Series Arcs
Yvonne Hartman
Torchwood

The first time Torchwood was mentioned was in Bad Wolf. During a round of The Weakest Link on Satelitte Five, one of the contestants was asked what the Great Cobalt Pyramid was built on the remains of, and the answer was correctly given as Torchwood. But it was seemingly just a random word back then.

Torchwood was again referred to in the first Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion, when PM Harriet Jones asked UNIT's Major Blake to contact the organisaton to help them defeat the Sycorax. Although she was aware that she wasn't meant to know of their existance, she later gave them the command to destroy the Sycorax even though the race had agreed to leave Earth in peace.

In Tooth and Claw, it is established that Torchwood was set up by Queen Victoria in 1879, who created the organisation with the intention of defending the United Kingdom against alien threat. She also wanted use it to monitor the Doctor's activity, after meeting the Time Lord at Torchwood House, where she also nearly died at the hands of a werewolf, an encounter that brought to light the new extra-terrestrial dangers that faced her country.

When trying to access UNIT's top secret files in School Reunion, Mickey Smith finds himself blocked out of the military website, and the words 'TORCHWOOD ACCESS DENIED' are briefly displayed on the monitor.

Though the events of Rise of the Cybermen take place on a parallel world, the organisaton is mentioned on a news report, seen on Rose's mobile phone, detailing the results of a survey recently carried out by the Torchwood Institute. The fact that it's being talked about on a public transmisson suggests that the organisation isn't as secret as it is on our universe, and, later on in the episode, at Jackie's birthday party, Pete Tyler is heard asking his friend Stevie how things at Torchwood are going, another suggestion that, on this particular alternative universe, Torchwood is very much a part of the public's consciousness.

In The Idiot's Lantern, police officers discuss the possibilty of Torchwood getting involved after the Wire attacks innocent civilians, and, in The Satan Pit, we are told that the crew onboard the Sanctuary Base are on the expedition as representatives of The Torchwood Archive.

In Love & Monsters, Victor Kennedy mentions that he has access to Torchwood's files, which comes in handy when researching the Doctor. Listen carefully when Chloe is ripping down the posters on her wall towards the end of Fear Her - Huw Edwards, who is commentating the 2012 Olympics coverage on BBC One, can be heard mentioning Torchwood after the crowd disappears.

Cybermen In the Series 2 finale, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, the mysteries of Torchwood are finally explained, when the Doctor and Rose arrive at the organisation (which is known to the public as Canary Wharf) to find that they've built a skyscraper over the city in order to reach a breach in time and space. When powered up, the breach is being used by the Cybermen to cross from their parallel world, through the Void, and into our world.

Pick an arc: Bad Wolf | Torchwood | Saxon