1.13: End of Days

[HappyHippo]

oooo, political - if accurate!

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown do have a Jack / Owen thing going on tho....

 

[Pyan]

Or maybe a Jack/Ianto thing.....? Naah

 

[Dave]

No, that's Tony Blair and John Prescott.

 

[Pyan]

Blurggh! The mental picture............

 

[HappyHippo]

ewww! *sprays hobnob crumbs in disgust at mental image*

who gets the stopwatch then? XD

 

[Loner]

Good Gawd!
I just read CoolHand's post and wet myself laughing!

I haven't seen this episode yet. I have only seen upto Small Worlds (ep 5) on DVD as its not released in my corner of the Empire yet.
However I see that nothing has changed except perhaps the "pants-ness" dial has been turned up to eleven.

 

[Pyan]

However I see that nothing has changed except perhaps the "pants-ness" dial has been turned up to eleven.

Oh yes. I'd say it gets worse before it gets better, except it doesn't get better.
Mind you, there's a perverse kind of pleasure in watching the series - it almost falls into the " it's so bad it's a classic " sort of area, like watching Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon!

 

[Loner]

My friends and I actually enjoy watching itso that we can point out the myriad faults in each episode.

Sad but true.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Taking candy from a baby.
Mugging a blind man.

 

[Pyan]

Yet there's actually a credit for "Script Editor"!! I'd like to know what they do!

 

[Dave]

So, has Jack gone for a spin with the Doctor? Or did the Doctor just need "a hand"?

The third Season episode of Doctor Who entitled 'Utopia' explains this partly. I don't want to spoil that, but I do want to return to this, because it still makes no sense.

I think it is safe to say that Jack does go for a spin with the Doctor. In fact, he had been waiting all this time, using the hand as a 'Doctor detector' for the Doctor to return. Apparently, the Doctor frequently returns to the Cardiff Rift to refuel the TARDIS.

But why did Jack pack the hand in his rugsack, except so that it could be used as a plot device in that Doctor Who episode. Once Jack had found the Doctor, he could have left the thing behind, seeing as it is quite heavy anyway.

The Doctor Who episode also explains much about Jack, such as why he is immortal. He is definately not a Time Lord. Spoilers....

Spoiler

Rose made him immortal when she used the power of the TARDIS to save him. The Doctor then caused his own regeneration in saving Rose.

Jack is not human, but he has lived right through the 19th and 20th Centuries as an immortal. He fought in both the Great War and Second World War. I expect that just as he took on the identity of Jack Harkness, he has taken on other identities in the traditional time honoured way of other immortals from fiction.

The problem with that is that he was already called Captain Jack Harkness before he met Rose and the Doctor. It is a circular time paradox and it's making my head hurt.

Also, I'm still not sure how Bilis Manger fits into this. Is he an older Jack??

I find myself actually wanting to see Season 2 if only for the explanation.

 

[Interference]

Remains Glib.

Sounds like a commentary on the entire series to me.

Special thanks to CoolHand for so excellently vindicating my decision to stop watching after two episodes. Life's too short and only time travellers get to make up for lost time. Russel T Davis is responsible, too, imo, for most of the worst episodes of Doctor Who. But just the thought that Torchwood, established by Queen Victoria, is now in the hands of a handful of sexually varaint fetishists, for whom if there's no sex involved there's no reason to get involved, almost literally makes me hide behind the sofa - something even the Daleks never made me do.

The series - forgive me if this is the wrong place to say this - is to my mind a sub-sub-sub genre of everything from Buffy (the tough-army-guys season) to X-Files (add a few more subs) to Scooby Doo. The fact that they managed to walk so closely alongside Sea of Souls and yet still avoided any accusations of plagiarism - or subtlety, come to that - only suggests to me that no one particularly cares where Torchwood might be heading now. To me, they missed a million great opportunities to provide a great British paranormal action/adventure show, at the very least. A thought-provoking one at best. What they ended up with was Doctor Who, the Pertwee Years with nipples. (Loved the Dead Ringers parody!)

Added to which is the unforgivable accusation that it ignores decades of valuable help the Doctor received from UNIT. Perhaps this calumny will be redressed in the current season of Doctor Who, but quite honestly I fear it won't. If only they would let real S.F. writers get involved and let Russel T do his gratuitous sex shows on radio or something where they won't bother anybody.

Ooh, I'm fumin! Grrrr! Aaaargh!