Connections Doctor Who and Torchwood Connections Issue 14 by Mickie Newton

So here we are, issue 14s connections for these two great shows. When I started creating the list some did surprise me, including last issues spiky ball. So what do we have for you this month? We have an echo of lines, one from ‘End of Days’ and one from ‘Amy’s Choice’ , the teams home and a Toshiko Sato creation!

Echoed Lines - “What is the point of you?”

The deaths of Rhys and Rory (Willams):

Torchwood

Season One, Episode 13

‘End of Days’

After Rhys has been stabbed to death by Bilis Manger, he is taken up to the main area and Owen’s pathology lab.

Gwen asks Jack to bring him back. When he says he can’t she gets angry and says

Gwen Cooper: No, there's something wrong with time so we, we can go back and, to the moment, to the very moment...

Captain Jack Harkness: Gwen!

Gwen Cooper: Well there's got to be, there's got to be something that you can do, otherwise what's the f*****g point of you! You bring him back! You bring him back, do you understand me Jack fucking Harkness?

Captain Jack Harkness: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Doctor Who

Season 31/5, Episode 7

‘Amy’s Choice’

Rory is killed by an ‘alien’ pensioner and after he says his last words turns to dust.

Like Gwen in Torchwood, Amy asks the Doctor to bring him back and her following lines is an echo of Gwen’s, without the swearing she says

Amy Pond: Save him. You save everyone. You always do. That's what you do.

The Doctor: Not always. I'm sorry.

Amy Pond: Then what is the point of you?

The Hub:

Torchwood

The Hub was Torchwood 3s base and appeared for two full seasons in seasons 1 and 2 and was destroyed in season 2s “Children of Earth” by a bomb planted inside Jack’s stomach. It was also where Jack seemed to reside most of the time, when he wasn’t out standing around on very tall buildings. The base is below the Oval Basin in Cardiff’s Bute Docks.

Torchwood Cardiff was originally set up in the Victorian times by Queen Victoria herself who’d commissioned the firm Thomas, Mackintosh & Lushton (Swansea) Ltd to construct it. The Firms Mr Bunting sort to finding land etc and instigating it’s construction along with numerous tunnels around the UK that seemed to connect three out of the four Torchwood bases. 

Though we mostly see only a small part of The Hub, like the TARDIS, there is a lot more to The Hub than just the main area near the base of the Water Tower. The Hub was built on many levels.

Main level was a originally a kind of Torchwood Station platform with various offices. There was also a small morgue with dumb waiters leading down to the large cold storage two levels below the main area.

The next level down had bricked-off tunnels and walkways to possible interrogation rooms.

Below this are the large cold storage areas, a mortuary with large draws that are bigger than the average man. All former dead agents are also kept down here, along with unnamed bodies that are used to cover up deaths caused by the Rift or other alien activity such as deaths caused by weevils.

At the deepest part of Torchwood 3 are the storerooms for various alien artefacts such as spacecrafts, gadgets and weapons. These are all stored and catalogued down here. There are also row upon row of filling cabinets that house all the Torchwood documentation, reports etc that are constantly kept up to date.

You can read more about the Hub if you are able to get your hands on a copy of ‘The Torchwood Archives’ written by Warren Martyn, who went missing around the time Torchwood One was destroyed in the battle of Canary wharf.. There seems to be the odd copy floating about. Though the main copy was grabbed by Torchwood 3 and archived.

There are numerous rooms that hold the archives both of Torchwood paperwork and the flotsam and jetsam that has fallen through the Rift over the years. The vaults, also known as the cells, where prisoners and captured aliens, such as Weevils, are held. There was also once a submarine bay, which is spoken of in the novel ‘Risk Assessment’.

There was also places such as bedrooms, showers, boardrooms, weapons storage, a hothouse, probably a kitchen etc. The tunnels, at one time, did connect to all the other Torchwood bases.

Doctor Who

The Hub, along with Jack, Gwen and Ianto, were featured in the season 30/ 4 episodes “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”

The Hub set was altered for the children’s workshop in the 2008 Christmas Special ‘The Next Doctor’ if you look carefully you can see The Hub hidden under the workshop set, such as the huge drain and tunnels.

After the Hub set was dismantled, at the end of filming ‘Children of Earth in 2009, it was later used for the 11th Doctors new TARDIS interior as they needed a much bigger sound stage than that used for the 10th Doctors TARDIS interior.

Time Lock:

Torchwood

The time lock was created by Toshiko and is a defence mechanism. It seals the Hub in a protective bubble.

Although it worked when a Dalek penetrated the Hub during a Dalek invasion, it was damaged and so was unable to protect the Hub when it was destroyed in  the season 3, five part story ‘Children of Earth’

Doctor Who

We see the Time Lock in action when a Dalek manages to get into the Hub in the season 30/4 episodes 12 & 13 ‘Stolen Earth’ and ‘Journeys End’.

We find Gwen and Ianto shooting at the Dalek when the Time Lock kicks into action and freezes the Dalek in a time locked bubble, along with the bullets fired by Gwen and Ianto’s guns.

When the Doctor, who was created via the meta crisis, committed genocide of the Daleks, the explosion of the time trapped Dalek caused such damage to the Time Lock, it was beyond repair leaving the Hub, once again, vulnerable to invasion.