What makes Captain Jack tick...

[fajrdrako]

I was thinking what an excellent metaphor a stopwatch is for Jack. Time is a central factor in his life. Once a Time Agent, he is now displaced in time; from once being able to travel to any era he wished, he is now stopped in time and forced to live one day at a time, like anyone else. For him, the number of days will be endless.

And he is living a countdown to two future events: the time in the twenty-first century when everything changes, and the return of the Doctor. We don't know when those events will be, and we don't know when Jack thinks they will happen.

Though I've been discussing a lot of my thoughts about Jack in various venues, I thought I'd put them down in more explicit form here. I might be wrong on any point, I might be Russelled at any moment, but here are my conclusions.

Since the chronology of Jack's life is unclear, I think of it as having three distinct stages:

1. Past - before we meet him in the Doctor Who episode The Empty Child
   In his past, he was a Time Agent, part of his memory was erased, he quite the agency and became a galactic con man in a stolen Chula ship. Running a con in 1941 London, he met Rose and the Doctor.



2. Turning point - from The Empty Child to The Parting of the Ways
   Jack, because of an act of self-sacrifice meant to compensate for a danger he unleashed, gets a place on the TARDIS and stays there for an indeterminate length of time (three more episodes) with the Doctor and Rose. After that time, in another act of self-sacrifice, he is killed by Daleks, revived by Rose, and abandoned by the TARDIS.



3. Present and Future - Torchwood
   Jack comes to Cardiff in or before 2007 or possibly 2008, and sets himself up in charge of Torchwood Three. Some time later, he takes Gwen Cooper into the team and the events we see in Torchwood unfold.

It is remarkable how much we don't know, in terms of the facts. We don't know how he travelled in time before or after he was on the TARDIS, but we know that he did - he has been to both pre-volcanic Pompeii and the 51st century. There is reason to think he is from the 51st century, as the Doctor seems to think so - I tend to take the Doctor's beliefs as usually reliable, given that he can see far into time and space and people's psyches. All we know for sure is that Jack got his weapon (the sonic blaster) from that time - and from the evidence of Girl in the Fireplace, we know that people in the 51st century could meddle with time, which might be taken as a partial corroboration. We know nothing about the Time Agency except that they had Agents. We don't know where Jack came from, but he passes as an American in 1941 London and 2007/08 Cardiff - possibly just to cover any odd cultural unfamiliarities.

And we have no idea how much subjective time has passed for Jack since The Parting of the Ways, or what happened to him between then and the beginning of Everything Changes.

The rest we know as a matter of surmise, and hints from Jack's running commentary on his own life. We know Jack likes sex, is flexible about categories, and has lived a sexually active life - twin acrobats, executioners, a Chula warrior, Estelle, Algy. We know he's good with technology, electronics and machines. Jack isn't very forthcoming on the what he has done, or when and where, but he's usually ready to talk about 'who'.

My interpretation:

Wherever he came from, Jack was living a life of somewhat increasing rootlessness. When he left the Time Agency, life as a free-lancer (or con man, or criminal, choose which term you prefer) he couldn't have had much stability - lots of casual sex, always on the move, presumably hunted by the Time Agents he was cheating.

So when he met the Doctor, two things happened. He found his own sense of courage and integrity - his own morality. Having endangered humankind in his con with the nanogenes, he risked himself to save others from the bomb.

The other thing that happened was that he fell in love with the Doctor and Rose.

Jack always talks warmly and positively about his former lovers; love comes easily to him, both physically and emotionally, but as he was always moving on, he couldn't let it reach him deeply. With the Doctor and Rose, he committed himself entirely - he wanted to stay with the Doctor on the TARDIS forever, just as Rose did, and was determined to prove himself worthy of the Doctor's love and trust. With the compatible company of the Doctor and Rose, he was free to be himself. It was as close to paradise as Jack could imagine.

This of course came to a sudden end when the TARDIS left without him. Whether he was Lucifer or Adam, I'm not sure, but Jack was left without an explanation for his expulsion from paradise - all the worse that it didn't happen as the result of a sin or even a mistake, but in conjunction with the greatest heroic act of his life, dying to save Earth from the Daleks. His phrase "see you in hell" is both ironic and poignant. With immortality, Jack was trapped forever in this purgatory.

My guess is that he used his skills with mechanics to get off the game satellite, and his gifts as a con man to make his way back to Cardiff, Earth, at a point sometime after the events of Boom Town. Because the TARDIS had once re-energized at the rift, he could guess the Doctor might take it back again, and Jack could be waiting there. He couldn't go back before the events of Boom Town for fear of meeting himself, changing time, and setting up the same kind of short-circuit of the universe that happened in Father's Day. But he could wait for the Doctor to return. I suspect he didn't go directly from the 2001st century to Cardiff of our time - I think the reason the faeries didn't kill him in Lahore in 1909 was that they knew he was immortal. He may have done some time-hopping to gather resources.

I would guess further that he arrived about the time of the Battle of Canary Wharf, or shortly before - so that when he tried to trace Jackie Tyler, or Rose, at the Powell Estates, he was too late to find them, and simply learned they were dead. I think he took advantage of his knowledge of extraterrestrials and his con man skills to get himself put in charge of Torchwood 3 at a time when Torchwood London was so in disarray that no one knew what was happening. I think he gathered (or stole) any memorabilia of the Doctor he could from Torchwood - the 1950s televisions, the 3D glasses, and so on. I think the 'period military' style he dresses in is a tribute to the circumstances in which he first met the Doctor.

Believing Rose to be dead, believing the Doctor had abandoned him, believing that living up to the higher ideals he had adopted was futile, Jack was embittered, depressed and alienated. He kept his friends and coworkers at a distance, and so never saw Susie's breakdown coming, and didn't notice that Ianto was hiding a Cyberwoman on the premises, or that morale was at a low ebb, or that Torchwood was increasing unable to fulfilling its mandate of preparing mankind for whatever is about to happen. In Gwen he saw a sense of humanity that pulled him out of his funk just when he woke up to the need for it - that any attempt to save the world from aliens (or itself) was doomed before it started if he couldn't manage a decent life for himself and improvement in Torchwood's capacity for teamwork and dedication to their purposes. He sees Gwen as giving them, or him, a second chance, with her innocent good nature and caring heart. She has given him a sense of hope.

Comments

[boji.livejournal.com]

I do like your take and reading on this, I really do - And it's very plausible that this is cannon as to the character but it's the lack of forethought where the writers are concerned that gets me. I want Jack and the team to be smarter than they've been. Broken is fine. Stupid is not. And a lot of the time they don't seem as competant to me as they'd need to be to do the job they do.

Which yes, isn't about Jack being embittered. Which he has every right to be.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I want Jack and the team to be smarter than they've been.

So do I. It's one thing to have dysfunctional, distracted, dangerous heroes who can rise to the occasion. It's another to have a whole team that makes stupid mistakes, doesn't pay enough attention to their work (though they have no personal lives either), and generally makes the situation worse.

Broken is fine. Stupid is not.

I agree absolutely. Even for psychologically-damaged geniuses they are an uninspiring lot. I was going to go into a digression about their various problems, speculating on Owen's past crimes, for example, or the reasons behind Susie's insanity - but then I thought that that would be best kept for another future post, when what I really wanted to do here was focus on Jack himself.

We know Jack could do better, and I'm hoping he will do better, but so far his laissez-faire leadership skills (which seem to largely have consisted of moping around ignoring the people working for him) seem to have done more harm than good.

[boji.livejournal.com]

It's like Jack is winging it on a prayer and a whim which if he's been at Torchwood 40+ years (and I really think it's 50+) HE WOULDN'T BE. But the writers are. I want smart, competant Jack, damn it. Sarcastic, funny, kind-hearted, tech-genius, future-savy, sexy, broken, damaged, dumped-by-doctor-who-may-not-deserve-him Jack.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

We know Jack could do better, and I'm hoping he will do better, but so far his laissez-faire leadership skills (which seem to largely have consisted of moping around ignoring the people working for him) seem to have done more harm than good.

Perhaps the writers felt they needed to give him some serious flaws -- without weaknesses, his immortality, devilish good looks, techno smarts, knowledge of the future, etc., etc., would place him Doctor-like, lofty plane and make him an unbearable Marty Stu. But his cluelessness with regard to his team's neuroses isn't much of a solution if, as you both note, it leads to these constant dumb-outs and blundering. I wish they'd go with something else.

I agree that Gwen was recruited in part because Jack sensed he was on the brink of every tall structure in Cardiff of losing his humanity/empathy entirely, and either hoped Gwen would help him recover it or at least supply his lack on missions. What's strange to me is that she doesn't seem to be having much effect. If anything, Torchwood's having a negative influence on her rather than the opposite.

In fairness, I get the impression that "arming the human race against the future" is their one clear mandate. Torchwood 3 exists to retrieve and reverse-engineer space junk to build a stockpile of weapons against future alien attack, period. But along comes Gwen and her morality, and Jack's dormant conscience stirs a bit, and now they're getting more involved with the rescuing and the derring-do.

And they do seem to be screwing up a lot. Perhaps fisticuffs with menaces like sex gas aliens and fairies is something they're just not accustomed to. I did get the impression (from Jack's speech in the bar, and from the the attitude of local law enforcement) that Torchwood didn't have much interest in straightforward do-gooding, at least until Gwen came along.

[raissad.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was beginning to think it was just me. It's hard to enjoy a story when the people you're supposed to be routing for aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. That's why I loved the cop's reaction to the lockdown. It was time someone called them on something, even if the writers don't realize they have an underlying internal logic problem.

So far, the most competent, consistently written character has been the pterodactyl.

[boji.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was beginning to think it was just me.

Oh, it's not just you, feel free to come on over and check out my meta. I've been yelling about the stupid since Cyberwoman - I'm ficcing to fix the stupid too.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

hat's why I loved the cop's reaction to the lockdown. It was time someone called them on something

I thought that was just a delicious scene all around. Partly because I like Yasmin Bannerman. Partly because it was funny. Partly because I thought Captain Jack was really cute while being abashed - and laughed at.

So far, the most competent, consistently written character has been the pterodactyl.

No wonder I love him so!

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

Those are really good speculations. I was always wondering about him being in 1909 myself. Maybe he started there? Maybe that's where he was from originaly? And he was found out by the Time Agents? I dunno. He's done so much jumping around. I know that Jack will see the doctor again sometime in season three of DW. At least, that's what I've heard/remembered hearing. I don't know if it will match up with Torchwood. I hope it does. Jack nees sooo much closure.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I was always wondering about him being in 1909 myself.

It's a puzzler. Going by the hints on the Torchwood web page, I could guess that he needed money, and found a diamond scam he could use to fund himself to get into Torchwood. This implies more time travelling ability than we currently know him to have.

I don't think he's from the nineteenth century, but my reasoning is thin: first, I'm working on the general principle that if the Doctor thinks something is true, it is, and the Doctor thought Jack was a fifty-first century man. Second, I don't see why the Time Agents would need to recruit people from the past - unless there was something special about Jack, but I don't see any evidence of that, either. So I would guess that Jack really was born in the 51st century, and that his trip to 1909 Lahore was part of his hopping around in time.

This doesn't explain his being in England - or was it Cardiff? - again in 1944. Okay, more time-hopping. As a Time Agent? As a con man? As an escapee from the game station trying to find the Doctor again? Could be any of these things.

[cyberducks.livejournal.com]

Have you been to the website? There are lots of clues and articles there that strongly imply that Jack has been working for TW for a very long time. I'd say he might have been around since shortly after its inception. Since the 19th century. There is something about the way Jack always looks in those morgue scenes with the freezer drawers that makes me wonder everytime how many of those people in the drawers he has known over the years - how many TW team generations he has worked with.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Have you been to the website? There are lots of clues and articles there that strongly imply that Jack has been working for TW for a very long time.

Yes. I've read them. I am not convinced, though I know a lot of fans see it that way. And I could well be wrong in my reasoning.

here is something about the way Jack always looks in those morgue scenes with the freezer drawers that makes me wonder everytime how many of those people in the drawers he has known over the years - how many TW team generations he has worked with.

Interesting and chilling thought!

[medelle.livejournal.com]

Very interesting analysis!

I don't really have anything intelligent to add, except I have not bought into the idea that Jack has been living chronologically from the 1920's or 40's or whatever until now.

I've seen some people say that, and I don't really agree.

I'm also not 100% willing to say that the Jack we say with Rose and the Doctor is the REAL Jack.

Its not to say that he doesn't have his lighthearted, fun loving moments, its just to say, that I keep seeing comments about how his current "darkness" is so not Jack, and I'd like to point out that we don't really KNOW who Jack is.

We know that he started out putting a con on Rose and the Doctor. So how much of the lightness et all was REALLY Jack?

Over all though, I like what you had to say here.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I have not bought into the idea that Jack has been living chronologically from the 1920's or 40's or whatever until now. I've seen some people say that, and I don't really agree.

Oh, good! We may be the only two who haven't accepted that as the likelihood. Which is okay. It's not the first time I've been a dissenter.

Its not to say that he doesn't have his lighthearted, fun loving moments, its just to say, that I keep seeing comments about how his current "darkness" is so not Jack, and I'd like to point out that we don't really KNOW who Jack is.

Hmm. Well, really, both Jacks are real, both show the man's real personality. Events have changed him. I think perhaps that the personality Jack showed when he was with the Doctor was the way he would want to be - a sort of ideal version of himself, and yes, to some extent a self-assumed fabrication, but not an insincere one - he was trying to live up to what he thought the Doctor wanted him to be, trying to remake himself in another image that would give him what he wanted.

So how much of the lightness et all was REALLY Jack?

Safe to say he never reveals his whole self. I believe however that his love of the Doctor and Rose and his life on the TARDIS was completely real, and he proved it in several ways, not least by being willing to die for them - and doing so. I also believe that Jack is at heart a romantic, and it was and his his romantic streak that made him what he became - then as now, both in happiness and subsequent bitterness.

So Byronic.

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that either Lahore 1909 or Estelle in the 1940s was post-Parting of the Ways. I still think they could've been from when he was still a Time Agent and doing jobs (which in some instances equals running scams?) for them. The other explanation for the faeries not killing him is that, due to their ability to go backward and forward in time, they knew they'd meet him again. However, your explanation is just as likely, and I prefer either theory to the notion that he's been hanging about since the early 1900s or earlier.

That aside, I agree with your theory that he hasn't been there in Torchwood very long. I thought briefly that he might have been around for a long while, what with the evidence of him being around in the 70s and so forth, but I think it's likely more evidence of him doing some time hopping at some point than of him going "the long way." Part of my reasoning for his not being with Torchwood for more than a few years at best is the fact that they would notice if he wasn't dying/aging. (I'm assuming that whatever's keeping him alive would look on aging as being as fatal as getting shot through the head.) And if they noticed that, I somehow doubt he'd still be running things with seemingly almost complete autonomy. I think he'd be somebody's professional lab rat, undergoing study to see if they can't figure out how to replicate his immortality.

Believing Rose to be dead, believing the Doctor had abandoned him, believing that living up to the higher ideals he had adopted was futile, Jack was embittered, depressed and alienated.

Yes, I agree. But I wonder if it's not too late for Torchwood to pull out of its tailspin.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that either Lahore 1909 or Estelle in the 1940s was post-Parting of the Ways. I still think they could've been from when he was still a Time Agent

Yes, I agree, that could well be, and I like your theory about why the faeries left him alive. (The might have feared him because they knew he'd later become a companion of the Doctor!)

I prefer either theory to the notion that he's been hanging about since the early 1900s or earlier.

As do I. I like the time travelling aspect of Jack - an aspect that we've lost (at least for the time being) with Torchwood.


Part of my reasoning for his not being with Torchwood for more than a few years at best is the fact that they would notice if he wasn't dying/aging.

Good point. That was a theme in Highlander - stay too long in one place, and people start to notice you haven't changed a bit.

(I'm assuming that whatever's keeping him alive would look on aging as being as fatal as getting shot through the head.)

Not conclusive, but probable.

Musing on the line from Suzie that Jack recruited her, I am suspected that Jack has recruited all the Torchwood staff - that they're his people, who don't predate his time there. If Tosh was in London, probably part of Torchwood One, a couple of years ago, when she examined the pig - that would imply that she too hasn't been at Torchwood Three a very long time. It would help explain why they don't know each other better, not just that they weren't very sociable, but that they haven't known each other for long or worked together for many years. If Jack recruited Owen when he was kicked out of medical practice for misconduct, as implied, well - that means all of them were taken on by Jack. We know how/when Ianto came to them.

All this reinforces the notion of Jack's autonomy.

I wonder if it's not too late for Torchwood to pull out of its tailspin.

The show, or the organisation? I was wondering if the antagonist in the final episodes might not be Torchwood itself.

[the-arachne.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that Jack was already well-established in Torchwood by the time of The Christmas Invasion; I don't see how else he could have that hand. I can't imagine anyone at Torchwood taking much notice of a severed hand, otherwise.

How Jack got the hand...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that Jack was already well-established in Torchwood by the time of The Christmas Invasion; I don't see how else he could have that hand.

I can think of numerous potential ways. For example:

• He might have assisted in the rescue operations at Torchwood One after the Battle of Canary Wharf - and have stolen what he wanted.


• Jack being Jack, he might have seduced a Torchwood employee who let him in, let him take things.


• He got it by subterfuge, pretending to be someone with authority.


• He simply asked to borrow it to study it, and Torchwood One let him do so.


• He bargained for it. Maybe: "Since you beg me so nicely, sure, I'll take over your Cardiff office, but you'll have to give me that hand as incentive."


• He found it himeself. He has the ability to scan for alien tech. It might have been lying unnoticed and undecaying on someone's roof or in some London alley.


• He won it in a poker game from a Torchwood One employee with an illicit gambling habit.


• His predecessor at Torchwood Three had posessed it, and Jack inherited it when he took over.


• He grabbed it from Torchwood One with the last dying energy in his portable transmat beam.

My favourite theory there is the sixth, that he found it himself and Torchwood One never knew about it.

I can't imagine anyone at Torchwood taking much notice of a severed hand, otherwise.

But they were certainly around during The Christmas Invasion, since they took part in the action. They would know exactly whose hand it was, and they have a special interest in the Doctor by fiat of Queen Victoria herself. He's part of their mandate. So yes, if they had it, it would be important to them, too.

[fitzsfool.livejournal.com]

I always thought that Jack could have returned to Earth during WW2 (after dying and being brought back to life) possibly through the rift. And that he'd been there ever since, waiting for the Doctor. Which is how he got involved with Torchwood; more from the bottom up so to speak. I sure as Hell would be bitter if I'd waited 60 odd years for a guy to turn up.... My head is rambling and it's coming down through my fingers!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

This is possible; I assume you mean that Jack would then have had little or no control of when he appeared?

I sure as Hell would be bitter if I'd waited 60 odd years for a guy to turn up....

But the Doctor has been around the UK many, many times in the past few decades. They keep going back to London for milk and to visit Jackie. Why wouldn't Jack just befriend Jackie and wait around the Powell Estates till the Doctor turned up? How could he miss the Doctor so often?

[mimarie.livejournal.com]

Blimey - there's a lot there... But:

I'll go with your three stages - in part. Stage one - that's all we've seen and all Jack himself has told us. Can't disagree with the canon as given/explained by the characters themselves, can we...? Stage two - yup. I saw those episodes too ;) Stage three... ah, now there I have to disagree. I'm strongly of the opinion that Jack's been with Torchwood virtually since inception. If we are to take the order of naming of TW 'offices' then Victoria took her idea back to London, and founded her institute, they used Torchwood house - so TW2 is in Scotland, and then there's TW3... Why would they build in Cardiff? And I'll accept that strange things had obviously happened there in the decade before TW's inception, but who could possibly pinpoint the rift well enough to build a tunnel so close to it? (the Hub site itself being there too, obviously from the autopsy room, etc, but the bit under the 'fountain' being a later extension as Cardiff Bay area was 'done up?')

Then there's the computer system, photos of Jack in the 70s, his own references to himself in 1909 and 1944 (with Estelle), and if I hadn't already been sold on how long Jack's been there - and how long he's been 'alive' for - then I think the conversation he had with Gwen in TKKS would have clinched it for me. Why would he not want to wish his condition on anyone else if he hadn't already lived through more than a normal human lifespan? If he didn't know at first hand how bloody awful immortality is - through living too long, for instance... (And also, Can you imagine how long it would take that man to run out of new and interesting things to try? 2, 3, 4... times)

I don't ship Jack with anyone, really, and I have trouble accepting that the reason he wanted to stay on the TARDIS - that he was so upset when they left him behind - was because they are the loves of his life. I just... Maybe I've just read too much of the fic *shrugs*, I can see that he'd be pretty bloody upset when he saw his ride - the fabulous timeship he'd been so happy to be accepted onto, the 'team' he'd joined after thinking he was alone (and he was part of a team that betrayed him in the Time Agency, he must have thought he'd found a replacement for what must have been his life for a good part of it) - leaving without him.

Absolutely. 'I just died for you, and...' Yup. And I'll definitely accept that he would have been looking for a way to get back to them/ the TARDIS when he left the gamestation. (I wrote fic *shrugs* it was posted the day 'Everything changes' was on, it vanished...) But, (IMO, obviously, proof of *anything* would be a wonder with TW, wouldn't it!) he's been in love since then - probably more than once; he's helped to found/run a 'secret' (ha!) organisation - the tentacles of which reach as far as... whenever the Satan Pit's set, and is still known by name in the year 200,100, so he's likely to know about it, anyway; he's lived two lifetimes - I know this depends on your POV on his age and chronology, but let's say for a moment that he is about 160 years old...

He's been in a position to get just about anything he wants from Torchwood: he's telling the PM what to do now, and there is the small matter that if Queen Victoria banished the Doctor - why does Yvonne seem so happy to see him? As for concealing his un-aging state from his co-workers - they're a young team, Suzie was the longest serving one there, and could we make a guess at the average lifespan for a TW3 recruit? I'm sure he's devastated everytime he has to close another one of those drawers on another colleague. And he's right - they are going to run out of space sometime. I'm more of the opinon that Jack's cold/hard/bitterness is a product of too long spent - as Gwen put it - underground. Why would he want to become really involved with anyone - he knows first hand that they age and die and he doesn't.

Damn, sorry - that was much too long. *runs off at mouth keyboard.* This series just makes me think too much...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Stage one - that's all we've seen and all Jack himself has told us. Can't disagree with the canon as given/explained by the characters themselves, can we...?

Well, it might be foolish two. I would add a couple of caveats, though. We can't necessarily believe what Jack tells us about himself, especially at first - he's an admitted con man. Second, there are areas of unsupported supposition; that, for instance, Jack is from the 51st century - he never says so. There are certain points I take as true because they appear so. The memory wipe by the Time Agency, for example. That knowledge doesn't really lead us anywhere because we don't know anything about the Time Agency.

If we are to take the order of naming of TW 'offices' then Victoria took her idea back to London, and founded her institute, they used Torchwood house - so TW2 is in Scotland, and then there's TW3...

But Torchwood One isn't Torchwood House, the original base in Scotland, it's in London. So the numbers can't be assigned by chronology.

Why would they build in Cardiff?

I think it was Jack's choice to put a base in Cardiff to wait for the Doctor, and I think he did it after "Boom Town". But that's just a theory.

(I wrote fic *shrugs* it was posted the day 'Everything changes' was on, it vanished...)

Got a URL to give me?

Why would he not want to wish his condition on anyone else if he hadn't already lived through more than a normal human lifespan?

Why would he? He's seen a lot of pain. Anticipating more ad infinitum can't be fun.

Being a romantic, and believing Jack is a romantic, I like to think he loved the Doctor deeply. But you can still take that out of my equation and see that the Doctor turned his life around. Jack says it himself - "I should never have met you. I was better off as a coward."

I do not think that Jack hasn't had plenty of other loves. I make no claims to the Doctor's exclusivity.

Queen Victoria banished the Doctor - why does Yvonne seem so happy to see him?

For his knowledge. Which she intends to get and use.

Why would he want to become really involved with anyone - he knows first hand that they age and die and he doesn't.

Which is, if George Bernard Shaw will forgive me for saying so, the Doctor's dilemma. The answer, as I'm sure the Doctor would confirm, is that love has its own value and its own rewards. But it isn't easy.

Damn, sorry - that was much too long.

But it was fun! Don't apologize! I love it when people are willing to talk to me about Torchwood.

[raissad.livejournal.com]

That is excellent analysis. Here's an important element I would like to see explored in Jack's characterization that no one has brought up so far...

I don't want the show to become a referendum on HIV/AIDS, but given the themes and the setting, I think it's irresponsible not to acknowledge the disease. At worst, it will kill you; at best, it'll turn you into a walking pharmacy. That's assuming, of course, that you have access to the cocktail and haven't built up an immunity, in which case, it'll just kill you. This is the context in which Jack Harkness is now "dancing." Unless he's brought a supply of replenishable, industrial strength anti-STD meds with him from the future, Jack is playing Russian roulette even with condoms. I'm all for openess, but I'd like Jack to say something about how the logistics have changed.

Even if HIV/AIDS won't kill him at this point, he's still a potential carrier, not to mention the fact that Jack's Immortality Factor could mutate the virus into another kind of problem.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Interesting points. It might go partway to explain why Jack - for all he talks a lot about affairs he has had in the past, which might also mean the future - doesn't seem to be very sexually active in the present. (Ianto notwithstanding.)

Presumably Jack in his immortal state can't get either HIV/AIDS or any STD - I wonder if he could transmit one? I don't see how immortality could change a virus - I think it would just reject it from his system - but who knows?

Food for thought.

One would guess that if the humans of the 51st century are 'dancing' their way around the universe, that they'e overcome this problem.

Origins

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

One spanner (or, um, monkeywrench; take thy pick!) in the works of your surmise that Jack is from the 51st century is that he told the Doctor and Rose, during the times of their first encounter in the Blitz, that something had happened to him in 1941 and then he couldn't die. Or am I remembering this completely wrong?

It is my strong thought that he is indeed an American, was indeed the "only one Captain Jack Harkness on record" who was reported missing in 1941 London, and that all the rest followed. Not necessarily in a linear way, time-wise. Hm?

Re: Origins

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

he told the Doctor and Rose, during the times of their first encounter in the Blitz, that something had happened to him in 1941 and then he couldn't die. Or am I remembering this completely wrong?

He never said anything like that - not that I recall - not until "Torchwood". At the end of "The Doctor Dances", he clearly thought he was going to die at the end, when his ship was about to blow up and he ordered his last hypervodka. So he must have been mortal then. And he did die in "The Parting of the Ways".

No, whatever is true about Jack, I'm sure his timeline isn't linear in any way!