tencrush | Haha SPOILERS DON'T READ

I don't know RTD well enough to tell whether he was joking or not. I know I was being tongue in cheek and I'm giving him the benefit of doubt by assuming he was at least half joking and/or just being a little bit too fanboyish with regards to his crushes because otherwise he's just some slimy creep who has no qualms about abusing his position. And even if he wasn't joking that still says more about him and the kind of character he is than it does about Gareth and his abilities or the viability of the character he played. The fact that RTD may be guided by his penis is his issue not the actors he hires. And if I take his comments seriously then it definitely puts another spin on his decision to get rid of the character in s3.

But Rose is with that other Doctor in the parallel (?) universe/timeline whatever. And how could she turn down a mortal version of a TimeLord for a mere mortal?

Personally, I'd take Mickey over The Doctor in a heartbeat. A single one, not a double.

Those videos are pretty funny. I don't even remember much that happened in Phantom Menace. Maybe that's why. And yeah if you have to explain in a post interview what was supposed to be going on in a scene then as far as I'm concerned you've failed as a writer. And I agree with his comment about tie-in books.They should be there as a side dish or a post meal coffee/ brandy not to make up for a scriptwriter's inability to write a decent, coherent script.

Yeah, Ten never appealed to me either. As far as the timeline goes, we could've seen Mickey with Rose rather than with Martha as the Doctor did go back to pre-Nine Rose rather than to where Rose is now with Handy in the parallel universe, but that would never happen in RTD-World, Rose and Ten are twu-wuv 4eva!

And since EoT was filmed well after CoE, RTD knew that Martha with Mickey was going to come out of nowhere, given that she'd only met him in Journey's End, especially given what we found out about Martha in TW series 2 and CoE. So yeah, lazy writing as a way to wedge in one more character from his own time in Who.

Edited 2010-01-04 17:04 (UTC)

Umm, no, actually, I was talking about Jack's emo manpain in the first line, not particularly his grief over Ianto, I think CoE pretty much made it clear that Jack wasn't particularly attached to Ianto, so that's not what I assumed he was brooding about in the bar. I assumed he was brooding about whatever it was that drove him into space, which primarily would be losing his daughter and killing his grandson with the blood and that. And the idea that a new cock to play with will fix that for ya is still one I find pretty offensive. Even if Jack IS immortal and has suffered a lot of loss, the idea that he uses people and sex to get over his immortal manpain, particularly the using people part, makes him completely unlikeable in my eyes.

You're right. I'm wrong. I'm sorry.

Given the craziness in the air *cough cough 400 page report,* it's still hard for me to read anything that seems hostile to RTD/references Capt. Jack without seeing it through the prism of the Ianto situation.

I appreciate that you are now on board with the real!Jack believers, even if you find that makes Jack unlikeable. To me, it makes him the Jack I fell in love with, who I was prepared to mourn if things had gone the other way.

I think the idea that a new shag of any gender or species as an acceptable way to relieve pain (be it man/woman/other) is very Jack, as we were given him from the very first episode. He's always used people...that's the first thing we saw him doing, presumably both shagging Algy for fun and being perfectly willing to boff Rose both because he wanted her and because it would help the con.

But regarding the specific issue of assuming you were attributing the moping (which as far as I could tell was actually non-existant until the Doctor showed up) to Ianto's death, mea culpa.

I think it makes him seem shallow and certainly makes his daughter's distrust of him that much more understandable. For a moment in COE I thought she might be being unfair to him and by extension Steve by not wanting him around, but apparently her assessment of him was right on the nose and she should have trusted her earlier instincts.

No argument. He'll shag anything "if it's gorgeous enough." When his daughter said "You are a bastard," I thought damn skippy he is. Bastard!Jack is what I was afraid we were going to lose. And I'm convinced that Lucy heard her mother say it many, many times, because I honestly doubt that he was faithful to her mother or Victorian Wife or even possibly Estelle, although that might have ended before he could start looking around again.

Jack Harkness is a bastard. That's what Moffett gave us. And those of us who never had illusions about him or wanted him to be in a schmoopy-ooopy ship, love him for it.

It just amazes me how much of the CoE hate is framed as "Jack was out of character" when to me, it was Jack being exactly in character.

I never bought that that was the characterisation they wanted for the "hero" of Torchwood, but apparently it was. I let a lot of people attempt to convince me that there was more depth to Jack/Ianto than we were seeing on screen, primarily because the Ianto thing bothered me because Jack was his boss, I find the boss/subordinate thing really quite squicky in and of itself, doubly so with Jack because he's less emotionally involved than the subordinate in question. If he hadn't been Ianto's boss, the whole thing wouldn't really have bugged me one way or the other.

Regarding Doctor Who, I really would have preferred that scene to have not involved a human man, but something from the "other" category.

I'm all for the "other." Jack is omni-sexual---let's see it action. That would be a definite wish for S4.

Well it's hard for me to say exactly what is in and out of character for him because the Jack we saw in s3 wasn't much like the Jack we saw in Dr. Who either, Moffat's version or otherwise. He was just yet another version of him. I assume people considered him 'out of character' in s3, not because he was a bastard or because he wasn't schmoopy enough, but because he didn't seem to gel with the character we'd seen develop over the past two seasons. Wanting to explore the character's 'bastard' side is one thing. Ignoring two season's worth of character or story because it's inconvenient to the plot you now want to explore is another and tells me that there is no 'real Jack' just a Jack, whose defining qualities are whatever a particular storyline may require. After all if they weren't so intent on ignoring or glossing over what came before, the events at the end of s2, losing his brother and two team mates and being buried for 1000's of years and the trauma that might cause was the perfect set up for the Jack we were introduced to in s3 and would have better explained the 'change' in him without seeming quite so jarring than what we got.

Whereas there was nothing jarring to me at all, just the reiteration that this was real!Jack and had been all along. I think the people who were expecting something different sold themselves a bill of good for whatever reason, somewhat aided and abetted by Moran's "Captain's Blog" swill. However that was never canon. What happened on screen told a consistent story and it wasn't the one they talked themselves into seeing. (Although I admit to being led astray by the pre-S3 hype, which was why I was so worried that Jack was being character assassination and so relieved when it didn't happen.)

Well it's doubly squicky because of the added implication of Ianto's possible emotional vulnerability. If he didn't want to get involved with Gwen because it wouldn't be healthy for her it's hard for me to understand his rationale for getting involved with Ianto. I know I like to accuse him of thinking with his dick, but it doesn't say much for his judgment as a leader either that he doesn't seem to have enough self-control to think it probably wasn't the best idea. (Of course with that line I may have just answered my own question). Plus while Ianto may have been more emotionally involved than Jack, Jack's the one shown pushing the relationship forward in s2 when it looks like Ianto may have cooled so I'd love to understand his motivation for that.

I think Jack's supposed to be a kind of anti-hero. A flawed man,who has done bad things,but also someone who at some point decided they want to do the right thing or be 'better'. I think that's always been his 'arc' which might be why it seems to have become something of a loop of late. lol. And while I do think he's capable of being a bastard or ruthless or a bit of a dick I've never got the sense that I was ever supposed to think he was remorseless especially since he seems to have a great need to atone and forgive.He clearly has issues. I tend to find him somewhat shallow, but I'm not convinced that's what I'm supposed to think so I have to assume the writing has failed him somewhere.

As for J/I when I'm not in a bad mood or letting my general annoyance with Jack cloud my judgment or just being contrary I don't really see it as 'just sex'. I'm not exactly sure what I see it as because sometimes reading between the lines feels like given the writers more credit for cohesiveness than I think they deserve, but there just seems to be too much baggage and too much of an attempt to create 'something' for me to buy it was all that casual either.

Well like I said I think it's a matter of opinion about the 'consistency' so we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Agreed.

Happy New Year & Cheers.

Yeah, I think we'd all be better off without Moran's blog and the prepublicity stuff. But I agree with Coldwater1010 on this one.

You can say that's not cannon but if its done by those involved in the show itself or are authorized material, its not unrealistic for people to assume it is. I certainly did as opposed to fan fiction where I never assume it is.

I'm not hugely involved in other ffs but long ago, in a glaxy far, far away, when AARP wasn't sending me membership letters to join, the Star Wars books that came out right after the Return of the Jedi were meticulously plotted and cross-checked. Can't say I know (or care) after the prequel crap.

Personally, I don't think RTD or Moran or anyone had/has a coherent view of who any of the characters are. I know you disagree, but The Jack of TW S1 & s2 is NOT the same bastard!Jack of DW. and the Jack of CoE is someone altogether different again. And the Jack in the scene in the recent DW - sort of a blending of them all.

I think you are reading into the series what you want to see, just as the Janto and Gwack shippers have done.

Can we please retire the ugly smushnames? (Whether you mean them positively or derogatorily.) They really suck. J/I or J/G makes the point just as well.

As I said in another post somewhere, Jack Harkness is quite the Roarshach test, but I can't be the only person in the world who thinks he has been consistently real!Jack onscreen from "Gotta meet a girl" to "Are you going my way."

From Grin to Shining Grin as it were; it's all so seamless.

I agree. I don't have much time for the blog or the books or whatever else t.v shows/ films etc. put out there because I'd rather they wrote better scripts rather than force their fans to seek out other outlets to get better clarity on what's supposed to be going on on the show/ film, whatever. But if the shows put them out there I assume, beyond being a cynical cash-in, that these things are supposed to be an addendum to the viewing experience and therefore another facet of canon. After all if the show doesn't want the audience to view them as connected to the show then the simple solution is not to produce them then there wouldn't be any confusion.

Of course there are those that see things your way. Just like there are those who believe that Janto (and yes I will continue to use that term- every term you don't happen to like is not derogatory) was apparent as well. And the characters are so ambiguously drawn that many different points of view have merit.

You might want to keep in mind that I have been a defender of your point of view on this journal. But you do not have the absolute truth to TW anymore than I do. So you might want to consider that the continual drumbeat of 'Real!Jack is back' is getting just a tad tiring.

Oh, and since I don't agree that your characterization of Jack is the real one, can I make a fuss about saying the Real!Jack term whether meant positively or degrogatively is a problem for me. Its not, but I just want to know if that Ok by you.

Oh, but its all about the money. The books, the DVD's, the official magazine, the action figures, that's worth many times more than the shows themselves.

And when they either contradict the show cannon or confuse it, then you can bet that $ is the driver and quality is a distant second.

Free internet and all that! And I'll keep up the fight against the smushnames purely on aesthetic grounds.

J/I was apparent because we saw a hand job and a total of three on-screen kisses. I've never said they weren't fucking.

Cheers & Happy New Year.

Please do me a favor. Drop the smushname campaign when communicating to me. I heard you. I just don't happen to agree, nor am I obligated to comply with your wishes..

You are selling way beyond the close at this point.

Happy New Year to you.

OK, I'll try to remember.

'And when they either contradict the show cannon or confuse it, then you can bet that $ is the driver and quality is a distant second.'
Agreed. That reminds me of how in one of the tie in books Ianto said he came out to his parents when he was younger, but it was completely contradicted in CoE.

Haha SPOILERS DON'T READ

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