In a neighbourhood near an ancient Cardiff wood, strange forces are at work. A paedophile is suffocated by rose petals. School bullies are assailed by strange winds. Ethereal laughter follows a lonely young girl. And Jack must confront the seemingly magical creatures whose very existence seems to be intertwined with his own.

Peter J (PJ) Hammond had enjoyed a career in television spanning more than four decades, writing for everything from Z Cars, Thirty Minute Theatre and Emmerdale Farm to The Bill, Doctor Finlay and Midsomer Murders. He had gained perhaps his greatest acclaim -- at least amongst the science-fantasy set -- with Sapphire And Steel, a high-concept series which debuted in 1979 and starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum. Subsequently, Hammond wrote “Paradise Five”, a discarded entry into the sprawling The Trial Of A Time Lord story which made up Doctor Who's tumultuous twenty-third season in 1986.

Hammond was finally given the opportunity to have a Doctor Who-related script make it to screen when he was commissioned to write Small Worlds for Torchwood. The episode took some of its inspiration from the story of Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, teenaged cousins dwelling at Cottingley, in Bradford, Yorkshire who claimed to have captured five photographs of fairies between 1917 and 1920. The images were so convincing at the time that drew adherents including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Harold Snelling, then a foremost expert in photographic forgeries. Shortly before their deaths in the mid-Eighties, Griffiths and Wright admitted that most of the pictures had in fact been faked, although Griffiths remained adamant that the cousins had seen fairies and that one of the photos was genuine. The tale of the Cottingley Fairies endures as one of the most intriguing examples of twentieth-century British folklore.

Small Worlds joined Out Of Time as part of Torchwood's fourth recording block. The director was Alice Troughton, whose prior credits included Doctors, Holby City and EastEnders.

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