Essay: Comparing Torchwood and Stargate Atlantis

This has been on my mind for the past two weeks, and it's finally bugged me enough to post about it. I've found some similarities between two of my favourite shows, so I'm write about it. Hopefully, it will be coherent somehow. There isn't a real point to this, I just wanted to do it.

(Warning: There are spoilers for the S4 and S5 of SGA, as well as the S2 of TW.)

Well, obviously, the first thing they have in common is aliens. They're both sci-fi shows, they both deal with aliens, and both aliens look fairly human. In Torchwood (TW), the main aliens are weevils, and they look so human that Gwen believed it was a man with a mask on at first. They wear blue jumpsuits, and they have emotions. In fact, the only distinguishable trait is that they can't speak. Of course, they kill at random, and have claws, and etc., but to be perfectly honestly, humans kill at random and we have fingernails that can be argued to be claws. In Stargate Atlantis (SGA), the main aliens are the Wraith, and they basically are human, with alien bug DNA, and that fact is canon. In one of my favourite episodes, Dr. Beckett produced a retrovirus to use on the Wraith that would make them human. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary solution, and the humans that were once Wraith turned into a Wraith/human hybrid, the main one being called Michael. In fact, all the aliens on SGA are, essentially, human: the story goes (and please, correct me if I am wrong) that the Ancients, who have a human form, went to different planets to escape the Wraith, and eventually, over time, became less Ancient and more human.

Another trait both shows have in common are the episode titles. This is actually, what struck me first: that the episodes from my two favourite shows were having the same titles. Now, this doesn't mean they have the same content; that is another point entirely that I will get to later. TW has the following titles: "Ghost Machine," an episode from the first season, "To the Last Man," an episode in second season, and "Adrift," an episode in the second season that has yet to air. And SGA has the following titles: "Adrift," the fourth season premiere episode, "The Last Man," the fourth season finale episode that will air on March 7th, and "Ghost in the Machine," a tentative title given to a fifth season episode that is still being written. Now, while none of these episodes have the same plot, there are still some things in common with the that have the same name. In "To The Last Man and "The Last Man," both episodes revolve around a man who doesn't belong in one time and needs to get back to the other, in order to prevent horrible things from happening. In TW's "To the Last Man," the episode was about a young man named Tommy, who was cryogenically in 1918 by Torchwood. He was to be revived every year, around the same time, so they could run a check-up. Jack told them they needed him somehow, and that was because Tommy had to return to his own time and repeat the cycle, so that the time shifts between 1918 and 2008 can stop, and the world would be saved. In SGA's "The Last Man," the episode is about Lt. Col. Sheppard being lost in the future; he comes back from a mission and finds it to be 40,000 years into his future. He comes across a hologram of an aged Dr. McKay, who has a plan to get him back to his own time, to prevent a horrible future from happening. In another two episodes, both of them being called "Adrift," the episodes are about something being lost. In SGA's episode, the entire city of Atlantis is stuck floating through space, with no idea where they are. Not only that, but one of the characters, Dr. Weir, is horribly injured, and the team does everything they can to fix her, but in the end, nothing really helps. Nearly the same thing happens in theTW's episode: Gwen is looking for missing persons taken by the rift, and one person in particular, Jonah, is terribly scarred by a fire, and comes back 40 years older than he was when he went missing. Jack does all that he can, but in the end, again, there's nothing he can do. Also, in both cases, the things lost (the city of Atlantis and the missing persons) are returned, but are never the same. The city is on another planet, far from the old planet, and far from where they were originally supposed to go. The missing people are also found, but they are not returned to their normal state, and many of the people are either injured beyond repair, or driven insane by what they've seen.


As I mentioned before, TW and SGA sometimes have the same general content. In TW's "Everything Changes," the episode was about Gwen, how she came to learn about Torchwood, and how she came to be a part of the team. The same can be said about a couple of episodes in SGA, particularly "Rising (Part I)" for Lt. Col. Sheppard (although it was only in the beginning), "Rising (Part II)" for Teyla (although it was a small part), and "Duet" for Ronon (although it wasn't primarily what the episode was about). Another example of similar plot can be found in TW's "Countrycide" and SGA's "Poisoning the Well". Both episodes have a similar idea that some people will go to any lengths to survive; in "Countrycide," a village of cannibals were willing to kidnap, kill and eat innocent people roaming the countryside, and in "Poisoning the Well," one planet was willing to sacrifice half of it's people in order for the other half to survive. One last example is in the episodes "Cyberwoman" (TW) and "Michael" (SGA). Both episodes are about a person who were huamn, but turned into something else. In "Cyberwoman," the episode is about Ianto's girlfriend Lisa, who was being turned into a Cyberman, one of the more dangerous foes in the TW and Doctor Who fandom, when the machine stopped working. Ianto, who was in love with her, pulled her out of the wreckage; but the damage was done. While she had a kind soul, after she turned into a Cyberman, her main goal was to turn everyone else into Cybermen. And while Ianto believed she could be changed back, it was impossible. In "Michael," Michael turned out to be a Wraith injected with Dr. Beckett's retrovirus, which made him a half-human, half-Wraith hybrid. When Michael learned the truth about who he was, he stopped taking the drug, but didn't turn back into a full Wraith.

And lastly, both shows have characters with similar traits. Jack (TW) and Lt. Col. Sheppard (SGA) are both leaders of their own teams, who would sacrifice themselves for the sake of the greater good. In "End of Days," Jack sacrificed himself in order to save his team, and the world, from a creature known as Abaddon. In "The Seige (Part II)," Lt. Col. Sheppard takes a Jumper with a nuclear bomb and sets off on a kamikaze mission to destroy the enemy ships. There are certain characters with bigger hearts than the other characters. Gwen (TW) often tells the rest of the team that they have been working too long, and forgot how about the "human element". Teyla, Dr. Keller, and Dr. Weir also have this trait, telling Dr. McKay, and the marines that they have to think about morals before acting. Toshiko (TW) and Dr. McKay (SGA) also have some things in common, if you think about it. Though it seems like they are on opposite ends, they both are smart and believe in their abilities to get the task done. Toshiko often uses her abilities to hack into other computers and systems to get information they need, while Dr. McKay is good at fixing things and coming up with solutions to save the day.

It's funny how, when I started this, it was originally to post about the episode names, and then I ended up with a three page essay.