Oh, my sides...

[tencrush]

Just in case you think I may have stopped following Miracle Day fandom all together (Yo, this is what I'm calling that show now, it saves typing and, you know, it makes a lot more sense this way.) I TOTALLY HAVEN'T.

Dudes, the Jane Espenson Ep 7 Jack's timeline continuity fail and her subsequent apologetic clueless twittering is the most hilarious thing to happen to this fandom since Jack made his grandson bleed out of every orifice for the sake of srs drama.

Should I watch episode 7, guys? I take it not much has happened since episode 1, so I should be good to go, yeah?

Comments

[shighola.livejournal.com]

I haven't been watching the TW:MD crapfest at all so I have no idea what's going on but I am curious. What's the timeline continuity fail?

[tencrush]

Well, apparently a large part of the episode is a flashback to a relationship Jack had with a guy in the 1920's. Everyone's assumed this was in the 1920's when Jack was living out his time on earth at Torchwood, so after the Victorian Lesbians recruit him, only, he's wearing his RAF coat from WW2, which would imply it's after WW2 when he aquired it, AND he calls himself a "fixed point in time", which is something he doesn't know about himself until after he goes back to see the Doctor at the end of TW S2, DW S3. All of which implies he must be time travelling back to the twenties in order to have this relationship, which either puts it between TW S2 and CoE, which would be weird because he's allegedly with Ianto at that point, and has no reason to be time travelling around, or it puts it post CoE, which, again, doesn't make any sense because he claims to have been keeping an eye on Gwen all the time post CoE and anyway BOTH of those options require a working vortex manipulator and we all know that was disabled at the end of DW S3. So, in conclusion, not a single one of those possibilities is canonically possible and Jane Espenson is now tweeting around going OH MY BAD (she literally said that) and trying to come up with a plausible explanation for the whole thing and failing miserably. It's hella funny.

[lawsontl.livejournal.com]

Actually, isn't the fixed point line what the Doctor says to him while he's in that radiation room? That's after TW S1, then, not S2. I suppose a trip to the 1920's could be squeezed in after he gets off the Valiant. Maybe he hopped around a bit before rejoining the Doctor and getting dropped off in Cardiff (when the VM's travel function gets disabled again). It doesn't make much sense, but it's more plausible there than it would be after S2. He'd have had the coat at least.

But it can't be post CoE at all, unless he's managed to find a Webley and a perfect replica of his holster, since both were destroyed in the explosion. And a lot of his dialogue still wouldn't groove.

The problem is, she fucked up or RTD fucked it up after she handed it in, and now it's fucked up canon in a show that already had a pretty annoying canon to begin with.

[tencrush]

Yeah, sorry, brain freeze, I meant after TW S1 when Jack leaves to see the Doctor. Whichever way you look at it, it's proving yet again that nobody gives two flyng fucks about this show's continuity which is the most annoying thing in the world.

[lawsontl.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[stlscape.livejournal.com]

But hey! The Vortex Manipulator, in addition to being able to do everything it used to be able to do in the past before it became just a present-day blood sodium level monitor, could lift the ink from a typewriter ribbon off the paper it was impressed on, and replace it with different letters. All of which are impressed onto the paper with the same degree of clarity. Obviously it didn't occur to anyone to use a manual typewriter to do the typing (and honestly I wouldn't expect them to), but it's another nitpick on my part.

And a lot of his dialogue still wouldn't groove.

Agreed. Because Jack chats about the future to so many people he just happens to run into and screw. And falls into wun twu wuv at a snap of the fingers. Lust, fine. Twu wuv should take a bit longer than "Hey! Nice ass. Let's screw. Twice." - at least in my book it does.

and now it's fucked up canon

At least it's officially, in-canon, fucked up canon, verified by the writers. So no one can insist that there's only one true TW canon. That'll make a lot of people very happy. We can officially ignore what bits we don't like. (Fanfic writers, please start your engines. You have supportive readers waiting to support you! :-) )

[shighola.livejournal.com]

Wow. I am so glad I stayed strong in my resolve to not be a part of this "new" Torchwood.

[radiant-pip.livejournal.com]

All right, I'm going to start this off by saying I haven't actually seen this episode, but have read MANY commnents about it that made me go huh??? So, hopefully, my rant here isn't completely without merit. ;) Here goes...


It doesn't even make sense why he would need to time travel except God forbid he appears for any period of time without that frickin' coat. Anyway, if JE wanted to dig herself out of an actual continuity fail hole, all she had to do was say it was meant to be in Jack's original living through the 20th century timeline OR that maybe all of the suspicious references in episode7 are setting up something for future episodes (like Jack coming from a future re-established Torchwood)...that would at least buy her some time and get the immediate heat off of her if it wasn't true.

It doesn't fit AT ALL with what we've seen on Torchwood. Jack didn't have a working vortex manipulator at any point during his Torchwood story (only on Doctor Who and none of that jives with him popping to the '20s to find a "companion"). It could make sense if Jack is from a future Torchwood, but for some reason JE had to say it was pre-COE while trying to placate the tweeters.

Maybe, maybe that period in season 1 after Ianto betrayed Jack in Cyberwoman and before he came back to Torchwood and renewed his feelings for Ianto in KKBB could have had a 1920's Torchwood-needs-to-send-Jack-back-in-time-via-the-Rift story, but then we would've seen it in the actual show. (Jack poppping through back and forth would've been a big deal since they never showed anyone able to do that in a controlled way or for an intended mission.) After all, he thought he had no one in Captain Jack Harkness; HOWEVER, there is dialogue that doesn't add up (but could be hand-waved away). Jack going back at any point in season 2 doesn't work AT ALL with what was on the show. He had all the companionship and family he could need from this Torchwood team (including a blossoming and supposedly healthy relationship with Ianto). Plus, supposedly still can't use Rift to time travel and still no working vortex manipulator.

A pre-COE, during S1-S2 team trip to the '20's totally messes with COE and Jack's supposed reason for being able to sacrifice Steven and RTD's main excuse for why Ianto HAD to die--Jack cared about Ianto SO MUCH!!! Again, though, dialogue screws up why he couldn't have gone back in time during some period while working for Torchwood before the show started (like during Alex's time or that stretch before Tosh, Owen, and Ianto joined).

There is just no reason (that we know of so far anyway--there are still three episodes left to the wonderful and absolutely no logic fails anywhere Miracle Day) why this had to be set pre-COE, but not during the natural course of his time living through the '20s, except that they were trying to catch lightning in the bottle again by making an even more romantic/suggestive/tragic/classic episode to rival the much touted Captain Jack Harkness. So, thanks show for ruining everything that came before it and for crapping all over the Jack/Ianto relationship again. So far, in MD, Ianto is just a "friend" after all.

Ugh. And here I was actually looking forward to this episode because it was going to be (I thought innocently--ha!) flashbacks to Jack's natural Earth-bound timeline that might also actually shed some light on the three-series-long relationship that they couldn't bother to spend any real time on, but they couldn't even give me that. Well, except that Jack apparently uses the same lines on guys and falls for them in similar ways.