...and another Torchwood thought

[selenak]

Today's hotel, near the place where three Roman legious were wiped out by Arminius the Cheruscan & friends, has at least one public computer for all, so, something which occured to me too late to add to the earlier entry, concerning everyone's favourite omnisexual conman and now team leader, Captain Jack Harkness.



If you think about, Jack, not the late Suzie, is the team member who got most people killed so far. Because Jack let Possessed!Carys escape just because he didn't want to lose the Doctor's hand. Which is creepy and touching and promising and whatnot in regards to Jack's emotional make-up, but if you think about it, it's incredibly irresponsible and makes him at the very least aide to manslaughter. He knew what was at stake, he had seen Carys/the alien kill. There was no doubt she'd do it again if they let her escape. Carys herself had pleaded for help with Gwen. And he risked her going on a serial killer rampage anyway. Which adds every single man who died at the sperm donor's clinic to his personal body count.

Yet the one who feels guilty about the entire situation? Is Gwen. Not that I don't appreciate Gwen acting responsibly, but her part in this was an accident. Jack's was a deliberate action.

Comments

[queenofthorns.livejournal.com]

Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!!! (Hee! I’m far too excited that you’re in the Teutoburger Wald ;))

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Teutoburger, Schmeutoburger. As the citizens of Detmold have learned to their ongoing anger in the 90s, the most likely location of the battle was actually none too far from Osnabrück, near a place called Kalkriese. Will report on the museum and the battleground tomorrow, if I can; it's fascinating to visit. With findings that have caused research to conclude that's where Varus and the 17th, 18th and 19th ended up....

[g_shadowslayer]

I think Jack is a bit more broken than he's letting on, and he's feeling a lot more guilty about it than he's showing. I think if he lets it show, he's going to shatter and be useless for everyone. But, that's just me. Considering TV writing, they may not go into it in much depth at all.

I'm more concerned about Owen's actions in the first episode, and his gleeful observation of Gwen and Carys before he decided to let the others know what was going on...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, everyone is concerned about Owen (and rightly so, of course), but let me play devil's advocate some more: Jack isn't a member of the team any more, he's team leader. Which makes Owen his responsibility as well, though naturally not to the same degree he was responsible for Carys' escape. But he is the guy's direct supervisor. He has worked with him for months if not a full year. Owen doesn't make a secret of his blatant sexism, and I don't think his irresponsible behaviour re: Gwen/Carys or later Carys in the cell was the first time. So, unless we find out Jack for some reason that is beyond his control cannot fire Owen, you have to admit to a certain degree of responsibility there as well.

(I like to mess with audience favourites sometimes, I admit.)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

He has worked with him for months if not a full year.

This is another thing that puzzled me. These people have worked with Jack Harkness for that long, and are still speculating about his sexual preferences? That is not the Jack I remember.

[g_shadowslayer]

Well, how much of Owen's behaviour does Jack actually know about? He knows Owen had the alien-pheremone-date-rape-drug, but does he know the idiot actually tried it out? I'm not sure. They didn't make that part clear.

He obviously knows about the other, and shame on him for letting himself be distracted by it, too. At least he was quick enough to go stop it the moment he shook his brain back into gear...

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

I speak as one who has not seen it, but has heard it much discussed, so take this with the requisite grain of salt:

If rheanna27's theory holds true, and Jack Harkness has been effectively immortal and working with Torchwood for a very long period of time, he's going to be an extremely jaded individual. This is not the same as escaping moral culpability, or hopefully a point beyond which he can feel guilt, but there could feasibly be a point past which that guilt is simply not going to have the overwhelming emotional effect that it would for people who haven't been alive/unbreakable for more than a couple of centuries. If Jack has been working with Torchwood since the beginning (entirely possible), then it's possible that this isn't the first time he's lost a team, even for terrible reasons, and he might simultaneously feel like hell and simply keep on because this is the way it goes.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Re: Jack's age - I agree we don't know how much time has passed for him since Bad Wolf. The dimensional crack in Cardiff from Boom Town is mentioned, and might be how he ended up there. Or conversely it can have been just the one year it was for the viewer. (I tend to favour that myself, because somehow I don't think Jack could have made it through centuries without running into the Doctor in one of his incarnations.)

However, it's not really relevant for this particular situation, isn't about losing a team but letting a serial killer loose on the general population - which he does, and which results in a lot of deaths which could have been avoided.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Jack has come to Cardiff because he knows the Doctor will eventually come back to the rift. So if he was there even a year ago (2006 by the show's internal chronology, which I suddenly hope Torchwood is actually following), he would have encountered the Doctor in "Boomtown". When the TARDIS was ... parked right over Torchwood HQ. (Admittedly, Jack was with the Doctor at the time, but there's nothing to prevent Torchwood!Jack from wandering up, catching the Doctor alone and slipping him a note that says, Dear Doctor, You great big screw up, don't forget to pick me up from Cardiff after I'm resurrected. Ta. PS. U R HOTTTT.

Um, I had a point. *casts about* Oh yes! That Jack probably hasn't been there for that long.