“Have you ever heard of Torchwood?”
That all-important question is asked early in “Torchwood: Miracle Day,” a 10-part miniseries that makes its long-awaited debut Friday night at 10 p.m. ET on Starz. And the query is not meant to be an idle one.
Showrunner Russell T. Davies -- who launched “Torchwood” for the BBC in 2006 and has Starz’s deeper pockets to thank for this fourth season -- is smart enough to realize that American audiences as a whole can’t possibly be as familiar with the show’s immersive sci-fi plotlines as millions of addicted fans in his native United Kingdom are.
Starz and Davies have promised that viewers won’t need to be intimately familiar with what has happened in the first three seasons of “Torchwood” to enjoy “Miracle Day." But you have to imagine that a large chunk of the pay cable network’s subscriber base is indeed asking itself the very question Davies made sure to address quickly.
For the uninitiated, here’s a primer on what you need to know about “Torchwood” before tuning in to the premiere.
It’s a spin-off of “Doctor Who”
Okay, so “Doctor Who” could use an introduction of its own. Originally running from 1963 to 1989, and rebooted with great success by Davies in 2005, the BBC series depicts the adventures of a time-travelling, interstellar and quite mysterious crime fighter and has garnered an extremely loyal cult following worldwide, including here in the United States, thanks to airings on BBC America and other outlets. Along the way, the Doctor has encountered many interesting characters -- most notably, at least for the purposes of “Torchwood” (whose title is an anagram of “Doctor Who”), a man named Captain Jack Harkness.
Meet Captain Jack Harkness
It is safe to say that Harkness, who was introduced in Davies’ first “Doctor Who” season in 2005, is one of the more provocative figures in the history of television. Not only is he a time-travelling immortal from the 51st century and an inveterate clothes horse, he’s also omnisexual. Played by the Scottish-born, American-reared actor John Barrowman, Harkness is that all-too-rare television icon: a well-dressed sexual chameleon who can also kick alien ass.
Wait -- “Torchwood” is about aliens?
Captain Jack Harkness provides the brains, brawn and beefcake behind the Cardiff, Wales, branch of the Torchwood Institute, a secretive alien-hunting agency dealing with no end of nutty phenomena. In the first two seasons, spanning 26 episodes, Jack and his inventive band of E.T. thwarters -- including the incurably sensible field agent Gwen Cooper (played by Eve Myles) -- encountered everything from drunken bipedal blowfish to giant space whales.
What’s up with Torchwood now?
The Torchwood Institute fell apart during the five episodes that comprised “Torchwood: Children of Earth,” the series’ 2009 third season. After a strange epidemic caused every kid in the world to freeze suddenly and chant seemingly nonsensical words in unison, Jack and his crew discovered that a sinister alien race called the 456 were behind the problem.
