Torchwood question...

[fajrdrako]

This morning order_of_chaos said to me, in a comment about Captain Jack Harkness, "it always amuses me when he tells the truth and people assume he's joking." I couldn't agree more.

It got me thinking. I could name you any number of times in Torchwood when Jack does exactly that. But at any point since the end of Doctor Who series one, have we seen him telling a lie to one of his team?

Occasionally he lies to an outsider for a purpose. Telling Jack Harkness he's James Harper, for example. With his own team, we see him evading the truth by refusing to answer direct questions, as he does when Toshiko asks him who he was before he became Captain Jack Harkness; we see him answering questions with questions, like when Gwen asks who he last snogged and he said, "Does that include alien life forms?"

There is, of course, the series-spanning use of the name Captain Jack Harkness - but I wouldn't call that a lie any more. I'd say our Jack owns by adoption now. After more than 138 years of using the name, I'd give him squatter's rights.

Am I forgetting something?

Question cross-posted to torch_wood

Comments

[ladyeclectic79.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that from his disappearance from DW1 to the beginning of TW1, he lived through the entire 20th century. He went from being a 30-something Time Police rogue (or whatever he had been) to suddenly being 130. Living that long, seeing the people you love grow old and die has got to do something to you. He must have had experiences too where he learned that lying is bad, that lying to friends will haunt you for the rest of your (considerable) life, so chose instead to tell the truth and assauge his conscious. Who knows, that whole past is so blank right now (hopefully it'll be pointed out more in TW2), but he's in a very different place now than he was at the end of DW.

Just IMO, 'course. And am still so squeeing over his last line to the Doctor in DW 3x13. OMG OMG OMG.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I asked that question a while back. I was told that he lies to Gwen, once, in Small Worlds, when he identifies pictures of himself that Estell has as "my father". But that's the only time, and Estelle was present.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, the father portrait. Good one.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think he learned not to lie from the Doctor. Of course, living 140 years through the 20th century would teach him some things as well, partly just experience, partly the school of hard knocks. But it seems clear to me that he was modelling himself (and his morality) on the Doctor, and the Doctor - though he will wantonly tease - is basically a truth-teller.

I don't remember what Jack's very last line was in "The Last of the Time Lords". Which line?

[(Anonymous)]

Rough paraphrase: "'The Face of Bo' they called me."

I'm still squeeing over that revelation.

truth teller?

[beccaelizabeth]

The Doctor's favourite tool after the sonic is the psychic paper, which is all about lying. And he makes up stories like being a postman or a hermit.
He lied to Martha about Gallifrey but that was A Bad Thing.
So again really we have someone who will lie happily to strangers about his identity but tries to tell the truth to friends.

Re: truth teller?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a pattern.

The central focus seems to be: lie about matters of identity, and lie to strangers.

Maybe this is why it seems so intimate whenever the Doctor is willing to talk about his past, or about Gallifrey. It's a sign of trust on a different level.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, right! That one. Heh. Yes.