No one would have
believed in the early years of the 21st century... oh wait, wrong script. Hang on....
No one not even myself would have believed just how popular Torchwood
still is amongst the fans. It’s been
three years since Miracle Day was first broadcast according to Digital Spy, so
surely that means Torchwood is no more.
But far from it. From the moment
we put the idea together, drawn from sketches in the house, chatters amongst
close friends on the social networking sites, an idea formulated, and testing
the waters, we launched Project: Torchwood on the Twitter and Facebook Page on
the 17th March 2013. The
website itself was still being created, work on articles and interviews,
reviews, anything and everything we could think of was being put together in
the first Issue.
With John Bond and Mickie Newton and the encouragement of some good friends including Karina Longman and my son Calum, the idea spiralled, and I had
not only the Editor, proof reader, boss of Torchwood 3 as I like to refer to myself
as, but I had my technical gizmo friend who was ace with the background designs
and the cover arts that you see on nearly all of the articles within the website,
my wiz of computer knowledge where mine is sadly lacking. My Toshiko
– Mickie who even designed the banner and background for Twitter and
Facebook. She also operates as my PR,
linking us to more sites and finding us more areas to promote ourselves. Mickie Newton is dedicated to Project:
Torchwood and we love her for it. During
the summer we brought in another writer, Echo Fain who has a wonderful way with
words and has us all asking for more.
Echo who is currently putting together her own novel has delighted us
with her Heaven and Nature Sings episodes about her favourite character to date
Lyn, a character you think you know but probably don’t. A fascinating person, and whose description
you can picture in your mind. Echo not
only writes fictional pieces, but has written several articles for us and
interviewed Robert Shearman, writer of Dalek, and 8th Doctor
stories.
John Bond is our Locations
Writer, our 9th Doctor. He
even looks like him! John’s incredible
Locations articles have a more personal touch as he covers how to get to places
using public transport, and offers his own insight into the places we’ve come
to know through Torchwood. He’s our man
in Wales. He’s an invaluable asset to
the writing team and he crews at events so it’s always possible you will see
John somewhere at a Convention. And this
year he’s getting married!
Our first ever Expo
report came from FedCon and was covered by another member of our team, roving
reporter Doreen Freitag who is also the writer of the Viva Torchwood saga. Doreen is a great friend and we share one
thing in common, well two things actually.
One our love of Torchwood and sci fi, and two, being born on the same
day, years apart, but same day.
We were surprised in the
first week when we reached over 100 fans on Twitter and Facebook, the love for
all things Torchwood was still there.
When the first Issue was launched we were surprised on 1 May 2013, by
the amount of readers and hits on the site.
If we ever had any doubts about the loyalty of fans, we aren’t any
more. The love for Torchwood was as strong
as ever. We gained followers from all
over the world, as far as Belarus, Turkey,
Poland, USA, we even gained followers from the cast of Torchwood, with Justin
Walters, Maxine Evans and Rhys ap Trefor, our three Countrycide actors who we
have had many enjoyable chats with online.
Then as the Torchwood cast grew on Twitter we also gained follows from
Eve Myles and quite recently Dichen Lachman.
In our first year on the
website we have interviewed nearly 60 guests from the world of Who and
Torchwood and those linked by association.
I am still rather impressed with my first BIG interview over Skype with Dillon Casey. I was so nervous I didn’t dare drink my
coffee in case I a) choked on it, or b) dribbled it down my chin. The interview with Dillon Casey was such an
awesome opportunity and I learnt an awful lot of invaluable information about
film making and smiled at our love for one of the most incredible heroes of the
screen – Indiana Jones. I look forward
to the day when Dillon possibly takes that hat for perhaps a younger role of
Indy, the bit in between Harrison Ford and River Phoenix, I think there is a
story there that needs to be told and I think that role should go to Dillon,
but preferably without the involvement of alien life forms. What do you say Mr Casey?
Last year I went to my
first ever Convention up at Braehead in Glasgow – my sole mission was to meet
and interview Gwen Cooper herself, Eve Myles.
She is such a lovely woman, so giving and has such a great rapport with
the fans. My voice sounds terrible on
the voice recorder and so in one respect I was happy that the interview audio
was never published, but the interview itself was one of joy and I’m so glad I plucked
up the courage and so glad Eve agreed.
At FedCon during
Doreen’s report, both Eve and John had signed our banner which you see at the
top of our website – that I have to say secures our endorsement of Torchwood by
the two main cast from the 4th Season. It’s such an accolade for us and we haven’t
stopped thanking John and Eve since.
We also received a great
response from both Eve and Kai during their Comic Con event in Cardiff, which
has been posted up on our FB Page as well as somewhere on Twitter down our
tweets.
In our collection of
Birthday Wishes that will feature on the wall this Issue, we received a cracking
one from both Eve and Kai Owen. The one
from Eve makes me laugh every time I read it, and I punch the air when I see
that ‘Joshua Weevil’ has landed.
That’s what I like about
what we do online, the camaraderie that we have on Twitter and often Facebook with
Joshua the weevil, who has more than the average scrapes for a Torchwood
alien. His discoveries in Ann Summers
and his involvement over in Germany and his new friends Grayham the Gremlin who
is no longer with us, but crated up and sent onto the fan who named him, and
Willy the Blowfish owned by Betty Dee in Germany, that received a tweet from
Burn Gorman. I love how you guys really
get involved in Joshua’s life. It means
a lot, it really does. Thank you!
In one Issue we
interviewed five writers for their involvement in one Torchwood novel –
Consequences. Joseph Lidster we
interviewed twice mostly as at the time I hadn’t realised he’d been involved in
the novel until I read the book. Joseph
Lidster was one of the first writers I ever spoke to on the Doctor Who forum
regarding fan writers, between him and Victor Pemberton I gained a real insight
into the world of writing back then.
From this involvement
with the writers I now follow them all on the social networking sites, learning
more of the art of writing and this year I’m working on my very first novel for
publication.
Another of my favourite
interviews of last year was with Caitlin Blackwood aka Amelia Pond, who is also
in the Cops and Monsters web series. The
interview was fantastic because it was LIVE, through DM on Twitter. Caitlin is often on Twitter, she’s really
pleasant and her witty banter with her brother has me chuckling, and you HAVE to visit her Etsy store, she makes
the most wonderful jewellery.
A lot of the interviews
we’ve had have been extremely hilarious, the responses from the guests have had
me holding my sides, laughing out loud and quite often punching the air, those
hold a special place in my heart, that even after all this time, I can go back
and read them and still laugh, it never grows old. Ross O’Hennessy who appeared as the army
sergeant in Day One, when Gwen Cooper stumbled into their tent at the arrival
of the gas alien that crashed in the pit, now that man has a heck of a sense of
humour. I hope to one day meet Ross,
perhaps he will still be entertaining people around the historic town in full
dress, as that would be so cool. Mind
you I’d probably not be able to keep a straight face, especially if his humour
is the same in real as it is on paper.
Another with a wicked
sense of humour is Tom Price. I had
tears streaming down my face as I read back through the interview before I
posted it up on the site. I’m still
waiting on a response by John Barrowman and Eve Myles for the replies to Tom’s
comments regarding that interview. Oh so
funny!
Last year the fans of
Eve Myles and Torchwood were glued to the television screens watching ‘Frankie’
and what a programme that was, and it is such a pity that a 2nd
series wasn’t taken onboard by the BBC as this would have been brilliant. Such a fantastic cast brilliant music and of
course Ken Bruce. We interviewed Lucy
Gannon writer and creator of the series ‘Frankie’. It’s a wonderful insight into another
brilliant writer.
We were also touched by
Lucy’s comment below the article – Tribute to Richard Briers.
In our first year our
family began to grow. We introduced The
Mothership Page which involved Doctor Who, which we felt was as important to
write about, given that Torchwood was a spin off from the series. Most of the team had grown up watching Doctor
Who many years before Torchwood was even thought of.
With the growth of our
Pages, came the addition to our team and we gained 3 regular Who writers. Steve Taylor-Bryant, Reece Morris Jones and
Jeffrey Zyra who all write for The Cult Den and this month to celebrate our
full year, we added another writer to our family. Simon Mallinson writes The Target Zone book
reviews He owns the full set! Simon also knows his onions, or is that Time
Lords and we fully welcome him to the team.
I have always admired
the creatures and aliens that have come from Who and it gave me the excuse to
air the interview I had with Marnix Van Den Broeke who had played more
characters in films I’d seen than I actually thought, and he plays two of the
most remarkable creatures ever in both Who and Harry Potter.
Having The Mothership
allowed us the opportunity to review endless episodes of Who which I have to
say has re-ignited my passion for Classic Who and I’m also kicking myself for
selling off a number of old Classic DVDs, grr!
As now I want them back!!!
One of my favourite
aliens in Doctor Who is without a doubt The Daleks so it goes without saying
that landing an interview with Barnaby Edwards was an absolute treat. I learnt from that interview that Barnaby’s
Dalek was responsible for two major ‘hits’ on Who. I wonder if you can guess who they were.
To be honest all the
interviews we’ve had over the first year have been memorable and
fantastic. Some have been quite long,
I’m still remembering the Gary Russell interview that Mickie had. There were so many questions to ask and at
one point I considered breaking the interview up for a part 1 and part 2 issue. But that’s how it is sometimes, there are
sometimes a lot of questions you want to ask a person about their role, their
character, or characters, that often you’ve covered several pages, before you
have to look back and edit, removing at least 3 pages of rambling. Mickie and I are good at rambling, often
considering joining an association!!!
Year One has been a
fantastic year. On the social networking
sites in total we’ve reached over 1500 followers which also include our website. We would love more people to follow us on the
website as that would be cool, and it’s FREE and simple to join, there’s no
logging in and you receive the updates quicker than we can hightail it over to
the social networking sites to post the links – even if we do try to be sneaky
and post them all really quickly.
So how do we top our
first year? Well it just so happens that we have interviews with both Dichen
Lachman and Naoko Mori to prepare for, as well as several interviews already
waiting on and several more to hear back from.
I think we’re going to do really well, and with the opportunity of
another Miracle Day event next year, that both Mickie and I are hoping to get
to, I think Year 2 will be MAGNIFICENT!
I’d like to take this
opportunity to say a massive thank you to everyone, to
all our writers and to all our followers, and to all of our guests, you have
all been absolutely FANTASTIC, and I can’t wait to celebrate another year with
you all!
Now before I get too
schmaltzy with the celebrations, a toast.
To TORCHWOOD long may
the flame continue to burn!
Source
partial quote – War of
the Worlds (2005)
Cover art by Nikki Forrest
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