Plot Bunnies
Mar. 4th, 2008 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sensiblecatI keep thinking about Jack. Well, someone has to do it, don't they? And just where is he going as a character in Torchwood?
What was going on in his mind when he reanimated Owen? I've just watched DMW again and I still don't really know. I can think of three possibilities.
One - he just couldn't bear to let Owen go. Which does make you wonder about his state of mind. He must have lost a lot of people over the years, and he didn't try to bring them back, even the ones after he knew about the Glove.
Two - although he's died many times, he's never seen what lies beyond. Did his curiosity get the better of him? Did he really believe Owen would only come back for two minutes and that would be long enough to find out? In which case, why did he ask Owen the access code question first of all? It wasn't terribly funny and had no clear purpose. And after the Suzie incident, it's almost beyond belief that Jack would put so much faith in the operation of a completely new, but apparently identical, glove.
Three - This one is a bit left-field but I keep thinking about his emotional farewell to Martha at the end of ADITD. Did he want to spare Martha the guilt of believing her actions had let to Owen's untimely death? We saw in Adam that Jack is tortured by his own guilt over Gray and his dad, and probably a whole lot more besides. By reanimating Owen he takes responsibility, and Jack's always preferred to be in charge of any situation he's in.
That leads me on to another question, which isn't as irrelevant as it appears. Who is running Torchwood One these days? Does Jack report directly to this person/people (presumably yes) and what would it take for them to fire him? And what would happen to Jack if he lost his job? What would he have left? Could he survive it mentally and emotionally?
That would be a credible reason for him remaining tight-lipped about his year on the Valiant. If Torchwood's agenda is still officially anti-Doctor, it wouldn't be good for news to get around that Jack had deserted his job and his team to run after the TARDIS and then, rather than turning the Doctor in as soon as he returned to present-day Earth, he'd sided with the Doctor against the Master.
Which gave me another interesting idea. Did the Master know about Torchwood and would he ever have made use of Torchwood One in his campaign against the Doctor? And are UNIT keeping quiet about Jack's presence on the Valiant and the reasons for it - because I can't believe Torchwood One haven't asked.
Who would be the perfect person to run Torchwood One post Yvonne Hartmann? How about a deceptively steely sweet upper-crust English blonde, whose apparently dippy aristocratic manner conceals the ability to kill in cold blood, at least once? And who's seen two Time Lords under pressure? She could return from her Swiss clinic, or wherever she went after LOTTL, an ice-cold, ultra-cynical killing machine, and if she knows where that ring went then, my friends, we may have a fic.
One - he just couldn't bear to let Owen go. Which does make you wonder about his state of mind. He must have lost a lot of people over the years, and he didn't try to bring them back, even the ones after he knew about the Glove.
Two - although he's died many times, he's never seen what lies beyond. Did his curiosity get the better of him? Did he really believe Owen would only come back for two minutes and that would be long enough to find out? In which case, why did he ask Owen the access code question first of all? It wasn't terribly funny and had no clear purpose. And after the Suzie incident, it's almost beyond belief that Jack would put so much faith in the operation of a completely new, but apparently identical, glove.
Three - This one is a bit left-field but I keep thinking about his emotional farewell to Martha at the end of ADITD. Did he want to spare Martha the guilt of believing her actions had let to Owen's untimely death? We saw in Adam that Jack is tortured by his own guilt over Gray and his dad, and probably a whole lot more besides. By reanimating Owen he takes responsibility, and Jack's always preferred to be in charge of any situation he's in.
That leads me on to another question, which isn't as irrelevant as it appears. Who is running Torchwood One these days? Does Jack report directly to this person/people (presumably yes) and what would it take for them to fire him? And what would happen to Jack if he lost his job? What would he have left? Could he survive it mentally and emotionally?
That would be a credible reason for him remaining tight-lipped about his year on the Valiant. If Torchwood's agenda is still officially anti-Doctor, it wouldn't be good for news to get around that Jack had deserted his job and his team to run after the TARDIS and then, rather than turning the Doctor in as soon as he returned to present-day Earth, he'd sided with the Doctor against the Master.
Which gave me another interesting idea. Did the Master know about Torchwood and would he ever have made use of Torchwood One in his campaign against the Doctor? And are UNIT keeping quiet about Jack's presence on the Valiant and the reasons for it - because I can't believe Torchwood One haven't asked.
Who would be the perfect person to run Torchwood One post Yvonne Hartmann? How about a deceptively steely sweet upper-crust English blonde, whose apparently dippy aristocratic manner conceals the ability to kill in cold blood, at least once? And who's seen two Time Lords under pressure? She could return from her Swiss clinic, or wherever she went after LOTTL, an ice-cold, ultra-cynical killing machine, and if she knows where that ring went then, my friends, we may have a fic.
