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Torchwood Captain Jack Harkness |
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| Story No. | 12 | 
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| Production Code | Series One Episode Twelve | |
| Dates | January 1, 2007 |
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With John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth
David-Lloyd.
Written by Catherine Tregenna Directed by Ashley Way Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner. |
| Synopsis: Jack and Toshi accidentally time travel back to the Blitz, where they discover that Captain Jack isn't all he seems. |
Love and War by Joe Ford 21/3/07
That was perfect. And I mean absolutely perfect. It would appear that Torchwood really has found its groove in the second half of the season and this is the best expression of what the show can do yet. It is this standard that season two needs to aspire to.
Jack and Tosh being whisked back in time to the Blitz is such a lovely idea and it provides nice symmetry to Out of Time that saw characters from the past visit us in modern times. I like these blatantly science-fiction episodes, it's what separates Torchwood from similar shows like The X-Files. Mulder and Scully's show did do a time travel episode but it was in constant denial about itself and nobody would actually say the words that Mulder had travelled through time. Torchwood tackles these silly SF themes head on with no apology. Also the scenes of characters wandering around the modern day dance hall with ghostly music sweeping through the room feels very Sapphire and Steel and that can never be a bad thing.
Time travel affords the production team a chance to go mad with period detail and the costumes and scenery are captivating. Bombs falling, the rift tearing open, romance and pumping testosterone between Ianto and Owen... this is the most atmospheric episode yet.
It is an intriguing mystery and the episode is superbly structured. Separating a piece between two time zones to see how one affects the other is not a new idea but it works a charm here with Gwen and Ianto searching the derelict dance hall and Tosh sending messages through time to them. You have to love Tosh's creativity and resourcefulness in this episode, fast becoming the most valuable member of the team. She writes the equations to open the rift and get them home in her own blood!
Here is an episode that adds layers to Jack's character and it is not before time. When we are introduced to Captain Jack Harkness in the 1940's and it is NOT our Jack, it is a genuine shock (and yet brilliantly set up in the first episode!) and we realise we have been cheated since as far back as The Empty Child. John Barrowman gives his best performance in either show here, he is absolutely captivating as the love struck and marooned time traveller. It is lovely to see him admitting his past to Tosh (as well as very sweetly taking her hand and admitting, "I'll take care of you") and in a breathtaking scene he admits he was brought back to life and feels he has been saved for something, but he doesn't know what.
Of course the highlight of the episode is the romance between the two Jacks. How nice to have a gay romance portrayed so sensitively, especially by Torchwood whose sexuality has been somewhat sleazy up until this point. Their feelings are built up throughout the episode, both trying to hold back but with one look you can see how badly they want to hold and comfort each other. Matt Rippy and John Barrowman share extraordinary chemistry and you are rooting for them throughout. I like how the episode does not make it easy for them, throwing in Nancy, Jack's girlfriend, an innocent Cardiff girl who has fallen in love with this heroic Captain. When Jack walks across the dance floor, takes Jack's hand and dances with him cheek to cheek I was punching the air with joy. The shocked looks they get just adds to the frisson of the scene. Looking into each other's eyes and kissing hungrily, it could have been sensationalist and gratuitous but built into this episode and played with totally sincerity, it is emotional pay off of the best kind. "This could be your last chance" our Jack says, knowing the Captain's fate. "That's why I came back," the real Jack admits, taking his hand.
Owen seems to have gone complete bananas. Had this come out of the blue it might have seemed really out of character but considering he took the loss of Diane so badly, and he was bitten by a Weevil last week and doesn't give a toss whether he lives or dies, it makes sense that he would open the Rift to see if he can get her back. He keeps sinking lower and lower into trouble, defying Jack's wishes to never open the rift, opening his safe, tussling with Ianto... there must be some comeuppance for him soon. Admittedly I was pretty proud of Ianto when he shot him in this episode!
There is a nice sense of continuity here too, making you realise how much back-story Torchwood has already built up. Ianto's Cyber-girlfriend, Owen's 50's philly, the resurrection glove knife and the ghost machine all get a moment.
Best of all, Torchwood seems to be setting up a new villain in the form of Billis Manger. Murray Melvin gives a suitably creepy performance in this episode. In fact, everything I have ever seen him in he gives a suitably creepy performance (remember him as the scary butler in Jonathon Creek?). His ability to pop back and forward in time makes him one to watch and how he seems to be playing the Torchwood team, scrubbing out Tosh's equations and yet leading Gwen to the information that will open the rift... a further appearance of this enigmatic character is essential. And I can't say that about many of the enemies the Torchwood team have fought.
Other thoughts:
A near-flawless piece of television.
Ballroom Blitz by John Nor 11/4/07
With this episode Jack and Toshiko are trapped in the past, where they meet someone strangely familiar. Can they get back from a 1940s dancehall to the present?
The early episodes of Torchwood tended to sideline Toshiko and Ianto and focus on the main three characters of Jack, Gwen and Owen. This episode is notable as all five get significant screen time for once, but as the title suggests, the focus is really on one character.
As Jack and Toshiko slip through a "temporal shift" in a Cardiff dancehall, the formal elegance of the setting contrasts with the garish lighting and thumping music of the bars and clubs Torchwood are usually to be found in. The maguffin (plot device) of this episode (with its various sub-maguffins of equations and cogs) is the "rift manipulator". The look of this object is a nod to the central column of the TARDIS. Surprisingly for such a significant element of the Hub, it has not been mentioned before (as far as I can recall.)
Owen opens up the safe to get the rift manipulator blueprints. As Cardiff Torchwood are an organisation whose mission (defined by Jack in his voiceover intro each week) is "arming the human race for the future" by collecting alien technology, I hope they have other storage areas for the piles of alien tech they have been finding as there is not much there. Though if the thirteen episodes are anything to go by, they don't manage to keep, let alone find, much.
The season's meager haul of new stuff is paraded as Owen searches through the safe: the life knife; the ghost machine; a box (I'm guessing containing the Dogon sixth eye) all are shown. (The resurrection glove and pendant having been destroyed by these so-called collectors. Doh!) The blueprints for the rift manipulator are finally found.
Owen finding the missing cog at the dancehall is slightly odd, but my filling in of the plot gaps supposes that Bilis Manger a) scratching off just the right part of the equation and b) leaving a subtly altered cog for Owen to find, these both create contribute to Manger's desired effect when they use the machine. (Manger seems to be willing them on to use the machine... but why? We can guess he will be back as his plotline seems unresolved.)
With a "haunted" dancehall featuring, Manger referring to himself as "the caretaker" is a sly reference to the the film The Shining. Manger is certainly an effectively creepy character.
The Owen and Ianto scenes in this episode are full of tension and sparks, with Owen's character and actions naturally flowing on from the last two episodes. The ten previous episodes which have made Owen such an (at times, and intentionally) annoying and unsympathetic character, that long build-up of obnoxiousness, the more low-key sympathetic moments built up for Ianto, these plot-lines are added to by the cracking dialogue of these scenes here, and they dovetail into a single moment of dramatic release... BLAM.
Back at the main plotline, the slow coming together of Jack and Jack is, like the Owen and Ianto scenes, marvelously done. Playing with the audience's expectations - of how they will portray what is happening - the writers ratchet up the dramatic tension. I kept thinking they would poignantly part Jack and Jack at various moments; at the "lover's corner"; at the interrupted clinch; so that the actual denouement was a real surprise with real drama.
The season so far had been rather coy about this side of Jack's life, restricting itself to obscure references, sometimes involving stopwatches, so expectations were lowered which made the moment even more dramatic.
In summary, the run of excellent episodes continues, adding to the mystery of Jack.
A Review by Liz Rawlings 18/4/07
This started out well, with Catherine Tregenna (who wrote Out of Time) giving us another decent story, with the bonus that in this one our heroes were actually in peril. Admittedly no one seemed that concerned about people with glowing earpieces and a laptop appearing in 1941, but the "messages through time" bit was fun (if unlikely; I can't see an office being left untouched for 50 years, isn't office space at a premium in most cities?) And Bilis Manger was nice and mysterious... actually, he remained nice and mysterious right to the end, even after seeing the next and final episode I never worked out who he was or where he came from.
However, it all turned to custard towards the end, because Catherine Tregenna seems to believe that two men dancing and kissing in a dance hall in 1941 would occasion nothing more than a few raised eyebrows and sniggers. In reality, "Real Jack" would have been subjected to ridicule, quite likely beaten up, and possibly even arrested. Alan Turing committed suicide after he'd been arrested for "indecent acts" (i.e. homosexual ones) in the mid-50s. In 1941, the real Captain Jack would probably have felt so ashamed that his death the following day would have almost certainly been deliberate.
In other words, that scene was either (a) unbelievable - "our Jack" was acting the way he did because he knew "Real Jack" was going to die, and wanted to show his feelings / acted out of pity - but without realising the effects this would have on "Real Jack" in the homophobic climate of 1941... or (b) disgustingly cynical, in that "our Jack" was just snogging "Real Jack" because he fancied him, knowing full well what effects that would have in 1941 but not caring two hoots about all the subsequent shame and ridicule, and quite possibly being responsible for "Real Jack's" death (or "assisted suicide") the next day. (Or maybe even wanting it to happen, so that he could take over his identity...)
If one is to take the story seriously, I can't see any other outcome. I suspect that the writer intended scenario (a) above, that "our Jack" was supposed to be acting from decent motives - but it's inconceivable that "our Jack", who had previously lived in 1941 (in The Empty Child/Doctor Dances) could have not known the effect his actions would have had on "Real Jack".
BTW, where was the earlier version of "our Jack" anyway? I had originally assumed that "our Jack" was going to meet himself, not his namesake. Given that "our Jack" was able to take over "Real Jack's" identity, surely a younger version of "our Jack" must have been around at the time, and fairly close to "Real Jack" (and living under yet another assumed name...) ?
In any case, God knows how "our Jack" managed to steal "Real Jack"'s identity - they didn't look that similar, and lots of people knew "Real Jack" - and would have known that he'd died... So how "our Jack" took over his identity actually seems very problematic, and is not explained. Maybe "alien tech" was involved.
Robert Smith? by Robert Smith? 29/6/20
The penultimate episode of Torchwood's first season has the unlikely title of Captain Jack Harkness. You know, there was an episode of Deep Space 9 called Dax, too, and the idea hasn't grown any better with time. At least with Rose it was a mission statement, as well as being the first episode of the new series, but it's still a really annoying thing to do.
However, everything else about this episode is brilliant. What's more, it undercuts your expectations, so even the title is playing on more levels than it seems. For once, Jack gets a role that the Doctor couldn't play (or at least not outside fanfic), and it works a treat. He's simply wrong for this part: the Captain Jack of old was much more fun, and that's something the show desperately needs, much more than it needs a wannabe Doctor substitute. Giving Toshi something to do, for only the second time, is also very welcome.
On the other hand, Jack gets lumbered with the Doctorish role of knowing his lover is going to die within 24 hours. So he's simultaneously depressed and fascinated, unable to let go and unable to look away. In some ways, Jack's immortality is a clever move, because TV characters almost never die anyway. On the other hand, it robs the series of most of its tension, because you're safe in the knowledge that nothing serious is ever going to happen. At least in Doctor Who, there's regeneration, which is a death substitute and a personal price the Doctor must pay, even if a new one emerges at the end.
The only way in which this episode doesn't work is in the number of unanswered questions it leaves. Fortunately, this isn't a problem at all, because all those questions get answered in the following episode. It's quite neat, actually: when you realise that everything Bilis did (e.g., scrubbing off only part of the blood formula, rather than just destroying the piece of paper entirely) was focused on getting Owen to open the rift.
Now, let's just hope all this build up will be worth it...
Captain James Harper by Noe Geric 12/1/23
After a run of three excellent episodes, Torchwood could've began to fall back into the sort of crap it produced with Day One or Cyberwoman, but not here. The penultimate episode of the first series sees the crew discover who Jack Harkness really is. The character itself was always a mystery, and even after this episode, he's still one. Tosh and her boss finds themselves brought into the middle of Second World War where they meet the Real Captain Jack Harkness and a curious entity known only as Billis Manger. I don't know what to say about this episode; very little happens in it. It's more of a character exploration, with only Gwen being put in the backseat (well, she was the main focus for most of the series, it was time for her to be less noisy). While Ianto and Owen got to shout for half of their scenes, Tosh faces WWII racism and Jack Harkness falls in love with Jack Harkness. I remember wanting more of it, after watching this one for the first time. It's incredibly gripping. Every scene makes you want to see the next.
I think the factor that makes every scene worth seeing is Billis Manger. Each time he appears, you wonder who the hell he can be. Before his backstory gets obliterated by the End of Days monstrosity, Billis was the most interesting villain of the show, and if I'm right he's the only one to also appear in a novel. The mystery around the character is mostly about him walking here and here in a sinister way without even saying a word. And he don't need a theatrical gimmick or an evil laugh to be truly menacing. I sincerely hope he'll be brought back in Doctor Who or another TV spin-off because he's the only character an appearance in audio/novel/comics can't satisfy.
And what about Jack? If you're not trying to think about Big Finish and the spin-off about the origins of the character, this episode is the one that tells the most about him without even saying too much. The mystery surrounding Jack is gripping, and it should've stopped there. No need for Nick Briggs and Co. to spoil all this even by revealing the character's true name! His relationship with the real Jack Harkness is deeply explored in a handful of scenes. I even found myself wanting to cry at the end. This is the first Torchwood episode where there aren't gay characters just because they needed to add some gay for everyone to be happy... No, the gay subplot is the essence of the story. Can Jack love the man whose name and identity he had stolen?
I also really liked the little hints about the periods like Tosh being bullied because she is Japanese or the sexism of everyone. Catherine Tregenna did remarkable work with historical people in a modern period with Out of Time, and here she did something even better with modern people in an historical setting. Torchwood should've done a little more historical (instead of sex-eating aliens) because it really manages to show how each member reacts to the past without having the Doctor explaining everything and telling everyone not to interfere with history.
Captain Jack Harkness is a brillant episode and should've been the series finale, because everything it did well here is completely destroyed by Chris Chibnall End of Days. Billis Manger is one of these villains I can't forgot, because he's incredibly well acted and the historical setting adds to the character charisma. Owen is at his most unbearable but... Who cares when you've got an episode as good as this? This may be my favorite of the first series, in close competition with Random Shoes. This isn't an action packed adventure, but it's a work of genius! 10/10