CoE review
This is my night to spam everyone with a YEAR of half-finished posts, apparently. Have ALL MY FEELINGS about CoE, and then some general thoughts about Captain Jack (SPOILER ALERT!: <3).
I was hoping the dower tone I kept hearing about from CoE would make me appreciate the fairy tale cotton candy jewelry box ballerina feel of DWS5, but it’s only made me more embittered against it. Partially I was spoiled for the two big deaths, so at least it didn’t have the eye-stabby surprise factor, but also, I can deal with tragedy so much better when it’s not going to be shoved away under nostalgia, and if there’s one thing you can’t accuse CoE of, it’s that.
Of course, though it’s overall excellent, there are a few flaws. Like everything else Davies looks at side-eyed, this is about forty-five minutes too long and forty-five times too self-indulgent. The man needs an editor who cares enough to tell him "no" more than he needs a keyboard - unfortunately, he's too bright and sharp for it to be likely anyone will. That said, it pulls the implications of the Who ‘verse out to their terrifying conclusion. It’s an unflinching look at human powerlessness and pain. It makes excellent use of a completely depersonalized plot point of an antagonist in order to let the conflict be entirely human. It brings forth a ton of new characters and gives them individuality, internal logic, and believable motivations. It’s worlds removed in tone from the cracky, campy fun of the first two season, but still definitely the same series. It’s a hell of a trick.
For all I’m about to yap away about Jack and my endless love, it’s really not his story any longer. Jack mostly resolved his existential crisis throughout S1 of Torchwood and S3 of Doctor Who. He dealt with the identity and guilt issues that reached back to his pre-immortal self with the John Hart arcs in S2. After that, there’s not much for Jack himself to really grow about or fear. He’s as much a concept as a person, and he’s okay with that. But Lois, Gwen, Rhys, and Ianto are rushing through their mayfly lives, with a lot to learn and a lot to lose.
Which! Gwen! Oh my GOD, I will never get tired of pregnant women who kick ass, EVER. When MTV makes the “Interventions for Pregnant CIA Agents and the Drug Lords Who Love Them, AT THE JERSEY SHORE” reality show, I am so there. I love her so much, her courage and her resourcefulness and her empathy and the way being led by her heart means she can sometimes pick the wrong villain or the futile course of action, but you have to admire her for it no matter what.
And OH DEAR LORD, Ianto. Ianto is quick on his feet and quite the hero in his own right, he’s a little bit shady and a little bit tunnel-visioned, he’s willing to sacrifice himself if necessary without having a hint of a martyr complex. His death bugs me far less than I assumed it would, and a lot less than Journey’s End, for some reason. (I am a hundred times more pissed that his queerness was handwaved away by the “it’s only him” talk with his sister, to be honest. VOMIT.) Possibly Davies just liked Ianto that much better than Donna, or maybe the ability to go there and actually kill Ianto off let him get the tragedy he wanted while still giving the character so much dignity and agency. Because for real, that was one hell of a send-off. Ianto was, unsurprisingly, the easiest character for me to get attached to back when I first started the show, and even having braced myself down to the episode, I was still tearing up along with Jack.
I don’t know. I could be justifying. Am I justifying? I can’t fault the reasoning that someone we cared about had to go for the showdown to be realistic, and it speaks to the strength of Torchwood that non-traditional characters are so prominent on the show, that if a main character was going to bite it, it had to be problematic - Ianto, or Gwen or Lois (which would have been truly egregious), or for that matter even the not-at-all-traditionally masculine Rhys. But I also can’t fault the objection that mass media is already so saturated with dead queer characters that there’s pretty much no way to do it that would not be terrible.
Here’s the other thing with this show: is that even if it were not the central romance, I would totally ship Jack/Ianto anyway. Because they’re very similar, really: thrill-seekers, who put on a big dramatic show (Ianto’s buttoned-up stiffness being as much of a deflection as Jack’s swagger) because their lives of otherworldly adventure have ruined them for the mundane world. The enthusiasm with which Torchwood gobbles up those hyper-romantic heterosexual/homosocial/subtextual tropes, and then flings them all back in the audience’s faces by changing nothing except the open acknowledgment that it’s a romantic relationship between two men - it’s a glorious reappropriation, even if it does highlight the sad truth of how very rare it is.
As horrifying as that cabinet meeting where they decide which children get sent off to the 456 is, it’s a stand-out scene in that it looks at the logical extensions of, well, everything in the Who ‘verse. The threats are so constant and so total, and it’s nice when the Doctor sweeps in with his godlike powers to make everything black and white. But he can’t possibly tackle every threat in all of time and space. Usually those decisions are going to be made by people, implemented with all the weight of our mundane injustices. But for all people are powerful relative to other people, they’re simply nothing up against the otherworldly threats the shows dish up constantly. Where do you accept and deal with powerlessness, where can you draw the line and seize back some agency? And can you live with the consequences?
And Jack’s immortality means he’s always playing with someone else’s stakes, and it’s what lets him be detached, rather than brave. The second it sinks in that the 456 can hurt him through Ianto, he caves immediately. And when they do, they drive home the fact that he can’t fix the catastrophic impact his decisions have on other people, and that’s what hardens him enough to agree to sacrifice Steven. Which, again - self-indulgent, and clearly far more to BRING THE PAIN more than anything else, but it makes perfect sense that he’d do what he did. And you know what, you never, EVER see the hero actually have to make that decision and choose all the other kids in the world over the kid who’s special to him. Steven’s death is totally for shock value, but given that, it’s played as well as could be.
Because given all that, CAPTAIN JACK IS STILL MY BABY. More my baby now, actually, I think I get him now.
For all he’s a big tough action hero, his big mythological thing is that he can’t die. Which is great and all, but it’s a fundamentally reactive power. You can’t actually defeat the bad guy by surviving at him, except in emotional, selfish terms - as the Simmster’s arc on DW showed us, it’s something that can be used against him at least as much. Gwen is the muscle; Tosh and then Ianto the brains; Jack’s thing is just to live, through whatever the universe throws at him. It’s everything, and then again, it’s nothing at all. No wonder he latched onto the Doctor and then the mighty institution of Torchwood.
I want to write off his pansexuality as See No Big Deal Now! Except (a) it is a big deal, even when we as a society have ditched the gross gay panic, people’s sexuality will still be important to them, and (b) it’s not just his anarchic orientation that defines him, but the power of sexuality at all. Maybe I’m justifying why he doesn’t fit into ugly bisexual stereotypes for me, but I think it’s that when bi people are portrayed in fiction as being hypersexual, it’s almost always symptomatic of some other tragedy. They’re damaged in some way - desperate for affection, or only interested in sex as a weapon. It turns queer sexuality into an instrument of showing something negative, rather than a characteristic in and of itself. And I think that’s what Jack really upends. It goes way past “sex makes him happy” and into this place where the idea of using sex as anything other than a joyful end in itself doesn’t seem to occur to him. Causing harm with sex would be like trying to smother someone with the smell of fresh bread.
He’s most important for the way he’s a superhero for gay kids, I know, and I don’t mean to diminish that, but he’s a great role model for all of us in this respect. This is the yes means yes vision right here, and you can’t be what you can’t see; I’m never not going to love Davies and Barrowman for making it happen. There’s a lot to love about him, for sure, but his totally positive sexuality is so radical and it makes me want to stand up and cheer.
No, Jack just likes to fuck, and over and above that, he loves to flirt.
Because for all that, a lot of his mugging does seem bizarrely desexualized to me. It’s endearing, and I love characters who are performative in and of themselves. The flirting is where a lot of his issues come out to play, because this is where I see him reaching out for affection. Starting back during his debut on DW before he becomes immortal, his relationships are all sexual/romantic, or the closer-than-family bond of Torchwood and the TARDIS, or alliances that shift like the sand. I don’t think he knows how to have friends. And now he really is FOREVER ALONE, but the goofy play-acting of flirting is a place where he can connect, however superficially. He's a self-aware romantic hero, convinced of his own inability to be anything else.
Jack seems to have grown past his crush on the Doctor because - he’s become the Doctor, or at least, everything about the Doctor which ensorcelled him so. Able to hurt more than he could imagine, but not to grow from it; the power and admiration and loneliness that comes with playing god; the terrible knowledge that sometimes, there’s nothing else for it but to run away.