Years ago, I made a solemn vow to myself not to become addicted to more than one television series at a time. I don’t have a lot of free time to obsess over more than one, and most shows on my DVR are for casual, one-time view it and delete it use. Right now, the object of my obsession is House, M.D. as it has since 2004 when it first premiered.
Friends have been trying to corral me into the Doctor Who universe for something like 25 years, but I never quite got into it as a must-see series. I’ve dabbled from time to time, so I know that his ship, the TARDIS is a blue London police call box, and that he’s combating Daleks, and that there have been ever so many incarnations of the timeless time lord (and as many actors playing him). But that’s about it.
But with summer in full swing, and the TV object of my affection on summer hiatus, I thought I would tune in have a look at Torchwood: Miracle Day, a 10-episode series currently airing on Starz. Stick my toe in the water: a mere summer fling. At least that was the plan. Before 25 minutes had passed, the plan, such as it was, had been forgotten. Intrigued by the Torchwood's complex protagonist Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), I was left hungering for more.
With a very hot and rainy weekend hovering over the Chicago area (but, not, to my knowledge any evidence of a time rift), I took a deep breath, booted up Netflix. Queuing up three seasons of Torchwood to my hopefully cooperative Blu-ray player, I pleaded with the machine to avoid its usual knack for re-buffering at the most inconvenient times, and plunged in.
Two days later (more or less), I came up for air genuinely addicted. Great! Just what I need: another television series requiring my care, feeding, and constant attention.
The Torchwood Institute, so the story goes, was created by Queen Victoria to investigate the unusual—sort of Victorian X-Files. The Institute operates outside normal government channels, and seems to have fallen in and out of favor over the many decades it’s been in business. Torchwood takes place in modern day Cardiff, Wales, the location of a rift in the time-space continuum. In a time (or temporal) rift, people and objects can fall through from other times (future or in the past) and locations, including alien beings and technology. Torchwood investigates and captures (or destroys) malevolent creatures, collecting their technology to stockpile for some coming battle.
Captain Jack is exactly the sort of literary hero to whom I gravitate: brilliant, outwardly brash, even egotistical, but harboring a lot of torment and secrets buried deep inside. He has a deeply human side, but can come across as cold and overly rational when weighing life and death choices. (Okay, I admit it, he's very, very easy on the eyes.)
Born in the 51st Century, he is from the Boeshane Peninsula—a place not of this earth. A "time agent" employed by the Time Agency, Jack's special wristband enables him to travel through time and space at will on missions of a unspecified nature.
From what I understand, Jack’s home town is an Earth colony on a distant planet. And from the bits and pieces I’ve seen of it on Torchwood (“Adam” and “Exit Wounds,” Series 2), it reminds me a bit of Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet. A desert-ish planet, it was attacked when Jack was a teenager. His father told him to run to safety with his brother Gray, but in the chaos, young Jack lost the grip on his brother's hand, and by the time he’d realized that Gray had let go, the attack was underway. In the end, Jack’s father was killed and Gray had disappeared.
Jack had never stopped searching for his brother, who he learns had been captured and tortured, leaving him bitter and with a hate for Jack that would last for eternity ("Exit Wounds"). When Gray suddenly appears at the end of Series 2, it is to torture Jack for the rest of his days.
Gray is the first of so many losses the immortal Jack has carried with him through the centuries, each costing him emotionally, despite his usually stoic and often arrogant façade. It is this sense of loss and suffering Jack carries with him that makes the character so compelling (at least to me). The loss is keener because Jack is immortal. He can e motally wounded, and has been many times, but he doesn't stay dead. This is something he discovers at the end of the 2005 series of Doctor Who (with the ninth Doctor, played by Chris Eccleston). After discovering his apparent immortality, The Doctor abandons Jack, who then transports himself to the end of the 19th Century, where he hopes to reunite with his mentor and friend.
It is here that Jack first encounters Torchwood and is told that he will not again see The Doctor until "the century turns twice." So Jack waits where he has landed, in Cardiff to await The Doctor's return. At the end of Torchwood Series 1, Jack finally reunites with The Doctor only to realize that he misses his mates back at the Torchwood Hub, and he returns to them at the start of Series 2.
Although he cannot die, when he is shot, stabbed or otherwise injured, Jack still hurts…and when he “dies,” he has said, the process of returning to life is like being “dragged over broken glass.” In the years we’ve known him as the leader of Torchwood Cardiff, we have seen Jack lose several people under his command, including Susie (in the very first episode of Series 1), medical officer Owen Harper (Burn Gorman), computer genius Toshiko Sato (Naoko Mori, “Exit Wounds”—the Series 2 finale), and his lover (and also Torchwood agent) Ianto Jones (“Children of the Earth”). Of his original team, only Gwen Cooper remains, although Torchwood itself never really survives the end of the epic Torchwood: Children of the Earth, as Jack vanishes for planets and times unknown. But no loss has shaken him more than the tragic sacrifice of his grandson at the end of Children of the Earth.
In that five-part miniseries (Series 3), Jack is faced with a terrible choice: sacrifice his grandson or condemn millions of other children to torture and destruction by the alien beings known as the “456.” The only way to save them is to watch his grandson die, ripped apart by horrific vibrations that lead to the death of the alien form. Condemning his grandson to death, he sacrifices the one for the many, a philosophy that Jack carries with him throughout the series.
He not only loses his grandson, but also his daughter, with whom he’d only had a tenuous relationship in the first place. He has also seen another lover—someone with whom he’d vowed decades earlier to be together until their deaths die, an elderly woman, destroyed by malevolent fairies (yes, you heard me!). All these deaths weigh very heavily on Captain Jack, as he blames himself. The burden of these deaths render him a tragic figure—condemned to live in eternity alone and lonely, longing for death in some ways, yet embracing it where he can.
And Captain Jack does embrace life; indeed he does. Coming from a more sexually “flexible” time in the distant future, Jack is known as “omnisexual.” In other words, he’ll shag just about anything or anyone—humanoid or not—if he (or she) strikes his fancy. He’s had lovers of both the male and female (human) persuasion. He’s been married and as noted earlier, even has offspring. Part of Jack’s tragedy is that he outlives them all, knowing that he, himself, cannot die.
Although he and his close Torchwood associate Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles, also featured in the current series) have never (at least in the series canon) been lovers, there is plenty of evidence that there is a very strong mutual attraction between them—and that they deeply care for (and probably love) each other. But since the series start, Gwen has always had Rhys (Kai Owen) at her side. He is loyal and committed to her and loves her.
Gwen also loves Rhys, who is always there for her and is as open a book as Jack is enigmatic. Jack has never said outright to Gwen that he’s in love with her, but several episodes suggest his feelings, and despite the deep affection and love he has for his male lover Ianto, there is an occasional longing in Jack’s expression when watching Gwen from afar (particularly in “Something Borrowed,” when Gwen marries long-time boyfriend Rhys).
And there is no doubt that Jack deeply loves Ianto, who dies in Episode 4 of Torchwood's third series Children of Earth. Ianto's death leaves Jack devastated.
So that’s the (very) short story of my new TV Boyfriend. If you really want to know Captain Jack and the rest of the Torchwood team, you must go watch the three previous series and several Doctor Who episodes. Don’t want to watch them all? Here are my favorites, in chronological order. Go have a peek, and see if you don’t end up watching them all anyway. Why these? I’ve selected those episodes that either give us special insight into Captain Jack or were otherwise emotionally resonant.
Series 1:
“Everything Changes”
“Day One”
“Small Worlds”
“Out of Time”
“Captain Jack Harkness”
“End of Days”
Series 2
“Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang”
“To the Last Man”
“Adam”
“Reset”
“Something Borrowed”
“Adrift”
“Fragments”
“Exit Wounds”
Torchwood: Children of Earth:
All five episodes must be seen.
Torchwood: Miracle Day airs on Starz Friday nights at 10:00 p.m. ET.
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Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
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