Customer Reviews

"Torchwood" Inside the Hub: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to "Torchwood" (Exclusive Hardcover)

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Inside the Hub: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Torchwood chronicles the hit BBC series from the first announcement of the Doctor Who spin-off through the time that Series 1 aired in the UK. The book features many quotations from magazine and newspaper articles, biographies of the cast and crew, and a very thorough episode guide.

The episode guide and the section detailing the influence American science fiction shows (such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) on Torchwood are interesting and probably the best parts of the book. It's obvious that a lot of time and thought went into both of these sections.

Unfortunately, the book's flaws are more prominent than its attributes. Run-on sentences abound; the most egregious example of this is a 170-word sentence in the Introduction. There are no pictures, which I assume is due to the unauthorized nature of the work. The text is small and, at times, hard to read. The book often gets bogged down with minutiae; things like air dates for 30-second trailers are listed in detail.

With the exception of the episode guide, most of the content of the book is available elsewhere. There are many quotations from popular British magazines, British TV critic web sites, and even "fan reactions" taken from sites such as LiveJournal. As an American, it was interesting to see how the launch of the series was covered by the British press. While having all of this information collected into a single book is nice, I would have preferred more original content from the author.

I heartily recommend both The Torchwood Archives and Torchwood The Official Magazine Yearbook to Torchwood fans. Give Inside the Hub a miss.