"Torchwood" continues on a slight upper trajectory, managing to be good in its own right but still utterly unlike "Doctor Who", for all the talk of Barrowman playing it Doctor. In many ways "Small Worlds" epitomised it - a neat 'earthbound' idea (if you think about it, evil fairies, aliens coming through rifts and marooned Cyber technology rather show up Season 7 and it's rockets and power stations for a few lost opportunities), a few kiddie-bothering adult elements that you couldn't stick the Doctor up against like this episode's paedo sub-plot, and replacement of the otherworldly magic of Who with a slick, gritty dramatical feel that betrays RTD's love of "Buffy" and "Angel" more than "Doctor Who" ever has.

This is a world, like "Buffy", of grimy alleyways and backstreet murders; where the fantastic means grim-faced beasts and creatures that are more likely to rip out your intestinal tract than try to take over your planet. And it's great - it's popular, it's exciting and it requires a sofa in the only way a TV show can possibly hope to require a sofa these days, when we are thoroughly sanitised to scares. There is, of course, an 'arc' fighting its way out here, as we mystifying learn that Jack was about and unchanged in the early part of the twentieth century - smell that end of Season 3 Doctor Who cross-over coming.

But, and here's the rub, in many respects, moments like Estelle's hunting by the fairies was a supreme Doctor Who-ish cliffhanger (where we allowed cliffhangers these days) - but the absence of Who for so many years robs of knowing just how much. It's possible that if Doctor Who had never been cancelled, it would look and feel a bit like Torchwood does today anyway. And just like Doctor Who, "Torchwood" struggles when the TARDIS/hub is like a number 99 bus - there really wasn't any need for anyone but Gwen and Jack in this episode, the others being sidelined as we remember overstocked companion teams always were. Ianto is their Turlough - forever stuck at base with nothing to do, except for those few moments when someone decides he needs to shine.

These days, Doctor Who's moral compass is held in check with an iron fist, perhaps more than it ever was in the old days. The old series, which used to annoy Mary Whitehouse every week and worry about offended policeman and lobby groups later, has been replaced with someone that won't allow a drop of blood on-screen where once Eric Saward contrived in the opposite direction. Terrance Dicks' "never cruel, never unkind" mantra, so often blurred when it came to those moments when you had to ask yourself again who the hero was (locking Susan out the TARDIS, shooting the Time Lord President, setting traps for his enemies in the McCoy era) is now stuck to rigidly by order of a committee, our hero being defined (and never breaching) his safe reputation. By contrast, this episode of "Torchwood" showed Jack in more shades of grey than we've seen the Doctor for a while - having to make some of those tricky "ends justifies the means" decisions and ending up letting the fairies have Jasmine because, basically, he couldn't fight them and it was either her or many more other innocents. It's hard to see the Doctor these days being seen to walk away from a shattered parent. But they can do that with Jack - he's our hero, but kind of not our most important one.

So with Earth-based horrors, moral ambiguity, a brave, risqué attitude to the way the series is shown, and far, far too many companions, is Torchwood more like Doctor Who than Doctor Who itself? Perhaps, in some ways, the master could learn from the student...

John Barrowman Sit-On-My-Face-O-Meter:
 

John was good as ever, but Captain Jack didn't really fly above his moral dilemmas this week.

Torchwood Tally:

This above-average episode had a sprinkling of fairy-dust that Doctor Who could welcomly benefit from.