Season-Specific Pages:
- Creator-Driven Successor: PJ Hammond's two episodes, "Small Worlds" and "From Out of the Rain", which feature The Fair Folk and a Carnival of Fear respectively, are quite distinct in atmosphere from the rest of Torchwood, but are strongly reminiscent of his late-70s-early-80s TV horror series Sapphire and Steel.
- Creator's Favorite Episode: "Countrycide" is the cast's favorite episode because they're "sick people" in the words of Eve Myles and the gruesome, horror-film-like content appealed to them.
- Development Hell: A fifth series seems a long way away, despite Miracle Day's cliffhanger ending. Russell T Davies had the absolute intention of continuing production in the US, but his ill partner brought him back to Britain.
- Dolled-Up Installment: Russell T Davies originally conceived this as a standalone series about an alien-fighting team called "Excalibur".
- DVD Bonus Content: Various behind the scene features and John Barrowman singing "Anything Goes"
. - Exiled from Continuity: The Doctor was barred from making an appearance on the grounds that children should not be watching the show at all, and should not be encouraged to do so by a cameo from him. Jack and Martha were allowed to show up, the Doctor's severed hand made an appearance, and one plot featured a major character played by Peter Capaldi, but that's as far as it went. Torchwood: Children of Earth actually provides a particularly heartbreaking Watsonian explanation for the Doctor's absence in these Darker and Edgier storylines, when Gwen tearfully admits to the camera that she thinks the reason the Doctor never shows up at Earth's greatest atrocities is that he's disgusted with the way humans act in these events.
- Fan Community Nickname: Woodies.
- Friendship on the Set: The cast became close friends, with all of them and Russell T Davies attending John Barrowman's wedding.
- Gay Panic: This is why Fox passed on an American version, because Russell T Davies refused to turn Jack (an omnisexual man last seen in a relationship with another man) straight.
- Milestone Celebration
- The 10th anniversary of the series premiere was commemorated in 2016 with Big Finish's The Torchwood Archive, a Continuity Cavalcade special set across the history of the Torchwood Institute featuring the majority of the main cast members of TV and audio.
- The 15th anniversary was celebrated by Big Finish in 2021, which saw the 50th release of their monthly range (was planned to be Absent Friends before it was cancelled, see below).
- Big Finish commemorated the 16th anniversary in 2022 with an episode introducing Nigel Havers as the voice of Torchwood's SUV.
- Production Nickname: The pterodactyl, Myfanwy.
- Proud to Be a Geek: Russell T Davies and the staff, and they deliberately write the show's geeky characters sympathetically because of it.
"What I like about this show is that a lot of the staff, and I include myself, are geeks. So there was no way we would write a geek as an idiot, as anally retentive, as thick."
— Talking about the character "Eugene" in a Behind the Scenes feature for Torchwood S1 E9 "Random Shoes"
- Queer Character, Queer Actor: The homosexual John Barrowman as the omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness.
- Recycled Script: "From Out of the Rain" has conceptual and plot similarities to "Assignment 4" (sometimes known by the unofficial name "The Man Without a Face") from P J Hammond's earlier horror series Sapphire and Steel; both involve sinister people coming out of photos/film.
- Recast as a Regular: Paul Marc Davis played Chiefs before becoming The Trickster.
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In 2021, following John Barrowman's misconduct allegations, the release of audio play Absent Friends, which would've marked the first time the Doctor appeared in this spinoff, was cancelled.
- Running the Asylum: Here's a challenge — find a review that doesn't compare this show to fanfiction.
- Sequel in Another Medium: Since the hiatus of the show in 2011, its story has been continued in a few other mediums, such as "Exodus Code", the Titan Comics run, and most notably the range of audios released by Big Finish.
- Spared by the Cut: Rhys was supposed to be Killed Off for Real in Series 1, but retained him partly because the producers liked Kai Owen as an actor.
- Troubled Production: The first series was made in an extreme rush, leading to several questionable production decisions; Chris Chibnall reportedly hated the infamous Cyberwoman costume, having envisaged something more Body Horror-based, but there was no time to change it and they were stuck with it. A lot of the series was also accidentally shot in interlaced video and had to have a film effect applied in post-production (which was spun as "camera problems", since strictly speaking they shouldn't have been allowed to filmise it).
- Si Spencer, under the pen name Webley Wildfoot, wrote the book Torch, Wood & Peasants: Adventures in British Sci Fi which was a "fictitious" account of the grueling behind the scenes problems of season 1 of "Alien Sex Cops" from a writer's perspective which details (with real names changed, of course) how unorganised everything was. This included rewrite deadlines that changed 3 times in as many days, the discovery that RTD was less involved as showrunner than everyone thought he was, and an impromptu writers room held in Chris Chibnall's garage where Si discovers that Chibnall (who appears to have much more sway over important decisions than anyone suspected) is the only person who doesn't like Spencer's script and has to submit a whole new episode and premise with less than 4 months before shooting begins, and then Spencer suffers the ultimate indignity of not even getting told his new story was rejected before filming began. He also refers to RTD as triumphantly "returning" to the show for season 3 (aka Children of Earth) and implys that it's because he wasn't satisfied with how Chibnall handled the show.
- Unfinished Episode:
- The creators were in talks with ABBA to do a musical episode. The plan never got off the ground.
- A Dalek episode was considered for season one, but was nixed on the grounds it might encourage children to watch.
- "Checkout" by Joseph Lidster, a Jack-Ianto-focused episode pitched as "Die Hard in a supermarket". Set shortly after Ianto was brought back from the dead (as was originally planned, before this storyline shifted to Owen), it would have involved getting a woman named Maggie, the supermarket’s last customer, out alive. The store would have been possessed by a demonic creature from the rift that manifested only late at night and fed off the human lifeforce. Ianto would have been able to save the day due to being already dead.
- "Into the Silence", also by Joseph Lidster, which would have seen Jack being transported to Hell by a malevolent cab driver. It was later reworked by Lidster as the audiobook Into the Shadows.
- "Communion", also by Lidster, which would have involved a Messiah-like figure controlling nightclubbers. The plot shares similarities with Lidster’s 2002 Doctor Who audio drama The Rapture.
- "Children", also by Lidster, which would have seen a Serial Killer targeting former classmates of Gwen’s.
- "Deadline" by Phil Ford, an Owen-centric episode which would have involved his medical background as something in the phones causes a series of deadly suicides across Cardiff. The idea originated from a strange phone call Russell T Davies recalled having where the line suddenly went dead followed by another person’s voice speaking. Ford completed two drafts of the script before being asked to instead work on that year's finale episode for The Sarah Jane Adventures. By the time he returned to work on the episode, plans for series two had changed significantly. The story arc for series two now involved Owen being killed mid-season and returned to life in an undead state (a fate originally intended for Ianto), meaning this story didn't fit Owen’s character anymore. After the collapse of Phil Ford's version of the script, Joseph Lidster was invited to develop the idea as "1471" before it was finally reworked by Ford as the radio play "The Dead Line".
- "Cross My Palm with Silver" by James Moran. This story idea started out as an earlier version of what would become "Sleeper". The character of Beth was originally envisaged as a fake fortune teller who was making her predictions come true with her unknown telekinetic abilities.
- "Unplugged", also by James Moran, a Tosh-centric episode where she has to cope without gadgets or weaponry.
- "Ooze", also by Moran, which would have seen a group of Neo Nazis targeting ethnic minorities with an alien weapon that caused the victims to lose all their bones.
- "The Jinx" by Andrew Cartmel, which involved a curse being placed on Gwen where bad luck befalls the men in her life. It would have featured warring Celtic goddesses who turn out to be aliens and Rhys nearly dying in a washing machine accident. Development stalled due to it conflicting with the death of Ianto/Owen storyline and Gwen and Rhys's wedding in "Something Borrowed". It was then hoped to be part of the third series until it was abandoned in favor of the "Children of Earth" storyline.
- "Diplomatic Mission", also by Andrew Cartmel, which involved a group of aliens attempting to close the rift by destroying Earth.
- "The Rift Preservation Society", also by Cartmel, which involved a group of eco-warriors who see the rift as a natural force that shouldn't be interfered with.
- "Babymother", also by Cartmel, which involved a single mother on a sinister housing estate being controlled by an alien cuckoo that has taken the form of her baby. It was later reworked by Carmel as the short story "The Wrong Hands" which featured as part of the "Consequences" collection.
- "Dominant Lifeform", also by Cartmel, which would have seen the Torchwood SUV being possessed by an alien consciousness.
- "Revenants", also by Lidster, which started out as an earlier version of what would become "A Day in the Death". It would have focused on Ianto coming to terms with his recent death and involved a group of people affected by various near-death experiences being targeted by an "angel of death".
- "SkyPoint", also by Phil Ford, which would have seen an alien creature living in an apartment block where other residents are going missing. It was later reworked by Ford as the novel of the same name.
- What Could Have Been:
- Suzie Costello was supposed to make more appearances, but scheduling conflicts with Indira Varma changed that.
- When writing the initial outline of Series 2, Russell T Davies's original intention was that Ianto would die and be resurrected instead of Owen. This was reportedly changed because Owen's characterisation up to that point had given him more of a zest for life (as The Hedonist who Really Gets Around), and it was decided that having to endure the physical challenges of being a partially-resurrected corpse would therefore make a more interesting contrast for Owen than for the more moderate Ianto.
- Word of Gay: Word of God has it that Gwen Cooper is just as bisexual as the rest of Torchwood, but apart from a mind-controlled makeout session with an alien, it's never come up.
