tencrush | Haha SPOILERS DON'T READ

Kareo- I strongly disagree with your assessment. And I'm a little surprised by it. Yes, I know you didn't like Ianto. Fine, he's dead. Gone, not coming back. But that has nothing to do with the narrative quality of RTD's work.

I think TenCrush's next post does a much better job describing some of the problems in the show. And its become a constant issue with RTD's recent work. Dropping in characters out of the sky. Changing story lines at whim. Abandoning cannon for a quick laugh or man-pain. This is poor writing.

Maybe my expectations are too high, but if a writer tells me something is the best thing ever, then I expect it be at least well plotted, and coherent. I didn't have particularly high expectations for TW S1 & S2. It was a silly cracky sci-fi show - and I accepted it as such.

RTD wants to make S3 a 'serious' drama, fine, but that requires a lot more care with the writing than a cracky show (as opposed to a well written comedy which is far more difficult to get right).

I give RTD full credit for reviving DW and creating TW. And I liked the first couple of seasons of both. But he always seems to end up telling the same story. Man-pain city. Oh the angst. Oh, so not interested.

The irony is that you are going to have to decide whether you want to be a Gwen/Jack shipper if there's a TW4. Man-whore Jack from DW isn't coming back. No its going to be all kissy-face Jack, Gwen and the baby once they throw Rhys under the bus. Hmm...somehow I don't think that fits your cannon. But you won't be complaining, right?

Love your stories, but you missed the boat on this one.

Kareo? Izzat my new nickname? Cool.

I'm thrilled to hear that you like my stories as well.

I honestly do think we're more likely to real!Jack back than you think, and of course my hope is UST with Gwen along with real!Jack flirting up a storm.

IF we get graphic sex and ILU with Gwen, I'd make the case that it was OOC, but it would more IC than the J/I situation because of the John/Eve chemistry and the fact that (much as we might disapprove) there does seem to be a dichotomy in Jack's relationships and even though it won't work in the end, he's more likely to attempt the curtain buying with a woman. (Plus a certain vindictive part will enjoy watching the explosion from the Gwen-haters who have claimed that never wanted/loved Gwen.)

Can we have moritorium on the phrase man-pain? Jack has pain. Period. All the characters do and it's pretty damn sexist to make fun of any character's issues only because of their gender.

Really glad you like the stories though. Did you read Role Reversal? Kind of my ultimate statement of Jack and some of his attachments.

Hey, glad you like the new nickname, LOL.

I don't think we'll see bastard!Jack back because Gwen is his favorite and I think he'll want to make all the Gwen/Jack shippers happy. They'll have a contenscious relationship (a la Moonlighting), but eventually domestic. Kai Owen said at a recent con that he didn't expect Rhys to live through S4.

Ultimately, I think what bothers me the most is that in order to get romantic Gwen/Jack to work RTD had to totally change the personality of Gwen from nosy, selfish, self-absorbed to MommyGoodWifeGwen. If she had started out that way, I'd be fine with it, but she obviously had a personality transplant between S2 & S3.

I wouldn't mind Bastard!Jack back. It would at least make sense in the context of the CoE. Man loses his lover (or shag from your point of view), kills his grandson, alienates his daughter, so he doesn't want to form new attachments. In fact, I would Love, I mean Love for Gwen to just be another in a long line of shags for Jack. But that's not going to happen, not in RTD's universe anyway.

As for 'man-pain' its meant to be derogatory. It probably is sexist, but RTD doesn't write this type of angst for his female characters. No, they just get their memories wiped (Donna) or go crazy (Suzie) or selflessly die (Tosh). And trust me when Rhys meets his tragic death, Gwen will grieve, but it will not be the same. Only the male lead character has this peculiar, over-the-top angst. Can I call it hero-pain? That's not gender specific.

We'll have to wait and see.

Out of curiosity, did you read Role Reversal? That story makes your exact point. If Gwen and Ianto's roles were reversed then Gwen would in fact be EXACTLY what Ianto is, just a shag. Period. End of story. Because that's who Jack is, and when confronted with the situation he admits it to himself.

IF we'd been given that Jack and a TW where everyone screws everyone, and James Moran's Captain's Blog crap had been flushed down the toilet where it belongs, I think we all could have had a much happier TW experience.

Give J/I the the Stopwatch scene, but then have one episode where Jack has to be dragged half-naked out of someone else's flat to go fight an alien. Then we'd know that Jack was still Jack and neither the J/Iers or the J/Gers would have a horse to get high on.

Life would be beautiful.

See, I've never really bought into the idea that just because Jack likes sex and is pretty open to the idea of sex irrespective of species that that automatically translates into him being incapable of anything more than casual shags. I think that's as much a fan fiction as the idea of him settling down with the 2.2 kids and the white picket fence.

He may be capable of more (Estelle, Victorian Wife), but it's pure fanfiction that he'd be having that kind of relationship with either of those people, at least based on what actually happened on screen, rather than the Blog and the fanfic writers minds. (And I'm willing to apply that to ANY TW ship. Those were all shag, but there's should have been more of them. Make it clear that he fucked Susie and Owen as well.)

What some people railed against in CoE was actually evidence that the real!Jack believers were right all along.

I agree that there was no real evidence that either relationship was that deep for him, but conversely there's no real evidence that it was only 'shag' or would only have been a shag (in the case of Gwen) either or that he was interested in shagging every member of his team. That's just personal interpretation because the writing was vague and subtexted or weak enough that if you want to you could chose your own adventure depending on your own biases.

Plus RTD's idea of what is 'romantic' and I use that term loosely and not really in the hearts and flowers way seems to be very different from what I, and apparently a lot of other people, consider 'romantic'. He seems to like the idea of the cool, aloof dominant figure and the needy, dependent figure as romantic model so it's possible in his mind we were supposed to see a 'love' story between Jack and Ianto in COE and it just got lost in translation and/or weak writing.

I don't think I've read Role Reversal. But I will, LOL. (Your best line ever is (and I may not be quoting it exactly)...I didn't want Tosh to become like you. That has to be the most Bastard!Jack ever, and I love it).

The biggest problem I have with RTD's writing is he can't do character development. When you look at TW, the personalities of everyone change episode to episode. And that's where the a lot of the fan infighting comes from. And where a lot of the 'fill in' in relationships comes from. Is Jack hot for Gwen? Maybe. Is Ianto more than a part-time shag? Maybe. Is Jack less of a bastard having traveled with the Dr? Maybe.

And I don't think that's due to RTD wanting to have ambiguity. I just don't think he cared enough to give the characters good coherent story arcs.

I honestly disagree. I haven't seen QAF UK, but based on my experience with Who, I feel like I got completely coherent arcs for Nine, Rose, Martha, Donna and Ten.

If anything is the problem with TW, it's not RTD, except to the extent that he didn't have enough hands-on as Producer to write a bible and tell everybody how it was going to be. That may make him a bad producer but not a bad writer per se. (And of course IMAO, they should have stuck with the original dead!Ianto concept and saved us all the pain.)

Clearly Jack is hot for Gwen-You could practically feel his erection in the gun lesson scene. Jack is a sexual bastard, but as a result of his travel with the Doctor he wants to be a hero. Those aren't contradictory. He might try to be less of a sexual bastard as well, but 100 years stuck in one place probably wore that out in a hurry.

And the fact that RTD chose to give us sexual Jack as the last image for Ten's Dr. Who, gives me a fairly good idea that he does see the character that way, AND CoE Jack is really Jack. (Hence my conviction that S4 Bigger and Better will have that Jack as well.)

Except the version of Jack that supposedly began COE wasn't really the guy who ended COE. He was supposedly 'broken' and grief stricken and feeling guilty. I assume we're at least supposed to think he's still 'grieving' otherwise he wouldn't have needed the Doctor to set him up he'd be running around finding his own boytoys. RTD wanted a 'broken' Jack which is why COE Jack had to suffer and suffer for his sins. So I suspect you're more likely to see a 'I'm looking for a redemption' Jack than the guy who showed up at the beginning of COE.

I never bought into the "broken" meme. He's done worse and he lost more. Sp no, not "grieving" either, certainly not for one temporary individual in his life, if anything for the one he left behind, and possibly for the chain of events starting with the Doctor's abandonment. That is the tragedy of his life; not any individual "relationship."

And if he's looking for redemption, it's still going to bring him back to Torchwood and eventually Gwen either in the bonded friendship/UST mode or to resolve the unexplained, unexplored love that RTD alluded to.

The fact that our last image of Jack is smiling and handsome, doesn't really lead to a whole gut-wrenching, soul-searching thing, although how much would the J/I shippers hate it if that happened...and it was Gwen he looked to for help?

Well he may have done worst, but in terms of what we know from the show I'm hard pressed to think what. You'll have to enlighten me.

Nearly a hundred years with Torchwood, especially pre-2000, Time Agent period, including his stint as go-to torture guy and the war before that. The boy's got plenty of guilt on his plate, which is why he went all ballistic in the death scene.

Which death scene are you talking about?

Ianto's.

Massive accumulated guilt especially regarding the death of yet another TW employee on his watch, plus residual abandonment issues relative to the Doctor.

Isn't Jack just basically another version of Ten just with more sexin' these days? Maybe that's why he's lost his sheen for me since I can't say I'm a big fan of Ten either. He's just another version of the angst-ridden 'lonely god' "nobody knows the troubles I've seen" trope RTD seems fond of except instead of sacrificing his 'people' he gets to sacrifice various relatives for the greater good while stoically suffering in his loneliness (or not) because no-one understands how lonely it is at the top having to be the immortal anti-hero all the time.

I wouldn't have minded if they'd stuck with a s1 Who version of Jack for Torchwood since I think that was probably the best version of him, but if they went back to that version after the events of COE I probably would end up hating him and despite the show's best efforts I'd rather retain at least a little bit of fondness for Jack.

Whereas I'd been terrified that all the J/I hype from GDL/Euros Lynn/JB etc leading into CoE was going to come true and destroy Jack forever, and was relieved when we got real!Jack backc so I could go on loving him the way I do.

Haha SPOILERS DON'T READ

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