So, what if it really is All About Jack?
Oct. 23rd, 2006 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThinking about the first two episodes in light of Jack's Issues
granted, we don't know about all of them yet. There's the missing couple of years, which may or may not have been fixed at some point, because he hasn't mentioned them in this series yet. There's oh noes can't die issues, alongside oh noes did die issues. And there's the one where he was this con man who used people and then he fell in love with this couple who showed him opening his heart was worth it and then they got him killed and left him at the wrong end of time. Or possibly the wrong middle of time. I'm a bit fuzzy on the whole time thing.
ANYways
I really hope they don't give him any extra Issues. Those right there seem plenty enough.
Except also, if he was pregnant, there may well have once been offspring. He was either a mother or a father, depending on how you look at it. And now he's likely in a different time zone than they are by a few thousand years. And anything he does to the timeline could potentially wipe them out.
Either that or he was pregnant and didn't finish. Maybe there's Jackling on ice somewhere in the future.
... I had a flashback to scully eggs ...
So, any way you look at it, Jack is fully equipped with Issues.
... Actually, hang on, and add in some slash standbys - time travelled to an era of homophobia and possible death. Remotely possible, given his current condition, but if you came from the happily liberated future, would you be happy with the early 21st century? All the legal fuss, all the badness that ends up in the news, that has to be depressing. Even if you call them quaint categories, there's bumping into the edges over and over.
And then there's the health issues, and the way everyone is going to die, possibly messy deaths, sometimes right in front of him. But that kind of loops back to the Immortality.
Oh, also, he's a Sentinel with no Guide.
... I think we can leave that one out, even if he is tasting rain and knowing he's being watched from way up above.
I've lost count of how many Issues that it.
Anyways, for them as have watched him die and come back, we start out right away with his issues - talking to the dead man, asking what he saw. This is very personally relevant to Jack, in a been there done that way.
And then there's the woman who is obsessed with the glove, because of the possibility of using it to make people immortal.
She kills herself, I think, in no small part, because of realising that if Jack already *is* Immortal she's been killing people for *no good reason even by her own standards*. Which has to be damn depressing really.
So first episode tentatively all about the death/return/immortality thing.
Second episode all about sex, and dying alone.
Jack kind of died alone. He was a bit alone, only talking, but then he was very alone, being all left behind.
Jack talks a lot about sex but we haven't actually seen him have any yet.
Compare/contrast
We have that bastard with the rape spray
and the alien with the pheromones
Jack and the bastard both talk about sex sometimes in a kind of... well, Jack saying he had fun and that's all that really matters, that kind of sounds like skipping the relationship stuff like the bastard and the parasite did.
But.
Jack is the contrast
he talks a lot, but he doesn't take advantage. Not sexually. He isn't tempted - he goes for the sword, not the sex. (Yes, insert sword joke here. Wooden sword. whatever.)
Interesting thing there - even the newbie nice girl was snogging her, and yet Jack doesn't. Got some self control.
Or, the Hub is really big and therefore the pheremones are less concentrated in the air. Depends if you want to use it as a character moment or not.
But then what Jack does isn't use chemistry to get sex, its use sex to get something else he wants, that being the alien out of the host body.
Forgot a set of issues - soldier stuff. People die. Because he killed them, because he didn't save them.
Gwen was all 'wah! my fault!' and he was all 'that kind of thinking doesn't help' and then he apparently was ignoring the 5 dead guys that happened because he didn't want the hand damaged.
But he was volunteering to be the one that might end up a little heap of dust, so you have to wonder.
How far has this 'immortality' been tested anyway? *Why* does he want a Doctor? Does he want to share, or does he want out? Does he even know?
Anyways
If you watch these episode for themes and suppose the themes reflect *on Jack* then I think that works pretty well.
He's gone a bit dark - but not as dark as the rest of Torchwood.
They're misusing alien tech for their own profit, *just like he was first time we saw him*. But now, far as we see, he *isn't*. Is that because he's genuinely fighting the good fight? Insufficient data. And if he *is* fighting that fight... What is he doing fighting it in this century? I mean, he was a Time Agent. What did they do? Stop time travellers screwing up history? Oh look, what's he doing right now?
He's kind of angry and bitter. He's acting the tart but doesn't seem to be paired up (or in any larger stable relationship neither).
Correction, he's *talking* a lot about what a tart he is/was, but if he lives in the building, how much time does he really have for that?
We've got some nice big gaps in our Jack knowledge still.
Sex addiction tie to Jack issues? Don't reckon it does.
Misuse of drugs tie in? Hell yes - amnesia drink goes right back to drink spiking, which goes to chemically induced consent, which for that bastard goes to rape.
But for Jack, it's all about the mission. He uses the amnesia pill because that's part of what their job is.
Bit inconsistent, because he's getting annoyed about humans buying the cover stories at the selfsame time he is the one engineering said cover stories.
And he calls it tragic that she'll forget him, which on the one hand is terribly arrogant, but on the other... according to the website, he had the team research her before she brought the pizza. He was interested then. Interested how?
Someone said the Gwen kissing was too early, in terms of 'ship.
I reckon any 'ship involving Jack is going to be... like Chiana on Farscape, fast with the body, slow with the soul. Easy to get into bed with, hard to get in a relationship. Don't know though, because as previously mentioned, he's all talk thus far.
for a bunch of disconnected thoughts, that ended up kind of long.
Some shows you can look at various characters and their stories as illuminating a central character. Some shows they kind of... pass the baton and have different who it is abouts. The only one we want to know about so far is Jack, who is set up as The Mystery for a lot of the other characters. Gwen has a very ordinary up front life so far, and is the one who wants to do the finding out. So I wonder, is it really telling us all about Jack?
But it isn't called Harkness, it is called Torchwood.
Among other things, this makes it much easier should any and/or all characters leave. Can keep the team and replace all the parts of it.
Without the slightly embarrassing 'which one's Blake' questions.
/ramble
granted, we don't know about all of them yet. There's the missing couple of years, which may or may not have been fixed at some point, because he hasn't mentioned them in this series yet. There's oh noes can't die issues, alongside oh noes did die issues. And there's the one where he was this con man who used people and then he fell in love with this couple who showed him opening his heart was worth it and then they got him killed and left him at the wrong end of time. Or possibly the wrong middle of time. I'm a bit fuzzy on the whole time thing.
ANYways
I really hope they don't give him any extra Issues. Those right there seem plenty enough.
Except also, if he was pregnant, there may well have once been offspring. He was either a mother or a father, depending on how you look at it. And now he's likely in a different time zone than they are by a few thousand years. And anything he does to the timeline could potentially wipe them out.
Either that or he was pregnant and didn't finish. Maybe there's Jackling on ice somewhere in the future.
... I had a flashback to scully eggs ...
So, any way you look at it, Jack is fully equipped with Issues.
... Actually, hang on, and add in some slash standbys - time travelled to an era of homophobia and possible death. Remotely possible, given his current condition, but if you came from the happily liberated future, would you be happy with the early 21st century? All the legal fuss, all the badness that ends up in the news, that has to be depressing. Even if you call them quaint categories, there's bumping into the edges over and over.
And then there's the health issues, and the way everyone is going to die, possibly messy deaths, sometimes right in front of him. But that kind of loops back to the Immortality.
... I think we can leave that one out, even if he is tasting rain and knowing he's being watched from way up above.
I've lost count of how many Issues that it.
Anyways, for them as have watched him die and come back, we start out right away with his issues - talking to the dead man, asking what he saw. This is very personally relevant to Jack, in a been there done that way.
And then there's the woman who is obsessed with the glove, because of the possibility of using it to make people immortal.
She kills herself, I think, in no small part, because of realising that if Jack already *is* Immortal she's been killing people for *no good reason even by her own standards*. Which has to be damn depressing really.
So first episode tentatively all about the death/return/immortality thing.
Second episode all about sex, and dying alone.
Jack kind of died alone. He was a bit alone, only talking, but then he was very alone, being all left behind.
Jack talks a lot about sex but we haven't actually seen him have any yet.
Compare/contrast
We have that bastard with the rape spray
and the alien with the pheromones
Jack and the bastard both talk about sex sometimes in a kind of... well, Jack saying he had fun and that's all that really matters, that kind of sounds like skipping the relationship stuff like the bastard and the parasite did.
But.
Jack is the contrast
he talks a lot, but he doesn't take advantage. Not sexually. He isn't tempted - he goes for the sword, not the sex. (Yes, insert sword joke here. Wooden sword. whatever.)
Interesting thing there - even the newbie nice girl was snogging her, and yet Jack doesn't. Got some self control.
Or, the Hub is really big and therefore the pheremones are less concentrated in the air. Depends if you want to use it as a character moment or not.
But then what Jack does isn't use chemistry to get sex, its use sex to get something else he wants, that being the alien out of the host body.
Forgot a set of issues - soldier stuff. People die. Because he killed them, because he didn't save them.
Gwen was all 'wah! my fault!' and he was all 'that kind of thinking doesn't help' and then he apparently was ignoring the 5 dead guys that happened because he didn't want the hand damaged.
But he was volunteering to be the one that might end up a little heap of dust, so you have to wonder.
How far has this 'immortality' been tested anyway? *Why* does he want a Doctor? Does he want to share, or does he want out? Does he even know?
Anyways
If you watch these episode for themes and suppose the themes reflect *on Jack* then I think that works pretty well.
He's gone a bit dark - but not as dark as the rest of Torchwood.
They're misusing alien tech for their own profit, *just like he was first time we saw him*. But now, far as we see, he *isn't*. Is that because he's genuinely fighting the good fight? Insufficient data. And if he *is* fighting that fight... What is he doing fighting it in this century? I mean, he was a Time Agent. What did they do? Stop time travellers screwing up history? Oh look, what's he doing right now?
He's kind of angry and bitter. He's acting the tart but doesn't seem to be paired up (or in any larger stable relationship neither).
Correction, he's *talking* a lot about what a tart he is/was, but if he lives in the building, how much time does he really have for that?
We've got some nice big gaps in our Jack knowledge still.
Sex addiction tie to Jack issues? Don't reckon it does.
Misuse of drugs tie in? Hell yes - amnesia drink goes right back to drink spiking, which goes to chemically induced consent, which for that bastard goes to rape.
But for Jack, it's all about the mission. He uses the amnesia pill because that's part of what their job is.
Bit inconsistent, because he's getting annoyed about humans buying the cover stories at the selfsame time he is the one engineering said cover stories.
And he calls it tragic that she'll forget him, which on the one hand is terribly arrogant, but on the other... according to the website, he had the team research her before she brought the pizza. He was interested then. Interested how?
Someone said the Gwen kissing was too early, in terms of 'ship.
I reckon any 'ship involving Jack is going to be... like Chiana on Farscape, fast with the body, slow with the soul. Easy to get into bed with, hard to get in a relationship. Don't know though, because as previously mentioned, he's all talk thus far.
for a bunch of disconnected thoughts, that ended up kind of long.
Some shows you can look at various characters and their stories as illuminating a central character. Some shows they kind of... pass the baton and have different who it is abouts. The only one we want to know about so far is Jack, who is set up as The Mystery for a lot of the other characters. Gwen has a very ordinary up front life so far, and is the one who wants to do the finding out. So I wonder, is it really telling us all about Jack?
But it isn't called Harkness, it is called Torchwood.
Among other things, this makes it much easier should any and/or all characters leave. Can keep the team and replace all the parts of it.
Without the slightly embarrassing 'which one's Blake' questions.
/ramble