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Steven Moffat Denies John Barrowman's Hint That He's Holding Up More Torchwood

Oh dear. For years since Torchwood came to a close with Miracle Day, John Barrowman has been a diehard advocate of bringing the Doctor Who spinoff back—but his latest statements about the show have landed him in some hot water with outgoing Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.

Barrowman has been kicking up a storm about trying to get Torchwood back on the air, telling any outlet he can that he’s been talking to BBC executives about the show or that his Arrow producers would be totally fine with him filming a new season of Torchwood or a Doctor Who cameo as Captain Jack. However, recent comments he made got a bit more inflammatory, heavily implying at a panel at the Honolulu Comic Con last month that one person on the Doctor Who team, soon to depart the series, was stopping Torchwood’s comeback:

Without giving too much information away, I was on a phone call with one of our executive producers, telling me the obstacles we’d have to face in order to bring [Torchwood] back. And I don’t like to see obstacles, because my feeling is that it’s a good show and it deserves to come back. And being told that it can’t until it’s got approval with certain people involved with Doctor Who...

I don’t understand why one show has to have the approval of another in order to come back. But that might change when somebody leaves.

Naturally, critics of Moffat’s time on Doctor Who were keen to believe that Moffat was also stopping a fan-favorite character from making a return either on the show or through Torchwood, presumably while he cackled maniacally and twiddled a sinister moustache he’d grown for the occasion.

But the backlash apparently got so bad that Moffat has now had to release a statement (via Doctor Who News) telling angry Torchwood fans to back off:

You may be aware that John Barrowman has been saying, publicly, that I’ve been blocking a new series of Torchwood. To be very clear—I haven’t blocked it; I wouldn’t block it; I wouldn’t even be ABLE to block it. I didn’t even know a revival had been mooted till I read about it on the Internet. As John perfectly well knows, it’s not my show and I could no more prevent it happening that he could cancel Sherlock. I am bewildered, and a little cross, even to be included in this conversation.

For the record, I really liked the show (especially the third series) and would be very happy to see more - monsters and mayhem, why not? But the fact is, it has nothing to do with me. Please pass this on to the anxious and the angry - I’ve had enough hate mail now.

Probably not the best idea to engender ill will with the person currently heading up the show you’re eager to cameo on, but there we go. If there is someone at the BBC trying to hold back a return of Torchwood, it’s not Steven Moffat.

Well this all seems a bit awkward! I'm not John Barrowman's biggest fan frankly, but I can understand why he's so frustrated at the BBC seeming to have forgotten Torchwood. It always seemed to do very well in the ratings, so it is a bit puzzling why they just stopped making it. Blaming Steven Moffat is a stretch through, it seems more likely to be because Chris Chibnall and Russell T. Davis have other stuff going on now, and they were the original executive producers?

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For me Torchwood died with Ianto one way or another, I never even finished "Children of Earth", so I don't really care at all, but I mean: BBC "cancelled" or rather ended "Musketeers" as well even though there would have been more stories to tell and the ratings were good, so there's that...

Yeah I was done after Children Of Earth too, not just for Ianto's death (although that really really sucked), but it also pretty much irredeemably ruined Jack's character for me as well. It was a good mini-series, it just left me with no interest in following Jack's character any more after that, especially with all of the regular cast dead as well

It just seems odd to me because TW always more than held its own in the ratings, COE especially reached their biggest audience yet, so I can understand why John Barrowman is questioning what the hold-up is. I suppose you're right that you never really know why these decisions are made though

/For me Torchwood died with Ianto/ - Yes! Like, theoretically I'd be all for more Torchwood, loved the hell out of the show, but with half the cast dead would it be Torchwood anymore? Because season 4 clearly wasn't it despite their best efforts... :(

Yeah I remember that series 4 was pretty much promoted as a US reboot, they can never really get back the original feel of the show from series 1 and 2 at this point. Children Of Earth was already a pretty radical change

They should never have killed off so many members of the core cast...

Well, they were pretty dramatic deaths and made for good tv but, well, you can't have your cake and eat it too, right? I mean, it's sci-fi so they could always find a way around the death thing in order to bring everybody back, like comic-books do all the time, but I'm afraid it would just look ridiculous... *sighs*

Well, they were pretty dramatic deaths and made for good tv but, well, you can't have your cake and eat it too, right?

Exactly, at the time it seemed like they surely must have been planning to bring the show to a dramatic close, it seems a bizarre choice otherwise to not consider how it would impact on the show to kill Ianto off as well, after they'd already lost Tosh and Owen. TW's appeal was never Jack and Gwen alone

/TW's appeal was never Jack and Gwen alone/ - Yep, which is why Miracle Day didn't work for me...

Also, I did love CoE, it crushed my heart to itty-bitty pieces and left me curled in a corner busy with ugly sobbing but it was a really well crafted show, or so I thought. The bit with Gwen talking about why the Doctor sometimes doesn't intervenes and that she thinks he just turns around in shame, the whole way they framed her face when she's reciting her speech, all stark shadows and light... *_* And the actors did a *terrific* job, Capaldi especially.

COE was very powerful drama definitely, but honestly it did feel to me a bit like a drama that RTD was already interested in telling as its own mini-series, and then he just grafted it on to the TW characters

Oh did they? Glad I saw that as I'd been wondering when Musketeers would return.

I gather the U.S. Torchwood season didn't do well, though I liked it well enough. Maybe that's the reason there's not much interest in financing it, a belief that the fandom doesn't really care about seeing more of it.

It wasn't popular with the critics, but the actual ratings were pretty decent I think? Well in the UK at least, I'm not sure how it did in the US, that might make a difference as I believe it was a US network that funded the last series

Oh that's interesting to know. I can't be certain any more but I think it wasn't very successful here, and yes, it was some sort of U.S. funded efforts.