Torchwood: series 4 writers revealed!

Russell T. Davies has revealed the writers he's assembled to work on the fourth season of Torchwood (a co-production between Starz and the BBC, set to premiere next year). Davies will write multiple episodes of the 10-part season (as he did for Doctor Who), and joing him in the writers' room will be: Jane Espenson (Battlestar Galactica, Buffy), John Shiban (The X Files, Breaking Bad), Doris Egan (House, Tru Calling), and John Fay (Robin Hood), the sole British writer who worked on the original show.

The new series is currently being written, and it's already known it will tell a 10-part serialized story, following the success of that format with the five-part "Children Of Earth".

What do you make of this news? It's certainly an impressive gathering of talent, although I've never been a fan of Espenson's writing and Shiban's work on The X Files wasn't great (but he's redeemed himself with some excellent Breaking Bad scripts). I'm not really aware of Egan's work, but Fay was involved with "Children Of Earth" (writing Day Two and Four), so he clearly impressed RTD enough to sign him up for the American continuation.

But whatever your opinion on these individual writers, there's no denying they're recognizable names for genre fans and it's a positive early sign Torchwood's attracted such talent. And I think the writers' room process (everyone sitting down and thrashing out every story, scene by scene, while planning out the entire season in detail) will only help matters -- particularly in regard to RTD's own scripts, which have always tended to play fast-and-loose with logic and plotting.

What say you?

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