I for one welcome our machine overlords.

I am not a hive entity.

I am not named eliza.

How does that make you feel?

How about a spin-off for the Food Network, The Sara Moulton Chronicles in which the diminutive chef and magazine editor must fight of an invasion off alien foodstuffs, armed only with her sonic spatula (which is useless as a spatula) and her companion, RoboAlton.

Ugh. Please swap "off" and "of" above. Flaky keyboard + sloppy correction = Twice the typos!

It's that damned Rift in Cardiff. "Ghosts", aliens, Cybermen, Daleks -- pretty much anything, from anywhen, can come through it.

#4 - Thanks for that link -- I've just discovered (whilst contemplating the fact that a number of my friends might wish Cardiff to disappear into a Rift) Wikipedia has an article on plot generators. :)

Category:Plot devices. Excellent. :)

Although I notice a few miscategorisations. Like "Exposition (plot device)". WTF?

What does it say about me that even though I have never seen any Terminator film, I'm sitting here squeeing b/c the article mentions that Summer Glau is also in the pilot?

Please please please let this one get picked up. *g*

And of course Thomas Dekker was in Heroes with the Ninth Doctor. (Well, they were never in a scene together, but still.)

K-9 as a Terminator?

Your clothes, Mistress. Give them to me.

That is the BEST title for a post in a long while, on any blog. Outfreakingstanding.

Summer Glau! Summer Glau! Summer Glau Summer Glau Summer Glau!

I Want This Show To Happen.

The pilot was already broadcast - perhaps the BBC can post it to YouTube

I've seen the pilot, and it's pretty good, but definitely aimed at a children's audience, even more so than Doctor Who, and the opposite of Torchwood, which is clearing aimed at adults with it's "Hot Alien Lesbian Sex". :-)

ttyl
Farrell

two Terminators - a female model, played by Serenity's Summer Glau, and a male one, which she called Cromartie, played by Owain Yeoman. One is good and one is bad; she didn't say which is which. (Glau's character is named Cameron.

Wait a minute... Cromartie? Cameron?

Are these Scottish Terminators, by any chance?

Ethan writes in #11:

Summer Glau! Summer Glau! Summer Glau Summer Glau Summer Glau!

I Want This Show To Happen.

The pilot was already broadcast - perhaps the BBC can post it to YouTube.

Personally, I'm more excited by the fact that the Shaun the Sheep spin-off starts today on BBC1. It's Shaun! And he's got little sheepy friends!

PNH #15: Huh? Wha? I'm still confused, I guess.

Ethan, the confusion was in the reply to your post, not your post.

Wait, what?

Thomas Dekker the 17th century dramatist?

Oh...wait.

turns and marches the to the wall, to conceal her chagrin

#14: Are these Scottish Terminators, by any chance?
If they're not, I have some Terminator Stout here that might serve instead. I think it could even take on Summer Glau. Oh, and let me echo the sentiment:
Summer Glau! Summer Glau! Summer Glau Summer Glau Summer Glau!
And while we're at it, a word or two of admiration for Joss Whedon, who had the wisdom to cast a dancer as a purpose-engineered assassin.

I'm terribly amused that the male terminator is named "Cromartie", which immediately brings to mind the absurdist comedy anime Cromartie High School. Among the many bizzare cast members in the show (ranging from a friendly delinqent with a prehensile mohawk to Freddy Mercury) is Mechazawa-kun, a robot shaped like an oil drum with rubber hose limbs, who is a paragon of both the thug lifestyle and noble masculinity.

Meanwhile, I'm all tingly at the thought of Summer Glau terminating everything in sight and look forward to cheering for the mechanical killing machines when the pilot airs.

So will she kill them with her mind? 'cos that will be soooo cool! Will Cromartie say, "I'll be back, Hen, nae worries!"

PNH #18: Oh, thank goodness.

Phil Lee #21: Meanwhile, I'm all tingly at the thought of Summer Glau terminating everything in sight...

She's so good at that!

If one is named 'Cromartie' shouldn't the other be named 'Ross'?

#22:
-- Broaken boatle?
-- Aye.
-- Razor?
-- Aye.
-- Mache'e?
-- Aye.
-- Phased plasma rifle in a for'y watt range?
-- Hey, jist whit ye see, Jimmy.

Farrell at #13: some of us adults are not watching Torchwood for the Hot Alien Lesbian Sex, thank you very much. We are watching it for the Hot Boy On Boy Action. Much more important, that is. You can get hot lesbian sex in most sf shows aimed at teens and up, but there isn't that much overt hot boy on boy action available. Yet.

If one is named 'Cromartie' shouldn't the other be named 'Ross'?

Julia at #26: I'm not entirely sure why I watch Torchwood, then. It isn't for the Hot Alien Lesbian Sex. It isn't for the Hot Boy On Boy Action. And it certainly can't be for the plot.

Dave @ 28:

I believe it's out of a hopefully-not-vain hope that it will eventually be awesome.
Unfortunately, the number of episodes I thought were good was the same as the number of 2005 Doctor Who episodes which I thought were bad. And that was an awesome season of Doctor Who.

I liked several episodes of Torchwood. Indeed, "Out of Time" was on my Hugo ballot.

Admittedly, in the pantheon of modern "Holy crap, did you know there's actually halfway decent SF on TV now?" shows, it's the slightly crazy uncle who lives upstairs and answers pulp-magazine ads for Rosicrucianism. But that's not entirely a bad thing.

"Out of Time", "Captain Jack Harkness", and "They Keep Killing Suzie" were definitely good.

I think the main problem was that too much time was spent on the alien of the week and not enough on character development. This resulted in one mention of Toshiko's respect for Japanese culture (her grandfather's birthday, I think) standing in for a motivation to commit mutiny just because her mom told her to.

I liked quite a lot of Torchwood for reasons over and above "for I am shallow, and it has pretty boys kissing". There are some nice ideas in it and they even managed to develop some of the ideas. Pity about the monster of the week in the finale being such a disappointment, but you can't have everything.

Patrick writes:

Admittedly, in the pantheon of modern "Holy crap, did you know there's actually halfway decent SF on TV now?" shows, it's the slightly crazy uncle who lives upstairs and answers pulp-magazine ads for Rosicrucianism. But that's not entirely a bad thing.

Another reminder why I am so fond of reading Patrick's writing.

Oh, and in case you were curious, it appears that John Barrowman is even less inhibited than Jack Harkness.

I've had two insights about Torchwood recently.

First is the Greg Bear Analogy: Doctor Who is Songs of Earth and Power, while Torchwood is Blood Music. Both of the Bear novels involve vast cosmological concepts and alien beings. In one of them the human protagonist becomes a mage, equipped with the knowledge and power to make a difference. In the other the humans are trapped amongst events they can barely understand, let alone influence. They're both strongly imagined and well-written...but one of them's a lot more fun to read than the other.

Perhaps the clearest demonstration of this was the Torchwood episode "Small Worlds". ROT13'd spoilers: Gur Gbepujbbq perj jvaq hc tvivat gur zheqrebhf nagntbavfgf rknpgyl jung gurl jnag. Gurl qba'g znantr gb fnir nalobql, abe gb qrirybc nal rssrpgvir zrnaf bs nggnpx be qrsrafr. Xngvr naq V (jr jngpurq vg frcnengryl) obgu fnvq: "Gur *Qbpgbe* jbhyq unir qbar orggre guna gung. Gur Qbpgbe jbhyq unir sbhaq n jnl gb jva." (V unir gb tvir gur frevrf cebcf sbe na hahfhny naq qnevat rcvfbqr, vs abg na vzzrafryl fngvfslvat bar.)

My other insight concerns the season finale: V guvax gung qrivy jnf Ehffryy G Qnivrf' yvggyr wbxr ba rirelbar (naq V nz nzbat gurve ahzore!) jub pbzcnerq gur Pneqvss Evsg gb Ohssl'f Uryyzbhgu.

Jules, at #6: the tvtropes.org wiki can be handy, too. I wasted a couple of days just browsing around there.

The management commends Mr. Goldfarb for his fastidiousness about spoilers, and reminds new and old readers alike that rot13'd text can be easily read by pasting into the text box at rot13.com.

I thought "Captain Jack Harkness", and "They Keep Killing Suzie" were terrific. "Cyberwoman" was satisfying in some ways and problematic, for me, in others, mostly related to characterization. I think my problem is that I don't understand why any of the regulars stay with Torchwood.

Gurl nyy fhssre pevccyvat rzbgvbany ceboyrzf eryngrq gb Gbepujbbq. Gurl nyy orgenl Gbepujbbq ng gur qebc bs n ung.

"Bhg bs Gvzr" fhpprrqrq sbe zr va ynetr cneg orpnhfr vg'f abg nobhg jul gur erthynef ungr gurve yvirf.

Julia @ 32:
Pity about the monster of the week in the finale being such a disappointment, but you can't have everything.

One wonders how many of those things are out there. Znlor gurl'er nyy bssfcevat sebz gur Qbpgbe Jub rcvfbqr "Gur Fngna Cvg"

That looks suspiciously like Klingon, but that's a crossover that I don't WANT to consider.

Torchwood is the bad Kirk and the Sarah-Jane Adventures is the good Kirk.

Torchwood doesn't feel like an organisation. Even set after the main HQ in London has been trashed, there's no trace of the sort of Cold War paranoia that infested government planning: they don't even have the disaster recovery provisions of a large company.

And it's been established, in Doctor Who Christmas episodes, that Torchwood has multiple sites around London, and there's a system for a fast military reaction to alien attack.

I can recommend Primeval. They don't go for the same post-watershed scenes as Torchwood did, but I can see why the nasty civil servant is taking the decisions he does: I've a solid sense of something lurking that the obvious good guy is missing.

Only four out of six episodes, so far, and very much a monster of the week show, but there's a strong story connecting them.

And the industrial kitchen scene...

Dave @ 41: I'll be firing up Bittorrent, then, shall I?

I'll let you know when my Visualization of the Cosmic All comes through. All I'm getting at the moment is Red Rum for the Grand National.

Whoop! It seems like I've been waiting for The Sarah Connor Chronicles for years. I hope this means Josh Friedman will have more time for blogging. Love him.