Phantom Jack...

[fajrdrako]

gigs_83 on torch_wood pointed me to this clip on YouTube, which has John Barrowman singing "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera. I like the Phantom music, I love Barrowman's singing, of course I watched it. It shows visuals from "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" - but what I really enjoyed is at the end, a trailer for "The Doctor Dances" in Japanese. I get a kick out of seeing Captain Jack be so... omnilingual.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think moderne humans are comfortable being hero any more.... That's why we've got Hamlet earlier in the day.

Yes, well, no surprise that Hamlet is another one of my favourites. Heroes whose problems are not simple and whose solutions are hard to define.

I don't see Daleks as interested enough in humans to play mind games with them...

Not even the Cult of Skaro? Maybe not... I'm sure whatever Russell T. Davies had in mind, it is, was, and will be interesting and scary.

are there any other alien villains who are likely to do so in the old Who universe?

I have no idea! Hmm...

I miss DW!Jack so much.

So do I. Not that I don't love Torchwood-Jack, but DW!Jack had more of a spark of brilliance. He was unique.

In TV world, happiness=boring=bad script. DW!Jack is convincingly happy, and sometimes silly, but not boring at all.

Part of it was that he could be happy within conflict. Even fighting the Daleks... he did whatever he did with such heart that he made it a part of him, and put everything into it. Even if "it" was telling a silly story or making a pass at someone. But even the bigger things, the life-and-death situations, he brought a joy and enthusiasm to them.

That's still there, but dampened. And changed. In convincing ways, but... pity the change had to happen.

It's such a rare occasion to see a TV character who gets to be hero and anti-hero and gets his redemption and has got all his joie de vivre in the same time.

I can't think of another example.

It's like watching fireworks...

Yes - breathtaking! And brighter than reality - even when real.

Has to rely on himself.

Yes. Which is one reason he jokes to Tosh about not understanding how 'real bosses' act - he's so used to playing roles, now he has to be something in real life with no one to tell him how. Using his own judgement.

The title is about bravado

I love the jokes in the show - and I've used variations in fiction - about what he might be Captain of, like the Innuendo Squad. This is so typical of Jack, to take a made-up rank and a nebulous identity and reify it, so that it becomes something significant and unique to him.

No wonder I love the character. There is a whole class of stories (and variations on them) in which a lie becomes the truth, and in doing so the protagonist becomes a hero. David Brin's novel "The Postman" is an example. So is Lois McMaster Bujold's "The Warrior's Apprentice". This is one of my favourite themes. And it's so much the story of Jack: the con man who becomes the figure he made up out of whole cloth, creating first an image for himself, and then becoming that image.

And further on the redemption theme, he goes from being the guy who almost accidentally destroyed the world with his nanogenes, to the guy who is defending the world against whatever is coming that we have to be ready for.

DW!Jack has got the Doctor to believe in.

TW!Jack still believes in the Doctor, he just doesn't have him around for inspiration and help, least of all for the self-doubt and the guilt and the uncertainties. He's lonely and frightened and making it up as he goes. But he's become a hero and he isn't going to give up. Perhaps he learned something from the Doctor about hope?

Even while saying that... I don't think hope is what sustains him. Faith in the future and in the Doctor, maybe, or faith that what he is doing needs to be done.

[myfavouriteplum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I believe he's learned something about hope from the Doctor.
Now I remember 'all human wisdom is summed up in these two words--Wait and hope' from 'Count of Monte Cristo'...

Yes, Jack's story is about how our masks sometimes end up becoming our real faces. Our lies are in our truth, and our truth is also in our lies. (The Doctor must find this fascinating.) Maybe this is what we're. Maybe it's only coincidence. Maybe it's karma.
Name is about identity. It can be glory and it can be a curse. And a false name can even be more significant than a real one, because we get to choose it, so it can be consciously/subconsciously meaningful to us.
I can see this being a brilliant book theme.
Some of my favourite books share some same themes with TW and Jack, too. Like the theme 'out of time'. I used to read everything written by this French novelist called Patrick Modiano. Though Modiano himself was born after the World War Two, his heroes always have a strange obession about 1940s(not in a Blitz London though, but in a Paris under German Occupation). In one of his novel, the hero is a man who tries to retrieve his memory, which was lost due to unknown incidents in 1941. In another one, the hero goes back to 1942 to his Jewish father, who abandoned him when he was a teenager. His novels are always about nostalgia and identity.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Wait and hope"

Interesting quote! It does seem to fit Jack.

Jack's story is about how our masks sometimes end up becoming our real faces. Our lies are in our truth, and our truth is also in our lies.

And lying about ourselves is another way of changing ourselves.

Maybe it's only coincidence. Maybe it's karma.

Or a way for people to grow. Sort of - evolution driven by making mistakes.

Name is about identity. It can be glory and it can be a curse. And a false name can even be more significant than a real one, because we get to choose it, so it can be consciously/subconsciously meaningful to us.

And there are so many name-resonances in Doctor Who and Torchwood. The Doctor himself has no name, which means the topic of a name comes up frequently. When the Doctor and Captain Jack met, each had a false name - the Doctor was introduced to him as Mr. Spock. Rose's name is used frequently, over and over, often the Doctor calling her name, or people repeating her name, sometimes as Rose, sometimes as Rose Tyler. Look at that great moment at the end of "The Runaway Bride", when the Doctor says, "Rose. Her name is Rose." She's gone, but her name still has power.

In Torchwood we have another hero without a name, because we know Captain Jack Harkness isn't his name, and yet he's adopted it and wears it with such a certainty of identity that it's become his name. "Torchwood" itselt is an interesting name, a chameleon-like thing, based on the anagram of "Doctor Who" as a sort of secondary identity - reinforcing the theme of Jack as a surrogate version of the Doctor. And Torchwood Three has a nebulous identity and relationship with regard to Torchwood One.

[myfavouriteplum.livejournal.com]

Yes, when you have your name, you have a footing. You have something solid on you--a clear sense of identity. Rose has a name and the Doctor none.
(In Highlander, it's the other way round. The hero has a real name and the sidekick has a nebulous identity.)
Jack has earned his name, by using it longer than using his real name, by doing things the original owner of the name would approve. He doesn't seem to miss very much the 51st Century or his earlier life before TARDIS, when he had his own name with him--the only things we know from this period are the dead friend and the memory loss. Two things he'd like to get rid of, for his own peace. And he's not that satisfied with himself the first time we met him, when he told the Doctor it was a con.
What we see repetitively is that he loves 1940s a lot. If people and place can be home, then time can be home, too.
Torchwood 3 is everything that Torchwood 1 isn't. I doubted Jack would like Torchwood 1 when I first saw it in DW. Torchwood 1 is in a tower when Torchwood 3 is in a...cave? Then TW 1 has a female boss and TW 3 has a male one. I know I've lost my mind every time the name Freud comes to mind...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Jack has earned his name, by using it longer than using his real name, by doing things the original owner of the name would approve.

As Tosh points out. Also by living under that name during what was probably the most significant period of his life, when he was on the TARDIS. It's the name with good connotations for him.

What we see repetitively is that he loves 1940s a lot. If people and place can be home, then time can be home, too.

Rather endearingly. Again, a time and place with good connotations for him - I like to think it's at least partly becaue he met the Doctor and Rose then, the event which changed his life for the better. Obviously he likes the music and style of the era. Memories of Estelle too, perhaps?

I know I've lost my mind every time the name Freud comes to mind...


I prefer to gravitate to Jung, and I have a few ideas on this one, but they're not clear enough to articulate yet.