Meme-Free Zone

Torchwood was set up by Queen Victoria in the 19th century, with headquarters in major cities in England, Scotland, and Wales (London was Torchwood 1, Glasgow 2, Cardiff 3), and important places in the Empire - Delhi was the only one mentioned by name, with no number.

But Ireland was also part of Britain then, and parts of it still are. Surely there should have been a base somewhere there, in Dublin, say, or Belfast. I don't know enough about 19th century Ireland to say where the most strategic site would be. I'm guessing it would be Torchwood 4. Presumably it would be moved to the North (if not already there) after Irish independence, since I can't see anyone in the know about Torchwood wanting to give a "rebel government" easy access to alien tech. But it was never mentioned in the show at all. It seems very odd, and leaves me wondering if it was somehow retconned out of their institutional awareness.

For that matter, does Ireland even exist in the Who-verse? I can't remember it ever being a setting for any of the shows.

Any thoughts?

Torchwood was founded in 1879. I don't think we're ever told who ran it in its early days, only that they reported directly to the Queen.

So I started thinking about characters from fiction who might plausibly be involved in running Torchwood in its early days, and there are two outstanding candidates - Mycroft Holmes, whose qualifications speak for themselves but was already involved in every aspect of keeping the Empire running smoothly and probably couldn't spare the time, and one other, a man implicitly trusted by the Queen, fearless in the face of all adversity, and devilishly handsome.

I speak, of course, of that paragon of Victorian manhood, Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE. Born in 1822, Flashman would be 57 when Torchwood was founded, fresh from his gallant heroics in the Battle of Isandlwana, one of the few British officers to emerge from it with any credit, but that's probably a little early for him to get involved, since he was still a troubleshooter for the Empire. He'd be 77 when Jack Harkness was recruited by Torchwood in 1899. Oddly, the adventures mentioned in his autobiography end around 1900, although he was still alive and active up to the start of the Great War. Coincidence? I think not!

Obviously the Queen, or her successor Edward Edward VII, ordered Flashman to fake his retirement so that he could secretly take the reins of Torchwood, with an emphasis on keeping Harkness from going too far off the rails! My guess is that they soon worked out each other's motives etc., and worked very well together until Flashman's death in 1915.

Any thoughts on this?

Another Doctor Who: Lockdown episode.



Without getting spoilery, I really do NOT like the end of this one. Compare and contrast with the solution chosen by Sapphire and Steel in story 4 of that series - explanation below the cut:


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Fun little Doctor Who video scripted by Neil Gaiman...

This is Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG, one of the better ones by all accounts:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/DoctorWho

This new collection presents recent .PDF ebooks for the official Doctor Who Roleplaying Game from Cubicle 7 Entertainment. Embark on your own adventures across time and space as the Doctor (any of his first 12 incarnations) and his companions (any of them too) -- or invent your own Time Lord, new companions, and a new TARDIS -- or create a ragtag band of time agents, or even a UNIT base protecting Earth. With the Doctor Who RPG the power is in your hands, and maybe in your Sonic Screwdriver.

(In July 2017 Humble Bundle presented a collection of 11 of Cubicle 7's various "Doctors Sourcebooks" for the RPG. Now this new offer from the Bundle of Holding (which isn't associated with Humble Bundle) duplicates only the core rulebook from the earlier Humble offer; all the sourcebooks, supplements, and adventures in this offer are new and have never been presented in a bundle.)

We provide each ebook complete in .PDF (Portable Document Format). Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these books have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their ereaders.

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to the charity designated by Dominic McDowall of Cubicle 7 Entertainment, BBC Children in Need.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$142. Customers who pay just US$19.95 get all three titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $70) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (retail price $30): The complete game (previously published as Doctor Who - Adventures in Time and Space) based on the Vortex System (Rocket Age, Primeval).
• All the Strange, Strange Creatures Volume 1 (retail $20): Aliens the Doctor has encountered on his adventures, aliens he has not yet met, and aliens he hopes never to meet again.
• Paternoster Investigations (retail $20): The sourcebook of Victorian-era adventures and Paternoster Gang campaigns.

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $29.95 to start, also get our entire Bonus Collection with four more titles worth an additional $72:

• Gamemaster's Companion (retail $20): A TARDIS-full of guidance for running Doctor Who RPG adventures, along with three complete scenarios.
• The campaign sourcebooks The Black Archive (retail $14), about UNIT, and The Silurian Age (retail $20), about dinosaurs in spaceships.
• All of Time and Space Volume 1 (retail $18): A collection of four complete adventures -- Ghost Engines, Northern Knights, Schrodinger's Expedition, and Tomb of Cleopatra.

The offer also includes a 30% discount on purchases of Doctor Who RPG print products at the Cubicle 7 webstore.

This is very pretty, with tons of illos from Capaldi-era and earlier iterations of Doctor Who, and the system looks very playable. It reminds me a bit of Time Lord, the only Doctor Who system I actually wrote for, which gave similar priority to role playing over combat etc., and has fun skills and traits like "Resourceful Pockets" (produce any item from your pockets as needed) and "Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow," pulling scientific rabbits out of your hat. I think that I can safely recommend it. But as usual I need to point out that I'm not paying for it, if you do your mileage may differ.

Gacked from nelc - What the Doctor Who titles would be like as performed by Tangerine Dream. Interesting...

So Dr Who did their take on VICTORIANS IN SPAAAAAACE! and on the whole it worked pretty well. Some obvious questions about the back story of the two senior British officers went unanswered, but I suppose you can explain it as records getting lost or assuming a new identity.

And next week they're doing The Eagle of the Ninth, with added tentacles...

...was great fun, with a nice creepy plot and good resolution, and the new companion Bill really worked well. I just hope that they can keep things this good.

Several years ago I promised selenak that I would write a Beatles story. It took a lot longer than I expected. This is a crossover between Doctor Who, Torchwood and the film Help! (1965), in which the Beatles played a fictionalised version of themselves. While the Beatles (and some other real people) appear in this story, it is the fictionalised versions that are portrayed in this story, not the real people. Major spoilers for Help! if it’s actually possible to spoil a 50+ year old film, and a lot of plot derailing.

 

All characters belong to the Beatles etc., not to me, and there is no intent to infringe on their copyright or deprive them of income. Many thanks to Selenak for help with some of the details - I hope you think it's been worth the wait.

In Torchwood / Doctor Who terms this is VERY wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, and thinking too much about the continuity will just give you a headache…

Comments please before I post to archives
 

( 10000 words! )

 

Does this sound like plausible Torchwood equipment circa the 1960s?

[Jack] quickly flashed the Torchwood version of psychic paper, a warrant card printed with a subliminal fractal pattern that triggered obedience and short term memory fuzziness. He took care to cover it before anyone had an epileptic fit.