Torchwood wasnt just a Doctor Who spin-off that originally aired on BBC Three. It was very much BBC Threes idea of what Doctor Who should be. So instead of a largely sexless space Jehovah travelling through the fifth dimension, we had a team of generically troubled sex-bunnies investigating mildly weird things in Cardiff City Centre. In this sense, Torchwood actually had more in common with Snog Marry Avoid than the childrens own show that adults love. In this sense, it was also terrible. The problem was that creator Russell T Davies assumed an adult version of Doctor Who meant gratuitous sex scenes andwell, more gratuitous sex scenes. Many an episode was disrupted by a pointless hook-up between protagonist Captain Jack and the Welsh one/the speccy one/the other Welsh one/the wonky mouthed one/the alien of the week (mix and match until credibility is broken). Bracing fare for a thirteen year old boy whose idea of raunch was a JPG of Jessica Albas head teetering precariously atop some porno hardbody. For the rest of us, it felt like Davies was clumsily inserting naughty bits into otherwise generic, b-pile Who scripts. The move to primetime BBC One allowed RTD to nail the concept, and the six part mini-series Children of Earth felt like a properly adult take on Doctor Whos themes. BBC Threes genre output also improved immeasurably, although the sight of panto icon John Barrowman grunting his way through endless quickies didnt exactly set the bar high.