Torchwood/YMMV

For Children of Earth YMMVs, see here.
For Miracle Day YMMVs, see here.
For The Lost Files YMMVs, see here.

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• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Owen, twice. His first death arguably got him Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Suzie. It's hard not to feel sorry for her, when she breaks down in her second appearance, tearfully telling Jack over the phone that she simply doesn't want to die, and admits that Gwen is a better team member than she ever was.
• Broken Base: The fandom ran into a few problems with this over Gwen in the first two seasons. What really dug a divide between previously calm fans were the events of Children of Earth's Day Four and Day Five. Be careful about any criticisms OR compliments you have about Ianto's death or how it was handled.
• Die for Our Ship: Gwen is perceived as getting in the way of Jack/Ianto, despite the fact that she married someone else.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Ianto's offhand comment that his dad was a master tailor in "Something Borrowed" leaves a different taste in your mouth after Children of Earth.
• Ho Yay: Lampshaded by Jack in the episode "Meat", where he simply turns to Gwen and comments, "This is quite homoerotic."
• Iron Woobie: Jack.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Owen spends the first half of season one being pure Jerkass, with the woobie elements coming in later.
    • Though the Woobie elements have been hinted at since "Ghost Machine", where Owen is deeply affected by witnessing a young woman's brutal rape and murder from years ago. The machine did cause him to feel her emotions, but that doesn't change that Owen was deeply affected to the point of nearly killing her (now old and mentally unsound) murderer - yet when the old man was dying, Owen's instincts as a doctor kick in and he tries to unsuccessfully save his life.
• Magnificent Bastard: John Hart. Jack has his moments, as well.
• Moral Event Horizon: Gray burying Jack alive for almost 2000 years. He was planning on eternity. Even John protests when he finds out.
• Motive Decay: So they're trying to restore British supremacy...or prepare humanity for aliens...or hide the existence of aliens...or build a cool alien tech collection. Somewhat justified by the fact that the government can't tell Torchwood what to do, and all the people who can order them around were killed before the show started, leaving them to pretty much do whatever they feel like. Like have sex.
  • Lampshaded in a second-series episode, when the team goes to save a stranded alien.

Owen: "Tell me how exactly we're going to use it to arm ourselves against the future?"
"We could hide behind it."

• • Subverted in Series 3, as when Aliens finally do come to Earth, and Torchwood finally has a chance to carry out its job, the government sees fit to try and destroy them. And succeeds, for the most part.
  • According to Russell T Davies in publicity for series 4, this trope has now been completed, due to the fact there are only Jack and Gwen left and in hiding, their HQ is gone, and now the Rift in time and space, their primary reason for being based in Cardiff, has been fixed and closed thanks to a certain Time Lord who also happened to be closing cracks in the fabric of reality and restarting the Universe... (though other accounts say the ghost of Ianto closed the rift instead). This is probably why the 4th series will have a more international setting.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Night Travellers could be hidden inside film canisters in anyone's basement.
• Ruined FOREVER: "Exit Wounds" elicited cries of Ruined Forever from some Toshiko and Owen fans.
• Running the Asylum: Here's a challenge -- find a review that doesn't compare this show to Fan Fiction.
• The Scrappy: Owen, especially in series 1.
• Strangled by the Red String: Owen going bananas over Diane after knowing her for all of a week. The overly romantic light that Jack and his relationship with the real Jack Harkness was painted in might count too, as they only know each other for a couple of hours. Ianto went from wanting Jack dead to being his lover in a few episodes with little on-screen development.
• Unfortunate Implications: Owen uses a cologne that gets people interested in him in the first episode. A high-tech date rape drug, in other words. Fridge Horror for some... And immediate horror for others. Has to be chalked up to first episode weirdness to have Owen be anything other than a villain.
• The Woobie:
  • The 'cash cow' from Meat. Also the main alien from spin-off novel 'Into The Silence'. The latter also counts as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and the way in which it finds refuge is oddly Heartwarming Momentswarming.
  • Practically all the cast do this at some point.
• Writer on Board: The show tends to come off as aggressively atheist. Jack refers to religion as superstition and rants about how primitive cultures cling to anything that denies the randomness of existence. It's repeatedly stated that there is no afterlife, and anyone with a belief in some form of deity is shot down as either naive or just plain wrong.