Cardiff (Welsh: Caerdydd (TV: Boom Town)), originally known as St James, was the capital and largest city of Wales. A spacetime rift was located near Roald Dahl Plass and Torchwood Three were located there, also near the Plass.
History
Founding of the city
In 27 AD, the city of Cardiff was founded. Jack Harkness, the leader of Torchwood Three, had travelled back to that time period at the insistence of his brother Gray. Gray and his unwilling accomplice John Hart buried him. The immortal Jack remained underground until 1901. (TV: Exit Wounds)
St James
In the 15th century, Cardiff was a small parish called St James. Some of the earliest depictions of the Grim Reaper originated from this small community, especially from wood carvings dating back to 1479, when Duroc walked the Earth.
When the townspeople heard about the Black Death, they built a large wall around their land. Sadly, this did not save the life of a little girl named Faith. According to legend, the town's priest brought her back to life using a gauntlet, but Faith brought Duroc with her. The entity needed to kill 13 people in order to gain a permanent hold on the Earth, but Faith managed to stop it at 12. (TV: Dead Man Walking)
19th century
Over the 19th century, St James expanded into a city. At some point, it was renamed Cardiff. (TV: Greeks Bearing Gifts, Dead Man Walking)
On Christmas Eve, 1869, Charles Dickens' reading of A Christmas Carol in the Taliesin Lodge was interrupted by a Gelth possessing the deceased Mrs Peace. Later that evening, Gwyneth made a bridge through the Rift to allow the Gelth to come through and take over human corpses. Rather than inhabiting a few bodies, the Gelth, numbering in the billions, wished to wipe out all of humanity. Gwyneth lit the gas-filled crypt with a match, trapping the Gelth. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)
When escaping from 200100 Satellite Five to search for the Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness landed in 1869 using his Vortex Manipulator, which subsequently broke. (TV: Utopia) Torchwood Cardiff, a branch of the Torchwood Institute later called Torchwood Three, was established here, with Jack joining around the turn of the 20th century. (TV: Fragments)
20th century
Torchwood Cardiff continued to exist. In 1901, the Jack Harkness that was buried in 27 A.D. was discovered by his associates. As a past version of Jack was already working for Torchwood, he demanded to be put inside a cryo-chamber for the next century to avoid crossing his own timestream. (TV: Exit Wounds)
In 1904, the Palisades Theatre was opened. (TV: From Out of the Rain)
During World War II, refugees from the Blitz in London travelled through here, changing trains at Cardiff Station. (TV: Ghost Machine)
21st century
2000s
On 5 March 2005, Cardiff city center was briefly "brought to its knees" during the Auton invasion of Earth (AUDIO: One Rule) which was brought about by the Nestene Consciousness animating plastic using the London Eye as a transmitter before it was defeated by the Ninth Doctor. (TV: Rose) The Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Roy Llewellyn, was murdered by a local councillor named Barry Jackson at about this time. Jackson, who desired the position of Mayor for himself, both for personal gain and acting on the orders of the Committee, used the invasion, announced to the public as a 'terrorist attack', to cover his act up among the casualties. (AUDIO: One Rule)
Jackson proceeded to use an alien device that controlled an unidentified blue, monstrous creature to murder his rivals for the position of Mayor. Over the three weeks until 26 March 2005, the creature murdered five local councillors in a spate of beheadings on Jackson's orders. Despite the intervention of Yvonne Hartman on that night in attempting to stop the creature, it proceeded to murder Ross Bevan, Julie Jones and finally Helen Evans, leaving Jackson unopposed for the position of Mayor. Hartman had worked out Jackson's plot and confronted him at his apartment, threatening to kill him for murdering innocent people and using alien technology to create scenarios that endangered the country. However, as she needed a spy in an official position to keep an eye on Torchwood Three and the Committee, she decided to let Jackson remain alive on the condition that he work for her. As a result, Jackson became Mayor of Cardiff. (AUDIO: One Rule)
Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, under her guise of Margaret Blaine, was elected as Lord Mayor of Cardiff following her escape from the destruction of 10 Downing Street. She planned to demolish Cardiff Castle and to construct the Blaidd Drwg (English: Bad Wolf) nuclear power station. She planned on using a tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator as a pan-dimensional surfboard to escape the solar system after Earth's destruction. (TV: Boom Town)
Circa September 2006, the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness (who from his timeline had not yet joined Torchwood), travelled to Cardiff to refuel the Doctor's TARDIS and to meet up with Mickey Smith. The group discovered this plot. The rift partially opened, causing an earthquake. (TV: Boom Town) Jack once said to Trine-E and Zu-Zana that he'd bought a pair of jeans from a Top Shop store in Cardiff. (TV: Bad Wolf)
By this time, humans living in Cardiff had started to notice and take advantage of the alien presence on their world. Illicit merchants for alien artefacts traded in the city and profited off them. These included the "Ghost Machine", which had fallen through the Rift. (TV: Ghost Machine) An underground "fight club" where the alien Weevils fought humans also briefly existed. (TV: Combat)
Not knowing exactly how to use it, part of Torchwood Three team used the Rift Manipulator in order to rescue two of their number out of the past. (TV: Captain Jack Harkness) The resulting disturbance caused disruptions in time to occur all over Earth, especially in Cardiff. Then, persuaded by Bilis Manger, Torchwood Three used the Rift Manipulator to repair the damage, but also released Abaddon, a demonic being which killed countless of people throughout the city. (TV: End of Days)
Days later, the Tenth Doctor and Martha stopped in Cardiff to refuel, whereupon Jack Harkness, having just left Torchwood Three, hitched a ride on his ship, (TV: Utopia) returning to Torchwood some time later having changed his mind. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, TV: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)
In 2008, St Teilo's Hospital started being demolished. As a result of this, time shifts between 1918 and 2008 started occurring. Tommy Brockless, with the help of Torchwood Three travelled back in time to "stitch" the shifts and stop 1918 and 2008 from colliding with one another. (TV: To the Last Man) When Owen Harper was brought back to a state of undeath with the resurrection gauntlet, he brought out the return of Duroc at St Helen's Hospital. Duroc was thwarted once again before he could reach 13 victims. (TV: Dead Man Walking)
Later, John Hart, under control from Gray set off explosions in key locations across Cardiff and releases an army of Weevils into the open causing maximum panic and terror. Torchwood Three cleaned this up, preventing the nuclear power station from going into meltdown, but losing Owen and Toshiko Sato in the process. Jack Harkness went back in time to be buried beneath Cardiff before its construction, but was later discovered inside the Torchwood cryo-chamber vaults. (TV: Exit Wounds)
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In 2013, the Eleventh Doctor visited Cardiff with Rory Williams to refuel the TARDIS using the Rift. They were captured by Cybermen. (COMIC: The Doctor and the Nurse)
Geography
Cardiff Bay
Roald Dahl Plass, under which Torchwood Three was situated, was a public plaza located in Cardiff Bay.[source needed]
Splott
Splott was the suburb of Cardiff in which Sean "Bernie" Harris lived. (TV: Ghost Machine)
Gary used Splott as an example of where Eugene Jones could have potentially met the bidder for his Dogon's sixth eye. (TV: Random Shoes)
Skypoint
SkyPoint was a skyscraper being constructed during the 2000s. It was intended to become the tallest building in the city. (PROSE: SkyPoint, AUDIO: The Conspiracy)
Behind the scenes
- Brian Badcoe and Terry Nation were born in Cardiff.
- Doctor Who is largely filmed in Cardiff. All five series of The Sarah Jane Adventures were also filmed there, as well as much of Torchwood.
- According to a file in The Torchwood Archives, which this wiki does not consider a valid source, after Abaddon was killed by Jack's unlimited life force, the deaths Abaddon caused were negated from the timeline.