![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinsyEveryone keeps going on about why Ianto’s death was necessary to the story and why Jack “sacrificed” Steven (he sure didn’t act like it was a sacrifice, but that’s an essay for a different day), and they basically explain it this way:
Ianto’s death made Jack so hopeless that it drove him to take such a drastic and horrifying measure.
If that’s true, I think I’ve been watching a very different Jack Harkness, and I think these people are forgetting that Jack wasn’t created on Torchwood –– he was created on Doctor Who, and he was created for a very specific purpose, and that purpose makes it really hard to buy hopeless!Jack or runaway!Jack or even child-killing!Jack.
From the moment he rescued Rose in “The Empty Child”, Jack was introduced as a character who could actually be equal with the Doctor: he was charming, intelligent, had a spaceship, could operate alien tech, could travel in time, etc. Yes, the Doctor is still the Doctor, and Jack always ends up deferring to that (watch “Boom Town” to see what I mean), but the way the Doctor interacts with Jack is massively different from the way he interacts with any of his other companions. Jack was introduced as the human who was “more than”, and this was before he became immortal. Jack was created specifically to be a slightly darker, more human parallel to the Doctor, to be the Doctor with a gun and sometimes questionable morals, but ultimately parallel, which means ultimately good.
This was before Torchwood was commissioned. Yes, Jack would fire a gun when the Doctor wouldn’t, but he still died defending the world, just like the Doctor is willing to. That is his character, and it didn’t change just because he got his own spin-off.
I know Torchwood isn’t Doctor Who. It’s darker, Jack is darker, and the endings aren’t always so neatly happy. Even so, it’s clear that deliberate parallels have been drawn between Jack and the Doctor, and the Doctor is clearly who Jack aspires to be (he says as much in “The Sound of Drums” when he tells the Doctor he works for Torchwood). This could not be more glaringly obvious than in the parallels between the Doctor’s relationship with the Master in DWS3 and Jack’s relationship with Gray in TWS2, which are so similar that they’re practically the same story, though the Torchwood version is more simplistic and straightforward and, I would argue, done rather better (although the Master is a more complex character than Gray). In other words, the creators of both shows have set up Jack to be, yes, a darker version of the Doctor, but still recognizably a version of the Doctor, which means he’s still a hero you can respect at the end of the day.
This is why I have a huge problem with Jack’s reaction to Ianto’s death. This.
There’s an interesting plot point in the DW episode “Bad Wolf” where Rose is apparently disintegrated before the Doctor’s eyes. Regardless of where you stand on shipping, think about this: the Doctor has very recently lost his entire people and planet which he personally had to blow up to save the universe; Rose is the first person he’s become emotionally attached to since this calamity; she just got turned to dust right before his eyes because he was about ten seconds too late. In other words, the Doctor has just lost everything important to him again, and in his eyes it’s his fault again. That’s a pretty heavy emotional blow. And then he gets arrested. Don’t you think he’s feeling pretty hopeless?
But guess what? The universe still needs saving. So what does the Doctor do?
I’ll give you a hint: he doesn’t sit in his jail cell feeling sorry for himself.
No, the Doctor turns to Jack in what is one of Nine’s greatest moments and says simply, “Let’s do it.” And then he and Jack proceed to break out and go off to find out what’s going on. Because, yes, it’s terrible that Rose is apparently dead, but the universe still needs saving. There’s a time and a place to be angsty. This isn’t it.
Think about this! The Doctor, who is a lord of angst as much as of time, realizes that when the world is ending, mourning must be delayed. Even if it’s for the person who matters to you the most.
Look, I love Jack and Ianto as a couple, but Jack has lived on Earth for 140 years at this point. We know for a fact that he was engaged to Estelle at one time, that he married someone, that he had a child with someone, and we can assume that he’s had multiple lovers in between all that. And guess what? By this time, he’s lost all of them, and considering most of his social interaction happens at Torchwood, we can assume some of them died in not very pretty ways at not very old ages. Losing people isn’t new to Jack. I’m not saying that makes it easier, but by now I’m sure he’d have developed some coping methods. Between his immortality and his job, this is a part of his life. It happens. It’s great that he apparently really, really loves Ianto and everything, but I don’t buy that Ianto meant more to him than any of those past lovers. I really, really don’t. Rose was the first person the Doctor let himself emotionally connect with after his planet was destroyed, but Ianto is just the latest in a long line. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. If losing Rose didn’t make the Doctor completely hopeless, I don’t know how I’m expected to believe that losing Ianto would do that to Jack. There’s only one person whose loss I could buy doing that to Jack, and he’s never going to show up on Torchwood, so that’s a moot point. Jack had to have seen this coming, eventually, and even if he didn’t, the world still needs saving. Where are the parallels between Jack and the Doctor now?
The Jack Harkness in “Day Five” isn’t the Jack Harkness I’ve gotten to know over ten episodes of Doctor Who and the thirty preceding episodes of Torchwood. Yes, we can sit and argue for weeks over whether or not he really would kill his own grandson to save all the other children in the world, but until Agent Johnson showed up, Jack wasn’t going to do anything to help, horrible and horrifying or not. And I don’t buy that.
No, Jack isn’t a carbon copy of the Doctor, but that doesn’t change the fact that the writers have been creating deliberate parallels between the two for the past four years, nor that they wrote forty episodes portraying him a certain way, only to have him reverse directions in the forty-first. I think I have the right to some skepticism. I’m sorry, Jack ran away? Jack’s only run away once in the entire time we’ve known him, and that was in “The Doctor Dances” and in the end he came back. In “Day Five”, his character essentially completed a 360º: he’s right back where he was when we first met him, only now it’s worse. It’s worse because he’s supposed to be better than that. We know he’s better than that.
I can’t accept it. I can’t accept this Jack or this story or those reasons. It goes against everything the new Whoniverse has represented for the past four years, and I don’t buy it, and I won’t accept it. And you know what, writers? I’m not going to apologize for that.
Ianto’s death made Jack so hopeless that it drove him to take such a drastic and horrifying measure.
If that’s true, I think I’ve been watching a very different Jack Harkness, and I think these people are forgetting that Jack wasn’t created on Torchwood –– he was created on Doctor Who, and he was created for a very specific purpose, and that purpose makes it really hard to buy hopeless!Jack or runaway!Jack or even child-killing!Jack.
From the moment he rescued Rose in “The Empty Child”, Jack was introduced as a character who could actually be equal with the Doctor: he was charming, intelligent, had a spaceship, could operate alien tech, could travel in time, etc. Yes, the Doctor is still the Doctor, and Jack always ends up deferring to that (watch “Boom Town” to see what I mean), but the way the Doctor interacts with Jack is massively different from the way he interacts with any of his other companions. Jack was introduced as the human who was “more than”, and this was before he became immortal. Jack was created specifically to be a slightly darker, more human parallel to the Doctor, to be the Doctor with a gun and sometimes questionable morals, but ultimately parallel, which means ultimately good.
This was before Torchwood was commissioned. Yes, Jack would fire a gun when the Doctor wouldn’t, but he still died defending the world, just like the Doctor is willing to. That is his character, and it didn’t change just because he got his own spin-off.
I know Torchwood isn’t Doctor Who. It’s darker, Jack is darker, and the endings aren’t always so neatly happy. Even so, it’s clear that deliberate parallels have been drawn between Jack and the Doctor, and the Doctor is clearly who Jack aspires to be (he says as much in “The Sound of Drums” when he tells the Doctor he works for Torchwood). This could not be more glaringly obvious than in the parallels between the Doctor’s relationship with the Master in DWS3 and Jack’s relationship with Gray in TWS2, which are so similar that they’re practically the same story, though the Torchwood version is more simplistic and straightforward and, I would argue, done rather better (although the Master is a more complex character than Gray). In other words, the creators of both shows have set up Jack to be, yes, a darker version of the Doctor, but still recognizably a version of the Doctor, which means he’s still a hero you can respect at the end of the day.
This is why I have a huge problem with Jack’s reaction to Ianto’s death. This.
There’s an interesting plot point in the DW episode “Bad Wolf” where Rose is apparently disintegrated before the Doctor’s eyes. Regardless of where you stand on shipping, think about this: the Doctor has very recently lost his entire people and planet which he personally had to blow up to save the universe; Rose is the first person he’s become emotionally attached to since this calamity; she just got turned to dust right before his eyes because he was about ten seconds too late. In other words, the Doctor has just lost everything important to him again, and in his eyes it’s his fault again. That’s a pretty heavy emotional blow. And then he gets arrested. Don’t you think he’s feeling pretty hopeless?
But guess what? The universe still needs saving. So what does the Doctor do?
I’ll give you a hint: he doesn’t sit in his jail cell feeling sorry for himself.
No, the Doctor turns to Jack in what is one of Nine’s greatest moments and says simply, “Let’s do it.” And then he and Jack proceed to break out and go off to find out what’s going on. Because, yes, it’s terrible that Rose is apparently dead, but the universe still needs saving. There’s a time and a place to be angsty. This isn’t it.
Think about this! The Doctor, who is a lord of angst as much as of time, realizes that when the world is ending, mourning must be delayed. Even if it’s for the person who matters to you the most.
Look, I love Jack and Ianto as a couple, but Jack has lived on Earth for 140 years at this point. We know for a fact that he was engaged to Estelle at one time, that he married someone, that he had a child with someone, and we can assume that he’s had multiple lovers in between all that. And guess what? By this time, he’s lost all of them, and considering most of his social interaction happens at Torchwood, we can assume some of them died in not very pretty ways at not very old ages. Losing people isn’t new to Jack. I’m not saying that makes it easier, but by now I’m sure he’d have developed some coping methods. Between his immortality and his job, this is a part of his life. It happens. It’s great that he apparently really, really loves Ianto and everything, but I don’t buy that Ianto meant more to him than any of those past lovers. I really, really don’t. Rose was the first person the Doctor let himself emotionally connect with after his planet was destroyed, but Ianto is just the latest in a long line. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. If losing Rose didn’t make the Doctor completely hopeless, I don’t know how I’m expected to believe that losing Ianto would do that to Jack. There’s only one person whose loss I could buy doing that to Jack, and he’s never going to show up on Torchwood, so that’s a moot point. Jack had to have seen this coming, eventually, and even if he didn’t, the world still needs saving. Where are the parallels between Jack and the Doctor now?
The Jack Harkness in “Day Five” isn’t the Jack Harkness I’ve gotten to know over ten episodes of Doctor Who and the thirty preceding episodes of Torchwood. Yes, we can sit and argue for weeks over whether or not he really would kill his own grandson to save all the other children in the world, but until Agent Johnson showed up, Jack wasn’t going to do anything to help, horrible and horrifying or not. And I don’t buy that.
No, Jack isn’t a carbon copy of the Doctor, but that doesn’t change the fact that the writers have been creating deliberate parallels between the two for the past four years, nor that they wrote forty episodes portraying him a certain way, only to have him reverse directions in the forty-first. I think I have the right to some skepticism. I’m sorry, Jack ran away? Jack’s only run away once in the entire time we’ve known him, and that was in “The Doctor Dances” and in the end he came back. In “Day Five”, his character essentially completed a 360º: he’s right back where he was when we first met him, only now it’s worse. It’s worse because he’s supposed to be better than that. We know he’s better than that.
I can’t accept it. I can’t accept this Jack or this story or those reasons. It goes against everything the new Whoniverse has represented for the past four years, and I don’t buy it, and I won’t accept it. And you know what, writers? I’m not going to apologize for that.
