As much as I find both organizations fascinating but you can’t deny that maybe some of their decisions in pursuit of their goals have probably violated the Geneva convention on several accounts. I’m still on the fence about it and would love to here other thoughts on the matter 
5 Likes
Haven’t listened to any of the Forge audios, or watched Torchwood. 
(Yet!)
But Torchwood as featured in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, yeah, their ethics are a little bit poor.
5 Likes
Yvonne is honestly just selfish. “Hey lets potentially endanger the entire human race for science or some other bullshit all because we like to hoard alien stuff”/j But if you look at what the forge has done then you will see how bad it can get.
5 Likes
I’m excited to get to their stories now!
5 Likes
I’ve not listened to anything with The Forge, so can’t comment on that front, but as far as Torchwood goes, it really depends what era you’re looking at.
Victorian - The peak of ‘For Queen and Country’, Victoria basically kills a Prime Minster in one of the Audios, and she sets up a rival faction to test Torchwood that ended up becoming an intergalactic menace (I think there’s more freedom to make Torchwood more evil here as it’s not connected to characters we care about as much, and it’s so far in the past, plus at a point in time where, lets be honest, the UK are the bad guys of history)
Soho - Norton isn’t exactly a good guy, and absolutely does some awful things for his own gain… but they’re mostly restricted to the Torchwood membership. He doesn’t do too much unethical to the outside world (by Torchwood standards at least). The Torchwood of this era also isn’t really organised enough to go anything super unethical
Yvonne 1 - And then they get organised again. I think this is definitely some of the least ethical you get from Torchwood, Yvonne is cold and fully believes in the Queen and Country ideals of Victorian-Torchwood in a way you don’t really get the impression other eras do.
Jack - I mean, he kills a child, basically sentences another to death, and hides a bunch of people away from their families on a remote island so it’s definitely not exactly moral, but I think this era is probably better than it could’ve been, mostly thanks to Gwen’s influence. Jack himself is definitely the ethically worst part of this era though (and that’s saying something with Owen around), especially if you read Fragments in such a way that he set up everyone to have no choice but to join Torchwood, which I think is a really interesting headcanon/reading.
Yvonne 2 - Better than Yvonne 1 at least. She doesn’t have quite the same callousness for aliens as seen by her relationships with Orr and Ng. She also doesn’t have the same ‘Queen and Country’ ideology as Yvonne 1 (which makes sense given Pete’s World didn’t have a Queen). That all said, the coldness and ruthlessness is definitely still there
4000s - Honestly, this era of Torchwood seems pretty solid ethically. We don’t have many stories with them, but what we do have shows a team that cares about everyone, hell, Ood included (at least when you get to Oodunnit) which is rare for that era.
5 Likes
I think the Forge as we see them are pretty much amoral. Or, in (bitspoilers for an early-middle main range audio) No Man’s Land, their efforts are focused on a particular cause (winning WWI) without any thought for ethics beyond that goal.
Torchwood, meanwhile, do have a morality… but that morality is very blinkered, narrow and, as @JayPea says, built on a colonialist and imperialist mentality. (And nationalist, as well. Certainly if I saw the phrase “protecting Britain from alien threats!” on social media, I would run HARD in the opposite direction!)
There’s an entire conversation to be had here about the overlap between sci-fi, and specifically invasion narratives, and xenophobia more generally, I think.
4 Likes
Jack being a horrible person in a lot of very specific and mostly small ways is one of my favourite canon-supported headcanons.
2 Likes
The Whoniverse has two amoral/evil secret organizations: Torchwood and The Forge. In-universe, Torchwood was created to protect the British Empire by Queen Victoria after an encounter with the Doctor, while the Forge was “was an English intelligence organisation formed at the turn of the 19th century.” In reality, The Forge was created by Big Finish in 2001 while Torchwood was created by RTD on TV in 2006. Can the two co-exist? Should the Forge come back in Big Finish? And, what would people think of a Forge/Torchwood team-up/battle?
3 Likes
From what I’ve heard so far, the Forge sounds messed up and intriguing and I’d be happy to see (hear?) them return.
4 Likes
Not exactly the same, but…
1 Like