The Twilight Streets was the sixth release in the BBC Torchwood Novels series.
Publisher's summary
It's the start of a Cardiff autumn - the days are getting shorter, the dark evenings settling in. There's a part of Cardiff that no one goes to much. No crime, no murders, just they stay away. A collection of old rundown houses and gloomy streets. Something's not quite right there, something is off-kilter. Except now, the Council are renovating the area. And a new company have been employed to do this. And look: they're going to organise street parties to show off the gentrified area. Clown and face-painters for the kids, street magicians for the adults. None of this is Torchwood's problem. Except that Tosh recognises the man sponsoring the street parties when she's passing one day: Bilis Manger!
Characters
References
- Some past members of the Torchwood team are introduced in this novel, Dr Tilda Brennan, Llinos King, Greg Bishop and Rhydian. Eric Lawson is Torchwood's Head of Logistics in an alternate future.
Notes
- Alan Turing made a Rift Predictor for Torchwood Three called The Bronze Goddess.
- Jack reflects that an ancestor of his must be walking about on Earth right now - then realises he's not actually sure if he's descended from humans.
- Bilis Manger states that Jack's evil is Abaddon's good. This is similar to a statement made by Sutekh in DW: Pyramids of Mars.
Continuity
- The main story takes place between TW: Meat and TW: Reset (Rhys is aware of Torchwood and Owen is alive), although the featured alternate timeline takes place after TW: Reset as Owen is dead and Gwen and Rhys are married.
- The alternate future Rhys and Gwen make reference to his saving her life with the Singularity Scalpel. (TW: Something Borrowed)
- In the alternate timeline, Gwen and Rhys have a son who they name Jack Ianto Geraint Williams, after Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, and Gwen's father Geraint. In the real timeline, they will have a daughter Anwen (TW: The New World).
- Idris Hopper, Margaret Blaine's secretary in DW: Boom Town is a major character in this novel.
- The main story takes place circa August 2008. Idris and Jack's conversation establishes that it has been 22 months since they last met, and that their last meeting was a month after DW: Boom Town. Boom Town took place circa September 2006, being six months after DW: World War Three.
- Toshiko Sato was responsible for The Toaster Incident, (TW: Exit Wounds) plus Tosh and UNIT "...are not mates". (TW: Fragments)
- An explanation is given that during the events of DW: Boom Town, Captain Jack confined the team to the Hub to stop them meeting his past self and contaminating his timeline.
- Rhys Williams and Gwen Cooper are making the final plans for their wedding. (TW: Something Borrowed)
- The phrase Turn Left (DW: Turn Left) is used frequently to describe the events leading to an alternate future.
- Charlie Gaskell's team is stated to have first discovered and used Torchwood's alien cryo-tech in 1906. (This would seem to contradict TW: Fragments in which Jack is frozen in 1901. Furthermore, Tosh states in TW: To the Last Man that Torchwood had been using the technology since "Victorian times" Perhaps Torchwood had rudimentary cryonic technology in the Victorian era, but later upgraded to a more advanced system in 1906.)
- Bilis Manger predicts Owen's death on a couple of occasions, accompanied by a spectral image of the gun that kills him. (TW: Reset)
- Bilis Manger also appears to predict Ianto's death (TW: Children of Earth: Day Four) while also hinting something about him by asking is anyone ever knew who and what he really was.
Timeline
- The Twilight Streets occurs after TW: Something Borrowed (parallel reality)