will be returning next year in a revamped incarnation that will see the series taking on a more international feel, as Captain Jack Harkness John Barrowman ) and Gwen Cooper Eve Myles ) team with two new characters, CIA agents Rex and Ester, to take on a threat that… Well, for now, the creators of Torchwood are keeping those specifics under wraps.

We're beginning to hear rumblings about casting for the new characters, as actress Arlene Tur joins the series in a recurring role. All of which is to say: I realized hey, now is probably the right time for me to run an interview I did with Torchwood executive producers Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner this summer, in which we discussed the direction of the series, as it debuts on Starz.Just how much is this new season, called Torchwood: The New World , going to wipe the slate clean for new viewers? Will the content change, now that the series is on Starz, known for the graphic Spartacus ? And what does Davies have to say about Doctor Who , now that he's moved on from that series?

We had a really good time with FOX. They treated us really well. They were really respectful of the source material, because it's not like starting a new show with them. They could see what we had done. But definitely doing it 10 episodes for a premium cable channel is much more what [Russell's] vision was and it does allow you to be darker in places and gives you more flexibility in the storytelling in the way that we wanted to take this particular season. And we're doing full hours, so that's a big thing for the audience. We wanted to get back to 54 minutes, which of course we could have never had done on a network.It's funny, you can't deny it's Series 4. There's a whole fan base and a whole legacy and a whole mythology that I would hate to contradict. Fortunately I have sort of done this before with Doctor Who , when I re-launched that in 2005. It was absolutely imperative to keep everyone who loved Doctor Who on board and to bring in a new audience - it was an even bigger task than this, to be honest. And frankly, I think that went very successfully. I'm an old hand at this. I do know how to do it.I think these subtitles help, because we don't actually refer to it as series 4. And we didn't actually refer to Children of Earth as Series 3. We referred to it as Children of Earth. Now this is The New World, so that takes the curse off of it sounding old. Obviously, you know your stuff – you know your television and I imagine your readership knows their stuff, so we can freely talk about the past. If this was an interview with, say, a more general and generic site, I would avoid talking about the past. So you [move] in-between those points. Because there's nothing worse than reading an interview and thinking, "Well, I won't watch that, because it's on Series 4."Also, if you look at the history of Torchwood in the UK, it's moved three channels in three years. It started on the digital channel BBC3 and moved to BBC2 and finally Children of Earth moved to BBC1 which is like the UK's network channel. Each time, particularly with Children of Earth, Russell reinvented it for a new audience. We didn't go into Children of Earth thinking that everyone had seen what had gone on before, but very much with that title, it would reward the audience that was there before. There would be references and nuances that they would pick up on that a new audience wouldn't, but it was done very very much to welcome in people.Frankly, it's gotten bigger and better with every series, and if we ever get to a Series 10, mankind would have to live on the moon to make room for it. So it's a good plan. [Laughs]