In October 2006, Torchwood, a ‘sexy and funny’ spin-off of the Doctor Who television series premiered on our screens. The BBC commissioned us to develop a virtual world to support this new series.

Torchwood is a stylish science-fiction drama that follows Captain Jack Harkness and his crack team as they use alien technology to solve crime, both alien and human. To support the series launch, the BBC wanted to take the online experience to an exciting new level - they asked us to create an extensive virtual world designed to simulate remote access to Torchwood’s computer systems.

To begin the project our in-house creative team worked closely with the new media department at BBC Wales. Torchwood was a brave and major commission for the BBC so it was fundamental that we understood the characters and the overall narrative of series. We read through episode scripts so we could transfer what was to be acted out on screen into an online experience.

After developing and discussing various ideas and designs we finally created a futuristic interface that provides a highly interactive experience of what it might be like to access the Torchwood Extranet - a secure ‘organic’ internal data repository used by Captain Jack Harkness and his team.

To achieve the objective of making the interface featured in the series a reality we developed a navigation system that has many of the attributes we commonly associate with our own computers – the goal was to make something fluid and seamless but which also had windows and traditional content in the form of text docs, photography and video.

The result - Torchwood fans have had an opportunity to immerse themselves yet further into the world of Torchwood. The site provides viewers with the opportunity to take a deeper look into the stories, characters and alien technology that feature in the show.