According to Den Of Geek, the director of BBC Wales, Menna Richards, gave a speech before the preview of the new Doctor Who season premiere yesterday, and listed the big productions being made at Cardiff's big new drama centre: Doctor Who, Pobol y Cwm and The Sarah Jane Adventures. But no mention of Torchwood.

Meanwhile, Russell T. Davies has said again and again that there's no news on Torchwood season four, although he also claims to have a storyline in mind. And John Barrowman, who's previously been quite vocal about saying that Torchwood season four will happen, and he's already signed for 13 more episodes, was on Radio 2 last weekend, and suddenly he was being quite coy about the show's future.

What's going on? There are a few possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive:

1) The BBC has gotten cold feet about spending so much money on another science-fiction show, and Torchwood is a victim of the BBC's initiative to get rid of older shows.

2) Davies isn't interested in doing the show in Wales any more, or Davies only wants to do it in some format the BBC doesn't feel comfortable with.

3) Torchwood season four is in the works, but it's just taking longer than any of us had expected to get off the ground.

4) It's going to happen, but only in the United States, on Fox. (In which case it'll be five episodes, not because that's the length of the season, but because that's how long Fox will let it be on the air.)

[Den Of Geek and Den Of Geek]

According to producer Peter Bennett, the newcomers to the show are:

Alice: Played by Lucy Cohu, Alice is described as "a woman keeping many secrets from the past".

Bridget Spears: Susan Brown plays "a character vitally connected to the government, which plays an important part in this story," says Bennett, which may explain why I thought "Harriet Jones," when I first read the name, inexplicably.

Lois Habiba: The amazingly named Cush Jumbo takes on the role of "a secretary who hacks into some vital information," according to Bennett. Some vital information kept on governmental databases, perhaps...?

Doctor Rupesh Patanjali: Rik Makarem is "a junior doctor at St Helen's hospital who gets drawn into Torchwood's investigations."

So now we know that the third season has something to do with a hospital, the past, and the government... oh, and also a hacker who discovers some vital information. Put that together with the title of the season, and I'm hoping that we're about to see a season where a junior doctor at St. Helen's hospital discovers that everyone in the British government is actually an alien, only to be killed by the government, only for that to be uncovered by a secretarial hacker, who... Okay, I admit it. We don't really have enough information to make that good a guess yet.

The new season of Torchwood makes it to British screens next year.

New 'Torchwood' cast members revealed [Digital Spy]