Torchwood producer Peter Bennett has been chatting with Digital Spy about the upcoming truncated season 3, which will run over 5 consecutive nights. Here's what's been revealed:

- Entitled Torchwood: Children of Earth, season 5 will have no individual episode titles, since the season deals with one story.

- Bennett says that Children of Earth eschews spaceship-style storylines for something a bit more X-Files: "It's about a government that did a deal with aliens back in the '60s, and they're now dealing with the consequences of that deal when the sins of their past come back to haunt them."

- The mania for 'dark' has infected season 3: "This series takes Torchwood on a much darker journey, but it's still Torchwood." says Bennett. " It's exciting, action-packed, and we've still got a lot of fun running through it."

- The departure of Owen and Tosh has left a hole in the character set-up but also given more scope to existing and new characters: "As far as the storylines are concerned, it's allowed us to see a whole new side of what's left of our regular characters and learn a whole lot more about their lives." Bennett told Digital Spy. "Also we've got new characters, people like Peter Capaldi, who's fantastic as the government middle man caught up in the storm, Liz May Brice as a covert government agent and Paul Copely as a damaged man."

- Gwen's husband Rhys (Kai Owen) will take on a bigger role in new Torchwood. "He was always on the fringes anyway but he takes a much more active part in the storyline now." Bennett said. "And we've got a new young lady who helps the team - I wouldn't say she's part of the team but she kind of helps them out. She's played by a new actress called Cush Jumbo, who's a very pretty young lady and who I'm sure is going to go on to bigger things."

- No firm news that John Barrowman will leave after season three. Bennett said: "I've not heard him say he wouldn't want to stick around after a third series, so I'm not sure where that's come from. But he certainly never mentioned it to us or on set. It wouldn't be the same without him obviously."

- James Moran is one of the s3 writers along with newcomer John Fay. "Russell was a fan of his, so he's come and written episode two, which is brilliant. Russell did one, John did two, James did three and then Russell did four and five."

Digital Spy

20th December 2008