Rumor Has It that Fox is considering picking up and developing its own version of Torchwood for the US audience.  Why, that sounds like nearly as good an idea as a US version of Red Dwarf!  Wouldn't that be… oh wait, they did, and it was terrible TERRIBLE.

Torchwood fans are universally set against this move.  For one thing, we already have a perfectly good Torchwood, thank you very much.  For another thing, although Fox Network is only loosely tied to Fox News, a lot of people assume that a Fox created Torchwood would be a Torchwood without all the gay.  

Naturally, what everyone wants to know is whether or not Fox intends to perform a "gay-ectomy" on the show.  On the one hand, Fox has ties to Fox News (although these ties are admittedly weak).  (Fox News, for those of you visiting from outside the States, is an unabashed bastion of the conservative-ist conservatives this side of Conservative Land.)  

On the other hand, Fox has proven to be fairly LGBT-friendly, as this GLAAD report handily illustrates.  (By the way, I want to take issue with GLAAD having categorized Roger (American Dad!), Kurt (Glee), and Thirteen (House) as "supporting characters.")  Fox has improved their record recently, from a failing grade of 4% to third place with 11% of LGBT-inclusive programming.

At this stage, Russell T. Davies has also been brought over to develop the new USian Torchwood, which is also a sign of hope.  The openly bisexual Davies is almost single-handedly responsible for the revival of both Dr. Who and Torchwood, and is more than willing to push things around on the Kinsey scale.

On the up side, Fox is traditionally the most science fiction friendly of the national broadcast networks.  Don't laugh, it's true!  

Even though Fox has canceled and then destroyed some of the best science fiction television shows of the last 20 years (and if you're lucky, they did it in that order).  You may not be able to blame NBC for smothering Firefly in its crib, but that's because NBC doesn't have any.


The best hope for Torchwood is that it is set up as a spin-off show.  (Several people have already suggested Torchwood San Francisco and Torchwood New Orleans as the best matches.  I agree!)  Although Fox asserts that it wants to create a version of Torchwood that is less Wales-specific, one shudders to think of the casting of an American Gwen, much less an American Owen or an American Tosh.  The only time this has ever worked is with The Office, which resolutely went in its own direction, and created characters that were both funny and worth caring about.

In a worst case scenario, Fox develops a retread of the UK Torchwood, with the same characters, except without any of the accents, and without any inter-colleague romance.  I can see a future with a lobotomized Fox version of Captain Jack, and I don't like it.  I don't like the thought, and I don't like what it represents.  In the worst case scenario, Fox decides that Americans aren't ready for an openly gay lead character.  And in the WORST worse case scenario… they're right.

Creative Commons-licensed picture courtesy of Flickr user yeimaya.