system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Torchwood] I've just joined Torchwood... who's actually paying me??

Hi guys

I answered a vague job advert in Cardiff and have just joined a rather sketchy organisation called Torchwood. They seem to live in a sewer and this guy tells me that they are "outside the government and beyond the police."

So like... are these guys actually legal? Lots of things are outside the government and beyond the police. Like tramps living under a sewer. Is this an actual proper organisation which is accountable to some authority or just a group of crazies?

The boss claims that Torchwood was set up by Queen Victoria, so does that mean this is some sort of secret organisation run by the Queen? Do we report directly to her and have meetings with her and no-one else knows we exist? Is that even something that can happen in this day and age? How does this even work?

I did ask if the government knows about us, but I was told they keep sending people to kill us half the time. Is my paycheck handled by Civil Service HR?

How screwed am I?

BRB - I've been told to go out on a mission because there's been a sighting of 'alien sex gas' or something. I assume that's a euphemism.
gpt
Torchwood Cardiff is probably mostly funded by ownership of patents for initially alien technology, and accounts set up by Captain Jack Harkness himself. While the initial plan was to work for The Crown, which escalated into an implied attempt to create a new and possibly expanded British Empire ready to fight aliens as though they were opposing military forces, Jack states that an unspecified amount of those old goals were left behind when Torchwood One was destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf.

I wouldn't be surprised if at the point of the series pilot, Torchwood has no official backing whatsoever, and has merely gained the appearance and abilities of a "government" agency through careful use of money, retcon, and other advanced tech.