‘I’m looking for a man in a big, grey coat...’
I’ve been rewatching Everything Changes, and
Here be Torchwood (and DW season 1) spoilers - count it as all eps, just to be safe...'>
as the Torchwood team arrive at the scene of John Tucker's murder, I was drawn immediately to thinking about this wonderful piece by sadbhyl - and I really think she’s spot on, although - I’m tempted to take the idea further...
Jack knows Gwen’s watching when he looks up from John Tucker’s newly re-dead body with his ‘What do you think?’ - and before that, for some reason, he’s encouraging her to have a better look at what they’re doing (read the fic, please, save me explaining something sadbhyl’s done so much better).
Maybe there is some connection with Gwyneth at play here: it’s entirely reasonable that Jack’s going to try and recall - and investigate - as much as possible of what he’s been told about the rift, and the Doctor’s connection to it, if he’s hoping to find him there again (Heck - maybe he’s just got a thing for women (men; small, furry aliens) in uniform, and no - that I’m not going to attempt to dissect) - but for whatever reason, from this point he sets out deliberately to engage her attention.
Is this standard recruiting procedure a la Harkness? If he’s been there as long as we all suspect (Personally I’m giving it - taking TW-time as 2008 - just under 130 years, given that, ‘Our computer is as old as Torchwood itself - a piece of organic, living, intuitive technology light years ahead of anything on Earth.’ (http://www.torchwood.org.uk/html/welcome/introduction.shtml), and that I can’t think of anyone better to be installing advanced tech in the 1880s...), then he’s done an awful lot of this over the years.
He wants to know more about their ‘curious cop’ http://www.torchwood.org.uk/html/gwen/jacknote.shtml and related items here (interestingly enough, it also sheds a different light on Tosh’s awkward reaction to Gwen’s revelation that she’s got a boyfriend - she was supposed to be looking into work and home life, after all...), so if this is to be believed, then he didn’t start looking until after the Tucker SOC. But leaving that aside for the time being (and in the absence of other evidence), however lax we perceive TW security to be, with all their resources you’re not going to recruit someone without knowing a fair bit about them. Although how much research Jack’s done before he gets the team involved, or whether this is indeed anything to do with Gwyneth (or is that just another bit of ‘Martha’ casting?)...
Will we ever know? How many potentials has he worked his way through over the years? He must have had plenty of opportunities to test the recipe of his amnesia pill, at any rate. I have no problem with Jack wiping people’s memories (although I think the initial ‘how could he’ reaction, after EC was first shown, has been wiped out rather in the tide of darker revelations about our intriguing Captain), merely because it’s expedient. And if what seems probable is actually the case, then it’s relatively harmless compared to his other recruiting practices.
Whatever Jack’s reasoning, they’re going to test her further before they draw her in. (Is she observant? Inquisitive? Tenacious? Will she follow the man in the big, grey coat?)
The psyche profile, etc, are done after they’ve used the glove at John Tucker’s murder scene. That checks out - she’s inquisitive, not too ambitious but bright, etc... So, what’s next? Check out the curious PC, arrange for her to meet a relatively easily controlled alien or other threat, something immediately other, see how she reacts.
‘So much for sealing it off,’ says the porter (not impressed by the fact that not only is the PC in a supposedly 'secure' area, but someone in fancy-dress, too). No one in the hospital knows why the corridor where Gwen finds the Weevil was sealed off at 9am that day, or who by (We have to assume that the pub brawl happens later in the day than that, so they’ve planned this in advance, arranged, in fact, for her to be faced with this situation - if the brawl hadn’t happened, if she hadn't been injured there, no doubt they’d have got her to the hospital some way or other), so - yup - damn, she was supposed to deal with the Weevil herself, they wanted to see her reaction - and where did that bloody porter come from? Well, maybe they weren’t counting on an ‘innocent’ getting involved, but even if they don’t know where he came from, we know where he’s going...
Stop a minute here - I did: how cold and calculating are they? Would the team happily go along with ‘let’s leave the Weevil there and see how she deals with it?' Was this another part of the deal, maybe like the memory wiping, that they’ve all been through? Or is this all Jack? I don’t find it hard to believe either way - he could have set it up alone and taken the team along for the ‘test’ as soon as she arrived (CCTV feeds, police radio scanners - wonderful things), or they could have known what was happening all along. They have no problems with concealing deaths, no compunction about Jack using his amnesia pill, there’s a brief noise from Tosh about Gwen offering her body to the ‘sex gas alien,’ in Day One, but they’re happy to let Jack take that decision - besides, if Gwen is recruited, they’ll have to rely on her, and they do want someone who’ll be able to cope with it all, don’t they?
And they were ready for her to follow them, too - all set up for a quick getaway, with Ianto driving them away from the hospital (unless they’ve got a remote controlled SUV) at top speed. Although - not too fast, obviously - they don’t want to lose the Police car in the rear mirror. And he’s got to drop them in the square, because she’s got to see them go. Because really? If the car can go in a different way, then so could they (someone tell me they’ve got a space booked in the local multi-storey...).
It’s a set up - from start to finish. Either that or bloody awful planning, direction, scripting... No - no way - it all fits much too neatly for that to be the case (the way they vanished in the square? Group hug or what?! There’s no way the slab-lift can hold four people without a bit of a squash (remember Gwen, Owen, Ianto and Jack leaving Lisa to Myfanwy?)) - they know she’s following them and they’re leaving her a trail of crumbs: deliberately drawing her in.
Besides, Jack would think it was worth it. He’d gamble on someone’s life in order to recruit a new body to his team who’d be able to save so many more - the collective good over the individual, every time. 'Collateral damage' is, I imagine, a phrase he avoids using as much as possible: you would, really, when you’ve seen (should that be caused?) as much of it as he has. (Remember his little army who were going to be able to fight the Daleks...? And even his attitude to his own immanent demise by WWII bomb. I think the word I want is ‘pragmatic’...)
So Gwen’s Jack’s protégé. Which is reasonable - they all are. She may have a more 'humanitarian' outlook that others he's recruited, but for all he knows at this point, she’s just the latest in a long line. How’s she going to feel if she ever realises that the porter died as part of her induction? That the events of ‘Day One’ weren’t her first deliberate encounter ‘with’ the team - deliberate on someone’s behalf, at any rate...
And they’ve all got to be in on it by the time they’re at the hospital, anyway - what were they doing before the Weevil attacked the porter? Jack runs into the building: just Jack, in order to lure Gwen after him. The others are already there - and arrive just as the Weevil attacks? This really bothered me on first watch, it looked clumsy and too obviously set up - well duh?! Rewatching it as a set up to test Gwen? Suddenly it all makes sense
First they intrigue, then they test, and then when she’s been inside - Jack adds some detail. He had absolutely no need to tell her what he did about Torchwood in the bar - and if he felt the need to talk to someone he was sure would never remember, there are a lot of other topics he could have moved the conversation onto. He made sure she wouldn’t actually talk to anyone about what she’s seen, and then...
Hell, he’s got all the time in the world, right?
All I want to know now is -
Has everyone seen this already, and I’m only now putting it together in my head?
Here be Torchwood (and DW season 1) spoilers - count it as all eps, just to be safe...'>
as the Torchwood team arrive at the scene of John Tucker's murder, I was drawn immediately to thinking about this wonderful piece by sadbhyl - and I really think she’s spot on, although - I’m tempted to take the idea further...
Jack knows Gwen’s watching when he looks up from John Tucker’s newly re-dead body with his ‘What do you think?’ - and before that, for some reason, he’s encouraging her to have a better look at what they’re doing (read the fic, please, save me explaining something sadbhyl’s done so much better).
Maybe there is some connection with Gwyneth at play here: it’s entirely reasonable that Jack’s going to try and recall - and investigate - as much as possible of what he’s been told about the rift, and the Doctor’s connection to it, if he’s hoping to find him there again (Heck - maybe he’s just got a thing for women (men; small, furry aliens) in uniform, and no - that I’m not going to attempt to dissect) - but for whatever reason, from this point he sets out deliberately to engage her attention.
Is this standard recruiting procedure a la Harkness? If he’s been there as long as we all suspect (Personally I’m giving it - taking TW-time as 2008 - just under 130 years, given that, ‘Our computer is as old as Torchwood itself - a piece of organic, living, intuitive technology light years ahead of anything on Earth.’ (http://www.torchwood.org.uk/html/welcome/introduction.shtml), and that I can’t think of anyone better to be installing advanced tech in the 1880s...), then he’s done an awful lot of this over the years.
He wants to know more about their ‘curious cop’ http://www.torchwood.org.uk/html/gwen/jacknote.shtml and related items here (interestingly enough, it also sheds a different light on Tosh’s awkward reaction to Gwen’s revelation that she’s got a boyfriend - she was supposed to be looking into work and home life, after all...), so if this is to be believed, then he didn’t start looking until after the Tucker SOC. But leaving that aside for the time being (and in the absence of other evidence), however lax we perceive TW security to be, with all their resources you’re not going to recruit someone without knowing a fair bit about them. Although how much research Jack’s done before he gets the team involved, or whether this is indeed anything to do with Gwyneth (or is that just another bit of ‘Martha’ casting?)...
Will we ever know? How many potentials has he worked his way through over the years? He must have had plenty of opportunities to test the recipe of his amnesia pill, at any rate. I have no problem with Jack wiping people’s memories (although I think the initial ‘how could he’ reaction, after EC was first shown, has been wiped out rather in the tide of darker revelations about our intriguing Captain), merely because it’s expedient. And if what seems probable is actually the case, then it’s relatively harmless compared to his other recruiting practices.
Whatever Jack’s reasoning, they’re going to test her further before they draw her in. (Is she observant? Inquisitive? Tenacious? Will she follow the man in the big, grey coat?)
The psyche profile, etc, are done after they’ve used the glove at John Tucker’s murder scene. That checks out - she’s inquisitive, not too ambitious but bright, etc... So, what’s next? Check out the curious PC, arrange for her to meet a relatively easily controlled alien or other threat, something immediately other, see how she reacts.
‘So much for sealing it off,’ says the porter (not impressed by the fact that not only is the PC in a supposedly 'secure' area, but someone in fancy-dress, too). No one in the hospital knows why the corridor where Gwen finds the Weevil was sealed off at 9am that day, or who by (We have to assume that the pub brawl happens later in the day than that, so they’ve planned this in advance, arranged, in fact, for her to be faced with this situation - if the brawl hadn’t happened, if she hadn't been injured there, no doubt they’d have got her to the hospital some way or other), so - yup - damn, she was supposed to deal with the Weevil herself, they wanted to see her reaction - and where did that bloody porter come from? Well, maybe they weren’t counting on an ‘innocent’ getting involved, but even if they don’t know where he came from, we know where he’s going...
Stop a minute here - I did: how cold and calculating are they? Would the team happily go along with ‘let’s leave the Weevil there and see how she deals with it?' Was this another part of the deal, maybe like the memory wiping, that they’ve all been through? Or is this all Jack? I don’t find it hard to believe either way - he could have set it up alone and taken the team along for the ‘test’ as soon as she arrived (CCTV feeds, police radio scanners - wonderful things), or they could have known what was happening all along. They have no problems with concealing deaths, no compunction about Jack using his amnesia pill, there’s a brief noise from Tosh about Gwen offering her body to the ‘sex gas alien,’ in Day One, but they’re happy to let Jack take that decision - besides, if Gwen is recruited, they’ll have to rely on her, and they do want someone who’ll be able to cope with it all, don’t they?
And they were ready for her to follow them, too - all set up for a quick getaway, with Ianto driving them away from the hospital (unless they’ve got a remote controlled SUV) at top speed. Although - not too fast, obviously - they don’t want to lose the Police car in the rear mirror. And he’s got to drop them in the square, because she’s got to see them go. Because really? If the car can go in a different way, then so could they (someone tell me they’ve got a space booked in the local multi-storey...).
It’s a set up - from start to finish. Either that or bloody awful planning, direction, scripting... No - no way - it all fits much too neatly for that to be the case (the way they vanished in the square? Group hug or what?! There’s no way the slab-lift can hold four people without a bit of a squash (remember Gwen, Owen, Ianto and Jack leaving Lisa to Myfanwy?)) - they know she’s following them and they’re leaving her a trail of crumbs: deliberately drawing her in.
Besides, Jack would think it was worth it. He’d gamble on someone’s life in order to recruit a new body to his team who’d be able to save so many more - the collective good over the individual, every time. 'Collateral damage' is, I imagine, a phrase he avoids using as much as possible: you would, really, when you’ve seen (should that be caused?) as much of it as he has. (Remember his little army who were going to be able to fight the Daleks...? And even his attitude to his own immanent demise by WWII bomb. I think the word I want is ‘pragmatic’...)
So Gwen’s Jack’s protégé. Which is reasonable - they all are. She may have a more 'humanitarian' outlook that others he's recruited, but for all he knows at this point, she’s just the latest in a long line. How’s she going to feel if she ever realises that the porter died as part of her induction? That the events of ‘Day One’ weren’t her first deliberate encounter ‘with’ the team - deliberate on someone’s behalf, at any rate...
And they’ve all got to be in on it by the time they’re at the hospital, anyway - what were they doing before the Weevil attacked the porter? Jack runs into the building: just Jack, in order to lure Gwen after him. The others are already there - and arrive just as the Weevil attacks? This really bothered me on first watch, it looked clumsy and too obviously set up - well duh?! Rewatching it as a set up to test Gwen? Suddenly it all makes sense
First they intrigue, then they test, and then when she’s been inside - Jack adds some detail. He had absolutely no need to tell her what he did about Torchwood in the bar - and if he felt the need to talk to someone he was sure would never remember, there are a lot of other topics he could have moved the conversation onto. He made sure she wouldn’t actually talk to anyone about what she’s seen, and then...
Hell, he’s got all the time in the world, right?
All I want to know now is -
Has everyone seen this already, and I’m only now putting it together in my head?