Torchwood, Doctor Who, and the infamous "Utopia" trailer...

[fajrdrako]

I've been thinking about the "Utopia" trailer that John Barrowman showed on Jonathan Ross, and enjoying the puzzle it represents.

Ever since I saw "The Parting of the Ways", I've pondering the question of why the Doctor didn't go back to collect Jack from the Game Station. My first guess was that the Doctor didn't know Rose had brought him back from the dead - but he clearly did know, as evidenced in "Children in Need", where they made a point of telling us so. And it was clear throughout Torchwood that Jack was looking for the Doctor, but even with a few close calls had failed to find him. So...

My conclusion was that the Doctor didn't want Jack to find him, but why? He liked Jack, and Jack had, first, changed his life for him, and then given his life for him - worth a little more, you'd think, than being abandoned. It looks cruel and arbitrary, especially when you look at the indications in Torchwood of Jack's love and loyalty - having his office decorated in Doctor memorabilia, his treasuring of the Doctor's hand.

The Doctor is seldom cruel and if he's often arbitrary, it isn't without having reasons. Like Jack, I have a lot of faith in the Doctor. Never doubted him, never will.

The thing about the "Utopia" trailer that was both horrific and encouraging is that it made clear how deliberately the Doctor wanted to avoid Jack - to escape him, even. Leaving Jack alone on the Game Station was a conscious decision.

This clip removed various theories I'd heard - that the Doctor really did think Jack was dead, and then lied to Rose about it, for example. Sounded possible but not plausible: the Doctor doesn't make that kind of mistake. He can see the motion of planets. He cares about his friends, and doesn't usually leave them to die alone. Not if he can help it.

My own theory has always been that the Doctor believed that when Rose rearranged the universe as she wished it to be - killing Daleks, saving Jack - she did something that shouldn't or couldn't be done. "You can't," he said, and she said, "I can." But when that kind of thing happens, there are consequences.

When the Doctor uses words like "can't", he means it. Remember how he said "you can't travel between the universes" to Pete and Jake, and they thought he was wrong? He wasn't wrong, though what he should have said was, "you can't travel between the universes without destroying them both". And because they travelled between universes anyway, they then had a problem that needed to be fixed - above and beyond the Cybermen and Daleks.

So I have been envisioning something like the Reaper situation in "Father's Day", where Rose's changing of history (even if it was history that at that point hadn't happened yet) set things in motion that were, are, or will be potentially disastrous. And that the Doctor is trying to avert it by keeping himself and Jack apart, rather like his attempts to keep Rose from touching herself as a baby in "Father's Day".

Of course, Jack and the Doctor will end up meeting again, we know that from the pictures we've seen in Starburst and online. And presumably there is a universe still in existence after they meet again. So my theory still has big huge black holes in it.

Cruel though the Doctor's apparent rejection of Jack is, I'd like to think it's painful for him, too. Not the way he wants things to be.

Still pondering the mystery....

Comments

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

Very thoughtful! It may well be something like that... and if the Doctor didn't know what was up with Jack's immortality when he left the Gamestation, he'd surely have cottoned on in the time since.

Maybe he dreads meeting Jack because it'd be his duty to "fix" Jack (effectively a death sentence), and he's such a big ole softie he can't bring himself to do it? And he has no way of knowing that fixing's exactly what Jack wants.

I'm trying. ;) I really don't want to scorn Ten for being a heartless dirtbag. I don't like the feeling.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

if the Doctor didn't know what was up with Jack's immortality when he left the Gamestation, he'd surely have cottoned on in the time since.

I wonder how much the Doctor has paid attention to Jack's life. He may have been watching him, keeping an eye on him.... Or have dismissed him from his mind entirely.

Maybe he dreads meeting Jack because it'd be his duty to "fix" Jack (effectively a death sentence),

Oh - scary thought, but it totally rings true. Kill Jack to save the world -- he's been faced with that choice before (mostly with Rose) and his decision has gone either way, but mostly in the direction of saving the person he cares about. And the way to do that in this case would be to avoid Jack entirely.

I like that.

he's such a big ole softie he can't bring himself to do it?

Well, no. Could you?

And he has no way of knowing that fixing's exactly what Jack wants.

What the Doctor would want would be to 'fix' Jack in other ways, take away the pain. I think he would want Jack to survive as much as Rose did, even knowing that it's wrong - what he wants and what should be aren't always the same thing.

I don't believe for a minute that Ten is a heartless dirtbag. Which is why figuring out his motivation for acting like one is so much fun.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

he's such a big ole softie he can't bring himself to do it?

Well, no. Could you?

I simply can't. That's why I'm projecting my motives onto Ten.

But I'm human and he's alien after all. Makes me tremble.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

But I'm human and he's alien after all. Makes me tremble.

Yeah. And I'm convinced the situation, whatever it actually is, is a difficult one for him.