Queen Victoria

Played by Pauline Collins

"I saw last night that Great Britain has enemies beyond imagination, and we must defend our borders on all sides. I propose an Institute to investigate these strange happenings and to fight them. I would call it Torchwood. "

The Tenth Doctor and Rose encountered Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Scotland, 1879. Although the target of several assassination attempts over the years, even the spirited, forthright royal wasn't prepared for the hostile activities of agents serving the Empire of the Wolf; an alien force which had seen the potential of the British Empire.

Besieged in the Torchwood Estate by enemy monks and with a powerful werewolf on the loose, Victoria worked with the Doctor and his friend to bring an end to the threat: a solution that came in part from the considerations of her long dead and beloved husband Albert.

Capable of defending herself even at the cost of the attacker's life, Victoria was a determined ruler who could understand and counter a threat. And so it was that once the Empire of the Wolf was defeated that she banished the Doctor from her sight and founded the Torchwood Institute, an organistion created to battle threats from beyond the Earth. An organisation that saw the Doctor as one of those threats...