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Talking Torchwood Comics With John and Carole Barrowman

Published Thu, 28 Jul 2016 12:00:06 -0500

Octavio Karbank writes,

OK: What's this particular Torchwood story about and where is the team emotionally when the story picks off?

Carole Barrowman: Let me do a little bit of both and then he can jump in. The first question, emotionally, they are in a much better place than where we left them in the TV show. If you read Exodus Code, the Captain Jack novel that comes after Miracle Day, they kind of all separated and Gwen went off on their own way and Jack does too. We don't really know what Jack has been doing, but when you open the first page you see that Jack hasn't stopped hunting or chasing things, because we run right into him in the middle of a crisis in the story. The sense of humor is back, Gwen and Rhys are more together as a family, so I think they're in a really good place. They're in Whales to start with and then the actual story has five or six arcs. The first one focuses on some things that Jack has been doing and that Rhys and Gwen have been doing. There's also the Ice Maiden, essentially a boat with an A.I.

John Barrowman: It's the kind of place that when Torchwood was destroyed, Jack has been putting all the stuff from all the different Torchwoods that don't exist anymore. The Ice Maiden has been floating around with all this tech run by an A.I. called…

CB: Mary Shelley. Because Dana, who's the captain of this ship, in fact there's more than one captain, there's three in fact and we're going to have a lot of fun with that, is just a super smart brainchild, and she created the A.I. for the ship out of all the stuff Jack has gathered. Since she loves English literature, and because I'm an English teacher myself, she called it Mary Shelley. We've got Easter Eggs thrown all about that aren't just prevalent to the show, but to us as people.

JB: We don't want to give away what we're going to do with it, but for example, the pterodactyl from Torchwood appears, just kind of hanging in the middle of the ship. And things like the dog Lewis that we mention, was one of Scott and I's favorite dogs, because we wanted him to live on.

CB: There's part of the canon of Torchwood that we've brought up and put in this new Torchwood House.

JB: We're going to touch on Boe. That's all we're going to say. We've talked about it and we've been told we can do it. That's something else from the Whovian world. Jack becomes Boe in the Whovian world, but we never see how Jack becomes Boe in the Torchwood world.

CB: When we started brainstorming, we thought about who we would like Jack to fight that he hasn't fought.

JB: If you go back and look at interviews I've done, I've talked about aliens I've wanted to fight. So the answers are there regarding whom Jack will fight.

OK: How did the project come about?

JB: It basically came out of me talking to Carole about it. We're huge fans of Torchwood and we've travelled to conventions and seen the huge popularity of Jack. Not only that, but in the streets people will come up and ask me to bring Jack back. So we're doing it. Of course we had to find a way to do it that we know will reach our fellow Whovians, geeks, and everybody. If you've never read Exodus Code or if you've never watched Torchwood, you can pick this up and start and go back and figure it out. This is a story that stands alone on its own. That's why we wanted to do it. I want to see Jack back on television and that's not just me being selfish as an actor. He's a fun character; he was a breakout character. There are a lot of shows now that are doing characters like Captain Jack but he's the original. He's the one who Russell Davies, Julie Garner, Phil Collins, and Steven Moffat from the BBC all took a risk with when they wrote Captain Jack and the first line out of his mouth was "Nice bottom," coming from a man about another man and a woman. Holy shit! Never been done before on television! Totally great! That's why I want him back!

CB: One of the nice things about this special edition version from Comic Con is that it includes the story, The Selkie, that's now out of print and costs a fortune on eBay, and Titan put it together.

JB: When we're visiting different places, we get asked can you re-release The Selkie and I explain how it's not up to us, so then we decided to just do it.

CB: World Without End, the name of the series, is its own continuing narrative, but then The Selkie is a standalone moment in Jack's life.

JB: See, you get a two for one! Double pumped!

OK: How many issues will it be?

CB: There's going to be six chapters.

JB: I want ten!

CB: This might be a big splash and six seems like a nice number.

OK: One of the things I really enjoy with Torchwood is Jack's mysteriousness with Gwen and the rest, similar to how the Doctor is enigmatic with his own companions.

JB: There's a crisis at the beginning and that's one of the secrets. The difference is that when Jack's with the Doctor, the Doctor knows all about him; the Doctor is the leader of that group and Jack's a follower. Jack behaves very differently when he's with the Doctor. When he's on Earth with the Torchwood team, he becomes like the Doctor, not revealing everything all the time until it's time to reveal it, and also keeping the secrets, because what you don't know does not hurt you. We will play on that in the comic itself, but maybe not such a heavy, dark way.

CB: Beginnings are really hard to write because you have to have a vague idea about the ending. Then we worked back. This first part really does seed a whole bunch of mysteries and questions.

OK: Any chance we'll see more Torchwood in the future, be it on television, comics, or otherwise?

JB: I've always thought Torchwood was cut off too soon and who knows the big story behind that. I think that it really should be back on TV; I know I'm being a little selfish. I have started the ball rolling into bringing Jack back on the screen. I'm talking to someone this week; I've spoken to some production people. The way the fan-base can help is to make this [comic] a success. The more successful it is, the more leverage and pull we will have to keep Jack alive. When I say I've spoken to other people in the hierarchy of it, they're behind us. There are obstacles in our way, but I don't see obstacles being a problem. I find a way to get around them, jump over them, or shove them out of the way, because this is important to me. It's important to me, it's important to Carole, and it's too good of a show to let it go away.

OK: What is it about Captain Jack and Torchwood that keeps fans coming back for more?

JB: His nine and a half inches of love and that's why!

CB: I think at the heart of it, it's a family drama. Jack is the father figure, but he's also the lover figure and the rogue. He's got a lot of depth, has a lot of everything that's iconic in literature, and I think this is where Russell and Steven and their creation of this character were so amazing, because he is complex and complicated, but also quite simple at the same time. What you see is what you get, but not always. I think he's a very original creation and I'm quite honestly thrilled and honored to breathe life into him on this series and John literally breathes life into him. I think that's part of it. It was really the first show that kind of brought, I want to say, a crime fiction formula to aliens and supernatural when it came out. If you look at how it was structured, there was mystery involved almost every time. It just plays on so many levels.

JB: To wrap it up, the characters are likeable and they're also characters that we as people can relate to. They're not cardboard cutouts. We don't look at them and think they don't eat. They're real. That's why we wanted to make sure the new characters we introduced were absolutely real, although one has shoulders you can ride for three hours, which isn't a problem, but everyone is a real person that you can identify with and that's most important.

Octavio Karbank is a writer and bona fide Whovian. Living in Massachusetts, you can find him on Twitter @TymeHunter and his blog www.cozmicventures.com

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