

Jack Harkness
Name:
Jack Harkness
Tenure:
21 May 2005–1 January 2010
First Seen In:
Last Appearance:
The Parting of the Ways (regular)
Latest Appearance:
Revolution of the Daleks (guest)
Appearances:
Torchwood episodes
Children of Earth episodes
Miracle Day episodes
Fugitive of the Judoon
Main Actor:
John Barrowman
source TARDIS Wikia
Captain Jack Harkness was the alias adopted by a
BIOGRAPHY
EARLY LIFE
Jack was born around the year 5094 (
ATTACK ON THE BOESHANE PENINSULA
Jack was reared on the Boeshane Peninsula, a sandy, beach-like area. He spent time with his brother
GROWING UP
As a young man, he persuaded a friend to “join up” with him to fight an unspecified enemy Jack described only as “horrible.” they were captured. The enemy thought Jack’s friend the weakerof the pair and tortured him as a lesson for Jack. They let Jack go, to bear the guilt of his friend’s fate. (
Once, when sentenced to death, he ordered four hypervodkas as a last meal and ended up bedding both executioners at the same time. He recalled them as a lovely couple who kept in touch. (
AS TIME AGENT AND CON ARTIST
Jack worked as a
Jack found that the Agency had erased two years of his past memory, which he wanted back. He left the Agency and became a time-travelling con artist, running scams using his knowledge of future events. His preferred schemes involved collecting payment for items he knew would be destroyed before the buyer could see it. Finding pieces of space junk and directing them to the soon-to-be disaster sites, Jack would sell them to passers-by, then allow the items to be destroyed before the buyers could pick up their merchandiseat some point, he acquired a small, sleek Chula spacecraft fitted for human use, which could turn invisible. (
In 1941, he assumed the alias of an American volunteer,
MEETING THE DOCTOR
While running a scam involving a Chula ambulance in the London Blitz, he spotted
Rose introduced him to the
The trio shared numerous adventures together, including an encounter with Russian special forces, and later, a neanderthal. (
Jack was aboard
LIFE ON EARTH
19TH CENTURY
After Jack was left on Satellite Five, he used the
Jack stayed in Cardiff, choosing to continue using the Harkness alias (or at least using it when he started working for
In 1898, Jack flirted with a woman (and her father) at a music hall bar. He booked a private box to watch the performance of The Amazing Anthony – The Wonderof 1898 and referred to himself at the time as being”on duty”. Over the years of
RECRUITMENT BY TORCHWOOD
In 1899,
Jack continued working for Torchwood forover a hundred years, still pursuing his goal of finding The Doctor in the meantime. (
Shortly after this, Jack went to China during the Boxer Rebellion, where he worked with explosives. (
20TH CENTURY
In 1902, Jack investigated strange visions at Ravenhall Manor, a Gothic 18th century house. He defeated the creature responsible. However, the creature would later come back to haunt him 106 years in his future. (
In 1906, Jack began two affairs with a couple called
In 1909, Jack was travelling through
In 1918,
Jack wasn’t present in pictures with Gerald and Harriet circa Tommy’s freezing.
In the 1920s, to investigate the Night Travellers, Jack joined a travelling show in which he was billed as “the man who couldn’t die”. (
In
In 1924, Jack was sent to shut Torchwood India down. During his stay in Delhi, he had a brief fling with Torchwood India’s leader, Eleanor. (
In 1927, Jack went to New York City on a mission to stop the
The next year, after Angelo got out of jail, Jack returned claiming that he had only been playing dead. Angelo didn’t believe Jack, however, and assumed that Jack was the Devil. Angelo stabbed Jack and was shocked when Jack came back to life. Jack was then chained up and repeatedly killed, since people assumed that his immortality was either a miracle or a blessing. Jack then saw three men come to the room where he was chained, but he never learned who they were. Angelo decided to help Jack escape, but Jack jumped off of a building and disappeared from Angelo’s life. (
Jack met Estelle Cole. The pair spent some time in London together. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Somehow, however, this never happened, and they lost touch with one another. (
In 1965, the alien race known as
In the 1970s, Jack dated Stella Courtney for five weeks. (
In 1975, Jack and another Torchwood agent, Lucia Moretti, had a daughter, Melissa Moretti, who aged normally. Lucia and Jack split up sometime prior to 1977, and at the request of her mother, their daughter was sent into the Witness Protectedition Program, relocated and given the name of Alice Sangster, presumably arising from her mother’s fear of the immortal Captain Jack. The application was approved on 14 February, 1977, however, Jack eventually rebuilt a relationship with his daughter. Although Jack was a Torchwood agent at the time, he was still considered a freelance operative rather than a full-time employee. (
On several occasions during the 1990s, Jack visited the Powell Estate to watch Rose Tyler grow up, but did not approach her to avoid disrupting her timeline. (
In 1902, Jack set up a bank account, the interest of which would lead to a small fortune by 2011. Gwen asked if she cleaned him out, but he replied in the negative. (
EARLY 21ST CENTURY
On New Year’s Day 2000, Jack, now a full-time agent for Torchwood Three, suffered a major emotional blow when one of his colleagues, Alex Hopkins, suffered a nervous breakdown and killed the entire Torchwood Three staff shortly before the end of 1999. Knowing Jack couldn’t die, he did not attempt to kill Jack and waited for him to arrive at the Hub before committing suicide. As the only surviving member of Torchwood Three, he spent the next few years recruiting new members. (
After taking over, Jack found two people the Rift had taken and later returned to Cardiff inside the vaults. He established an institution on Flat Holm Island. Jack told the carers there that they, and others that came through, were experiments gone wrong. (
THE NEW TORCHWOOD THREE
Over several years Jack rebuilt his decimated organisation, recruiting
(
After
During this time, Jack held on to the hope of re-establishing contact with The Doctor, who he believed could help himat some point after Torchwood One destroyed the
The team had been testing the
After Suzie was exposed as a serial murderer, she tried escaping by shooting Jack, but when he revived, she shot herself. Jack recruited Gwen, whose memories had resurfaced, as Torchwood’s newest member. Gwen became the only person on the team who knew of Jack’s immortality. (
Jack chased after a meteorite containing the sex gas creature, where Gwen had accidentally released it. He tricked the gas creature into leaving
As Gwen was a “beat cop”, and untrained in firearms, Jack trained her to protect herself. (
Jack helped Gwen and Owen capture a quantum transducer
Ianto had hidden the partially-
Jack re-encountered the same fairies that had killed his men in Lahore. He saw them kill Estelle Cole and he prevented Gwen from stopping
The Torchwood team travelled to the Welsh countryside to investigate a series of gruesome murders. The
The Torchwood team discovered a teleporter buried in the ground for two hundred years, alongside a corpse of a soldier with his heart ripped out. An Arcateenian called Mary threatened Tosh’s life, demanding her transporter back. Jack reprogrammed Mary’s teleporter as he handed it back and she was teleported straight into the Sun. (
While investigating a murder case with Suzie’s involvement, Gwen revived Suzie using the resurrection gauntlet, and started having her life drained by the constant link the gauntlet maintained between them. After shooting her achieved nothing, Jack ordered Tosh to destroy the gauntlet, killing Suzie and saving Gwen’s life. (
Jack saw
At some point during this time, Jack was kidnapped and Gwen searched for him. They then captured Gwen and transported them to Chernobyl, where they extracted blood samples from Jack, and used retcon gas to remove his and Gwen’s memories of the event. This event would prove significant later. (
Early in 2008, Jack shut down a
Tosh and Jack investigated music from the 1940s playing from the Ritz. The Rift brought them back to 1941, where they met Jack’s namesake. Jack bonded with the real Jack over war stories and inadvertently complicated his relationship with
The opening of the Rift brought diseases and people across time and space. Jack was forced to dismiss Owen. Owen later returned and shot Jack, through
After the Rift was opened, Jack was forced to confront
A short While after his resurrection, Jack noticed The Doctor’s hand begin to glow. From inside of the Hub, Jack recognised the sound of the TARDIS materialising, elated after decades of waiting by the knowledge that the young cartomancer’s prophecy had been fulfilled and that a version of the Doctor he knew was returning to refuel. By the time the rest of the Torchwood team arrived to investigate the sound, Jack had gone. (
REUNION WITH THE DOCTOR
Having heard the TARDIS, Jack left the Hub chasing after the sound. With The Doctor’s hand in a backpack, he managed to jump onto the ship before it dematerialised and re-materialised in the year 100, 000, 000, 000, 000. This made Jack the only individual known to have withstood a trip through the time vortex on the exterior of a TARDIS, thanks to his immortality. The Doctor and Jack had an awkward reunedition, owing both to The Doctor’s
The Doctor, Jack and
After Jack had been imprisoned and tortured on the Valiant forone year, Martha Jones helped The Doctor and Jack to gain control of the ship, and Jack destroyed The Master’s
After The Master’s death, The Doctor offered Jack the opportunity to end his long exile on Earth and join him in the TARDIS, but out of loyalty to his Torchwood team, he decided to stay. (
RETURN TO TORCHWOOD THREE
Jack returned to Torchwood and the team, saving the life of a woman being menaced by a Blowfish.
Jack reunited with Captain John Hart, who had come through the Rift searching for some canisters that had also come through. Captain John told Torchwood that they contained radioactive bombs. John tricked Jack, pushing him off the top of an office building and taking the canister. Jack caught up with John, but the contents of the canisters were actually components of a bomb that latched onto the DNA of the ownerof the canisters’ murderer. Jack confused the bomb by injecting John with the DNA of the Torchwood team and safely disposed of it. Jack then asked John to leave. As he did so, he said he found Gray. (
Torchwood took in
Jack reawakened Tommy Brockless for the last time. Time shifts at St Teilo’s Hospital started occurring and Jack’s instructions to send Tommy and Toshiko back opened. Jack gave Tommy a small
Gwen’s fiancéee
The memory-altering creature
Jack invited Martha onto the team to investigate the Pharm, a medical organisation that could cure diseases thought incurable. He ordered Toshiko to close the Pharm down once he learnt of their mistreatment of humans and aliens alike, but the Pharm’s manager, Aaron Copley, shot Owen and then Jack shot him. (
Unwilling to accept the loss of another teammate, Jack tracked down the other resurrection gauntlet and brought back Owen. The attempt, though successful, left Owen unable to digest food, sleep, or enjoy sex. In addition, the glove released an extra dimensional alien, Duroc, the embodiment of death. Owen saved the day by using his new condition to stifle the needs of the entity, but still expressed a deep resentment towards his leader. (
A regretful Jack was forced to temporarily relieve Owen until he could acclimatise. Jack later had Owen retrieve the Pulse from an ailing Henry Parker. Owen became medical officer again after Martha had taken over for Owen to acclimatise, and Jack kissed Martha goodbye. (
Gwen was impregnated by a Nostrovite Jack had killed. She decided against postponing her wedding to Rhys. The biological mother, “Carrie”, tried forcibly taking her unborn child from Gwen’s womb and Jack was forced to stop the wedding. Rhys killed the child that was killing Gwen with the singularity scalpel, while Jack killed the Nostrovite mother. The wedding proceeded and Jack put retcon inside the wedding guests’ drinks. (
The Night Travellers escaped from a reel of film playing inside the Electro and took the last breaths of people in Cardiff. As more of the Travellers began to leave, Jack captured the Travellers, which were made from the same material as the film, onto a camera and destroyed the negatives by exposing them to light. Before he was destroyed, the Ghostmaker threw the flask containing the breaths and all but one of the victims died. (
Jack warned Gwen not to investigate the disappearance of Jonah Bevan, who unknown to Gwen had been taken away by the Rift. Ianto gave Gwen a GPS that pointed her towards Flat Holm and she found Jonah was inside, forty years older. Jack explained to Gwen what had happened to those taken to Flat Holm. Despite his protests, Gwen showed Nikki her ill son and how he screamed for most of each day. (
SECOND DESTRUCTION OF TORCHWOOD THREE
Jack’s team came under further pressure when Captain John Hart returned, laying bombs within a warehouse in an attempt to kill all of the Torchwood Three team. This failed and Jack found a message from John on his vortex manipulator, which included an appearance by Gray. Shaken, Jack immediately went back to the Hub to confront Captain Hart, leaving the other members of the team to deal with their respective challenges. (
On meeting John again, Jack was killed before being chained up and made to listen whilst John explained his predicament. Jack’s rogue partner then detonated strategically placed bombs in and around Cardiff, obliterating the city before abducting Jack and taking both of them back through time to Cardiff in 27AD.
Here, Jack discovered that John was being manipulated by Gray, who marked his return by stabbing Jack in cold blood. Gray then forced John to bury Jack alive, twenty feet beneath what would become Cardiff. Gray, transformed into a merciless, sadistic beast by a lifetime of horrific torture, blamed Jack for letting go of his hand when they were children and wanted Jack to experience a similar, never-ending pain by choking on dirt, thrashing on the edge of life every time he revived, only to die again. Before burying Jack, John, finally pushed too far by the awareness of how wrong his actions were, slipped a signet ring into the grave with him, hoping that the signal it emitted could be used to locate Jack.
Stuck in a cycle of death and resurrection for centuries, Jack was discovered by Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell of Torchwood in 1901, who had picked up the signal of John’s ring. Back in the early 20th century, Jack, insistent that he could not be allowed to cross his own timeline (for by now two versions of Jack were present – his past self and present self) demanded to be placed in cryopreservationfor 107 years. Despite being baffled, the two granted him this request.
Jack awoke again inside Torchwood Three concurrent to Gray’s mayhem – just in time to prevent Gray from finishing off Toshiko with a bullet. Despite Gray’s own unwillingness to absolve him, Jack forgave his brotherof his trespasses. Left with no otheroption, a tearful Jack chloroformed and cryopreserved Gray, refusing to kill him, but the damage had already been done, as Gray had been responsible for the deaths of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. Jack and John parted ways on better terms, with John travelling the world of the 21st century, determined to find out why Jack found the time period so interesting. Torchwood Three continued on, reduced to Jack, Ianto and Gwen. (
AGAINST THE DALEKS
Later, when the Earth was relocated by the
Subsequently, after The Doctor’s abortive regeneration, Jack boarded the
When
The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor finished off the Daleks, destroying the Crucible. Jack helped pilot the TARDIS as it returned the Earth to its original location. He offered Martha Jones a permanent position with Torchwood, and soon after was joined by Mickey, but not before The Doctor deactivated his vortex manipulatoronce again, refusing to run the risk of allowing him to travel in time. (
It was some time around here that Jack made a series of tutorial videos about
THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER AND OTHER ADVENTURES
Martha phoned Jack for help with the
Jack, Ianto, Gwen and
Jack’s past, once again, came back to haunt him when he, Gwen and Ianto began investigating visions at Ravenhall Manor, which Jack had done in 1902. He re-encountered the creature that was responsible for creating the visions, and after being reunited with a trapped Gwen and Ianto, he destroyed the house. (
Investigating an alien energy field, Jack, Gwen and Ianto travelled to Delhi, India, where Jack was surprised to discover that Torchwood India had maintained its existence by using a time store to remain frozen in time. Horrified at
FIGHTING THE 456
Also in September, Jack’s past returned to haunt him when the 456, in need of more subjects for their drug production, once more contacted humanity by using the children of Earth as a collective mouthpiece. The British government, fearing that the secret of the deal would come out, assigned
The government, through a ruse involving their agent Rupesh Patanjali, killed Jack and planted a bomb inside his body before he revived. When Jack, unsuspecting, returned to the Hub, the bomb detonated, destroying both Jack’s body and the Hub, but not before Jack managed to evacuate Gwen and Ianto. (
A covert ops team conveyed Jack’s scattered remains to a holding facility, where he slowly regenerated his body and returned to life. When Frobisher’s chief of operations in the taskforce realised that destroying the Hub had not rendered Jack mortal, she had him encased in concrete. Gwen and Ianto, however, had not been idle, and with the help of
With Ianto’s knowlege of Torchwood One’s old infrastructure, and a little criminal mischief orchestrated by Gwen, Jack headquartered his team inside a former Torchwood facility. Gwen arranged for the protection of former 456 victim Clem MacDonald by bringing him to “Hub 2, ” as Rhys came to call it. Jack himself tracked down Frobisher and warned him to call off the assassination, or the 1965 incident would be disclosed. However, Frobisher countered with a new bombshell: Johnson’s team had taken Jack’s daughter Alice and grandson Steven hostage in order to ensure Jack’s silence in the plans to negotiate terms with the 456. (
Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Rhys retaliated by persuading
A tearful Captain Jack surrendered to the authorities, blaming himself for Ianto’s death. He instructed Gwen to have Rhys surrender himself as well, and arranged for the couple to return to Cardiff, with instructions to inform Rhiannon of her brother’s death, and to see to the needs of her family.
As the world governments began capitulating to the demands of the 456, and began rounding up children by the millions, Jack found himself sprung from prison by a surprise ally – Agent Johnson, who had become dis illusioned and convinced by Alice to take a stand. With the aid of Johnson and Mr Dekker, who had managed to escape the massacre at Thames House, Jack devised a way to defeat The 456 using a reconstitution wave of a similar wavelength to that the 456 had used to kill Clem, using the children as one vast transmitter. There was one major catch: in order for it to work, the wave needed to be channelled through one child, for whom the force of the transmission would be deadly. Only one child was available to serve as the “transmitter.” Ignoring his daughter’s screams and protests, Jack used his own grandson, Steven, as the prime transmitter. The plan succeeded, and the 456 were violently ejected from Earth. However, Steven died as a result, and Alice severed all contact with Jack, walking away without speaking a word. (
Jack was declared dead as a result of the
LEAVING TORCHWOOD THREE
Jack then went on to travel the world. He did not find it enough to rid himself of his guilt. After six months he returned to Cardiff to destroy the House of the Dead, in turn, sealing the Rift forever. He encountered the ghost of Ianto Jones, and the couple finally confessed their love to each other for the first and last time, before the House of the Dead was destroyed with Ianto still iSol systemnside. (The House of the Dead) Shortly afterwards, after saying goodbye to Gwen and Rhys, he used his vortex manipulator (which Rhys and Gwen had retrieved from the ruins of Torchwood) to signal a nearby cold fusion freighter near the edge of the and teleported off into space. (
Some time later, Jack was in