Torchwood - Jack (and the Doctor)

[tencrush]

I was reading the scene analysis of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by antelope_writes I linked to in a earlier post and I came across this take on Jack's time with the Doctor in Utopia-The Sound of Drums-Last of the Time Lords:

When he saw the Doctor again, the being who had quite literally saved his life and inspired his love (and I'm convinced that on some level, Nine loved Jack in return) was gone, replaced by a different man who would just as happily throw Jack out with yesterday's garbage. He subjects Jack to all kinds of great and petty insults, from leaving him lying dead on the ground after the TARDIS stopped at the end of the world (with the strong implication that he'd abandon Jack again right then and there had Martha not stopped him) to reviling Jack's involvement with Torchwood. When Jack fires right back at the Doctor about Torchwood and what Jack has done since Canary Wharf, the Doctor doesn't apologize, even when Torchwood's Archangel Network eventually becomes the mechanism to save the Doctor and the world. In the meantime, Jack gets chained in an engine room--I work on ships for a living, and trust me, there is NOWHERE worse to be than the hot, filthy, noisy, smelly confines of an engine room. That alone means that he will never have a moment of silence, enduring pain that can be eardrum-shatteringly loud, subject to noxious fumes, and dealing with near-constant sweltering heat. It's one more layer of torture the Master inflicted on Jack. After Lucy shoots the Master, after Jack has dealt with all this and the emotional trauma inflicted on Tish and Martha and all, he gets to watch the man he literally died for once and a thousand times cry over the body of a man who would have destroyed the world.

Imagine that--somebody you love enough to throw your life away, telling you and showing you in the most irrefutable way in the universe that you don't matter enough to even consider what you've been through. He's just had the one long-term emotional commitment of his life get shattered in a heartbeat. He was physically abandoned at the Game Station; he was irrevocably emotionally abandoned by Ten on the bridge of the Valiant.

Wow. Harsh, eh? I've mentioned before that I think Ten is a dick, and I sometimes wonder how much of that perceived dickness comes from the fact that Torchwood makes you view Doctor Who from a more adult perspective. If we approach the Doctor from Jack's point of view, taking into account everything we've learned from Torchwood about Jack and his history since the Game Station, the Doctor really does come off pretty badly. Worse, even, than he comes off for the way he treated Martha. I'd like to talk about that some time, but at the moment I fear it may depress me way too much for the start of Season Four, and I'm trying to build up some squee. Somehow.

For the moment, I'd like to think about Jack, specifically. I've always had trouble putting my finger on just exactly what it was Jack WANTED from the Doctor, and why he was so adamant on tracking him down. Did he just, simply, think the Doctor could fix him and make him mortal again? It seems from Fragments that that's how it started, he really just seems at that moment to be looking for a fix. But, then again, wait over a hundred years for someone and your perspective will change, surely. I personally think that the importance of the fix Jack was after started to diminish as time went on. One would have to assume that Jack started to learn to cope with his immortality better and better as he died more and more often. So what was he after?

rowanswhimsy says this about Jack, and I tend to agree: Jack is, of course, damaged by virtue of his immortality because he continues to live while those around him die. Also, I would say that the details he's revealed about his childhood indicate that he may have had issues forming personal attachments since the destruction of his biological family and his protective suppression of the pain and guilt associated with those events. Jack has displayed a tendency to romanticize people that he can't have (e.g. the Doctor, Rose) and/or create reasons why he can't have people (e.g. protecting Gwen from himself so that she can have a 'normal' man). I think she's right here, and the way I see Jack is like this: He's a guy who doesn't really form deeply commited relationships, for whatever reason, but probably something to do with his family, yeah. He hops around time and space having loads and loads of non-commited sexual flings. (Am I the only one who believes, firmly, that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the sexual anecdotes Jack has ever told dates from before the Game Station? Surely not.) And then he meets the Doctor and Rose, and from here onwards he starts on his path of redemption. Unfortunately, he's abandoned, immortal, on the Game Station, leaving no-one around to witness or validate that redemption. He starts looking for the Doctor, at first to provide him with answers regarding his immortality, but also, as time progresses to give him MEANING, to tell him he's on the right path, to validate what he's been doing. Reshaping Torchwood, he states quite clearly, IN THE DOCTOR'S HONOUR. I don't think he's romanticising the Doctor as a love interest, per se, but as a hero, as a father figure, the instrument that brought about Jack's transformation and the guy whose approval he needs to continue on his mission, however unclear and improvised that mission might be. (And maybe also a guy who can, if he can't fix him, at least empathise with the whole longevity thing, and maybe even offer some moral support.)

What does he get? A kind of pissed off Dad figure. He gets told off for flirting and essentially being himself, gets told he's ALL WRONG, he gets smacked down for being involved with Torchwood, and after suffering for a year at the hands of the Master, he gets, basically, zip. It's no wonder he runs back to the Hub as fast as he can. He's just wasted 100+ years of his life waiting for some guy who is just that: SOME GUY. The Doctor doesn't have any answers, he can't help Jack find any meaning and he can't even bring himself to be particularly nice. Ouch. Sure, the Doctor's a hero who saves the world and stuff, but even that he only does BY VIRTUE OF THOSE HE HAS GATHERED AROUND HIM. Funnily enough, though, that realisation seems to be just what Jack needs to snap him out of his funk, because, let's face it, in TW S1 he was a miserable git. And he HAS learned a few things, like I said after KKBB, the most notable seemingly being that you can't use your longevity as an excuse to keep yourself isolated from people, it doesn't work that way and it makes you turn into the aforementioned miserable git. And you can be a hero all you like, but you need the support of people you can trust around you or you'll still end your days as a troll in a birdcage.

So what kind of guy is Jack now? Well, like I said, I think the omnisexuality card is played WAYYY too often by the fans. There's no evidence to support that Jack has had ANY casual sexual encounters since the Game Station, apart, possibly, from Ianto, depending on how far you think that relationship went before Cyberwoman (You know my view, I think it went pretty far, I think Jack was way too hurt and betrayed by Ianto's actions to purely have it be about the deception. I think part of Jack's hurt was simply about the fact that THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE.) He's had two serious relationships that we know of, with his wife and Estelle, both of which, it can be assumed, involved partners who knew nothing of his origins or his longevity. (I think it's interesting that in Fragments we were immediately shown that Ianto, from their first encounter, knew all about Jack's origins and possibly even something about his longevity. Ianto is THE VERY FIRST PERSON Jack can totally be himself with. EVER.) We know Jack pretty much IS Torchwood at this stage of the proceedings, and he seems ready to forge his own path, and not one that is guided purely by his desire for approval from the Doctor. That goes some way to explaining his actions with Owen and his desire to keep his team together even in death, he's building something new now, on his own, and he has a clear view of who he needs around him to help him do it. (Yes, even Gwen. She's an idiot, but she questions him and approaches things from such an acutely different angle than he does, that he needs her around, if only to stop him taking his position as immortal superhero slightly too seriously. And yeah, Ianto does that too, but much less agressively.) It makes me wonder what sort of interaction Jack will have with the Doctor when they next meet. Knowing Rusty it'll be all fawning hero worship again, and I'll be proven entirely wrong. Oh well.


Oh, and as an aside, am I the only one hugely amused by the revelation that, in his time as an immortal being, 150 years or so, Jack has managed to die on average about ONCE A MONTH? I mean, if the Doctor wanted to lord anything over the guy, at least he could have dropped in that he's managed to only do that about ONCE A CENTURY.

Comments

[staceyuk.livejournal.com]

Very good post. Jack definitely got short shrift with Ten.

[off_coloratura]

Twice a year? 1392 divided by 150 = around 9 deaths a year.

And I think the Doctor has regenerated more than once a decade since he started, if that counts.

[tencrush]

Goodness, you're right, my mathematical brain has ceased functioning. And my typing hand, because I meant to write "ten". I shall correct.

[cayendi.livejournal.com]

(Am I the only one who believes, firmly, that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the sexual anecdotes Jack has ever told dates from before the Game Station? Surely not.)
I don't agree, because
a)He's a very sexual being
b)His time spent on Earth after the Game station is at least twice as long than he lived before that (I have, of course, no idea how old he is ... but I'm taking John's age as an example.), which meant he probably had more sexual encounters after than before.
c) I doubt Jack would only rehash sexual encounters from over a century ago. Unless they were really spectacular, and a comment like 'I had a boyfriend whose nostrils flaired when he lied' doesn't sound spectacular enough to remember after over a century

[tencrush]

A)I don't really have much evidence of that apart from his behaviour BEFORE the Game Station happened (TEC/TDD), the anecdotes he tells the TW team and the way he kind of groped Gwen in the shooting range scene (which shows me he's a very touchy-feely guy and he doesn't really respect people's personal space sometimes, but it doesn't really tell me any more than that.)
B)Yes, true. But we've been shown that even way back in the 1890's he was a miserable git, pretty much obsessed with finding the Doctor, which is exactly what he STILL was in Season One, a hundred-odd years later. He's not exactly the happy-go-lucky shagmonkey he describes in those anecdotes during that time.
C)Also true, but to be fair it's not really a spectacular enough fact to remember after a year or two. It was a specific reference to a body language cue, that really had nothing to do with whether or not it was his boyfriend. It could have been his cousin, it's not really relevant as a sexual anecdote, just as an "I once knew someone"-type of anecdote.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Jack may or may not have had any casual flings in the time between the TW Bitches and Ianto. We do not know for sure, and honestly, I don't see at this point in Jack's character if it matters or not.

All I can say for sure is that starting at KKBB, he's got exactly one person in mind. There is zero sexual interest on his part for Gwen (which is why Nostrovite!Jack stands out so much), and he follows Ianto around with his eyes pretty much all the time starting in Meat.

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

In "Captain Jack Harkness" he said that he wanted to understand why he was immortal, if he had some purpose to fulfill. He "dies" to save the worl in "End of Days." Then he finally reunites with his Doctor, finds that he was abandoned because of the Doctor's deep seated prejudice against fixed points in time...and Jack instantly forgives him--the same way he forgave Ianto for the Cyberwoman and Tosh for the alien-telepath chick, and Owen for opening the Rift and shooting him. Jack has an enormous capacity to forgive.

Yes, Jack has a twinge of jealousy for Rose, but he loves her far more than he resents her. I don't think Jack would ever feel resentment over the fact that the Doctor loves others more, especially when that other is the only other living Time Lord. Jack knows loneliness, and he knows that the Doctor's loneliness is an endless blackhole.

Let's also keep in mind that Jack *volunteered* to stay with the Doctor rather than running off with Martha and that at no point did Jack say or do anything in the last eps of season three of DW or in season 2 of Torchwood that indicates any resentment of the Doctor.

There have been indications that he's still sensitive to the plight of a chained and tortured creature ("Meat"), but he left the Doctor in "LotTL" quite happily having found closure. Now that he understands *what* he is, Jack is free to find a new purpose in life.

[tencrush]

I never implied he resented anyone, what I'm saying is he used the Doctor to some extent as the be-all and end-all of his existence, essentially living his life in a religious, what-would-Jesus-the-magic-pixie-do kind of way, knowing the pixie will show up and hoping he'll say "Yes, my son, this was and is your purpose and you are on the right path."

Instead, the pixie says "meh." Now I don't doubt Jack DOES forgive him that, pretty quickly. What I'm saying is, from there on in, Jack's purpose is his own.

[rhianona]

I like your analysis here and agree with much of it.

I recently rewatched The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, and I'm not all that convinced that the Doctor would have rescued Jack at the end of TDD if not for Rose. For the Doctor, everything is for Rose - on the Game Station, he gets pissy at Jack when they find each other because Rose is still not safe - he snaps at Jack, somewhat unfairly, but expected given the circumstances, for saying hi to Lynda while Rose is still missing. I think the Doctor set fairly strict guidelines for Jack traveling with him and is only allowing Jack to do so because for some reason Rose likes him.

The Children in Need special that aired before The Christmas Invasion and Season 2 of the new Who has a throwaway comment that would suggest the Doctor knew Jack was alive on the Game Station when they left. Rose asks about Captain Jack and the Doctor says oh, he's busy, has things to do, has to rebuild the Earth.

In some ways, Ten reminds me of earlier Doctors, such as the First, who was not a very nice being.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

I got the feeling by POTW that Nine had some affection for Jack. He knows he's sending Jack off to die, but sticks with him and talks to him right up until Jack is exterminated. You don't do that with somebody who has no meaning to you.

[ivy-b.livejournal.com]

I was so looking forward to the Jack/Doctor reuinion during season three. While I enjoyed Utopia and a bit of SOD, I just hated the Doctor in the end. For all the reasons you've just stated- what a git. Jack deserves better. I'm also wondering how he'll be in season 4, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Plus it won't be the only reunion there, so it'll probably be pushed to the sidelines.

I think MOST of Jack's stories were pre-immortality, but not all of them. He probably had less of them, but something tells me Jack did occasionally sleep around, and not just have those two relationships.

I always found it amusing that considering fans keep thinking that Jack just has sex all the team, he only had ONE 'relationship' or sexual encounter during the two season. All the others had more than him- Ianto had two, Gwen had two, Owen had two and Tosh had three.

I think Jack may have had a bit of a death-wish. I mean it took him 23 years to figure out he was immortal,. so I'm guessing he didn't die all that time. SINCE then? Is another story. Plus it depends if we count the Valiant and the amount of times he probably died there and he could have died several times during the wars. I can just imagine Ten making it a contest of who dies the least, lol.

[tencrush]

*nods*
Yeah. Jack and Ianto are the only ones who have never actually had a casual sexual encounter on the show, unless you count a particular stage of their relationship with each other as casual.

I forgot about the Valiant. I guess it could be argued that he died hundreds of times there. Still can't believe it would have been anywhere near even 1000, though. I'm sure the Master had better things to be doing than killing Jack, like, three times a day. It must get old.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

In the post I wrote that tencrush referenced above, I make the point that Jack craves approval and forgiveness. He's still trying to atone for his past, one hundred odd years later. I think what he wants from the Doctor is more along the "good job" and pat on the back kind, not a romantic thing. He is also looking for some kind of answer as to exactly what happened to him under the Doctor's care. Jack is so far gone at this point that he'd be willing to accept whatever tiny crumbs of affection the Doctor is willing to toss his way.

If you look at it another way, our time-traveling homeboy got some poor girl knocked up and left her after the kid was born. Years later, kid goes off looking for his old man, hoping to learn something about himself and fill in the gaping chasm in his life left by his lack of a father. Old man doesn't give a damn and brushes Jack off in the most hurtful possible way. Telling Jack he was wrong and shouldn't exist is just like telling a kid that he's a mistake and wishing that kid had never been born. Kid shows the old man his science project, which is pretty darn cool, and old man reacts with disgust and pushes kid away even more. Kid fights back, telling daddy dearest that he modeled his entire life's work in the Old Man's image. Then kid sacrifices his life over and over and over again, hoping daddy will notice and think his kid is worth something.

Sound about right? That's our Doctor, the intergalactic deadbeat dad.

Back to Torchwood, Jack makes the same mistake with Owen that the Doctor makes with Jack, that whole eternal life/death thing, only Jack sticks around to take care of what he created. It's that kind of thing that makes us respect Jack, no matter how messed up he is. The Doctor makes mistakes but doesn't stick around to fix them. Jack makes mistakes and sucks it up and takes the consequences.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

The Doctor makes mistakes but doesn't stick around to fix them. Jack makes mistakes and sucks it up and takes the consequences.
I love your observations. I think there is an intrinsic aloofness or detachment to the Doctor. He has Companions, not partners. He holds himself apart from them just enough to be able to let them go.

Jack wants partners. Jack's not good at letting go. And that is both to his credit but also to the Hubbies peril.

[erinnthered.livejournal.com]

That's our Doctor, the intergalactic deadbeat dad.

I really like this observation. I think you're right, and I think tencrush is right as to why a lot of Torchwood fans are having trouble working up the squee for season 4. The fact that we understand what Jack has become and what the Doctor is rejecting has left such a bad taste in our mouths.

I think I can finally put a finger on my concern about the end of season 4. I can't wait for the storyline (the Big Bad), but I'm concerned it's all going to get bogged down in the "reunion of the Doctor and Rose." I think, now that Sarah Jane and Jack have their own shows, fans have developed independent emotional attachments to them. I'm worried that RTD will think that because of their own shows that they don't need the resolution or depth that Rose does on the mother show, when really it's the opposite. I want Jack and Sarah Jane, and even Martha, to get equal treatment, and maybe a bit of a thank you. I hate putting expectations like that on any show, but I can't seem to help myself here.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

I think that to understand what Jack wanted from the Doctor we can look at what Jack is building with his team, particularly with Ianto. Ianto views Jack as someone to help him achieve meaning in his life by functioning as a parent, a lover, a mentor, a critic, and a partner. I suspect that Jack wanted something similar from the Doctor.

Jack's journey for personal redemption and his immortality mark him as 'Other' and set him apart. But I think Jack desperately needs to connect with others and in a deeper way than the traditional Companions, so he seeks out the Doctor who he perceives to be more like him than anyone else. However, instead of embracing Jack, the Doctor essentially rejects Jack as wrong or 'Other'. I think that was likely devastating to Jack. The Doctor might not mind being (maybe) the last of his kind but I'm not sure Jack really wants to be so alone and so separate. I think Jack wants to be part of a community. So now Jack is starting to create his own set of Companions but cast in his own image of what that relationship should entail, which includes all things physical, emotional, mental, and sexual with, of course, the exception of the things Jack is afraid to reveal about himself.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Oh I think the Doctor minds being the last of his kind, to the point where he is willing to keep the Master like a prisoner or pet and begs a man who slaughtered millions and millions of innocent lives to stay and live with him.

He's so desperate to NOT be the last Time Lord that he is willing to brave a long-term relationship with a madman. The only close comparison I can think of is for me to be so desperately lonely that I would offer salvation and a permanent home to Idi Amin or Pol Pot. Can you imagine? Small wonder Martha and Jack would feel betrayed...and Tish and the rest of Martha's family, who were dragged into the worst of it without even knowing what was going on? Heaven forbid!

[baby-werewolf.livejournal.com]

Word, I think.

Oh, and as an aside, am I the only one hugely amused by the revelation that, in his time as an immortal being, 150 years or so, Jack has managed to die on average about ONCE A MONTH? I mean, if the Doctor wanted to lord anything over the guy, at least he could have dropped in that he's managed to only do that about ONCE A CENTURY.

Jack is just flat-out careless, it looks like :p
The Doctor is more careful of his because while he gets more lives than us, he still has a more limited supply than Jack.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Also bear in mind that some of that may have been Jack deliberately trying to kill himself. Certainly he's suiciding hard-core for Abbadon.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

1. "Come with me. I don't mind. Really."

2. And the moral of the story is: do not have sexual relations of any kind with gods. (If necessary, turn yourself into a tree.) Especially: do not fall in love with them.

[off_coloratura]

The tone of voice to me suggested that the Doctor didn't really want Jack to come, he was just making a token gesture. He knew Jack had made up his mind at that point.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

LOL! Classical mythology FOR THE WIN!!!

I think I love you.

[erinnthered.livejournal.com]

I think it's interesting that in Fragments we were immediately shown that Ianto, from their first encounter, knew all about Jack's origins and possibly even something about his longevity. Ianto is THE VERY FIRST PERSON Jack can totally be himself with. EVER.

I'm not sure this is completely true. He did open himself up to the Doctor, and it sounds like he was very open with John in the past. I think what is really telling is that the only two people we see Ianto show overt jealousy towards are the Doctor and John. The only other people Ianto (and the viewers) know of who Jack has shared his secrets with.

I really hope that during the finale they establish, or at least hint, that Ianto knew who Grey was. That is, if they don't completely forget that no one was supposed to know who Grey was.

[tencrush]

I'm sure he was pretty open with John, yeah, but they were contemporaries and Jack wasn't immortal then. So there wasn't as much to tell. Since the Game Station happened and Jack's been after slightly more significant emotional connections (if you believe that to be the case), Ianto's the first candidate in 150 years he can be himself with.

Yeah, I'd like to hear that Ianto knows who Grey is and has had some sort of talk about that with Jack since KKBB. That would really clinch this relationship for me.

[holdingoff.livejournal.com]

I'm sure others will draw this conclusion but i haven't seen it here and it relates to pre S2 TW.

Jack placed the Doctor on this pedestal and over time allowed this huge mythos to develop. He believed that the Doctor was some great heroic figure and that to "live up to him" he (Jack) needed to make things better. But, while doing this he kept many things secret, or simply didn't pay too much attention to the ephemerals around him.

When Jack finally reaches Mt. Olympus to speak with Zeus, the mythos he's built starts to unravel and the pedestal crumbles. The Doctor is a mercurial being who has always attracted trouble and doesn't treat those around him as equals; mostly he treats them like ignorant fools (or i believe the current line is hairless apes?)

The whole Utopia episode made me ill. The Doctor and Jack have this totally tense "hackles up" reintroduction with the Doctor making Jack look like a freak but what does he do? He USES Jack's freakish nature to once again show how wonder *he* is by getting that ship off the ground. so what if it kills Jack in the process. Jack, for whatever reason, allows himself to be used like this probably because he wants to prove himself to the Doctor, but I'm unsure.

Then we have all hell break lose and Jack gets killed who-knows-how-many-times over a year's span. Total personal projection here after spending nearly a year in the hospital; but when you get locked up and tortured (killed, pumped with chemo drugs - its similar really) you spend a lot of time reflecting on things you've done in the past that you might want to change. My guess, Jack did a lot of reflecting and saw his mistakes- especially with the TW team as people- and made his decision to return "if we fix this."

If anything, post "Last of the Time Lords" I think its Jack -- the "fixed point" that has matured while the Doctor is still the same arrogant sod. Witness "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" where Jack is opening up- maybe not telling everything outright; but he's at least trying to be human again.

Finally (boy, do I ramble) I think Jack was screwing his way through his wait for the Doctor. Come on, the Chris Isherwood quip, Estelle, the Wedding Photo, the comment about the twins; Proust. He's too sexual a character to sit idle for nearly 200 years...

I grew up with DW from Jon Pertwee and I've got to say that other than Colin Baker (#6) David Tennant's Doctor #10 has been my least favorite incarnation -- less because of the acting (with CB it was the acting) but because the character is written as such a jerk thanks to RTD and his anti-hero mentality.

[tencrush]

Ah, but he says he was cruising with Isherwood, I never really got the impression they were intimate (in fact I got a bit of a vibe of that just being patently not true, just Jack making a literary joke that flew over everyone's heads), though, obviously, yes, he was cruising, but maybe he was just trying to find Isherwood a nice young boy to take home? And he says he dated Proust, so that would qualify as a relationship (Yeah, alright, I'm flailing here, sue me. And anyway, Proust??? Seriously? Of all the historical Ghey to choose from...) I just get a general impression from Jack that his slutty flirty ways are something in a very far past and not really a personality trait that seems relevant anymore.

I agree with you about Ten, I think he's coming off really badly, though, like I said, I think that's also down to a fundamental problem you get from inserting the Jack we know from Torchswood back into Who, we've started to see things from Jack's point of view through the spinoff, and that change of viewpoint is making the supposed hero of the parent show look particularly bad.

But, yeah, Ten's a real jerk.