Following the lukewarm reception to last year’s ‘Miracle Day’ ten-parter it seems that neither the BBC or their co-production partners Starz in the US are in any hurry to resurrect Captain Jack Harkness and the Torchwood team for more TV adventures. The intermittently popular Doctor Who spin-off remains on ice for the foreseeable.

The show lives on in audio and print form – nothing unusual about that – but this Autumn sees the release of a notable new BBC Books Torchwood novel written by Jack himself, John Barrowman, along with his sister Carole. The Barrowmans collaborated last year on a well-received children’s book, ‘Hollow Earth’, which is itself in development as a TV project. The new Torchwood opus, ‘Exodus Code’ is set after the events of the most recent series and seems set to continue the ‘conspiracy theory’ themes of the last two TV series. Here’s the official synopsis:

It starts with a series of unexplained events. Earth tremors across the globe. People being driven insane by their heightened and scrambled senses. And the world is starting to notice – the number one Twitter trend is #TheLoco. Governments and scientists are bewildered and silent. The world needs Torchwood, but there’s not much of Torchwood left. Captain Jack has tracked the problem to its source: a village in Peru, where he’s uncovered evidence of alien involvement. Back in Cardiff, Gwen Cooper has discovered something lurking inside the Torchwood software – something alien and somehow connected to Jack. If the world is to be restored, she has to warn him – but she’s quickly becoming a victim of the madness, too!

Torchwood: Exodus Code is released in hardback through BBC Books in the UK in September.

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