Subject: A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

WARNING: This thread assumes you've seen series 2 of Torchwood and the latest episode of Doctor Who. It may even incorporate information from The Sarah Jane Adventures, as needed. It is only for those who are thoroughly caught up on the latest events in the Whoniverse. The level of its spoiling will change as new episodes of the various series air. As such, it is a thread spoiled rotten.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

The thing I don't get, with respect to Jack finding the Doctor, is why he wasn't present at the Battle of Canary Wharf. Maybe I'm forgetting some line from "Cyberwoman" or something, but wouldn't there be some Torchwood-wide alert that he'd shown up at Torchwood 1? I wish we'd gotten a little scene right at the end of the battle where Jack turns up to find that the Doctor's already gone. I mean, I know it's going to be important to the end of series 4 that Jack knows that Rose was "on a list of the dead', but it somehow just doesn't make sense that Jack wasn't at Canary Wharf. If he knew that Torchwood was wrong on the "evil" that the Doctor represented, wouldn't he have rushed to the scene of any time the Doctor was "captured" by Torchwood? Wouldn't he have wanted to be there to protect the Doctor?

And i'm still waiting for Jack to reveal that he's got 17 particular DVDs.

As for wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff allowing Jack to meet a previous Doctor, I think that the answer is that Jack doesn't know about it. He's probably never had the equivalent of "Temporal Mechanics 101". The Time Agency's training program, though not explored in detail, doesn't seem like a patch on a freshman level course at the Prydonian Academy.

I think he's looking for a "version of the Doctor that coincides with him" because he's got specific questions of a Doctor after the 9th. Finding the 3d Doctor, though I think possible and even easy, doesn't get him an answer to the question, "Why did you abandon me?" As he says, he's looking for "the right Doctor."

Though I suppose it's plausible that Jack eventually got tired of going to various Doctor sightings only to discover it was the wrong one — and that he therefore settled on the plan of just waiting for him to show up at Cardiff and trip the "hand alarm" — it still is a bit unsatisfactory. After all, he didn't retrieve the hand in Cardiff; he went to London, probably because Torchwood 1 tipped him off that the Doctor was involved. There's no reason in the world he couldn't have been so tipped off by Torchwood 1 in "Army of Ghosts". Or that any one of the other major alien incursions of London ("Runaway", "Smith", "Aliens") wouldn't have sent him scurrying off for at least a bit of reconnaissance. I mean, he sent Tosh to London in "Aliens", but he didn't go himself? After she positively identified the Doctor? I'm not sure how much sense that makes.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

I just assume that its part of his Time Agent training.

knowing how much energy will be released if he meets himself (see maudrin undead or fathersday) Jack will avoid himself.

I recon he went on holiday during boomtown - just incase as they ate in the resturant JUST outside Torchwood.

also the invisibility... that means torchwood hub was build where it was was After unquiet dead. rather than boom town.. (obviously the building was in place when that area of cardif was docks and not a theatre,

there will have been 3 jacks there during boom town and 2 at most other times. I strongly wonder if jack wouldnt have opend the coffin and asked himself what was in store... 100 years of temptation...

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= Tin Dog Podcast] I just assume that its part of his Time Agent training.

knowing how much energy will be released if he meets himself (see maudrin undead or fathersday) Jack will avoid himself.

I recon he went on holiday during boomtown - just incase as they ate in the resturant JUST outside Torchwood.

also the invisibility... that means torchwood hub was build where it was was After unquiet dead. rather than boom town.. (obviously the building was in place when that area of cardif was docks and not a theatre,

there will have been 3 jacks there during boom town and 2 at most other times. I strongly wonder if jack wouldnt have opend the coffin and asked himself what was in store... 100 years of temptation...

[/QUOTE]

There's also three Jack's during "Empty Child/Doctor Dances"
1. The one we see on screen
2. The one that's working for Torchwood
3. The one that's frozen

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= DarthSkeptical] WARNING: This thread assumes you've seen series 2 of Torchwood and the latest episode of Doctor Who. It may even incorporate information from The Sarah Jane Adventures, as needed. It is only for those who are thoroughly caught up on the latest events in the Whoniverse. The level of its spoiling will change as new episodes of the various series air. As such, it is a thread spoiled rotten.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= Linquel] Good thinking, Darth. I need to go back to the PiC thread to see just how it got onto that topic anyway. [/QUOTE]

I'm pretty sure it was me... I just wondered, how many times do you think Jack goes back in time and waits to catch back up with himself? It's rather like Marvin in THGTTG or Bender from Futurama in "Bender's Big Score".

I'm pretty sure Jack knows about all of the previous regenerations of the Doctor and has followed him as he appears on Earth throughout the 20th century. I'm speculating, but I'm sure Torchwood would be up on everything UNIT was doing, especially if the Doctor wound up in any of its reports (then again, if that were so, why were they so happy to meet the 10th Doctor as if it were their first encounter with him... dunno- need more retcon!).

Anyway, Jack pretty clearly states in Utopia that he waited until he could meet up with the version of the Doctor that existed after he was abandoned on Satellite 5.

A bigger question that I have about Jack has to do with the two years of his life that he says he can't account for. This is Jack before he becomes immortal, just after he starts traveling with Rose and the 9th Doctor. He talked about that a bit in Series 1 (Boom Town, I think?), and I have been waiting for this topic to come back up in Torchwood... Unless I've missed it, it hasn't yet.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= rocko] [QUOTE BY= Linquel] Good thinking, Darth. I need to go back to the PiC thread to see just how it got onto that topic anyway. [/QUOTE]
A bigger question that I have about Jack has to do with the two years of his life that he says he can't account for. This is Jack before he becomes immortal, just after he starts traveling with Rose and the 9th Doctor. He talked about that a bit in Series 1 (Boom Town, I think?), and I have been waiting for this topic to come back up in Torchwood... Unless I've missed it, it hasn't yet.
[/QUOTE]
The two missing years are from before his travels with the Doctor and Rose (from Jack's perspective)...

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= stjohnny] [QUOTE BY= Tin Dog Podcast] I just assume that its part of his Time Agent training.

knowing how much energy will be released if he meets himself (see maudrin undead or fathersday) Jack will avoid himself.

I recon he went on holiday during boomtown - just incase as they ate in the resturant JUST outside Torchwood.

also the invisibility... that means torchwood hub was build where it was was After unquiet dead. rather than boom town.. (obviously the building was in place when that area of cardif was docks and not a theatre,

there will have been 3 jacks there during boom town and 2 at most other times. I strongly wonder if jack wouldnt have opend the coffin and asked himself what was in store... 100 years of temptation...

[/QUOTE]

There's also three Jack's during "Empty Child/Doctor Dances"
1. The one we see on screen
2. The one that's working for Torchwood
3. The one that's frozen[/QUOTE]

Don't forget the one who's around in 1941 during the events of the episode "Captain Jack Harkness." So we've got 4 Jacks hanging around, not to mention the real Captain Harkness.

Every single series with Jack finds a way to put him in 1941. It's going to start to get pretty crowded fairly soon.

Perhaps everyone in 1941 Cardiff or London that we don't see is Jack Harkness, much like my "every citizen of Cardiff we do not see on screen in Torchwood is scuba diving in Spain" theory.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

Are there 4 Jacks in "CJH"? I'm not so convinced.

Three of them can be established without difficulty: the pre- and post-"Exit Wounds" Torchwood leader Jacks (frozen and unfrozen), as well as the post-"Parting of the Ways" Torchwood employee Jack.

What's always messed with my head about "CJH", though, is how it can be set in Cardiff. I mean, it is, but it doesn't make any sense. How can pre-"Empty Child" Jack have really have known about the real Captain Jack? Why would an obscure officer attached to a regiment in Cardiff have attracted Time Agent Jack's attention in London? Does this imply that Time Agent Jack (the Face of Bo, or whatever he was called prior to the events of "Empty Child") had not yet arrived in the UK as of the events of "CJH"? I suppose it must, really, cause he wouldn't have taken the real Jack's identity before the real Jack died. So there's the possibility that as of the precise moments of the events of "CJH", there are only three Jacks in the UK: pre-"Exit Wounds" Torchwood leader Jack, frozen Torchwood leader Jack (or "post-Exit Wounds" Jack), and post-"Parting of the Ways" Torchwood employee Jack.

Still, Cardiff as a location makes little sense to me, cause I don't see how Time Agent Jack hit upon the name of Jack Harkness from London. I mean, wouldn't it have taken some time for casualty reports to have filtered in from the outlying areas? Maybe, then, "Empty Child" is set considerably after "CJH". The Blitz did last a number of months . . .

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

Wow. I really need to watch the rest of Torchwood series 2 (I'm stalled out on Something Borrowed) because all of this talk about Exit Wounds and frozen Jacks is confusing the bejeezus out of me.

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= tarashnat] [QUOTE BY= rocko]
A bigger question that I have about Jack has to do with the two years of his life that he says he can't account for. This is Jack before he becomes immortal, just after he starts traveling with Rose and the 9th Doctor. He talked about that a bit in Series 1 (Boom Town, I think?), and I have been waiting for this topic to come back up in Torchwood... Unless I've missed it, it hasn't yet.
[/QUOTE]
The two missing years are from before his travels with the Doctor and Rose (from Jack's perspective)...[/QUOTE]

Right. Does he ever talk about them again?

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= rocko] [QUOTE BY= tarashnat] [QUOTE BY= rocko]
A bigger question that I have about Jack has to do with the two years of his life that he says he can't account for. This is Jack before he becomes immortal, just after he starts traveling with Rose and the 9th Doctor. He talked about that a bit in Series 1 (Boom Town, I think?), and I have been waiting for this topic to come back up in Torchwood... Unless I've missed it, it hasn't yet.
[/QUOTE]
The two missing years are from before his travels with the Doctor and Rose (from Jack's perspective)...[/QUOTE]

Right. Does he ever talk about them again?[/QUOTE] No. Which I hope is a part of some, no-pun-intended, master plan. The right place for a revelation about that is really Doctor Who, not Torchwood. It would be very satisfactory, indeed, were the reason for Jack's memory loss be tied in with a season finale on DW. It would be even cooler, still, if the proximate cause of the memory loss were the Doctor himself. How neat would it be, for instance, if the Jack we're going to see at the end of this year were to be a pre-9th Doctor, pre-Torchwood Jack, and he has to have his memory wiped because the Doctor, knowing what's to come, gives him a dose of retcon?

WIthout a reference to the memory loss in Torchwood, the only way you can really fit it in is if you make it an extremely fleeting (like the "alien pig" ref in "Exit Wounds"). And I don't want extremely fleeting. That's a potentially BIG DAMN plotline, and it should go in the series where the majority of viewers would "get" it (and, frankly, care about it).

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= DarthSkeptical] How neat would it be, for instance, if the Jack we're going to see at the end of this year were to be a pre-9th Doctor, pre-Torchwood Jack, and he has to have his memory wiped because the Doctor, knowing what's to come, gives him a dose of retcon? [/QUOTE]

Or maybe he meets up with his future self and must retcon himself to save damage to the timeline...

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= rocko] [QUOTE BY= DarthSkeptical] How neat would it be, for instance, if the Jack we're going to see at the end of this year were to be a pre-9th Doctor, pre-Torchwood Jack, and he has to have his memory wiped because the Doctor, knowing what's to come, gives him a dose of retcon? [/QUOTE]

Or maybe he meets up with his future self and must retcon himself to save damage to the timeline...[/QUOTE]

THEN they can explain exactly how he got his name, because i'm not buying the whole Captain Jack Harkness naming story either, there's too many Torchwood Jack's hanging around the UK for pre-Empty Child Jack to go unnoticed!

Perhaps this and the reason for his 2 year memory loss will come out in the new series' of Doctor Who/Torchwood

A fistful of Jacks [SPOILERS: latest DW, TW, SJA]

[QUOTE BY= DarthSkeptical]Still, Cardiff as a location makes little sense to me, cause I don't see how Time Agent Jack hit upon the name of Jack Harkness from London. I mean, wouldn't it have taken some time for casualty reports to have filtered in from the outlying areas? Maybe, then, "Empty Child" is set considerably after "CJH". The Blitz did last a number of months . . . [/QUOTE]

That's what I would assume. Going strictly by clothing, it seems to be colder in "Empty Child" than "CJH."

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