Torchwood

Torchwood is a 2006 spinoff of the legendary Science-Fiction series, Doctor Who. You'd never guess that was unless you've seen the specific episode of Doctor Who that they referenced in the first episode. The only reason I know about Torchwood is because I picked up the first series of Doctor Who one day I happened to be at the library and they started referencing Torchwood in the second series. It lasted four series. The first thing I noticed was that the first disc has only two episodes, the second has three, the third two, and unless I'm remembering wrong the fourth has Torchwood Declassified. They DO know that single-layer DVDs can hold 4.7GBs right? Why only have two episodes on the first disc and three on the second? Anyways, minor spoilers ahead and onto the show: It focuses less on the more interesting members of the cast, IE: Captain Jack Harkness, or any of Torchwood aside from one episode that was about Ianto's person struggles and instead chooses to focus on the buzzkill cop that graduated from the same school of closed-mindedness as Inspector Lestrade, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, and Captain Tobias Gregson, Gwen Cooper. The show focuses on her, her life, her challenges, and not the interesting concept of a Doctor Who cop show. Torchwood tries to be Doctor Who with more dark and edgy, except it just comes across as forced and stupid. They were on a roll in the first episode, playing the alien technology for laughs and showing you some of their cool equipment. Then it goes downhill and starts being less enjoyable and less understandable. For instance, right after Ianto's (Who is essentially the butler) girlfriend dies and Jack's oldest friend is killed they begin implying things between the two of them that A) make no sense (For various reasons), and B) are never mentioned ever again. Torchwood attempts to re-create the heartstring-tugging emotional voyages that make Doctor Who so good and falls flat on its face. After some time they brought Martha Jones from Doctor Who to be on the show and she only lasted one series! Here's my thinking on this: "Oh, a spinoff of Doctor Who (which I love) with one of the most ingenious companions The Doctor has had on it? I can't check this out fast enough!" I was then annoyed by the fact that they wasted the chance to get me enthralled in the show by not doing things that should come naturally to a show like Torchwood, namely them investigating paranormal disturbances under the guise of a detective agency, playing Captain Jack's immortality for laughs, having the characters be relate-able and interesting and crossing over with Doctor Who more often. Then there's implied sexual things going on between characters that hadn't shown any interest in each other since THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW. The opening sequence lays down the premise of the entire show and then the show goes and blows the entire interesting premise to try and be a generic cop drama. I watched the first series until Episode Six: Countrycide, and shut it off when Owen was talking dirty to Gwen. Let me get into a bit of backstory, Owen kissed Gwen when he thought they were about to die, and then later it was implied that the two of them had slept together even though the characters weren't odd around each other, nor did they share meaningful glances. Funny thing, about the time I shut it off was when it was becoming painfully obvious that they were trying to be as dark and edgy as possible. About that time was when I was wanting to stick Resident Evil in my PlayStation and play it start to finish, that tells you how bad I found Torchwood.
All in all, the show is in bad need of a reboot, they can keep John Barrowman and really the entire cast of Torchwood, but they need to write it differently. Sometime in Series 2 they killed off most of the cast except for Gwen Cooper, the one that IMO really needed it.
Anyways, I'll watch the rest of the series online and get back to you on the quality of everything past series 1.