TV is the New Reading

‘Torchwood’ worth a look

I’ll go into more detail later, after you’ve picked your jaws back up off the floor. After you’ve tuned in to watch “Torchwood” on BBC America, Saturday at 8 p.m.

Viewers of a recent installment of “Doctor Who” on SciFi will recognize a familiar face: 52nd century alien hunter Capt. Jack, in charge of the Cardiff offices of Torchwood.

“Torchwood” is a spinoff of “Doctor Who” — careful readers might have already noticed that the names are anagrams of one another. Whereas “Doctor Who” follows the adventures of a gadfly time-traveler through time and space, “Torchwood” is more like a British version of “The X-Files” where everyone’s in on it — that is, alien technology is real and being used and demonstrated within 5 minutes of the title sequence. And aliens are all over the place — largely because in the world of the show, Cardiff exists on a rift in time and space, where it’s unstable enough that aliens just show up on their own, sometimes without even meaning to. And some of them are harmless, but perhaps not surprisingly, those aren’t the ones that make the best stories, so they mostly skip those and focus on the more interesting encounters.

Viewers are advised that the show explores unexpectedly strong sexual storylines. It’s not especially graphic, but because of the nature of the cases and the agents involved, it’s all but unavoidable and occasionally a little, well, racy.

Taking all this under advisement, if you’re a fan of science fiction and you do get BBC America, it’s worth a look. Enjoy!

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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