10 Soul Crushing Torchwood Moments That Left Us Traumatised

Torchwood. The 21st century is when everything changes, and you’ve gotta be ready.

Jack, in his opening monologue, is presumably warning us to be ready for the moment where Russell T. Davies climbs out of our television, rips our hearts from our chests and stamps on them repeatedly, all whilst asking if we're having fun. Because that's certainly what it feels like is happenning...

Everybody knew roughly what to expect when John Barrowman's Doctor Who spin-off for adults launched. There would be the usual smattering of aliens, running and general campiness that the main show was famous for, but with more violence, more swearing, and more sex. What none of us anticipated was just how dark the show would get, or how often it would emotionally crush its viewers. Especially in its later seasons, the show verges further away from its wannabe-edgy roots and further into ultra-gritty sci-fi that, at times, rivals the likes of Black Mirror on the trauma scale.

This is a show that, in no uncertain terms, has no reservations about killing all your favourite characters (and we really do mean all), or dealing with some incredibly dark themes that the main show wouldn't touch with a cellophane-wrapped twelve-foot barge pole. At times, it's easy to forget that it even shares a universe with its parent show if Captain Jack is off screen for long enough (or Chibbers tries to write in a Cyberwoman in a metal bikini...).

Here at WhatCulture, it can sometimes take a bit of digging to find 10 worthy list items. This is not one of those times. There were almost too many upsetting Torchwood moments to choose from (and that was just the shortlist), but we've managed to narrow it down, just about...

Okay, this one isn't traditionally 'sad', but for fans of the show it hits hard. The Cardiff Hub had been the central setting for two seasons of the show, and was just as iconic as Jack's blue military coat. It was Torchwood's TARDIS, and it felt just as homely... in a dingy, wet and grungy sort of way. At this point, it had appeared in every episode, with some episodes even being set entirely within it. To this day, almost a decade later, fans are still making a pilgrimage to its fictional location in Cardiff Bay (which we'll come back to later...)

When the first episode of Children of Earth came along, so did a massive change to the format of the show. The series focused on a single, continuous plot and was condensed into five episodes, the team was smaller and, devastatingly, the hub was taken out of the equation. This central element of the show did, however, go out with a (literal) bang, after Jack discovered a bomb sewn into his stomach. With no time left to avert the imminent disaster, Jack orders his team to leave him, forcing Ianto to take the slowest lift in the world so they can stare forlornly at each other as he escapes to safety. To its credit, this is a very emotional scene, as we begin to question how even Jack could survive being at the heart of an explosion of that scale.

Jack does, of course, survive, but the hub is destroyed. And we don't mean 'destroyed and then rebuilt, better than ever, a few episodes later', we mean destroyed, full stop. The Hub is gone forever and never appears again. Finito. With it, the traditional format of Torchwood also disappeared for good. It was the end of the 'good times' for our characters, and whilst the audience was just beginning of what is arguably the best series of the show, this was an end of an era. For that, it deserves its spot.