taffimai | Army of Ghosts

Current Mood: curious

Army of Ghosts

Watching Army of Ghosts on BBCA, and had thoughts:

1) Freema looks gorgeous in a suit with her hair pulled back. Absolutely lovely.
2) It's amazing how very different Jack's Torchwood is from Yvonne's. Clean and industrial vs. Victorian and decrepit; Yvonne's modern people skills vs. Jack's ... rather Jackesque leadership style.
3) What the hell was Jack doing during the two months of the ghost shift? I know fanon has him in Cardiff yelling and screaming at Yvonne. Except Yvonne is willing to listen to the Doctor fairly quickly, so why would she have ignored Jack? And the magnaclamps are from the base of Mount Snowdon, which would imply that Torchwood Three isn't operational (because wouldn't T3 have been doing salvage in Wales?) In The Sound of Drums Jack says that he rebuilt Torchwood after Canary Wharf in the Doctor's honor. Doesn't that imply that he wasn't part of it before?

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I, personally, am in the minority of believing that Jack did *not* join Torchwood until around/after Canary Warf, or at least the end of the 20th century. He says he was waiting around on -a version of the Doctor that would match his own timeline, instead of a past one-. For me, that means that there was no point/potential gain in joining Torchwood that early on.

But I fully expect canon to Joss me, so it's probably not so much that I believe it as how I've cobbled it together in my head.

Well, I can see why he'd have wanted to join Torchwood before, because Ten appears earlier (face-eating televisions, anyone?) But it just doesn't look like he did. I'm leaning towards Jack having been a prisoner of Torchwood's before Canary Wharf. Partly because it would have been really cool if Jack was pulled out of the wreckage of Canary Wharf along with Ianto and Lisa. But mostly because it just seems to make sense.

Hey, whatever works for making sense out of the admittedly cracked canon. I can see him being a prisoner, though honestly not for particularly long - not with that list of deaths.

Hmmm ... I don't know, that list of deaths doesn't seem like it would have to cover too much past WWII. After all, Jack died five times in just the few months covered by Torchwood's first season. And three times in the week he was with the Doctor before the year of hell.

Yeah, but up to the end of WWII takes him 80 years past being stranded, give or take a few years. Of course that leaves about 60-70 that aren't mentioned, which obviously isn't insignifgant, at all.

I think I'm missing something. Why would it make sense for Jack to have been a prisoner? Who would put a former prisoner in charge of a facility? What is your reasoning?

If Jack rebuilt Torchwood, then the implication is that he took charge rather than being put in charge. It also explains why he didn't put a stop to the whole ghost shift thing for the two months before the Doctor showed up.

::shakes head:: I do not see that implication. My interpretation is that Jack was given the authority by someone to rebuild and he proceeded to make it happen. If Jack had been a part of Torchwood during the ghost shifting, it is possible that he wasn't listened to because (1) he wasn't high enough up the chain of command to be listened to and (2) noone knew that he was from the future so whereas they would listen to the Doctor, who has been established as an extraterrestrial know-it-all buttinsky, they probably wouldn't listen to Jack, just another low-level coffeeboy with more skills than he should have.

Is there fic with Jack as a Torchwood prisoner?

Maybe I'm just having trouble with the idea of Jack as coffeeboy. As for fic, there's fic with Jack as Teyla's babydaddy, so I'd guess that there is.

::boggles:: SG:Atlantis's Teyla? And you just throw that out as a given that a Jack as Teyla's babydaddy would necessarily involve Jack as a prisoner? I'm on to you. You are trying to scramble my brains. It won't work because I am running away.

No, babydaddying doesn't mean Jack's a prisoner, I was using it as an example of there's-just-about-everything-in-fic. Actually the babydaddy story is extremely well written and a ton of fun. You should read it. Here.

My personal fanon has him a) boss of TW3 but trying to keep under Yvonne's radar while searching for the Doctor; or b) chained in Yvonne's basement.

Jack does seem to go well with being chained up in basements.

1 - agreed. She always looks lovely, but suit = yum
2 - I love that contrast. It caught me a little off guard when I first saw Torchwood.
3 - I generally assumed that Jack and Torchwood 3 (and 2, and 4 if they are ever found) answered to Yvonne, and when Jack says he 'rebuilt' Torchwood, he meant taking command of the entire thing, rather than just Torchwood 3. My own personal canon has Jack rebuilding Canary Wharf at some point.

I'd also assume the Torchwoods share stuff, so the magnaclamps could have been found by 3 and borrowed or requisitioned by 1.

Makes sense. Though Jack can't even seem to keep his team of four from going rogue ever other week, so I shudder to think what would happen if he attempted an operation the size of Canary Wharf.

2) I really love the contrast they set up. The clean and industrial version was also the vastly hubristic version. T3, down in the sewers basically, is... less so, but possibly only because they're smaller, with fewer resources. Though I'd also like to think Jack keeps them small and humble because he's seen what can happen the other way.

As for 3)... to quote an icon, Jack's timeline makes my head hurt. :) Good observation about the magnaclamps. Hmm. I took the comment about rebuilding Torchwood to mean that, whether he was or wasn't part of Torchwood before, he jumped in and took charge after Canary Wharf.

Yeah, I think Jack's, "there's just a handful of us now" comment was meant to communicate to the Doctor that he knew the dangers of something like Torchwood becoming too large.

Jack's timeline is definitely headachy. The reason I was struggling with the he-wasn't-part-of-Torchwood idea was I couldn't fathom what he was doing for the two months of the ghost shift. Jack doesn't seem the type to just let that happen. Unless Jack knew about Canary Wharf and knew the ghost shift and resulting battle had to happen for him to step in and rebuild Torchwood (which would tie in nicely to the fanon that Torchwood becomes the Time Agency.) But that seems unlikely if the Doctor had never heard of Torchwood. Ugh, timeline headache.

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Army of Ghosts

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