I liken this to the occasional clear out I have at home 'haven't touched that for five years or more and its just cluttering up the place, so may as well get rid'. I was indifferent to some old episodes being found. Its good and everything, especially for those whom care about this stuff, but for me, not so much.

I kind of like that there's some ...incompleteness about Doctor Who. Adds to the mystery.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Skyquake87 wrote:I kind of like that there's some ...incompleteness about Doctor Who. Adds to the mystery.
Mmmmm, I'm always strangely torn... I long ago gave into the recon thing, but back in the day (mid-late nineties was when I was obssessive... y'know, about the only time there wasn't Who being made) I was quite in two minds.

It came from the novels and the video release schedule - if something wasn't out on VHS I'd get the Target instead and experience the story that way. So you'd read something like Planet of the Daleks, which'd be a good little knockaround, and you'd really look forward to it coming out. But the glossy well-acted actioner in your head was always then overwritten by bad actors staggering around a rubber jungle. You knew it was going to happen deep down but you couldn't deceive yourself anymore...

The same thing happened to fandom en masse for things like Tomb, Web Planet, anything starring Jon Pertwee (it cannot be stressed how highly regarded the Pertwee stuff was in fandom until fans got to be able to see most of it) and I suppose there's always the worry it'll happen to, say, Marco Polo.

But then the real-time audio and telesnap reconstructions bridge enough of the gap now - though, considering I only watch sixties Who as wallpaper (any other way you'd go mad) there's so little chance for being genuinely surprised that I'm content to wait to get these as DVD rips when the download sites catch up. All we're really going to get back is people walking into things they shouldn't be.


One thought on the stories recently released is that it's odd both are generally well-regarded, which makes me think there's a couple of stinkers to come that they didn't want to lead the releases with... I'd say no Hartnell because they'd have loved to have one of each, but maybe some shite like Moonbase, Highlanders, Space Pirates or Wheel (that were both semi-complete anyway).
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Ah the curse of reading books...! whats in your mind can never be matched by whats presented on screen. Especially where a BBC budget is concerned.

Having never had anything to do with Doctor Who fandom, I did not know the Pertwee stuff was so 'legendary'. Being new to a lot of the old stuff* through my DW DVD files sub, I find them quite patchy. and occasionally preachy. I like the UNIT dynamic and the sort of 'Boys Own' feel to a lot of his stories though. Probably why he's remembered as a sort of Action Hero Doctor, when a lot of the time he's not.

*The VHS releases were a bit too steep for my liking, I only picked up a few in the late '90s when the BBC started re-releasing them again with smarter jackets and the older releases all got knocked down in price.

Doctor's one and two are new to me, but of the Troughton stuff I've seen, its the stuff with Jamie and Zoe I like mostest. They make a good team.
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inflatable dalek wrote:Starz were apparently interested in more Torchwood, but RTD's boyfriend's cancer had him relocate back to the UK and semi-retire from TV for a bit, putting the kybosh on the whole thing.

The Beeb's attitude towards the show has always been a bit baffling, "It's done really well for us! Lets not make anymore!". Though the series perhaps didn't help by killing off all but two of the main cast and then blowing up Cardiff bay.

That "Five night" mini-series thing was briefly very popular (I think there was one about a car-crash as well), but seems to have fallen out of favour (Broadchurch would have been a shoe-in for it had it been done five years ago). I guess the cost of making TV means that channels would rather give up the potential buzz of an event in favour of not having all that cash be over and done with in a week.
I watched a marathon of Torchwood: Mircale Day on Starz it was OK, but once John DeLancie showed up he steals the show (just like he did on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager) as the head of the CIA and I was more interested in his character than Captain Jack. I knew Eve Myles from her voice work as Merrill in Dragon Age II and it was nice to see what she looked like.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Cliffjumper wrote:I think Torchwood's big problem was that the BBC could manage similar success with stuff that was a lot cheaper to make (Ashes to Ashes being a prime example). Unlike Who it didn't have any real merchandising potential (they made loads but no-one bought it) but it did require a similar effects budget...
I would say Torchwood was relatively cheap to make. It had one big expensive set (which cost enough that the rumour at the time was the show was guarenteed a second year regardless of how well it did so as to spread the cost of the hub out. Of course, they also used it as the basis for Smith's first Tardis console room so they got good use out of it if nothing else), some odd bits of CGI and make up asside- much of which was borrowed from the parent show, IIRC the big bad of season 1 was a reuse of the Satan Pit CGI Devil- it was basically a show filmed outside in Cardiff.

As a comparison, Ashes to Ashes actually falls down a bit as; for at least the first year; was a really difficult and expensive (and unlike Torchwood harder to make money back on selling abroad because of the distinctly British history it's based around, it was just easier for other countries to remake Life on Mars locally) show to make.

Unexpectedly so as well, turning Manchester into its 1970's counterpart was much easier in Life On that recreating London into the 80's for Ashes was. Jokes about the North/South divide aside, it was likely helped by the '70's already being part of the Beeb's stock period-drama repertoire in a way the '80's hadn't become yet. I'm not sure if they fixed this for the last two years as I still haven't seen them yet but in the first season it's painfully obvious they keep driving up and down the same two streets over and over again because they're the only undeveloped ones they could find in central London.

I think I may be the only person on the planet who doesn't mind the first two years of Torchwood. Not brilliant, but harmless enough fun (apart from bloody Cyberwoman). Sometimes it's lonely being me.


As for Lost episodes living up to what we imagine, in fairness I think all the ones that have come back in the last two years have included stuff that has exceeded peoples expectations. OK, in the case of The Underwater Menance that boils down to just possessing basic competence, but things like just how well directed Galaxy 4 is or the completely and utterly batshit insane OTT device Salamander uses to get into his underground bunker are more brilliant that anything anyone expected (and if the cost of this pure Thunderbirds sequence was the reason for the "Why are we guarding him in this corridor?" bit in episode 3 then I say it was money well spent).
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Do you know, I sat through all of Ashes To Ashes out of obligation more than anything else, having started to watch it. I can't remember if the locations improved. There were certainly more set based antics. I just remember the admittedly impressive ending. Just a shame it wasn't as good as Life On Mars.

I liked the second series of Torchwood, which was a massive improvement over the first and the third really was excellent. The first had its moments, the fairy episode was superb and I can vaguely recall the finale being pretty decent.
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