ℐℋ || FILE 001 || Canon Character Information
The history and relationship sections can get very spoiler heavy! There are other small spoilers sprinkled throughout, but most of the big ones are further down in the more detailed sections.
Name: Jack Harkness, Captain (this is an alias, his birth name is unknown)
Age: Physically, Jack is in his mid-thirties; due to inability to die or age, he is approximately twenty-two hundred years old mentally. Emotionally, Jack can sometimes seem like he's more of a horny eighteen-year-old than the mature man he should be.
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 180lbs approx.
DOB: unknown
Hair: dark brown, short, styled in a somewhat spiky yet traditional fashion
Eyes: pale blue
Birthplace: Boeshane Peninsula, 51st century
Distinguishing Features: he's got a swell cleft in his chin~
Dress: blue dress shirts, dark slacks, suspenders (often blue/grey/maroon), light brown boots, and always his great coat as well as his wrist strap.
Occupation(s): conman, royal air force captain, Time Agent, Torchwood III employee, Torchwood III boss
Current Residence: most recently Cardiff, Whales; has since been traveling time and space
Eating Habits: Jack's a fan of typical British food, as well as pizza. Pizza is always good. Doesn't usually drink anything other than water, but has been known to drink brandy from time to time.
Sleeping Habits: Jack doesn't sleep. When he does, it's usually short-lived due to nightmares or his restless personality. While normal people sleep, Jack will usually be found standing dramatically on tall buildings.
Strengths: Jack is a good leader that can get almost anyone to listen to him in a crisis. Also, due to his incredible life experience, he usually has a solution for any problem as well as a fitting story to lighten the mood. Jack can be very flirtatious, which may not seem like a strength to some, but he definitely counts his charms as one of his most deadly weapons.
Weaknesses: He often keeps too many secrets, causing those close to him to doubt whether he trusts them or not. Jack can also be stubborn to a fault, though it's usually when he's trying to do the best for everyone involved. His flirtation can also be considered a weakness as it can get him into tight spots and irritate enemies further.
Personality & History:
Jack is the biggest flirt in the universe. “Omnisexual”, he’s often described as someone that would shag anything that has a postcode. Human, alien, male, female; if it has a pulse, he’ll have sex with it. This can sometimes distract him from his job, but 99% of the time he’s dedicated to his personal goal of protecting his friends as well as the saving the world. He started out as a con man, using his charms and killer smile to coax people out of their money (and sometimes into his bed). But after meeting The Doctor, a selfless man and protector of the universe, Jack changed his ways and decided to fight for the “good guys” of the universe. This lead him to work for and then run Torchwood 3, based in Cardiff where a rift through time and space brings dangerous alien life forms and artifacts into Whales. This job not only allows him to protect the city and often the world, but also to try to “save” his employees from themselves. While working to neutralize alien threats, whether from an alien itself or a piece of technology that’s found its way to Earth, Jack leads his team with single-mindedness that sometimes leads to trouble. Though he always insists that he has humanity in his best interests, he sometimes forgets about the people working with him towards the same goals. It’s a give and take, though, because while Jack often broadens the horizons of those close to him, they also help keep him humble and grounded, realizing that there is more to a person than how well they can shoot a gun.
Through a freak twist of fate, it was made that Jack cannot stay dead (he can still die, unfortunately, and coming back to life is rather painful). After wasting many deaths on trying to find a “cure”, he decided to use his new-found immortality for the betterment of the universe while waiting to meet The Doctor again in hopes he could fix him. Jack has seen a lot of death in his time (most of it his own) and has lost many loved ones, which has somewhat hardened and aged him in a way that physical phenomenon no longer can. He always tries to spare lives when he can, preferring to help aliens brought through the Cardiff Rift rather than killing them, but often has no choice. In order to hide his dark side and even darker past, Jack puts on a light-hearted and playful demeanor that loves to crack jokes and flirt with secretaries. Jack’s frequent brushes with death have, ironically, brought him a greater appreciation of life which can be seen through his zealous lifestyle. He is constantly pushing those around him to live life to the fullest, not wanting anyone to waste away a life that is so precious. This leads Jack to being a force of change in many people’s lives, not only because he brings with him new knowledge of the universe, but also new knowledge of humanity, mortality, and the mundane. Once you’ve befriended Jack and earned his trust, you’ll not only find a powerful ally, but possibly a ferocious lover.
Jack’s life and timeline is a complicated story, the name Jack Harkness not even being his own. The little that is known about his life is often discovered through his interactions with his allies and enemies, the information often given up less than willingly. What is known is that he was born and raised in the 51st century in a human colony on the Boeshane Peninsula, his family consisting of a mother, father, and little brother. In his late teens/early twenties, Jack went to war against creatures that remain a mystery, though he often describes their cruelness as “beyond imagining.” After surviving the war, he joined an organization called The Time Agency, a group of con men (and presumably women) who manipulated time in order to meet their own ends. His job as a Time Agent is what brought Jack together with The Doctor and his then companion Rose. While trying to con the pair, Jack realized that his life was being wasted and decided to join the two on their adventures. This move is what ultimately brought Jack his immortality as Rose gained the ability to manipulate time and space, bringing a slain Jack back to life forever. Because of his static timeline, The Doctor abandoned Jack in the future. What happened next is largely unknown, but eventually Jack made it to the late 19th century in Cardiff, Whales, where he waited for The Doctor to return. While living in Cardiff, Jack was forced into employment at Torchwood 3 where he lived and died and lived as an employee until 2000 when he was unwittingly promoted to boss and manager of the organization. Eventually he did meet The Doctor again, though unfortunately it was only to find out that he could not return to being mortal and would have to live out his life until the end of the universe. Many other events have happened in his life, such as creating his own Torchwood team, being reunited with a brother that he believed to be dead, traveling to the end of the universe, and being buried under Cardiff for nearly two-thousand years. It is believed that he lives until around the year 5,000,000,053 CE, though many believe that he lives on even after his supposed “final death” at that time.
This life has led to Jack being hard to figure out at times, especially because he keeps a lot of his life hidden, even from those close to him. He will usually beat around the bush if a civilian asks him a question that would usually lead to him revealing the truth about his immortality or the existence of aliens. Some people, however, he decides are more fit to handle the truth. These people are allowed to see more into his life than most, and they’re usually people he meets through the Doctor or working at Torchwood. Despite this, relatively little is known about Jack, and though he is almost always talking, he very rarely says anything that really means something. Though it bothers a lot of those that have tried to get close to him, he does it for their own protection as well as his own. As a man who can never die, he’s troubled by the act of letting someone get so close to him and learn about his many lives just to have them die and leave him. On the other hand, he also wants to protected those he loves from the pain of knowing that they aren’t the first and won’t be the last in a long line of lovers, friends, and even family that he’s had and will likely have again.
Relationships:
Ianto Jones - Jack's relationship with Ianto started out as a lustful office romance, the suggestion being that they had a variety of sexual encounters while not officially dating. At the start of the second season, however, Jack showed intention to make their relationship more official, asking Ianto out on a real date. Their relationship progressed, though it was never revealed to what level, though Ianto's death in the third season greatly affected Jack and can be seen as his main reason for leaving Earth at the end of the season.
Gwen Cooper - Gwen's character flip-flops back and forth between being simply a friend an anchor or Jack's humanity and at times being more of a romantic interest. In the first season, there is some very definite romantic tension between the two, Gwen originally getting her job at Torchwood through her obsession to learn more about Jack among other things. As the show progresses, Gwen becomes engaged to her very average boyfriend, Rhys, thus ruining any chances of her and Jack having a real relationship. Even still, Jack is a very important person to Gwen, and Jack also relies on Gwen to keep him connected to reality as well as keep him human. Gwen is a the heart of the team, balancing out Jack's sometimes cold handling of people.
Owen Harper - Owen, the Torchwood physician, acts as a bit of competition for Jack to keep him on his toes. Owen is a very cynical man, and he has trouble trusting others to a certain extent. In the season one finale, Owen leads a mutiny against Jack, showing his insecurities as someone following Jack rather than leading the team in the direction he sees fit. Jack, however, understands this about Owen, and is constantly trying to save Owen from himself.
Toshiko Sato - Jack's relationship with Tosh has something of a father/daughter feel to it. Saving Toshiko from herself in more ways than one and on countless occasions, Jack can be protective of the naive and often too trusting hacker. Whether is romantic trouble or getting too caught up in work, Jack is there to take care of Tosh and try to keep her on track with what matters.
The Doctor - One of the most complicated relationships Jack has is with the Doctor. Jack first met the Doctor (the Ninth incarnation) when he was trying to con him and, in the process, ended up putting countless lives in danger. After righting his wrongs, the Doctor invited Jack to travel with him and Rose. It was during these adventures that Jack became immortal, causing the Doctor to abandon him. After waiting for the Doctor in Cardiff for two centuries, Jack finally caught up with the Doctor (now in his Tenth incarnation). During his time spent with this new Doctor, Jack found out that he was a static point in time, something that the Doctor couldn't stand to be around as someone able to see the flow of time. Though they've teamed up since then, Jack is always left behind in the end while the Doctor travels with other companions. Despite this, however, Jack's time with the Doctor motivated him to leave behind his life as a conman and use his charms and bravery for the betterment of the world and to save Earth from alien threats.
Rose Tyler - Rose is the main reason Jack is who he is today. After absorbing the time vortex from the TARDIS, Rose used the power to bring a recently slain Jack back to life. However, unable to control the vortex properly, Rose unknowingly brought Jack back to life forever, making it so that he could not stay dead. This immortality shaped Jack in ways that a mortal life never could, mainly in that Jack dedicated his life to protecting people while he waiting for another chance to see the Doctor and possibly get him to fix his dying problem.
Family:
Father - Franklin
Mother - name unknown
Brother (younger) - Grey
Jack's relationship with Grey is a very complicated one that starts in childhood. Jack and Grey were very close brothers when they were younger, playing on the beaches of Boeshane together with their father. However, an unnamed enemy attacked their settlement and Grey was kidnapped as one of the prisoners. Tortured for many years, Grey became mentally unstable and came to blame Jack for his suffering. However, Jack also suffered through the years due to the guilt he felt about potentially being the reason Grey's abduction was seemingly easy.