Torchwood Institute

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For the television show, see Torchwood

The Torchwood Institute (or "Torchwood" for short) was an organisation founded in 1879 (TW: The New World) to protect the British Empire (later Great Britain) from extraterrestrial threat and to capture the Doctor (whom Queen Victoria regarded as such in his tenth incarnation and to secure alien technology for Britain. (DW: Tooth and Claw, Army of Ghosts)

It had branches across the Empire. (TW: Everything Changes, BBCR: Golden Age) Before 2007, the leading branch was Torchwood One in London. (DW: Army of Ghosts) After the Battle of Canary Wharf, leadership moved to Torchwood Three in Cardiff, which already had a more ecumenical agenda of protecting the world since Captain Jack Harkness had taken over in 2000. (DW: Doomsday, The Sound of Drums, TW: Everything Changes, Fragments)

Torchwood ceased to exist between 2010 and 2011, before reasserting itself in the wake of Miracle Day with surviving members of Torchwood Three rejoining. (TW: Children of Earth: Day Five, Dead of Night)

Overview

While Queen Victoria was grateful for the Tenth Doctor and Rose's assistance in defeating the werewolf, the incident also made her aware of otherworldly threats to the British Empire, and thus ordered that Torchwood be established in order to defend against them -- specifically from the Doctor. Seeing his power and knowledge, the Queen was wary of any possible threat he could cause to the Empire. The name of the Institute was drawn from the Torchwood Estate, where most of the adventure took place. (DW: Tooth and Claw)

Over time, the Institute accumulated much alien technology, reverse-engineering it and applying it to secret military projects within the British Army. Within Torchwood an unofficial slogan evolved: "If it's alien, it's ours." At least under Yvonne Hartman one of the objectives of Torchwood was to at some point re-establish the British Empire.

Hiding out in the open in the Canary Wharf area was Torchwood Tower, built to more readily access a weak point in spacetime. The Torchwood Tower was itself only part of a much larger plan involving free energy (DW: Army of Ghosts) that backfired horribly and resulted in the deaths of many. (DW: Doomsday) This cell of the Institute was abandoned afterwards. (WEB: Torchwood website)

Torchwood operated in cells, London being Torchwood One, and Cardiff being the home to Torchwood Three, the maverick organisation led by Capt. Jack Harkness. At least two other Torchwood cells were known: Torchwood Two, based in Glasgow, Scotland, and a Torchwood Four, the nature of which was unknown except that it had some how gotten "lost" (TW: Everything Changes). Torchwood India was based in India and led by the Duchess of Melrose, which was disbanded in 1924, but later continued until 2009. (BBCR: Golden Age)

Captain Jack declared the organisation "outside the government and beyond the police". (TW: Everything Changes) Indeed, it was different to most British institutions in that it was created by royal decree and was funded directly by the Crown. (TW: Children of Earth: Day One) The royal hold over Torchwood was later demonstrated when HM Queen Elizabeth II closed down Torchwood One following the Battle of Canary Wharf (WEB: torchwood.org.uk).

However, it was explicitly not "above" the government. HM Queen Victoria ordered:

Torchwood is also to administer to the Government thereof in our name, and generally to act in our name and on our behalf, subject to such orders and regulations as Torchwood shall, from time to time, receive from us through one of our Principal Secretaries of state.The Torchwood Charter, 31st December 1879 (TW: Children of Earth: Day One)

Despite Jack's occasional tendency to stress Torchwood's independence, Torchwood Three, at least, often complied with the spirit of the Charter. He often referred to the British cabinet and to UNIT in both an advisory and operational capacity. (TW: Everything Changes, Children of Earth: Day One, and others) On at least one occasion an active member of UNIT, Martha Jones, was even assigned to work with Torchwood Three for a time, (TW: Reset, Dead Man Walking, A Day in the Death) though this may have been due to the friendly relations between Martha Jones and the head of Torchwood Three, Captain Jack Harkness. (DW: Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords)

The amount of knowledge the general public had regarding Torchwood seemed to vary depending upon the situation. By the 1950s, at least, it was known by police authorities (DW: The Idiot's Lantern); by the late 2000s, the name at least was known by the general public (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), to the extent where it could be cited with some authority in much the same way terms like FBI or Homeland Security (or UNIT) could also be cited (TW: Dead Man Walking), and people were even aware of the general location of the Torchwood Three headquarters by Cardiff Bay (TW: Children of Earth: Day One). By the early 2010s, Torchwood was known enough to have the Battle of Canary Wharf become known as the Battle of Torchwood. (DW: Fear Her) By the year 200,000, the Torchwood Institute had become the stuff of trivia questions. (DW: Bad Wolf)

History

19th century

Torchwood's origins date back to an incident involving the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Queen Victoria in the mid-19th century. At Torchwood House in Scotland, a monastic group called the brethren stored a Werewolf, which menanced the countryside, and the Queen. Ultimately, and with the monarch's assistance, the Doctor and Rose killed the werewolf. Victoria knighted the Doctor and Rose for their service, but then banished them from the kingdom, declaring the Doctor in particular a danger to the Empire. Now made aware of the reality of alien/supernatural life forms, Victoria ordered that an organization be created to protect the British Empire from both the Doctor and threats such as the werewolf. Victoria named the organization the Torchwood Institute, after the location of the werewolf encounter. (DW: Tooth and Claw). She issued a royal decree establishing the Institute on 31st December, 1879. (TW: Children of Earth)

In 1889, agents Eliza Cooper and Robert Lewis attempted to capture the the Tenth Doctor when they realised he had been stranded in London. They came across H. G. Wells with the Doctor, and interrogated him about all he knew about the man. Wells leads them to the TARDIS, which disappears, apparently leaving the Doctor behind for them to apprehend. (IDW: The Time Machination) The man was however revealed not to be the Doctor when he was dissected. (IDW: Final Sacrifice)

After discovering a spacetime Rift in Cardiff, Queen Victoria founded a third branch of Torchwood (after the first and second in London and Scotland), Torchwood Three. (WEB: torchwood.org.uk) In 1899 Cardiff Jack Harkness was recruited by two of this branch's operatives, Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd to become a freelance agent for the Institute. His first mission was to apprehend an intelligent blowfish alien; he succeeded, but was greatly disturbed when Guppy summarily executed the creature before his eyes. He continued to work for Torchwood largely against his will, having been informed by a fortune-telling tarot card reader that he would have to wait more than a century before seeing the Doctor again, during which time he needed money to live. He continued to work for the organization over the decades that followed, although he remained disturbed by the Institute's callous disregard for alien life forms. (TW: Fragments) At some point, Victoria also established Torchwood India to collect all things alien in the British Raj. (BBCR: Golden Age)

20th century

In 1901, Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell dug up a future version of Jack Harkness that had been taken from the 21st century and buried in 27 AD Cardiff. He told them to freeze him in the cryo-chambers so he could defeat his brother Gray. Subsequently, Jack's future self resided in the cryo-chambers even as his younger self continued to work nearby. Guppy reportedly died sometime thereafter (WEB: torchwood.org.uk).

In 1906 Eliza Cooper and Robert Lewis used a machine they commissioned Professor Alexander Hugh to build to travel to another planet thousands of years into the future. Neither Cooper nor Lewis returned; the former remained on the planet while the latter was killed. Professor Hugh was returned home by the Tenth Doctor. (IDW: Final Sacrifice)

In 1918, Torchwood Three investigated ghost sightings in a hospital in Cardiff. As present and future blended, they caught glimpses of 2009. At this time they had a team of 5, the leader being a man called Gerald Carter and, based on a photo, were very possibly already based out of the Hub. They already had equipment capable of detecting disturbances in Time. (TW: To the Last Man)

Circa 1919, Harriet Derbyshire, one of the investigators of the hospital sightings and in only her mid-twenties, died in action. (TW: To the Last Man)

Harkness continued to work as an operative throughout the 20th century, For reasons unknown, he was put in charge of a group of soldiers in 1909 (TW: Small Worlds), and in the 1920s worked undercover with a travelling circus in pursuit of the Night Travellers (TW: From Out of the Rain), though it would appear the latter mission was unsuccessful as he never found them until 80 years later.

In 1923, thanks to a Professor Livesy-Smythe, Torchwood found evidence that an alien race called the Pyroviles invaded Earth at Pompeii in 79 AD. (WC: Captain Jack's Monster Files, referencing DW: The Fires of Pompeii)

In 1924, Torchwood sent Jack Harkness to India to close down the branch there before the fall of the Raj (BBCR: Golden Age).

"The Boss" ran the overall Torchwood in the mid-20th century. (WEB: Torchwood website)

By 1953 the London branch was influential enough that London Police feared its involvement when investigating the strange occurrences provoked by the activities of an alien entity known as The Wire (DW: The Idiot's Lantern)

In 1965 the government asked five highly ranked officers, including Jack Harkness, to give twelve children to the 456 as a gift. It was decided that the children would be taken from a Scottish orphanage as they wouldn't be missed. Despite eleven children being taken, Clement MacDonald managed to escape. (TW: Children of Earth: Day Three)

Circa 1984, Torchwood bought H.C. Clements. (DW: The Runaway Bride)

Circa 1996, Torchwood recovered a Jathaa sunglider and reverse-engineered weaponry from it. (DW: Army of Ghosts)

At the end of 1999, Harkness became the leader of Torchwood Three when one of its members, Alex Hopkins, killed the rest of the team and himself after being driven insane by an alien artefact that revealed the events of the coming years. (TW: Fragments)

21st century

Over the next few years, Harkness rebuilt the Torchwood Three team, recruiting Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper. Disapproving of the ethics of Torchwood One, Harkness told Sato of his intent to reform the organization to be more benevolent. (TW: Fragments) Sato was also sent to London to investigate the alien lifeform recovered from a crashed spacecraft. (DW: Aliens of London)

On Christmas 2006, the alien Sycorax attempted an invasion of Earth by blood control and a ship built out of an asteroid which hovered over London. (DW: The Christmas Invasion) Torchwood was preparing a weapon for just such a contingency, based on alien technology that they had scavenged from a Jathaa sun glider. At the same time, in Torchwood Tower, the Institute examined the Void Ship (though they did not call it by that name), to them an obviously alien artefact which they struggled to understand. Meanwhile, it was discovered that tapping into the resonance around it could provide massive amounts of what they believed was free energy. A side-effect of these experiments was the appearance of millions of "ghosts" all over the world; humanoid figures that seemed to glow with an unearthly light. (DW: Army of Ghosts)

It was at this point that the Tenth Doctor became involved, and explained to the then-administrator Yvonne Hartman that their experiments were in fact weakening the barrier between dimensions, which would eventually lead to dramatic problems in their own world, perhaps even resulting in the collapse of their dimension altogether. His warnings were not heeded, and the experiments continued. As a result, a massive invasion force from another dimension came through the 'hole', allowing the Earth to be conquered by the Cybermen for approximately an hour.

At the same time, the Void Ship opened, revealing a hidden cadre of Daleks. Four Daleks, members of the secret Cult of Skaro, had come to Earth to help restore the Dalek race using a stolen piece of Time Lord technology called the Genesis Ark. They promptly killed a Torchwood technician while stealing his knowledge of current events, and seeing the Cybermen as an impediment to their own return, they began a war against them, despite an offer from the Cyber-Leader to form an alliance.

The 'hole' in space time created by the Void Ship also allowed a resistance army from another dimension to cross over, initially with the intention of stopping the Cybermen. However with the advance of the Cybermen and Daleks, a rather sudden and uneasy truce began, with Torchwood militia men and the Preachers fighting together against the Daleks and Cybermen. This turned the Torchwood Tower into a battleground, and the fighting did not stop until the Doctor found a way to intervene, reversing Torchwood's power machinery and sending the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void. Rose Tyler was recruited by the version of Torchwood that existed on the parallel Earth nicknamed Pete's World, having been trapped there after the reversal sealed the gap between Normal Space and Pete's World. (DW: Army of Ghosts / Doomsday)

With the vast majority of the Torchwood administration stationed in London and thus killed or 'upgraded' by the Cybermen, the organization was severely weakened. Jack Harkness worked to reform the remainder of Torchwood into a more humane organization, recruiting Canary Wharf survivor Ianto Jones and other members (including, ultimately, Gwen Cooper). (TW: Everything Changes,DW: The Sound of Drums)

In 2008 a major event occurred with the opening of the Cardiff rift, resulting in massive temporal displacements and the release of the demon Abaddon. (TW: End of Days) Shortly thereafter team leader Captain Jack Harkness mysteriously disappeared. (DW: Utopia) Subsequently, The Master under the guise of Harold Saxon, sent the crew of Torchwood three on a wild goose chase in the Himalayas in order to look for him. Actually, the Master just wanted them out of the way. (DW: The Sound of Drums)

After a few months had passed for Torchwood Three (and about a year for Jack, who had lived through the Year That Never Was, Jack returned to Torchwood Three. Although Gwen Cooper had taken charge during his absence, Jack resumed command upon his return. (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) Some months later, the Torchwood Three team was depleted by the deaths of two members (TW: Exit Wounds) and the survivors later became involved in assisting the Tenth Doctor restore the Earth to its original location after it was forceably moved by the Daleks to the Medusa Cascade. (DW: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)

Perhaps due to their frequent influence during alien invasion, by the late 2000s, Torchwood was beginning to be known by the public at large, although more by name and reputation than by their actual purpose. (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang).

In 2009, the Institute was left in disarray thanks to an intentional effort by the British Prime Minister Brian Green to destroy Torchwood in order to prevent the revelation of previous dealings between the UK and the alien race known as The 456, in which Harkness was involved. The Cardiff Hub was destroyed by a paramilitary unit headed by Agent Johnson, and attempts were made on the lives of the surviving members of Torchwood Three (TW: Children of Earth: Day One and Day Two). The fate of Torchwood Two is unclear, but files held by the British government assumed it had been disbanded.

After the defeat of The 456, Torchwood was left with only two active operatives: Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, the latter being pregnant. Torchwood's activities immediately following the incident are unknown, but six months later Harkness, having spent an unknown amount of time travelling the world on his own, made the decision to leave Earth, leaving Cooper -- now heavily pregnant -- as the last known Torchwood operative. It was at this point that the Institute disbanded (TW: The New World)

Jack returned to Earth when the word "Torchwood" was emailed all around the world, coinciding with the start of the Miracle Day phenomenon. He used malware to expunge evidence of Torchwood from the Internet, and went to the CIA hard copy records to clear the last of the information. In Wales, Rex Matheson of the CIA extradited Jack and Gwen to the United States. (TW: The New World) However, as it turned out that the CIA decided to hunt down everyone with knowledge of Torchwood, including Rex himself and his colleague Esther Drummond, (TW: Rendition) Rex and Esther had no choice but to become members of the new Torchwood team. The new team was initially based in Washington, D.C., (TW: Dead of Night) but later moved west to Venice Beach in Los Angeles. (TW: Escape to LA)

By 2012, the name (if not necessarily the function) of Torchwood was widely known by the public, to the extent that the Battle of Canary Wharf had come to be known as the "Battle of Torchwood". (DW: Fear Her)

It would appear that Torchwood reformed or was reestablished at some point, because by the 2080s, Torchwood Three was capable of controlling the Rift. (BBCR: Asylum)

Post-21st century

The Institute still existed, as the Torchwood Archive, in the 42nd century. (DW: The Satan Pit)

The Great Cobalt Pyramid was built on the ruins of Torchwood (although it's unclear which branch this refers to). (DW: Bad Wolf) In the same period (the year 200,100), Big Brother contestant Strood lists his home as "Torchwood", implying it to have grown into a sovereign state.

Unknown Date

Torchwood Branches

The Torchwood Institute was known to have four denominations across Britain and international one branch. In 2007, Torchwood One was lost. By 2009, Two and Three and had also ceased operations. Torchwood Four ceased operations, by virtue of disappearance, at an earlier point in time. From 2011, the Institute's two surviving Torchwood agents simply represented "Torchwood". As fugitives, or self-styled "freedom fighters", the name Torchwood was simply a word which connected its team members (TW: The Categories of Life).

  • Torchwood One, headquartered Canary Wharf, destroyed during the battle with the Cybermen, and consequently abandoned. Last director was Yvonne Hartman. Had properties and bases across London.
  • Torchwood Four, lost, but, in the words of Captain Jack Harkness, "we'll find it someday".
  • Torchwood India, operating in Delhi to collect all artefacts in the Raj. Closed in 1924 by Captain Jack Harkness, though the facility, and some of its members, continued to survive, unageing due to an alien artefact, until 2009. (TWA: Golden Age)

Torchwood One also had a base under the Thames Barrier and owns the security firm "H.C. Clements" used to recreate Huon particles. (DW: The Runaway Bride)
The parallel Earth, Pete's World, also had a version of Torchwood. (DW: Doomsday).

Known Staff

File:Yvonne1.jpg
Yvonne Hartman

Torchwood One - (Closed c.2006)

Torchwood Two - (Closed c.2006-2009)

  • Archie (unknown; possibly deceased c.2006-2009)

Torchwood Three - (Closed 2009)

Surviving staff of Torchwood Three would later represent just "Torchwood", no numerical designation.

  • Captain Jack Harkness (leader of Torchwood; de facto leader of the Torchwood Institute following the Battle of Canary Wharf, hired circa 1899; effectively resigned circa 2010)
  • Gwen Cooper, (liaison with regular police, temporary leader during Jack's absence, hired in 2007)
  • Greg Bishop (active, vanished circa 1941; returned, died circa 2009)
  • Several unidentified members of Torchwood Three were killed by Hopkins on 31st December 1999.
  • Suzie Costello (weapons specialist, second-in-command prior to death, deceased circa 2007, though later temporarily revived.)
  • Toshiko Sato, (computer specialist, reverse engineering of alien artefacts; hired circa 2004, deceased circa 2009)
  • Ianto Jones, (administrator and general support, moved from Torchwood One, hired circa 2007, deceased circa 2009)

Torchwood India (Closed 1924, Destroyed 2009)

  • Mr Das (butler; frozen in time 2009)

New Torchwood team

After the destruction of Torchwood Three and the events of Miracle Day, the surviving Torchwood staff were joined by two CIA agents that were being hunted down by the CIA because of their knowledge of Torchwood in a new Torchwood team. They are later joined by a surgeon who had been a part of the US government's medical panels.

Parallel Torchwood on Pete's World

Other individuals are known to have used the parallel Torchwood's facilities, including Pete Tyler and Mickey Smith, but Rose and Stevie are the only confirmed Torchwood members.

Behind the scenes

  • 'Torchwood' was a code name for the new series of Doctor Who when it was in production, partly to keep it secret, partly to keep people from absconding with tapes of it before it was produced. The word 'Torchwood' itself is an anagram of 'Doctor Who'.
  • Torchwood is also the name of a spin-off series from the BBC set in the Doctor Who universe.

See also

External links

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