Doctor Who fans will already know what is about to hit the screens of our televisions. A breakaway from Dr Who, is making its about is making its entrance.

Clearly, the Director: Russel T Davies, has high hopes in the American and Australia audiences. He is the same Director as Dr Who, and the original Queer As Folk series.

Channel 10 has bought Torchwood, so it's out of the domain of the ABC. How are the Australian audience and advertisers going to react?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/17/torch.shtml

Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barryman was introduced in the Doctor Who series: Episode "the Hollow Child".

The character can only be described as "omnisexual". That is, Captain Jack is likely to have sex with anyone, any life form or anything. Viewers have seen some of the naughtiness in Dr Who after Jack pinches admirals on the bottom: they smile back, kisses the women, then kisses the men and connotated bondage with "the Slevene": Blond Fel Foch.

There is more innuendo, more kisses, more sex, and many lesbian scenes: all in a sci-fi unit founded by Queen Victoria to defend the world from aliens.

There was no outrage in the UK and US.

Here are some examples of Torchwood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2XLIB9Spvo

The "two Jack's" dancing show more "narcism" than homosexual interest. They are the same person in a different dimensions. This gets more complex as narcisist behaviour or dyfunction turns to heroics.

Dead Ringers Parodies of Torchwood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlboOGbM94c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJuJBKbexl0&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAgkLarbag&mode=related&search=

The British tabloid will be keen to see Australia's resonse to what could be a cultural trap. If Australia over-reacts, will we be branded a redneck biggoted country again? Such a label is bad for tourism, enough for the Peter Beattie to force Townsville into showing Brokeback Mountain: the only place in the world that had a problem with it.

Will the Australian conservatives take the bait without considering these interesting heros?

Correction in grammar, please ignore the second "is making" in the second sentence. My apologies.

OK so some of you are wondering what this space cadet is ranting on about and why.

I admit it, I'm depressed about politics.

All political parties depress me at present including the Greens. They are proving to be all fakes.

I look to our famous quotes:

'Politics' is made up of two words. 'Poli,' which is Greek for 'many,' and 'tics,' which are bloodsucking insects." (Gore Vidal)

No wonder I feel like I've been sucked by a vampire after a political meeting. William Burroughs warns about feeling like you have lost a quart of plasma:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgLcv1mQZBg

"If you've been exposed to someone's presence and you feel like you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence, you need it like you need Misses anemia, we like to hear the word vampire around here, trying to improve our public image. Now some of you sign the Devil's bargain to get that far. Any old soul is worth saving at least to a priest; not every soul is worth buying".

Now when you come to this disappointment, you can go into denial and walk away, hit the bottle, do drugs, open the bible, or go further into sci-fi. I do the latter in times of depression. I think sci-fi is mostly innocent as it opens our imaginations to all kinds of possibilities and hypotheticals.

"I suspect one of the reasons that fantasy and science fiction appeal so much to younger readers is that, when the space and time have been altered to allow characters to travel easily anywhere through the continuum and thus escape physical dangers and timepiece inevitabilities, mortality is so seldom an issue." (Thomas Pynchon)

http://www.quotationreference.com/quotefinder.php?strt=1&subj=Science+Fiction&bys=1&subind=1&lr=S

You know perfectly well, Saintfletcher that Australia is still as Patrick White described it… the Great Australian Emptiness in which the mind is the least of possessions, where young people stare at the world through blind blue eyes, and the march of material ugliness does not raise a quiver from the average nerves; where the exaltation of the average robotic suburban drone-males, anchored to their lawn-mowers, sends waves of panic through thinking men’s hearts.
Of course Australia is not ready for anything confronting, anything that might challenge their blinkered view of the world. In 1967 when Britain was repealing laws against homosexuality, Australians had only just accepted that their indigenous people existed and were human! They refused to accept same-sex-oriented people were human until the late 1980’s and the country remains the most repressive in the so-called ‘western world’.
Australia is a land steeped in conformist mediocrity, religious bigotry, callous disregard for others, and fear of difference.
Torchwood will be reviled by some and misunderstood by everyone else.
I love the comments about politics -- so sadly true.

I've seen a couple of episodes of Torchwood and think it's great fun.
I can't see audiences batting an eyelid.

Thanx for responding. Guess some will make some interesting reviews after they see it. Maybe Australia will like it as much as the UK does. Who knows?