The second season of Torchwood got away from that whole obsessed with shagging everything in sight feel that the first season of Torchwood had. But they replaced it with a heavy dose of downers, death, and despair. A few spoilers to follow.
Our pansexual hero Captain Jack still spends a lot of quality time with Ianto and it was hinted at in an episode which guest starred Martha Jones that he had sexual relations with most of his motley crew. He spent a lot of his time on Dr Who lusting after the Doctor, and everyone else he saw. But these were small bits of the story-mostly Captain Jack and company had real problems to deal with.
There is a lot of death in Season Two of Torchwood, in the finial episode even Cardiff is bombed to bits. There are a couple of stories where the heroes don’t succeed in saving the day and people die left and right-or are left to suffer forever. Our heroes are always on the verge of death-Owen actually dies and becomes a zombie near the start of the season. The next to last episode had a pretty good little bit of back story on how these people all ended up at Torchwood and why they stay.
Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will like seeing James ‘Spike’ Marsters as a semi-evil Time Cop who is madly in love with Captain Jack, though he does kill Jack a number of times. Torchwood Season Two was pretty grim there at the end. But there were some lighter moments, like Gwen getting married, and well, hmm, that seems to be it. Of course, even the wedding was crashed by a killer alien so it wasn’t all that light.
I like Torchwood and hope it will be hack for a third season-though I wonder about the cast. With the death of a couple of the main characters, new people will be needed to replace them. The Rogue Time Cop is still wandering around and of course, The Rift is always doing all kinds of nasty things. All in all, it always did seem kind of a big job for five people, even if one of them is the immortal Captain Jack Harkness.
