Army of Ghosts

[taffimai]

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?

Comments

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

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.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

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.