Torchwood/YMMV

For Children of Earth YMMVs, see here.
For Miracle Day YMMVs, see here.
For The Lost Files YMMVs, see here.

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• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Owen, twice. His first death arguably got him Rescued From the Scrappy Heap.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Suzie. It's hard not to feel sorry for her, when she breaks down in her second appearance, tearfully telling Jack over the phone that she simply doesn't want to die, and admits that Gwen is a better team member than she ever was.
• Arc Fatigue: After years of hiatuses, some people just generally had no interest left. It took so long that they moved on with their lives.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The show began to drift towards this as the Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy became more pronounced. A man on the street show in the Whoniverse sounds great on paper but when the show became so divorced from Doctor Who and was largely just cynical angst, very few fans stuck around.
• Broken Base: The fandom ran into a few problems with this over Gwen in the first two seasons. What really dug a divide between previously calm fans were the events of Children of Earth's Day Four and Day Five. Be careful about any criticisms OR compliments you have about Ianto's death or how it was handled.
• Cult Classic: Never pulled in the numbers of, or got the same mainstream appeal as, Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures but its fanbase signed on for life and can, often loudly, be found calling for a continuation.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Torchwood was always the Darker and Edgier outlier compared to Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, overtime it became known only for a dark, gory and overtly cynical tone. For however dark its sister shows could get, they at least believed that Humans Are Good and had hopeful tones.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Torchwood as a whole is often in fan works as being a just organization that has been silently, and heroically, guarding the Earth from alien threats in secret for centuries without ever expecting any recognition. And while Torchwood Three was certainly a heroic group, Torchwood as a whole was a violently racist organization whose end goal was to rebuild the British Empire with most "alien invaders" whose tech they seized were just regular people whom Torchwood attacked simply for being on Earth.
• Die for Our Ship: Gwen is perceived as getting in the way of Jack/Ianto, despite the fact that she married someone else.
• Fandom Specific Plot: The Doctor turns up to the Hub.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., often viewed as a Spiritual Successor. Like Torchwood, it was a Darker and Edgier spin-off of generally family-friendly media that was largely reduced to Loose Canon by what spawned it.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Ianto's offhand comment that his dad was a master tailor in "Something Borrowed" leaves a different taste in your mouth after Children of Earth.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: After years of people complaining about the show's pro-atheist tract, usually complaining that there's no afterlife, Steven Moffat's run on the main show reveals that there really is no afterlife for humanity. It's all Brain Uploading.
• Ho Yay: Lampshaded by Jack in the episode "Meat", where he simply turns to Gwen and comments, "This is quite homoerotic."
• Iron Woobie: Jack.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Owen spends the first half of season one being pure Jerkass, with the woobie elements coming in later.
    • Though the Woobie elements have been hinted at since "Ghost Machine", where Owen is deeply affected by witnessing a young woman's brutal rape and murder from years ago. The machine did cause him to feel her emotions, but that doesn't change that Owen was deeply affected to the point of nearly killing her (now old and mentally unsound) murderer - yet when the old man was dying, Owen's instincts as a doctor kick in and he tries to unsuccessfully save his life.
• Magnificent Bastard: John Hart. Jack has his moments, as well.
• Moral Event Horizon: Gray burying Jack alive for almost 2000 years. He was planning on eternity. Even John protests when he finds out.
• Never Live It Down: The Sex Gas. The. Sex. Gas.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Night Travellers could be hidden inside film canisters in anyone's basement.
• Ruined FOREVER: "Exit Wounds" elicited cries of Ruined Forever from some Toshiko and Owen fans.
• Running the Asylum: Here's a challenge — find a review that doesn't compare this show to Fan Fiction.
• The Scrappy: Owen, especially in series 1.
• Strangled by the Red String: Owen going bananas over Diane after knowing her for all of a week. The overly romantic light that Jack and his relationship with the real Jack Harkness was painted in might count too, as they only know each other for a couple of hours. Ianto went from wanting Jack dead to being his lover in a few episodes with little on-screen development.
• Uncertain Audience: Is the show a sci-fi Police Procedural? A dark and grounded drama about a Chosen Family where sci-fi is arguably a footnote? Or does everyone just want to have sex with each other opposite navel contemplating?
• Unfortunate Implications: Owen uses a cologne that gets people interested in him in the first episode. A high-tech date rape drug, in other words. Fridge Horror for some... And immediate horror for others. Has to be chalked up to first episode weirdness to have Owen be anything other than a villain.
• The Woobie:
  • The 'cash cow' from Meat. Also the main alien from spin-off novel 'Into The Silence'. The latter also counts as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and the way in which it finds refuge is oddly Heartwarming Momentswarming.
  • Practically all the cast do this at some point.
• Writer on Board: The show tends to come off as aggressively atheist. Jack refers to religion as superstition and rants about how primitive cultures cling to anything that denies the randomness of existence. It's repeatedly stated that there is no afterlife, and anyone with a belief in some form of deity is shot down as either naive or just plain wrong.

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