meta: Jack in "Doctor Who: End of Time"

[rose71]

Enough about the long drawn-out exit of RTD as lead writer David Tennant as Ten. (Just kidding--I'm sad too.) Now it's time to talk about the most important 97 seconds of Doctor Who this year... the reappearance of Jack!

SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT

Comments

[rabecka]

YES. And I think that exchange of salutes at the end showed Jack's understanding of what the Doctor was doing.

I do wonder exactly how the Doctor choose that moment though. If you consider all of his goodbyes, Donna was the most obvious. Yup, getting married, no money, flit a few days ahead and get a winning lottery ticket. Pretty obvious for a time traveler. The rest were trickier. In order to save Martha and Luke, he had to know EXACTLY when and how they died. He didn't show up at precisely the right moment by chance. Not to mention making some pretty hefty modifications to the timeline. (Um... Luke, Sarah Jane, Martha, Mickey - not exactly "little people" are they?)

So... was there anything else behind the scene with Jack? Maybe he was intending to just watch, like with Rose, but changed his mind when he saw Alonso. I mean, Alonso (someone the Doctor knew and liked) sitting right next to Jack, is a hell of a coincidence. But what if it wasn't a coincidence, and he looked at Jack's future to find this particular moment to

[rose71]

I think that exchange of salutes at the end showed Jack's understanding of what the Doctor was doing.
Oh, yes, I agree! This makes the scene even more bittersweet, and even more respectful toward Jack's past with Ianto. It's not like a spontaneous, "hey, look at the cute guy over over there" moment.

Yup, getting married, no money, flit a few days ahead and get a winning lottery ticket. Pretty obvious for a time traveler.
*grin* And I love your questions about the Doctor's choice of moments! I try not to think too much about the goodbyes in terms of realistic plausibility (how did the Doctor find all those precise moments while he was busy DYING himself?). But did he know that Jack and Alonso would both be there, and does that mean that he was following Alonso's timeline as well? I do think so, and that it does give more weight to the intro.

[magnetic_pole]

Nothing to say on the DW front, since I haven't seen the show, but I was curious to see what you were thinking. Ah, fandom and academia, so similar, and yet...not. M.

[rose71]

Aww, thanks for reading, M! This is probably the least academic, most purely fannish post I've ever written. Which is funny, because actually the character of Jack in DW first appealed to me for partly academic reasons. You've probably picked up that Jack is one of the few canonically queer characters in popular sci fi. But I'm fascinated by the way that he's been written according to a social constructionist view of sexual identity! (Hee, academic jargon.) He comes from a time in the future when people are no longer labeled by sexual orientation, and then (after becoming accidentally immortal) he lives through Earth history since 1870 without ever fully understanding the various forms of homophobia and sexism around him. I love this, and of course it's done even better in fanfic than in the series.

Sorry, not (really) trying to fandom-convert you here. Anyway, this post (for once) is not about social identity... but just my 100% fannish love for this character!

[magnetic_pole]

Nah, no worries about conversion--I'm a bit jaded about the fact that we're oh-so-eager to show that the society of the future has "gotten over" homophobia but not as eager, apparently, to combat sexism, classism, or racism. (I always suspect upper middle-class white gay men of fundamentally Not Getting It on so many levels. But we've already discussed this, and I'm breaking the first rule of fandom, don't rain on someone else's parade. Have fun! I do enjoying watching you dissect.)

When do classes start up again for you? M.

[rose71]

I'm a bit jaded about the fact that we're oh-so-eager to show that the society of the future has "gotten over" homophobia but not as eager, apparently, to combat sexism, classism, or racism.Yes, I agree with you, but luckily that doesn't stop me from enjoying DW fandom! However, now I do wish that I could fandom-convert you, because I want to discuss all sorts of things about race/class/gender in DW with you. *wry smile* Just one note: the "society of the future" in DW is actually a bit more complex than I made it sound. Supposedly, after several thousand years of space travel--mixing with (and sometimes shagging) aliens--people stop paying attention to earlier human divisions of gender, sexual orientation, and race; but other kinds of hierarchy (including new class divisions) remain. Is this just the sci fi version of "getting over" homophobia? An outer space version of the Human Rights Campaign/NY Times Style section upper-middle-class gay politics? I'm not sure. Still, it's the idea a sexually fluid/queer action hero that'

[bedawyn]

I was disappointed with the scene, but only in the same sense I was disappointed with all the goodbye scenes, not for any particular Jack reason. I am, grantedly, less disappointed with it after learning that the random guy was the same one from VotD, which I didn't remember from my one watch of that ep.

Something else in terms of the alcohol: it wasn't just the champagne in EC/DD, but the martini at the end (which he had preprogrammed!) and I believe he was drinking in the beginning with Algy too. Which would mean when we first meet him, he's drinking in almost every scene that he's not sharing with the Doctor. Also, his tone of voice when he says "I need a drink" after Estelle dies? That is not the tone of someone with a healthy relationship with alcohol.

I'm always befuddled to see those apparently-alcoholic decanters in the conference room at the Hub.

[rose71]

disappointed with all the goodbye scenes
Yes, I can completely understand your not liking the Farewell Tour. Though I personally liked Jack's scene (and Rose's scene) better than some of the others. Saving lives or giving money to newly-married couples seems a bit easy and trite, and I liked that the Doctor can't (for different reasons) offer anything so simple to Jack or Rose. And, yes, the non-randomness of Alonso might make a difference. I'd never seen VotD and just watched it because of this Jack scene!

Thanks for those other great examples of the Jack/alcohol OTP. In EC/DD, he is always drinking, but in this sort of debonair, man-about-town, James Bond-esque way (with luxury drinks). In TW, it's more clearly an addiction that he's (mostly) trying to kick. This could be a change in Jack's psychology (after all the traumas at the end of DW S1), or a change between the comic genre of DW and the more "edgy" TW. Or probably both.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

[bedawyn]

I think the non-randomness definitely makes a difference! My first reaction to the scene, not recognizing Alonso, was that the Doctor was just underestimating Jack again, thinking an easy shag would be all Jack wanted. I considered the possibility that the Doctor was instead pointing him toward someone who needed some kind of help at a time that Jack needed to be helpful as well as to be distracted from his moroseness (since Alonso also stuck out rather badly in that bar, implying some similarity with Jack), but I also thought that second option was mostly wishful thinking on my part. But knowing it's Alonso from VotD makes the second option much much more likely than the first

[cweb]

I've been thinking along the same lines, but you put it most eloquently:)

[rose71]

Thanks so much for reading and commenting! Glad we agree about this scene.