Jack Harkness
Name:
Jack Harkness
Main Alias:
Javic Piotr Thane
Species:
Human
Place of Origin:
Boeshane Peninsula
Affiliated With:
Time Agency
Torchwood Three
Children of Time
Torchwood team
Red Doors
First Seen In:
Last Appearance:
The Parting of the Ways (regular)
Latest Appearance:
Revolution of the Daleks (guest)
Other Appearances:
Tenth Doctor episodes
Torchwood episodes
Excodos Code
BBC Books
BBC Audio
Children of Earth episodes
Miracle Day episodes
Fugitive of the Judoon
Big Finish Guide
Main Actor:
John Barrowman
Other Actors:
Jack Montgomery
Other Voice Actors:
Philip Bond
Alexander Vlahos
Kieran Bew
Sakuntala Ramanee
Paul Clayton
Sir Michael Palin
source TARDIS Wikia
“Captain Jack Harkness” was the alias adopted by the human Time Agent and con man Javic Piotr Thane (Month 25, R&J) from the Boeshane Peninsula in the 51st century. He was a companion of the Ninth Doctor, and an associate of the Sixth, Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors.
Originally a Time Agent, Harkness lost his memories of his previous life and became a con artist. Upon meeting the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler in 1941, he tried to scam them into buying a Chula ambulance, having mistaken them for fellow Time Agents. After assisting The Doctor and Rose in curing a plague unleashed by rogue Chula nanogenes from the crashed ambulance, however, he would go on to join them in their travels in the TARDIS, inspiring him to become a better man.
After he was shot and killed by a Dalek, Jack was revived by Rose, who at the time had been transformed into a nearly omnipotent being by gazing into the heart of the TARDIS. Unable to control her powers, she accidentally turned him into an immortal being. Because of this, The Doctor saw his companion as a fixed point — a temporal paradox that threatened the TARDIS’s functionality. Consequently, The Doctor abandoned him in the year 200,100 aboard a space station orbiting a Dalek-devastated Earth. Stranded, the former Time Agent had to use his own devices to catch up to The Doctor. He thought it likely that he’d find the Ninth Doctor in the early 21st century, since that was Rose’s home era. But his vortex manipulator failed to deliver him there due to the damage caused when he was exterminated by The Daleks, missing by more than a century — and going on the fritz immediately thereafter. This left the immortal no choice but to simply wait from the mid-19th to the early 21st century to reconnect with The Doctor.
During his long wait for the “right Doctor”, he experienced what was to him Earth’s history firsthand and he even served in a few of the well-known conflicts. He also had many different relationships, some of which produced offspring. For the majority of those years, he also worked for Torchwood Three. After several decades as an informal free-lancer, he eventually became its head in the year 2000. Later that decade, he finally met up with The Doctor, although the Time Lord had by this time regenerated into his tenth incarnation and was now travelling with Martha Jones. The Doctor told Harkness why he had abandoned him, and explained there was nothing he could to fix Harkness’s condition. Together The Doctor, Harkness and Jones thwarted The Master and his plan to turn Earth into a new Gallifrey during the Year That Never Was, before Harkness parted ways with them to return to Torchwood.
Over the years, Torchwood lost many of its members. At the dawn of the 2010s, the 456 returned to Earth. Although Torchwood was able to repel the threat, their success came with the loss of their headquarters and the loss of Harkness’s grandson, Steven Carter, as well as his teammate and lover, Ianto Jones. He, therefore, disbanded the group and left Earth. However, he returned during the events of the so-called “Miracle Day”, and a new Torchwood team arose. Later though, after several further changes to the team, Torchwood lost contact with Harkness, with his exact whereabouts unknown.
Eventually Harkness once again returned to Earth on board a stolen spaceship in 2020. Attempting to warn The Doctor of the threat of the Lone Cyberman and his quest to restore the Cyber-Empire in the far future, he was only able to scoop up the companions of the Thirteenth Doctor during the an invasion of Judoon in Gloucester. Promising to find The Doctor again when she needed him, he told them of an alliance that sent something the Lone Cyberman was looking for back in time and that, should The Doctor find it, she must not give it to the Cyberman at any cost. He later proved true to his word, and rescued The Doctor from imprisonment at a Judoon prison, before assisting her and her companions in repelling The Daleks once more in 2021. With the threat of the Cybermen in the future already neutralised, Harkness went off to catch up with Gwen Cooper, his former teammate at Torchwood.
An important facet of Jack’s existence on Earth was its temporal complexity. There were whole decades when multiple versions of Jack existed on Earth. Indeed, during the whole of the 20th century, there were always at least two Jacks on Earth since a younger version was a part of Torchwood Three and an older one was in a grave dug by his brother in ancient Britain. During the World War II era, Earth had at least one more Jack — the younger “con artist” who first met The Doctor and Rose.
EARLY LIFE
Javic Piotr Thane was born before the year 5094[1] (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) to Franklin and his wife. He had a younger brother called Gray. (Adam) He was raised on the Boeshane Peninsula (Last of the Time Lords) where he spent time with his brother and father playing cricket and singing around a campfire. (Adam)
On what he would later call the worst day of his life, Javic fled from a host of creatures with Gray and lost him in the confusion when he accidentally let go of his hand. He returned home and found his mother crying over his father’s body. He spent years looking for Gray without success, eventually burying the memory of what happened as well as his happy memories of his father. (Adam)
Javic persuaded his best friend to “join up” with him to fight the creatures. They were captured, and the enemy thought Javic’s friend the weaker of the pair and tortured him as a lesson for Javic. They let Javic go, to bear the guilt of his friend’s fate. (Captain Jack Harkness)
In 5094, Javic won the Rear of the Year award. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)
THE TIME AGENCY
Javic was the first Boeshane resident to be signed up for the Time Agency, making him a “poster boy” for the area, known as the “Face of Boe”. (Last of the Time Lords) Going undercover during World War II in 1941, Javic assumed the identity of an American volunteer named Captain Jack Harkness, who had died in action the January prior. He knew very little about the real Jack, other than basic information such as the date and manner of his death. (Captain Jack Harkness)
On one of his first missions for the Time Agency, Jack fought the Navigators (World Without End) and went to a black market on Fluren’s World to bid on a Monstrom Time Destroyer, but lost it to a pair of Wrightosaur mercenaries, whom he also had a sexual encounter with. (Weapons of Past Destruction) He later spent some time living as a Priest in the 17th century, under the alias of “Father Julian Horst”. (Slaver’s Song)
Jack worked as a Time Agent with John Hart, a partner both professionally and sexually. They once spent five years trapped in a two-week time loop, becoming the equivalent of a married couple after spending so much time together. Hart admitted to having been “a good wife”, closing an argument between the two as to the details of the relationship. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) On another occasion, the two agents faced off against a horde of Weeping Angels. (Secret Agent Man)
Once, when sentenced to death, Jack 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. (The Doctor Dances)
While still a Time Agent, (Secret Agent Man) Jack acquired a small, sleek Chula warship fitted for human use, which could turn invisible. (The Empty Child)
Jack found that the Agency had erased two years of his memory, (The Empty Child) which other Time Agents like Hart refused to discuss with him. (Secret Agent Man) 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 merchandise. (The Empty Child)
ADVENTURES WITH THE NINTH DOCTOR
Though there are records of Jack having already been travelling with the Ninth Doctor when the Time Lord met Rose Tyler, (Dr. Ninth) the most common account of the Doctor and Jack’s first encounter states that while running a scam involving a Chula ambulance in the London Blitz, Jack spotted Rose Tyler hanging from a barrage balloon. Just as she fell, he rescued her and took her aboard his ship. Deducing she came from the future, and thinking she was a Time Agent, he tried conning her into purchasing the ambulance. Upon meeting Rose’s “companion”, the Ninth Doctor, Jack realised that they were just freelancers like he was. The Doctor pointed out that the landing site of the ambulance was where the ground zero of the Empty Child plague started. Jack believed the object was empty space junk, (The Empty Child) but in fact, the ambulance contained nanogenes. The nanogenes had not seen a human before; they took the gas mask for the deceased child’s face and fused it to him, spreading to other people who touched him, also transforming them into undead creatures with no life signs.
Jack teleported The Doctor and Rose to his warship to escape, and they went to the bombsite near the hospital, where they realised the truth. The ambulance started its emergency protocols, calling the creatures, who had been armed as “Chula warriors”, and was ready to “tear the world apart” to find the boy’s mother.
Every patient and soldier at the bombsite converged on The Doctor, Rose and Jack. The Doctor fixed the nanogenes’ mistakes by comparing the DNA of the child and Nancy, who was his mother, restoring the infected zombies to normal. Jack stopped the bomb from hitting the bomb site by placing it in stasis inside his warship and when everyone got to safety, The Doctor destroyed the ambulance, making sure that history said that a bomb hit that location. The Doctor rescued Jack from his Chula warship just before it exploded, taking him aboard the TARDIS as his latest companion, to the delight of both Rose, who found Jack attractive, and Jack, who found both Rose and The Doctor attractive. (The Doctor Dances)
The Doctor took Rose and Jack to where the planet Excroth should have been but found it was gone. The TARDIS was taken aboard a Lect spaceship, but The Doctor and Jack escaped after it was attacked by Unon, after Jack shot one of them. However, Rose was blasted into the Time Vortex but was protected from the time winds by the tachyon inhibitor she found. Jack tracked Rose down to the Fluren Temporal Bazaar. The Doctor called the attention of the Unon but attracted the Lect who attacked one another, and which subsequently led to the emergency protocol being triggered, dissipating the time bubble protecting Fluren’s World. Separated from Rose, Jack, in the TARDIS, was captured and taken to the Unon’s Perpetual City, where he reunited with The Doctor, who he believed to have died.
Arnora, mother superior of the Unon, tricked The Doctor into coming to the planet Traxis with Jack, and The Doctor used a temporal stabiliser to seal a time fissure. After Rose tricked The Doctor into giving the co-ordinates of the Perpetual City to the Lect, Evja, the Grand High Seer of the Unon, took Jack to a sub-dimensional void. In the void, Jack saw what future would come if The Doctor wasn’t around and the Unon was in charge of time. Released from the void, Jack and Evja saved The Doctor. After Arnora was killed by the Lect, The Doctor, unable to stop the overloading entropy engine, took as many Unon as he could to another world so they could start again. (Weapons of Past Destruction)
Visiting the Eye of Orion, Jack, Rose and The Doctor found a giant ziggurat and the Hanging Gardens of Slarvia, which had been destroyed centuries before. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to discover a ship in orbit, which transmatted them on board and brought them face to face with Taggani, the most famous geohacker in history. They stopped him from using The Doctor’s memories to recreate everything lost in the Last Great Time War, and exposed his true identity as an art historian from the Braxiatel Collection before handing him over to the Judoon. (Hacked)
While on Clix, Jack and The Doctor disguised themselves as Slitheens to find Rose, who had been kidnapped by Slist Fayflut Marteveerthon Slitheen. (Doctormania)
The trio shared numerous adventures together, including encountering Russian special forces and the Novrosk spaceship. (The Deviant Strain)
Jack later spent a month in 2006 Bromley, helping a Neanderthal named Das to fit in with 21st century society. (Only Human)
When the TARDIS became powerless to travel through time, the three travellers stopped off in Cardiff in 2006 so that the TARDIS could refuel via a scar in a rift running through the city. Whilst in Cardiff, Jack met Rose’s estranged boyfriend, Mickey Smith. Together, they captured Blon, the sole Slitheen survivor of a prior attack on 10 Downing Street who had become Lord Mayor. When the TARDIS was refuelled, they stopped off at Raxacoricofallapatorius to return her home. (Boom Town)
Afterwards, they visited Arkannis Major in 2775, where Jack was committed to an asylum for telling fictional stories. (The Stealers of Dreams)
At some point, The Doctor, Rose and Jack went to New Vegas in the 23rd century, where they assisted detective James McNeil to investigate The Whisper, a strange vigilante that had terrorised the city’s underworld. This involved Jack working undercover as a reporter for the Daily Galaxy, where he befriended Daisy Hewett, but she later betrayed him to Mafia boss Cyrus Wolfsbane, who kidnapped Jack so that the Doctor would lead him to the Whisper, with Cyrus subsequently killing the Whisper. (Night of the Whisper)
After visiting Kyoto, Japan in 1336, Jack, The Doctor and Rose were abducted by transmat beams, and awoke on the Game Station. Jack found himself on a makeover game show hosted by Trine-E and Zu-Zana. When the android hosts threatened him, he shot them, and improvised a more powerful gun out of their defabricator.
Jack met up with The Doctor and an escapee from the deadly games, Lynda Moss, and tracked down Rose. They raced to save Rose from The Weakest Link hosted by a deadly Anne Droid; they were unsuccessful in preventing the Anne Droid from seemingly killing Rose. Completely heartbroken, Jack was tempted to shoot the staff behind the games and threatened to kill the guards when they arrested The Doctor and Lynda, only to get arrested himself for breaking in and out of the games. However, he and The Doctor physically overpowered the guards and set off to stop the deadly “entertainment”.
Taking “hostages” in the control room, Jack found the TARDIS stowed away in an archive room. Using the TARDIS, he discovered the laser that “killed” the games’ losers was actually teleporting them across space. Puzzled, The Doctor discovered that the Game Station was unknowingly broadcasting a secondary signal to an empty location of space, which was where all the losers ended up. Disabling the signal, The Doctor was horrified to find two hundred Dalek battleships. Establishing contact, The Doctor learned his old foes had taken Rose hostage, but promised The Daleks that he would rescue her and destroy them for the final time. (Bad Wolf)
Jack and The Doctor flew the TARDIS into the Dalek mothership, rescued Rose and discovered the Dalek Emperor was controlling the Game Station and turning the contestants into Daleks. Returning to the Game Station to prepare for the battle ahead, Jack formed a resistance group consisting of contestants and staff members to fight The Daleks. Knowing he was fighting a losing battle and would most certainly perish, Jack kissed Rose and The Doctor goodbye. In the ensuing battle, all of the resistance were killed and The Doctor sent Rose home in the TARDIS. Now the last man fighting, Jack was killed defending the satellite against The Daleks as they attacked the Game Station, and seemingly accepted his death. Rose Tyler, while holding the powers of the Time Vortex which turned her into the Bad Wolf, returned to the Game Station, destroyed The Daleks, and resurrected Jack. The TARDIS departed before Jack could rejoin them since his new immortal nature perverted the Laws of Time, and would interfere with the operations of the TARDIS. He was left stranded on the satellite. (The Parting of the Ways) Rose couldn’t control her powers and had brought Jack back to life forever, making him immortal, and as the Doctor claimed, a fixed point in time. (Utopia)
Shortly following The Doctor’s regeneration going wrong, Rose suggested going back to find Jack, thinking he might be able to help; The Doctor claimed that he was busy rebuilding the Earth, not yet wishing to tell her the truth about what had just happened. (Born Again)
Somehow making his way to the ravaged Earth, Jack, though recognised as a hero for his fight against The Daleks, chose to live as a recluse in a small cabin located near the ruins of the Black Country Dome. A year passed, and Jack found himself approached by Silo Crook, an aspiring reporter. Though Jack vehemently wished to be left alone, both shared a suspicion of the Hope Foundation, a charity founded by Vortia Trear ostensibly to take the surviving humans off Earth and give them new, better lives. Sneaking aboard Trear Station, repurposed from the Game Station along with several starliners and a couple of freight ships, Jack reunited with Silo and found that Vortia was part of a rich elite which had always looked out for themselves and intended to exploit those below them. In the ensuing revolt, Trear was deposed and the station was left falling to Earth, forcing Jack to interact with live cables to land it safely. Reviving after being electrocuted, Jack reasoned that the universe liked him and saw that an abundance of resources was salvaged from the grounded station, confident that humanity would ultimately rebuild itself. (The Year After I Died)
LIFE ON PAST EARTH
19TH CENTURY
Eventually, Jack used the vortex manipulator in his Time Agency wrist strap to return to Cardiff, the site of an active space-time rift. Jack knew that the TARDIS could refuel itself using the rift, and therefore attempted to reach there in the early 21st century so that he could find The Doctor again. However, Jack ended up in 1869, and his vortex manipulator burned out, leaving him stranded. (Utopia)
Jack stayed in Cardiff, choosing to continue using the Harkness alias (or at least using it when he started working for Torchwood Three). (Fragments) His third death and resurrection occurred when he was shot in 1892 during a fight on Ellis Island. Jack found that he still aged, but very slowly — he noted that he had a couple of grey hairs in the 2000s,[nb 1] over 100 years after arriving in Cardiff (Last of the Time Lords) — and could recover from any degree of physical harm, including death itself, given a few minutes time. (Utopia)
In 1898, Jack went to the music hall performance of Anthony Bradshaw, also known as “the Wonder of 1898”, who could foretell the future through his invisible friend the Lawphoram. Jack asked him, “how will I die?” and Anthony did not know. When Edward Hardiman, Anthony’s “uncle”, tried to leave the theatre, Jack stopped him, and told him to scram after buying Anthony from a workhouse the previous year. Jack forced the Lawphoram, a creature from the future which was feeding on Anthony’s mind, out of Anthony using the vortex manipulator on Jack’s wrist. He cradled Anthony, promising him he’d be all right. (Best Friends)
In 1899, Torchwood Cardiff agents Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd found out about Jack. They captured and tortured him to discover why he could not die and what connection he had to The Doctor, who the Torchwood Institute had designated an enemy. After telling them that the Doctor was a hero who would save them from aliens, Jack was released on the condition that he undertake a mission for Torchwood. Jack was sent to stop a criminal Blowfish, which he returned to Torchwood Three’s Hub, only to see it killed by a shot to the head. Disgusted by Torchwood’s methods, Jack walked away from the organisation. He ended up in a bar, where he drowned his sorrows alone until a young cartomancer offered to read him his fortune. She gave a completely accurate prophecy of the Doctor’s eventual return to Cardiff 100 years into the future. Left with nothing to do but wait for a full century until his version of the Doctor coincided with his timeline, Jack reconsidered Torchwood’s offer and began working for them and awaiting The Doctor’s return.
Jack continued working for Torchwood for over a hundred years, still pursuing his goal of finding The Doctor in the meantime. (Fragments)
Shortly after this, Jack and the rest of Torchwood infiltrated and destroyed the HMS Hades after it was found to be a lab for experimenting on aliens. (The Baby Farmers)
On 17 May 1899, Jack was temporarily working with the London branch of Torchwood based at the Natural History Museum. The Life-stealer escaped custody and started feeding on the youth of Londoners at the same time Torchwood was being visited by Queen Victoria for her annual inspection of the Institute, resulting in him sharing an adventure with the Queen as she took to pursuing the creature. After Victoria killed the creature by exploiting its weakness against the elderly, Jack declined her offer to take command of Torchwood London, the position having been left vacant when its previous director was rendered rapidly aged permanently incapacitated, telling her that his place was in Cardiff. (The Victorian Age)
Jack went to China during the Boxer Rebellion, where he worked with explosives. (The Blood Line)
Jack presented Torchwood‘s findings about Object 1 to Queen Victoria. She ordered him to get rid of it by throwing it into the Rift. He took it back to Cardiff but neglected to follow her orders, hoping the Object’s temporal effects might attract The Doctor. (The Torchwood Archive)
20TH CENTURY
In 1902, Jack investigated strange visions at Ravenhall Manor, a Gothic 18th century house. He defeated the creature responsible. (Hell House))
In 1906, Jack set up a bank account, the interest of which would lead to a small fortune by 2011. (Dead of Night) In the same year, Jack began two affairs with a couple called Alison and Miles, and even attended their wedding. On the same day, Miles drowned Alison and turned himself into the police, leaving Jack to face the guilt of his role in their volatile demises. (The House That Jack Built)
In 1909, Jack was travelling through Lahore by train with a group of soldiers under his command, when they were killed by Fairies. Some of the soldiers had recently run over and killed one of the Fairies’ Chosen Ones. In revenge, the Fairies suffocated the soldiers by forcing rose petals down their throats. (Small Worlds)
In 1914, he investigated strange disappearances in Tiger Bay and discovered that the missing sailors were becoming Weevils. He realised that this must have had something to do with Object 1 and finally threw it into the Rift. (The Torchwood Archive) Jack later left Torchwood to fight in World War I. (To the Last Man, Utopia)
In 1914, during the Christmas truce, Jack was recovering in a hospital after surviving a bullet to the head. (The Forgotten)
Jack was present at Gallipoli during the Gallipoli campaign. By this point he was wearing a battered coat which had sustained several holes as a result of gunfire. He was responsible for saving the life of Ata, an Ottoman soldier, while warding off a creature which fed on fear in times of war. While doing so, Jack was killed twice, first from a gunshot inflicted by Ata when he initially approached him, then again by Ottoman forces when they recovered Ata. (What Have I Done?)
Jack fought in the Battle of Passchendaele and the Battle of the Somme. (To the Last Man)
In 1918, Gerald Carter and Harriet Derbyshire brought in Tommy Brockless to be put in suspended animation and use him as a key to fix time shifts happening then and in the 21st century. At some point after this, Jack retrieved instructions on what to do with Tommy in a box temporally locked until the Rift met the same conditions as in 1918. Jack witnessed Tommy being awakened each year to see if he “still worked”. (To the Last Man) Jack was witness to the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918, which killed 5% of the human race. (Children of Earth: Day Four)
In 1919, Jack assisted in convicting Roderick Simonsen, though he was unaware of the true nature of Simonsen’s crimes. (They Keep Killing Andy)
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”. (From Out of the Rain) 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. He arranged for all their alien artefacts to be transported back to Britain (Golden Age) except for Object 1, which the angry Eleanor had sent to him anyway. (The Torchwood Archive)
In 1927, Jack went to New York City on a mission to stop the Trickster’s Brigade from infecting President Roosevelt’s brain with a parasite. When he arrived at Ellis Island, Jack met Angelo Colasanto. The two stayed in a room in New York together and had sex. Comparing Angelo to one of the Doctor’s companions, the two went to the warehouse where the parasite was being kept and killed it. As the two tried to escape, however, Jack was killed and Angelo was captured and taken to jail.
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. (Immortal Sins)
Jack later fought in World War II. (Utopia) He claimed to have been a prisoner of war on a German U-Boat for a couple of weeks, during which time he seduced a number of the submariners. (Plant Life) During the war, he met Estelle Cole. The pair became lovers and 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. (Small Worlds)
In the 1950s Jack discovered that members of Torchwood Three were selling alien artefacts at auctions in Cardiff. To put a stop to this he flooded the market with fake artefacts, destroying the buyers’ demand. (The Beauty of our Weapons)
In 1955, Jack was burnt to death whilst trying to save Hugo and other men infected with Invictus. He revived in a room with Norton Folgate, whom he blamed for what happened. Norton eventually won him around and they had a sexual relationship, (“Prodromal: Love”) also coming up with a plan should Good Thinking ever be used again, inserting a trojan horse into Jack’s personal data. (“Invasion: Kill”)
In 1965, the alien race known as the 456, communicating through radio, set up a deal: Jack, with the involvement of Andrew Staines, Ellen Hunt and Michael Sanders, would deliver to them twelve young orphans as a “gift” at a meeting point in Scotland. In exchange for the children, the unseen aliens would give them a cure for a new strain of an Indonesian flu that the aliens claimed would mutate and kill twenty-five million people. Jack received the assignment specifically because of his immortality, and the perception, as one of the officers later told him, that he “didn’t care.” Despite his misgivings, Jack followed his orders, and delivered the children. Clement McDonald, however, slipped away from the exchange, and had nightmares about Jack for the rest of his life. (Children of Earth: Day Four)
In the 1970s, Jack sported a moustache. (End of the Road) He dated Stella Courtney for five weeks. (The Dead Line)
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 Protection 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. (Children of Earth: Day Three)
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. (Utopia)
At some point during the 20th century, Jack found a Rehabilitator and documented it in Torchwood’s archives. (Kaleidoscope)
At another point, he briefly met the author Arthur Machen and found him to be an interesting man. Jack later revealed himself to be familiar with Machen’s writing. (The Wrong Hands)
Around Christmas 1999, Jack dropped a truck on the Millennium Bug. (The Torchwood Archive)
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. 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. (Fragments)
After taking over, Jack found two people the Rift had taken and later returned to Cardiff inside the vaults. He established an institution for them on Flat Holm Island, and told the careers there that they, and others that came through, were experiments gone wrong. (Adrift)
Over several years Jack rebuilt his decimated organisation. He headhunted weapons expert Suzie Costello to come to Cardiff to join (Moving Target) and later recruited Toshiko Sato from UNIT imprisonment. (Fragments) Sebastian Vaughan joined the team thanks to his father, a Cabinet minister. (The Vigil)
In 2004, Torchwood Three shutdown an Ovid factory making duplicates of a village’s population in South Wales. Suzie found Object 1 in the factory, so Jack had her phone Yvonne Hartman to pass it on to Torchwood One. (The Torchwood Archive)
Jack was present in the Hub on 26 March 2005 when it was temporarily frozen in a time bubble for a day by Torchwood One’s Rajesh Singh so that director Yvonne Hartman could procure a Drahvin scanner from the Hub unhindered. Yvonne observed the frozen Jack, noting this was the first time they had met, though he was unable to notice her. She commented that his photographs did not do him justice. Understanding that Jack did not work “for Queen and Country”, Yvonne regarded him as a liability and “not Torchwood” and would soon after arrange for the new Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Barry Jackson, to inform her when The Doctor appeared in Cardiff, knowing that Jack would not. (One Rule)
Jack met Dr Owen Harper when he dealt with an alien parasite which had inhabited the brain of Owen’s fiancée Katie Russell under the guise of a tumour before revealing itself during surgery, with Jack being forced to sedate Owen when he refused to let him recover her body before altering security footage to remove all traces of himself. Jack later went to observe, from a distance, Owen standing by Katie’s grave following her funeral. He was seen by Owen, who angrily rushed towards and attacked him before breaking down in his arms. After Owen calmed down, Jack offered Owen a job with Torchwood Three, so he could save people and find purpose without Katie. Owen reluctantly accepted. (Fragments)
Jack’s activities at the time of the Blaidd Drwg incident in Cardiff in September 2006, which involved Jack’s younger, mortal self, (Boom Town) included keeping the entire Torchwood team on lockdown in the Hub, to prevent them from seeing his younger self, and vice versa. (The Twilight Streets)
After Torchwood One’s old regime was “destroyed” in the Battle of Canary Wharf, Jack rebuilt and changed Torchwood’s organisation. Within a few years,[nb 1] there was a half dozen of them left. He later told the Tenth Doctor that he did this in The Doctor’s honour. (The Sound of Drums) In the 2000s,[nb 2] he took in Ianto Jones, a survivor of Torchwood One, after some heavy persuasion by Ianto himself. (Fragments) At some point afterwards, Sebastian Vaughan was killed by a cortex leech. (The Vigil)
During this time, Jack held on to the hope of re-establishing contact with The Doctor, who he believed could help him. At some point after Torchwood One destroyed the Sycorax ship in 2006 under orders from Prime Minister Harriet Jones, (The Christmas Invasion) Jack obtained a severed hand that had fallen from the Sycorax craft and which was identified as having belonged to the Tenth Doctor. (Utopia) He kept the hand in a portable container in Torchwood Three’s nerve centre, the Hub, and treated it as a prized possession, much to the occasional consternation of his colleagues. (Everything Changes, Day One)
The team had been testing the resurrection gauntlet on a series of murders which unknown to Jack were committed by Suzie to make her understand the glove further. At a hospital, he helped capture a Weevil. Police Constable Gwen Cooper began investigating Jack and followed him from the hospital to Torchwood. He showed her around the Hub, then laced a drink with retcon to make her forget about everything.
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. (Everything Changes)
Jack chased after a meteorite containing the sex gas creature, where Gwen had accidentally released it. He tricked the gas creature into leaving Carys Fletcher and entering the Torchwood portable prison cell. The entity was poisoned by Earth’s atmosphere and died. (Day One)
As Gwen was a “beat cop”, and untrained in firearms, Jack trained her to protect herself. (Day One, Ghost Machine)
Jack helped Gwen and Owen capture a quantum transducer Bernie Harris had been carrying. He later confiscated the alien artefacts Bernie had been trying to sell. He failed to prevent the death of Ed Morgan Gwen indirectly foresaw with the transducer. Jack then ordered the transducer locked away. (Ghost Machine)
Ianto had hidden the partially-converted Cyberman Lisa Hallett inside the Torchwood Hub. Jack and the others managed to bypass the Hub’s lockdown and escape, but Ianto rushed back for his girlfriend. After Lisa had placed her brain inside the body of another human, the rest of the team had no choice but to kill her. (Cyberwoman) Sometime later, Jack asked Ianto how he was after Lisa’s death and took him on a Weevil hunt. (Broken)
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 Jasmine Pierce, their new Chosen One, from joining their ranks as they could have destroyed the Earth. His team turned their backs on him after this, angry at his decision. (Small Worlds)
Jack and Ianto worked together against an incursion of Scorchies at the Millennium Centre. Afterwards Ianto confessed he wanted to be more involved in the team and Jack promised to try to help with that. (Broken)
The Torchwood team travelled to the Welsh countryside to investigate a series of disappearances, fearing the Rift was expanding. The Torchwood SUV was stolen by a group of cannibals that harvested travellers once every ten years. The team followed the cannibals to their village. Right as his team were captured, Jack stepped in and incapacitated the cannibals with a shotgun. The cannibals were arrested by the police. (Countrycide) He asked Ianto how he was coping a few days later, as Tosh had been reporting having nightmares. (Broken)
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. (Greeks Bearing Gifts) That night he went to The Ferret to investigate disappearances and possible Rift activity and encountered Ianto in the pub. Despite Ianto’s requests for him to stay away, he followed him when the barmaid Mandy took him to meet the Saviour. Jack knew what the Saviour really was and that his race were slave traders. Distressed at Mandy’s betrayal, Ianto pushed him into the rift which the Saviour had opened. Ianto then regretted his decision and went to retrieve him from the camp. Afterwards they had a proper talk about what Ianto was going through and began a relationship. (Broken)
Jack decided to investigate the conspiracy theorist George Wilson who talked about the Committee, as he knew that the Committee actually existed. He posed as an investigator for Plexus Magazine to attend one of Wilson’s conferences where he met by accident with Sam Hallett who recognised him. He managed to get an interview from Kate Wilson with her father. He learnt about the different phases that George believed the Committee was arranging. He then spent his time looking through video footage of George learning more about him. During his research he was contacted by Sam and Jack was forced to watch Sam commit suicide. He went to Wilson to find out why Sam was killed. Jack learnt what Wilson thought he had made it all up, though Jack knew some of it was true. He found out that Kate was a member of the Committee and that they knew all about him. Kate told him that she was feeding enough information to George to make the humans believe the conspiracy and that they were doing this to make the humans complacent. He then went AWOL from Torchwood for a while to investigate them, leaving a recording for the rest of the team to explain his disappearance. (The Conspiracy)
Jack decided to investigate Neil Redmond after learning Kate had escaped the country in one of his private’s jets, learning about his doppelganger NJ. He investigated Neil’s crash and traced mysterious things following the accident. Talking with Neil, he discovered that Eve Trent from Ovid Industries had supplied him with the doppelganger. He told Neil that his actions had cost a lot of people their lives. Neil detailed how he got the robot to take over his operations and his social life, but he started to resent him. Jack informed Neil that NJ was going rogue and dealing with terrorists. He later met with NJ who tried to seduce him and succeeded. After having sex with NJ he told Neil to shut him down but this didn’t work. NJ attacked Jack after this and killed him. After Jack came back to life he managed to destroy NJ, but not before NJ confirmed that he was made by the Committee and that the Committee weren’t invading the Earth, they had been invited. Jack decided he couldn’t do this alone and rejoined Torchwood. (Uncanny Valley)
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. (They Keep Killing Suzie)
When Gwen was investigating the death of Eugene Jones, Jack tried to make her stop but she refused. Jack was later present when Eugene reappeared to save Gwen’s life from a speeding car. Jack thanked Gwen for not giving up on Eugene. (Random Shoes)
At some point in 2007, Jack was kidnapped by the Three Families. Gwen came looking for him and was also captured. They were transported to Chernobyl, where the Families 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. (Miracle Day, Web of Lies)
Jack saw John Ellis, Emma-Louise Cowell and Diane Holmes come through the Rift from 1953 Earth in the Sky Gypsy. He befriended John, as he was also a man out of his own time. As John had nothing left to live for, he committed suicide. Unable to convince John to continue living, Jack held his hand as the car fumes overwhelmed John. (Out of Time)
Jack shut down a Weevil Fight Club, freed the Weevil captive there and saved Owen’s life. Owen chastised Jack for saving him, saying that he felt “totally at peace”. (Combat)
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 Nancy Floyd. The two Jacks had a brief romance. Owen opened the Rift with the Rift Manipulator to return Jack and Tosh to the 21st century. (Captain Jack Harkness)
The opening of the Rift brought diseases and people across time and space so Jack felt forced to dismiss Owen. Owen later returned and shot Jack; through Bilis Manger’s manipulations, Owen re-opened the Rift to send everything back. Jack resurrected and the rest of his team learnt of his immortality.
After the Rift was opened, Jack was forced to confront Abaddon. Abbadon was destroyed while attempting to leech Jack’s life, though the exertion resulted in Jack remaining dead for days, his immortality apparently unable to save him. He was brought back to life after a kiss from Gwen.
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. (End of Days)
REUNION WITH THE DOCTOR
Having heard the TARDIS, Jack left the Hub with The Doctor’s hand in a backpack. Rushing to where it was parked, he managed to jump onto the ship before it dematerialised, clinging on as it travelled through the time vortex to the year 100,000,000,000,000. The Doctor and Jack had an awkward reunion, owing both to The Doctor’s regeneration into his tenth incarnation since they last met and the fact the Ninth Doctor had abandoned him on Satellite Five. Before long The Doctor admitted that he had run from Jack because his unique nature as a living temporal anomaly made the Time Lord physically uncomfortable when near him — even looking at Jack was an effort. Jack made the happy discovery, though, that Rose had not been killed in the Battle of Canary Wharf as he had believed. They met and helped Professor Yana to repair a spaceship in order to help the last humans in the universe reach Utopia. After Yana became the War Master, who regenerated into a new body and took off in the TARDIS with The Doctor’s hand still inside, Jack, The Doctor and The Doctor’s companion Martha Jones were left stranded at the end of the universe to be killed by the Futurekind. (Utopia)
After The Doctor fixed Jack’s vortex manipulator, the trio used it to escape the Futurekind and travel back to the 2000s,[nb 3] where they discovered The Master, using the alias “Harold Saxon”, had been elected Great Britain’s Prime Minister. He framed them for terrorism, planting explosives in Martha’s flat. He also made sure that Jack couldn’t get help from his Torchwood team by sending them to the Himalayas “on a wild goose chase”. With nowhere to go, Jack, The Doctor and Martha went on the run.
On board The Master’s airship, the Valiant, The Doctor discovered his TARDIS had been turned into a paradox machine. After failing to foil The Master’s plot, the Master summoned the Toclafane, whom he ordered to assassinate US President Arthur Winters, attack the Earth, and decimate the population. He then killed Jack and aged The Doctor with his laser screwdriver. (The Sound of Drums) As the Toclafane began slaughtering the population, Jack, realising they couldn’t stop The Master, told Martha to escape using his vortex manipulator. (The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords)
Being kept prisoner aboard the Valiant for a year, Jack, The Doctor and the Jones family witnessed The Master and the Toclafane devastate Earth’s civilisations and reduce the human race to camps of survivors, and suffered at his hands themselves. Bound in chains aboard the Valiant, the thing that kept Jack going during the year of hell was the thought of getting back to his Torchwood team.
When Martha allowed herself to be taken to the Master, she and The Doctor revealed their plan; using the Archangel Network, T
he Doctor harnessed the psychic energy of humanity’s hope, as Martha had spent a year travelling the world telling humanity about his importance to them. On The Doctor’s orders, Jack destroyed the paradox machine keeping the Toclafane in the present, undoing the entire year; Earth was restored as time resumed for everyone else right after the President was killed, but those on the Valiant retained their memories due to being at the “eye of the storm”. 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 in Cardiff. (Last of the Time Lords)
RETURN TO TORCHWOOD THREE
Jack returned to Torchwood and the team, while they were on a mission in the 2000s,[nb 4] saving the life of a woman being menaced by a Blowfish.
He quickly had yet another visit from the past, this time even further back; Jack was reunited with Captain John Hart from his Time Agent days, 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 owner of 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 told Jack that he had found Gray. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)
Torchwood took in Beth Halloran on suspicion over the deaths of two burglars. Jack ordered a mind probe on her, and her true identity, the sleeper agent Kayehla Janees, surfaced. Once Tosh deactivated the link, an advance guard of Cell 114 attacked Cardiff. Jack and Gwen stopped “David” from attacking a stockpile of nuclear warheads. Before David committed suicide, he told Jack the rest of Cell 114 had already arrived on Earth and factored Torchwood into their plans. Rather than let her sleeper agent form take over, Beth pretended to threaten Gwen and Torchwood killed her. (Sleeper)
Jack and Ianto tracked a Cell 114 signal to Serenity Plaza and went undercover to track the sleeper agent. Pretending to be an idyllic couple, Jack went off to work each day returning to the hub, whilst Ianto stayed at home. When Mary thought Jack was attracted to her husband Bob he played along. Once the sleepers had activated, they found their control centre and Jack devised a way to completely wipe out Cell 114. (Serenity)
When Ianto discovered an alien artefact was missing from the archive, Gwen and Tosh tracked it down to a Cardiff hotel. When Jack arrived he recognised the artefact as a nuclear bomb, and proposed the team return to the hotel later on, to steal the aretefact and cast it into the Rift. (The Beauty of our Weapons)
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 Rift Manipulator in order to close the time shifts. Toshiko then projected an image of herself to Tommy to tell him how to use the “key”. (To the Last Man)
Gwen’s fiancé Rhys Williams discovered the true nature of Gwen’s job. Jack gave Rhys a brief tour at Torchwood and used his position as a transport manager to sneak into Harries & Harries. An alien that could replenish its cells indefinitely was being mutilated there so its meat could be sold. Jack saw Owen mercy kill the creature and felt sorry for it. Torchwood then had its workers retconned and the alien incinerated. Jack asked Gwen to give Rhys retcon, but she refused. (Meat)
The memory-altering creature Adam Smith altered Torchwood Three’s memories, making them think he had been a team member for years. After doing this, Jack’s memories of Gray and his father resurfaced. Jack realised that all the memories of Adam were false and that Adam’s files only dated back 48 hours. Torchwood Three took retcon and erased all trace of Adam’s existence on file. (Adam)
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. (Reset)
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 extradimensional 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 Jack. (Dead Man Walking)
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. (A Day in the Death)
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. (Something Borrowed)
Jack, feeling stuck on Earth, met Val Ross and attended some of the lectures at the Church of the Outsiders. However, he turned against them after Davey Russell’s suicide, manipulating Val into spreading footage of his resurrection and turning the Church into a laughing stock. He also saved Cardiff by telling Andromeda Ross that nobody cared about the message she sent through the Rift. (Believe)
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. (From Out of the Rain)
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. (Adrift)
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. (Fragments)
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 27 AD.
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, now 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 cryopreservation for 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 brother of his trespasses. Left with no other option, 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. (Exit Wounds)
Disappearing from Torchwood for a while, Jack agreed with Jonty to be a surrogate for the next leader of the Yalnix Empire, hoping to make up for the recent deaths by creating a new life. He returned to Earth heavily pregnant, with Jonty his midwife, to Ianto’s shock. He started to get very emotional due to the hormones which coursed through his body, but attempted to keep going with his duties for Torchwood including hunting Weevils. Ianto eventually booked him into a spa to wait out the rest of his pregnancy. At the Spa the rest of the clients started acting strangely, which freaked out both Jonty and Jack, fearing it was the Yalnix’s enemies. They later realised that this was due to the influence of Junior. Ianto saved them and Jack was transported to the birthing ship. (Expectant)
Not long after Owen and Tosh’s deaths, Martha phoned Jack for help at the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He, Ianto and Gwen flew to Switzerland and met up with Martha. They investigated twelve accidents and found a creature that fed on neutrons was responsible. (Lost Souls)
DALEK INVASION OF EARTH
Later, when the Earth was relocated by The Daleks to the Medusa Cascade in the 2000s,[nb 5] Harriet Jones, a former Prime Minister and acquaintance of the Tenth Doctor, contacted Torchwood and other allies of the Doctor via the Sub-Wave Network. After receiving vital information from Martha that allowed him to reactivate his vortex manipulator, Jack teleported to The Doctor’s side just as a Dalek shot him. (The Stolen Earth)
Subsequently, after The Doctor’s abortive regeneration, Jack boarded the Crucible and surrendered to the Dalek forces. After the TARDIS was supposedly destroyed, he attempted to shoot the Supreme Dalek in anger and was promptly “exterminated”. Reviving before his body could be incinerated, he subsequently burrowed into the Crucible and linked up with Sarah Jane Smith, Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler. He attempted to use Sarah Jane’s warp star to bluff The Daleks into calling off the detonation of the reality bomb but was transported to Davros’ chamber instead.
When Donna Noble disabled The Daleks, the Supreme Dalek descended into the vault and destroyed the Magnetron that was bringing the stolen planets back to their rightful positions, leaving Earth behind. Jack blasted the Supreme Dalek again, this time successfully destroying it.
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 manipulator once again, refusing to run the risk of allowing him to travel in time. (Journey’s End)
Jack made a series of tutorial videos about Adipose, Pyroviles, Ood, Sontarans, Slitheen, Hath, Vespiforms, Vashta Nerada, Judoon, the Midnight entity, the Trickster’s Brigade, Daleks, Davros, festive aliens and Cybermen in the Torchwood Three Hub. These were confiscated by UNIT and were made top-secret footage. (Captain Jack’s Monster Files)
THE TORCHWOOD THREE
Following a cannibalistic massacre on a yacht in Cardiff Bay, Jack and Ianto found themselves zombie-hunting in Trowbridge. As Jack captured a zombie, which he nicknamed Mildred, Ianto saved mother-to-be Sarah Thomas, along with her injured husband, Trystan Thomas, who were under attack from a quartet of “zombies”. While putting Mildred in the boot of the SUV, Jack was attacked and knocked unconscious by a zombie which jumped out from beneath the vehicle. He later awoke in the autopsy room, and travelled with Ianto to St Helen’s Hospital. There, they met up with Gwen and Rhys, and found that Leet – a Dellacoi – had created the zombies to search for his life-shell and control over the creatures had passed to Oscar Phillips, a coma patient. As Oscar ran at the hospital window, Jack held Gwen back from saving him. Oscar fell to his death, relinquishing his control over the zombies. Following Oscar’s funeral, Jack went with Gwen to place snowdrops on Oscar’s grave. (Bay of the Dead)
While trying to locate an alien weapon, Jack and Gwen discovered a parasitic alien baby. Their actions caused the baby to unlatch from its host, and the host then killed herself along with the baby. (The Wrong Hands) The baby’s father then came after Torchwood, infecting Jack and Gwen with the Kagawa Virus. Jack and Gwen remained comatose for almost a full day while Ianto searched for an antidote. (Virus)
Jack, Ianto, Gwen and Andy Davidson helped a confused girl named Freda who had been sent to 2009 by Torchwood representatives in 2069 to escape social prejudice against Ghosties. (Asylum)
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. (Hell 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 Eleanor’s plan to turn the entire Earth back to 1924, Jack destroyed the time store and Torchwood India. (Golden Age)
Torchwood Three combated a mysterious force that put people into coma-like trances after they answered the phone. (The Dead Line)
After Rhys’ uncle, Bryn Williams died in the 2000s,[nb 6] Torchwood Three investigated mysterious power cuts and Miss Carew. She was a woman in her eighties who was fit and at work after being on her deathbed not long before. Carew worked with Fitzroy to destroy all electricity on Earth, but was stopped. (The Devil and Miss Carew)
Torchwood Three, working in cooperation with UNIT, tracked a distress signal to the Mariana Trench and discovered Sam Doyle of the Guernica who hadn’t aged in fifty years. The team defeated the entity possessing him which later entered Carlie Roberts. (Submission)
In 2009, Jack recognised Invictus when he met the infected Luke Palmer. He quantum sealed the Hub to prevent himself from killing Gwen and Ianto, but the latter was still inside. (“Incubation: Know”) He had hallucinations about what happened in 1955 and tried to kill Ianto, only failing because he entered Stage 4 and died, his data being uploaded to the Data Core. (“Prodromal: Love”) Upon reviving, he joined forces with Dr Larsen and activated the trojan horse in his data, deactivating Invictus and Provictus. He told Frances Godalming to leave, having already sent Luke into her car, and informed the minister responsible that he would be going to prison. (“Invasion: Kill”)
Jack and Ianto played with a dog, Untitled, whilst being observed by Roy. (The Torchwood Archive)
Jack had kept the medical officer position vacant in the hopes of Martha deciding to join, but ultimately she went freelance instead. (Dissected)
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 John Frobisher to deal with the situation. Frobisher, knowing Jack’s role as part of the team which had negotiated with the 456, reluctantly ordered Jack’s assassination. Speculating, incorrectly, that the Hub had special properties which enabled Jack’s regenerative abilities, Frobisher insisted on the complete destruction of the Hub, along with Jack, who was already attempting to investigate by seeking to examine his grandson Steven.
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. (Children of Earth: Day One)
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 task force 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 Rhys and Ianto’s sister Rhiannon, they infiltrated the facility and rescued him. (Children of Earth: Day Two)
With Ianto’s knowledge 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. (Children of Earth: Day Three) Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Rhys retaliated by persuading Lois Habiba to collect incriminating evidence against the entire Cabinet regarding the new terms, then threatening full disclosure unless Torchwood was allowed access to the 456. Storming into Thames House to confront the aliens, Jack and Ianto promised a “fight to the death.” In response, the 456 released a virus into the Thames House, killing all inside. Among the victims was Ianto, who died in Jack’s arms. (Children of Earth: Day Four)
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 disillusioned 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. (Children of Earth: Day Five)
Jack was officially declared dead as a result of the 456 Regulation. (The New World)
LEAVING TORCHWOOD THREE
In October 2009, Jack was present in Cardiff when Suzie Costello was resurrected for the second time. He informed Suzie over the phone that he was “coming for her”. He later observed her final death from the top of the Millennium Centre. (Long Time Dead)
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, believing it would seal the Rift forever. He encountered the ghost of Ianto Jones at the house, and the couple finally confessed their love to each other for the first and last time. Ianto refused to let Jack sacrifice himself to seal the Rift and tricked him into leaving. Jack watched as the House of the Dead was destroyed with the ghost of Ianto unable to leave. (The House of the Dead) Shortly after this event, Jack decided to leave Earth. 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 Sol system and teleported off into space. (Children of Earth: Day Five)
Some time later, Jack was drowning his sorrows in a bar surrounded by various alien species, when a barman handed him a folded piece of paper which indicated that someone’s name was Alonso. Looking up, he saw the Tenth Doctor staring back, before gesturing towards the man approaching the bar. Seizing the opportunity, Jack addressed Alonso by his first name and told him that he was psychic when asked how he knew him. The Doctor left as Jack continued to flirt with Alonso. (The End of Time)
Their evening was soon interrupted as the space station they were on was attacked by the forces of Mother Nothing, a giant cannibal beetle that sought its diamond engine. Ultimately, with Alonso Frame’s assistance, Jack was able to defeat Mother Nothing and resolve the crisis. It was at this point that Jack learnt that Alonso had met The Doctor as well. Left with only a single operable escape pod between the two of them, Jack was knocked out by the midshipman who, unaware of his immortality, sent him out to safety. Awaking in his pod, Jack, presuming Alonso dead, was enraged to know he sacrificed himself in vain only to learn that he had managed to repair a pod for himself and survive. However, Jack and Alonso were separated when a meteor shower sent them on different paths. (One Enchanted Evening)
MORTAL ONCE AGAIN
Jack returned to planet Earth when the word “Torchwood” was emailed all around the world, coinciding with the start of the Miracle Day phenomenon. He used malware to expunge evidence of Torchwood from the Internet, and went to the CIA hard copy records to clear the last of the information. There he encountered CIA agent Esther Drummond, on whom he used Retcon. Jack used the alias “Owen Harper” while he gathered more information; he learned that the Miracle had given humans a version of his immortality, once seeing a severed head continue to live but unable to reform or heal. Jack also discovered that on Miracle Day, he lost his immortality, or perhaps just his instant healing ability as he kept minor wounds that normally would have healed in a day for him (from the explosion at the CIA Archives). He followed Rex Matheson, also CIA, to Wales to protect Gwen. There, they fought off assassins. Despite planning to investigate the Miracle with Gwen, Matheson extradited them to the United States against their will. (The New World)
Once the pair were forced onto a plane headed for America, Rex confiscated Jack’s vortex manipulator and handcuffed him to his seat. Hearing his manipulator beeping, Jack told Rex he had low sodium levels. Jack asked for a Coke, but was poisoned with arsenic by corrupt CIA agent Lyn Peterfield. He was saved by Rex and Gwen with the help of Dr Vera Juarez via phone call. Upon arrival at the airport, Rex freed Jack (along with Gwen) to fight the now corrupt CIA who wished to frame and dispose of them. After Lyn’s neck was broken and the guards knocked out, the three boarded the car of Rex’s fellow ex-agent, Esther. They left the airport after Jack briefly met the doctor who had saved his life. (Rendition)
Jack took command of the now ex-CIA agents with Gwen to form a new Torchwood team. They began stealing materials needed for operations again, and purchasing necessities with his ATM card, which had a large amount to spend. Soon coming into possession of the phone of Brian Friedkin, the CIA director who had given the orders to eliminate Torchwood, Jack led the team to a warehouse owned by PhiCorp. Inside was a stockpile of painkiller drugs, indicating that they knew “Miracle Day” would happen. Seemingly out of character, Jack decided to take the night off from his usual persistence in solving a mystery and had a one-night stand with a bartender. The following night, Jack confronted PhiCorp’s new public face, Oswald Danes, and got him to admit his true feelings about his crime. Jack realised that Danes wished desperately for death. He was tossed out by Danes’ guards, who took the recording he made of his conversation with Oswald. (Dead of Night)
Jack went to Los Angeles with the new Torchwood team to infiltrate a PhiCorp facility there. Unknown to him, they were followed by an assassin with orders to kill Jack. After arriving in LA, Jack and Gwen tricked Nicolas Frumkin into giving them access to the PhiCorp base. However, the assassin also gained access, and followed Jack and Gwen there. Inside the building, the assassin tied up Jack and Gwen, and informed them he had been ordered to kill Jack. However, the assassin was fascinated that Jack was the only mortal man left, and did not want to kill him. After informing Jack that something that he did in the past was involved, the assassin threatened to cut Gwen’s throat. Before he could carry out his threat, he was shot in the throat by Rex. This earned Jack’s anger as the assassin could have filled in the blanks about the new enemy they were facing. (Escape to LA)
After the new categories of life were released and the overflow camps were opened, Gwen returned to Wales to free her father from one and Dr. Vera Juarez came to LA to join Torchwood. Rex, Vera, and Esther decided to infiltrate an overflow camp. As he was recognised easily by anyone working for this new enemy, Jack couldn’t go. Learning Oswald Danes was to give a speech at the Miracle Rally, Jack sneaked in and tried persuading Danes to read a speech he wrote, revealing PhiCorp knew of the Miracle beforehand, instead of the speech that Jilly Kitzinger had written. If Danes read his speech, Jack promised that when the Miracle ended, he would help him die as he desperately wished. Much to his disappointment, Jack watched as Oswald took parts from both speeches to make his own, saying humanity had evolved into ever-lasting angels. (The Categories of Life)
Jack gained access to Stuart Owens’ email and found out that he was having an extra-marital affair with Janet Tanner and that he planned to transfer her. Jack met Janet in a bar and persuaded her to help him meet Owens. Janet pretended to have been kidnapped over the phone, while Jack spoke with Stuart in a restaurant. Stuart explained that despite his position in PhiCorp, he did not know anything about the Miracle. He had been trying to find out about it. He also told Jack that something called the Blessing was involved. The police soon arrived and Jack was forced to leave. Jack returned to Torchwood’s base and began to investigate the Blessing. Gwen contacted him using the Eye-5 contact lenses, and Jack recorded Gwen blowing up the modules at the Cowbridge Overflow Camp. He also put Rex’s footage of both the San Pedro Overflow Camp and Vera’s death online with Gwen’s, starting public outrage at the conditions that the injured and ill were enduring; however, as “Torchwood wasn’t designed to fight politics,” they had no more success than that. (The Middle Men)
Gwen received a message on the Torchwood contact lenses, telling her they had Rhys, her mother, and Anwen. She would have to hand over Jack if she wanted to see her family again. Gwen returned to LA, and asked Jack to come outside. Once outside, Gwen stunned Jack and tied him up in the car. She drove him to where the contact lenses instructed her. Once they arrived at the specified location and a van arrived carrying three people, Rex and Esther revealed that they had followed them. They pointed sniper rifles at the people from the van. Jack was told they wanted to take him to Angelo Colasanto, the only person who knew the true nature of the Miracle. (Immortal Sins)
The person who had arranged to have Gwen’s family kidnapped was Olivia Colasanto, Angelo’s granddaughter. Olivia took Jack and the rest of the Torchwood team to Angelo’s house, where Jack was told Angelo had been able to live to over a hundred years through artificial means, but had aged normally and was in a coma on life support. Angelo had become wealthy thanks to the advice Jack had given him and kept pictures of him from throughout the 20th century. Olivia explained that three families, Ablemarch, Costerdane and Frines, had made a deal to purchase Jack back in 1926 for his immortality. When he escaped, they vowed to find him again, destroying all evidence of their existence to cover their tracks.
Rex soon brought the CIA to Angelo’s house, and Allen Shapiro had Olivia and Brian Friedkin arrested; Friedkin killed himself and Olivia with a bomb to escape the families’ wrath for failing. Jack spoke to Angelo even though he was unconscious, and unplugged Angelo’s life support equipment, assuming that he would survive due to the Miracle, and was surprised when Angelo died. After Shapiro had Gwen deported to Wales, Jack discovered a null field generator under Angelo’s bed that cancelled out the morphic field that had caused the Miracle in the first place. Jack didn’t want the CIA to obtain the null field technology, so he persuaded Rex and Esther to help him escape with a vital component of the generator. Unfortunately, Jack was shot soon after he escaped. Esther was forced to go with him, while Rex stayed with the CIA. (End of the Road)
Jack spent the next two months with Esther, ending up in Scotland. Esther collected his blood, which she believed relevant to the Miracle. Eventually, they were contacted by Gwen, who told them Oswald Danes was in her house and wanted to speak to Jack. Jack and Esther went to Wales, where Jack retconned a man who was watching Gwen’s house before going in. Oswald explained to Jack that he had stolen Jilly Kitzinger’s laptop. He knew what she was doing for the families. Jilly was helping them to mistranslate video from other countries to hide the location of the Blessing. Torchwood realised that there were two Blessings, one in Shanghai, and one in Buenos Aires. Jack went to Shanghai with Gwen and Oswald. Once they arrived there, his gunshot wound began to hurt more. Gwen helped him change his bandage, and Oswald noticed that Jack’s blood was moving by itself. Gwen determined that Jack’s blood must be moving towards the Blessing. (The Gathering)
BACK TO ABNORMAL
With Oswald’s help, Jack and Gwen located the Blessing, which was about to be blown up by the Families to bury it forever. They knew that Torchwood had located it. Strapping Oswald to a bomb, the three forced their way into the Blessing. Rex and Esther were captured while trying to infiltrate the Blessing in Buenos Aires. Jack, despite being from the future and having had experiences with The Doctor, had no idea what the Blessing really was. He believed it to have been on Earth since the beginning. The Blessing seemed to show everybody themselves, but Jack didn’t appear significantly affected by seeing all the lives he had lived. Jack learned that his blood was used to change the Blessing, which ran Earth’s morphic field. Jack realised the Blessing changed in self-defence and that his mortal blood could change it back. A family member revealed that mortal blood would need to be put into the Blessing from both ends to reverse the Miracle. Jack would have no way to do it. Rex, however, had transfused Jack’s blood into his own body.
The two men were prepared to sacrifice themselves to end the Miracle, but Esther was shot by the Families to prevent this, as ending the Miracle would kill Esther. The two decided to end the Miracle anyway, and Gwen shot Jack while Rex removed his bandage. Jack appeared to die of the gunshot wound. Oswald decided to stay behind to blow up a family member, and Gwen and Jilly decided to escape. Jack’s immortality returned and he escaped with Gwen as Oswald detonated his bomb. Rex also survived the ordeal, but Esther did not make it.
The friends attended Esther’s funeral. There, Charlotte Wills exposed herself as the CIA mole that kept the Families informed about actions taken against them and killed Rex before being killed herself. Rex resurrected, having somehow gained Jack’s immortality. (The Blood Line)
TAKING A HOLIDAY
After the events of Miracle Day, Jack decided to take a holiday away from humanity, and find solitude by going to Cotter Paluni’s World. (Red Skies) After this, Jack then returned to Cardiff to assist Andy Davidson solve the mystery of Mr Invincible. (Mr Invincible)
By 2013, Jack’s vortex manipulator was held in UNIT’s Black Archive. A Zygon posing as Kate Stewart told Clara Oswald it was bequeathed to the UNIT archive by Jack on the occasion of his death, “one of them”. (The Day of the Doctor)
Jack was captured by Adam Mitchell and trapped with many other companions of the Doctor in Adam Mitchell’s fortress. (The Choice) Along with the others, he was released by Frobisher and assisted the first eleven incarnations of the Doctor as they fought through the Tremas Master’s army of Autons. After Adam thwarted The Master’s plot to destroy the universe at the cost of his life, all The Doctors and their companions oversaw his memorial before taking their leave. (Endgame)
RETURN TO THE FIGHT
In 2012, Jack Harkness returned to Earth to assist Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams and Andy Davidson to stop an attempt by the Mandragora Helix to attack Earth. (Exodus Code) Jack then travelled with the crew of the Ice Maiden, an ice-rigging ship augmented with alien technology, to explore Earth and other planets. (World Without End)
Jack realised that the Committee was behind the Three Families and, hoping to find out how the Evolved had kept their worlds safe from the Committee, travelled to Peritus IV. He begged the Evolved to help him save Earth and agreed to a controlled experiment of their technology upon humans. When he learnt of what that entailed, they held him captive and tried to kill him.
Due to his immortality, the Evolved instead transferred him into the body of Mr Griffith at Bryn Offa Residential Care. He had Elunedd call Gwen and later offered the Evolved his mind in return for Rhys, Anwen and the other people whose minds they had swapped being restored. (Forgotten Lives)
Travelling from the third planet in the Otega system, back to Earth, Jack and the crew of the Ice Maiden were attacked by ninjas on jet-skis who came from a flying saucer. (World Without End)
SORVIX OCCUPATION
LEADING THE NEW TORCHWOOD
After being “dumped” by the crew of the Ice Maiden, (Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy) Jack resumed his work with Gwen at Torchwood. They were joined by St John Colchester and operated from a partially-restored Hub. (Changes Everything) He was unaware of Gwen’s possession by Ng. (Orr, etc.) The three became aware of the presence of an alien race that had taken over the city and Jack set his sights on Tyler Steele to join them due to his skills with computers and investigation.
Jack vetted Tyler whilst investigating 3Sol but refused to let him join after he encouraged Vorsun to kill her human hostages, although he did tell him to continue looking into the aliens. (Changes Everything) They continued a sexual relationship. The two of them met Orr, whom Jack drove out of Cardiff to protect the city from the explosive control necklace, and Jack began to feel distanced from “Gwen” when she did not invite him to her mother’s funeral. (Orr) He posed as a barman at the Cardiff Bay Intelligent Hotel and Spa to gather information and later killed himself to shut down the CPU. At the Hub, he invited Orr to join them. (Superiority Complex)
Jack was infected by a parasite after being raped by Duncan. He went on to infect Tyler and Ng and, after the three were given curative worms by Ro-Jedda, Tyler called off their relationship and told Jack to do something about Red Doors. (Love Rat) He and Orr went to help Andy Davidson with a hostage situation whilst Mr Colchester went to Ritz Tower to save Colin (A Kill to a View) and went to Neath to get spare parts for the Rift Manipulator when Deliverables began taking control. (Zero Hour)
To save Andy and prevent 3Sol from gaining complete control of policing, Jack allied himself with Xander Vaughn of Red Doors, promising to supply them with quantum tech in return for their help in locating Helen White and thwarting Ro-Jedda’s plans. He recruited a number of students to the Red Doors cause and supplied them with flash grenades and the like for the protest. In the end, he reached a compromise with Ro-Jedda. (The Empty Hand) Yvonne Hartman arrived at the Hub afterwards and exposed him, also framing him for helping Red Doors place glitterbombs around the city. Torchwood turned against him and Yvonne took his place, telling Jack to join Red Doors and put them to a better use. (Poker Face)
LEADING RED DOORS
From the ruins of the intelligence of the Cardiff Bay Intelligent Hotel and Spa, Jack engineered the Meme with the intention of using it to encourage rebellion against the Sorvix. However, Red Doors altered it into instead encouraging violence and revenge. Mr Colchester asked Jack to meet with him and admonished him for his role. (Tagged)
Jack tempered Red Doors and directed them solely against the Sorvix and empty buildings. However, he was unable to prevent them from bombing Cardiff Airport and died in the explosion. With Orr, he decided to bring an end to Red Doors and met with Inspector Bernstein to take them down, although they found that Yvonne and 3Sol already got to them. He returned to the Hub after warning Cardiff City Hall of the oncoming bomb attack and allowed the Rift to open, splitting Gwen from Ng. He said goodbye to his friend as she left with Rhys. There was an explosion at the Hub (Herald of the Dawn) which made Jack mortal again. (See No Evil)
GOD AND THE COMMITTEE
Due to what she did to Gwen, Jack avoided Ng and did not talk to her. (Future Pain, Night Watch) He hunted the plasmic psychovore under the misconception that it was God and was almost late to Mr Colchester’s funeral because of it. He was surprised and confused when Orr transformed into him in Colin’s presence and was convinced by them into rejoining Torchwood as they had reservations about Yvonne. (Future Pain)
Jack convinced to Jo Jones to come with him to Llanfairfach to investigate Proper Grub. In the mines he was bitten by one of the Maggots and started to glow green. He discovered with Jo that BOSS was behind it and they the supposed vegan food was actually made from the maggots. He struck a deal with BOSS for the giant maggots and flies to stay in the mines. (The Green Life)
Brent Hayden believed that Jack and Orr watched a speech that he made concerning racism and conspiracies and that they planned to destroy him. Brent also imagined that he was a homophobic Yank who used language and phrases from old films. (The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood)
Jack avoided Ng and went to help Colin when a predator shrouded Cardiff in darkness. His night-vision goggles were broken in St Martin’s but he let Colin continue to believe that he was wearing them despite the fact that Colin himself was the one leading them to Ritz Tower. In Flat 151, Jack told Colin that he thought that he had become mortal again. Colin kissed Jack, whereupon Mr Colchester appeared and asked Jack what he was doing. (See No Evil)
Believing Mr Colchester to be a ghost, Jack returned to the Hub unaware that the blue light had latched onto him and was giving waking nightmares to those disconnected from him, namely Yvonne, Tyler and Mr Colchester. Orr later absorbed the light from him and he decided to make an effort with Ng. He protested when Yvonne said that she was going to use the pharadyne projector to bring back Ianto and witnessed when, instead, Norton Folgate appeared. (Night Watch)
Jack was on a rooftop when Mr Colchester approached him, telling him to keep away from his husband and asking about resurrection. Jack believed that he had become immortal again thanks to the Night Sun. (Flight 405) He convinced Yvonne to let Tyler live in a repurposed cell in the Hub and told him to talk to him should he ever need to. (Hostile Environment)
After having sex with seven Penashi, Jack found himself in Mr Colchester’s body and pretended to be him so as not to ruin Colin’s birthday. He took him on a tour of rooftops and to watch the ducks before receiving a text telling him of a reservation at Antonio’s. There, he convinced Mr Colchester that it was in Colin’s best interests that he continue pretending to be him, later taking him through Mr Colchester’s Rift corridors. When their bodies switched back, Mr Colchester was grateful. (Another Man’s Shoes)
Jack, Mr Colchester, Ng and Norton travelled in a submersible to the Sorvix power station to stop it from exploding and destroying western Europe. He and Norton went to shut the station down, but Norton trapped him in a concentration filter and had him absorb the energy, also admitting that he was working for the Committee. Jack was saved by Ng and he later saved Mr Colchester from drowning. The three were in the submersible when the tsunami hit Cardiff. (Eye of the Storm)
AFTER THE TSNUNAMI
Jack planned for Torchwood to go back underground and had Andy start working for him as a spy, becoming director of the Disaster Recovery Committee and ostensibly working for the Committee. (Thoughts and Prayers)
Two months after the tsunami hit, Jack planned to expose Yvonne for her role. He attended the inquiry into the response of the emergency services and told Bethan Foster that there was clearly a cover-up, as well as saying that Yvonne was powerful and dangerous. This eventually resulted in Bethan realising that the drinking water contained retcon, replacing it and exposing Yvonne. (A Mother’s Son)
Jack approached Yvonne outside of the Disaster Recovery Committee building and fled from a security guard with her to a “crappy car” that he said would let them sit unnoticed. They discussed the situation and, whilst Yvonne went to God, Jack went to the Ritz Tower camp. He was shot and killed by a security guard when he tried to stop him from shooting a boy. Andy had him taken away when he did not revive. (Day Zero)
Andy took Jack’s body to a jail cell where he was joined by God. The two of them left the cell and went to the Hub, leaving Yvonne and Orr in there with the Lens to destroy the Committee and Erebus. Jack saved the two of them on the invisible lift after the Hub began falling apart and went on the run with Ng, Mr Colchester, Orr and Tyler when Andy informed them that they were fugitives. (Thoughts and Prayers) The split up team subsequently lost contact with Jack. (Aliens Next Door) Ng later asked Gwen if she’d heard from him, which she hadn’t. (Misty Eyes) His disappearance was known to Kristin, leader of Torchwood’s Icelandic counterpart. (Heistland)
ALLY OF THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR
In 2020, Jack travelled in a stolen spaceship to warn The Doctor about the Lone Cyberman and what he was searching for. He caught up with Team TARDIS in Gloucester, but was only able to make contact with Graham, Ryan, and Yaz due to interference by the Judoon who were hunting an unknown incarnation of the Doctor. With the ship’s previous owners and defense nanogenes attacking, Jack explained that the Alliance had sent something back through time that the Lone Cyberman was after and that the Thirteenth Doctor must not give the Cyberman what it wanted or risk the fallen Cyber-Empire rising again. Before teleporting away, Jack said that it would be some time before The Doctor saw him again, but he would be there if she needed him. The Doctor was pleased to hear from her old friend again, (Fugitive of the Judoon) but was ultimately forced to ignore Jack’s warning when the time came due to the circumstances surrounding the event. (The Haunting of Villa Diodati)
Jack later learned that the Doctor had been locked in prison and purposefully got himself arrested for a number of unspecified crimes in order to break her out. After nineteen years, Jack managed to reach the adjoining cell to The Doctor’s and drew her attention by knocking four times on the wall. The next day, Jack revealed himself and used a device the surrounded them in a bubble of frozen time to race himself and The Doctor to a hidden compartment in another cell containing his repaired vortex manipulator. Dodging questions about how he had smuggled it in, Jack teleported them away as the alarms went off.
Returning The Doctor to her TARDIS, the two reminisced and Jack was dismayed to learn that the Doctor had given the Lone Cyberman the Cyberium although she reassured Jack that she eventually fixed it “sort of.” Jack was surprised to learn that she had been locked up for running from the Judoon twice at once and only 7,000 other offences. Upon returning to Earth, Jack happily greeted Team TARDIS, only to learn that it had been ten months for them. Yaz, Graham and Ryan revealed that they were dealing with a Dalek threat and the group tried to figure it out with Jack explaining his immortality and how The Daleks had once killed him a long time before.
While the others went to interrogate Jack Robertson for answers, Jack and Yaz went to investigate the corrupted Dalek DNA trace that the TARDIS had detected. Jack reminisced on his 51st century origins and sympathized with Yaz’s fear of the Doctor not coming back based on his own experiences. Jack warned Yaz that being The Doctor’s companion, you had no choice in when it stopped, whether you left The Doctor or they left you. However, despite how hard it is to experience traveling with The Doctor and then losing it, Jack told Yaz that it was worth it and to enjoy it while she had it “because the joy is worth the pain.”
Opening the door to the facility with his sonic blaster, Jack and Yaz discovered to their horror that the facility was a clone farm growing thousands of cloned Daleks. Jack began planting explosives to blow the facility up as Yaz gathered samples of the Dalek mutants food in the hopes of finding a way to stop them. The two came under attack by Dalek mutants, but Jack managed to kill them with his sonic blaster. Shortly thereafter, The Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Robertson arrived in the TARDIS with Jack expressing pleasure at hearing the TARDIS again. The group was confronted by The Dalek responsible for the creation of the clone farm possessing Leo Rugazzi. The Dalek explained how it connected itself into Robertson’s systems and used them create the clone farm and its new race of Daleks, disgusting Jack to learn that they were being fed liquidized humans. The Dalek revealed that it intended to use Earth as a base to begin a conquest of the universe and utilized ultraviolet light to teleport The Daleks into their Defence Drone shells. Robertson revealed that thousands of drones had been built before The Dalek killed Leo and disappeared.
Returning to the TARDIS, The Doctor announced to the others that their only chance was the nuclear option that might backfire upon them. Jack immediately realized what the Doctor meant and warned her that it was a planet-threatening risk. However, Jack didn’t have any better ideas to stop the threat. The Doctor explained that the Daleks were built from the original Reconnaissance Dalek and she would give them what they wanted. The Doctor began to send a message through the Time Vortex and Jack told Yaz that she was doing something that you never want to do. The message was received by a Dalek saucer containing Death Squad Daleks with The Doctor revealing that her plan was to bring in more Daleks to deal with the Defence Drones, although they must not know that she was there. However, they will have to deal with the new Daleks once the Defence Drones are dealt with.
The Doctor’s plan succeeded and thousands of Death Squad Daleks exterminated the Defence Drones, but Robertson betrayed the group. In order to stop the Death Squad Daleks, The Doctor asked Jack to blow up their ship which he was only too happy to do and Ryan and Graham volunteered to help. Jack armed the two men with some of his bombs and The Doctor and Yaz ordered them not to detonate until they were sure that all of the Defence Drones were destroyed and until the men were clear of the ship. Jack teleported the three to the saucer using his vortex manipulator and they began to spread out and plant bombs. However, the ship’s internal sensors detect non-Dalek lifeforms onboard and Jack witnesses Robertson betraying them and warning The Daleks about The Doctor. After witnessing the extermination of the last of Robertson’s Daleks, Jack warned The Doctor that Robertson had sold her out to the Daleks. Coming up with a plan to deal with the remainder of the Daleks, The Doctor ordered Jack to stand by for Yaz’s signal to teleport out and destroy the ship. Jack, Ryan and Graham rescued Robertson, but became cornered by Daleks. Yaz gave the signal and after introducing himself, Jack teleported them out as the Daleks fired. Ryan detonated the bombs as they left, destroying the Dalek saucer. Returning to the TARDIS, Jack was elated to learn that the plan had worked and that all of the Daleks were destroyed, embracing Yaz as the Doctor confronted Robertson over his betrayal.
After the defeat of the Daleks, Jack departed from the TARDIS again, leaving a message that he was staying on Earth to catch up with Gwen Cooper but promising to call The Doctor. (Revolution of the Daleks)
FAR FUTURE
Now owning the “latest model” of vortex manipulator, Jack was contacted by The Doctor’s automated helpline to rescue River Song after she’d jumped out of Stormcage into space. He retrieved her in an air bubble and gave her a lift to her home in 1939 New York City. (The Ruby’s Curse)
Jack and Torchwood helped the Human Empire to combat the Enemy. He befriended Jeremiah Bash Henderson and asked him to visit the Torchwood Archive, which had travelled beyond the Empire’s space. This may all have been a lie, as Jeremiah confessed to having faked a “sob story” to infiltrate the Archive. (The Torchwood Archive)
POTENTIAL FATE
Before The Doctor had reason to ponder that Jack was the Face of Boe, (Last of the Time Lords) whose death he had previously witnessed; (Gridlock) if Jack was indeed the Face of Boe, he once unknowingly visited his own funeral. (R&J)
Before he had reason to speculate Jack was the Face of Boe, (Last of the Time Lords) the Tenth Doctor speculated another fate; that Jack, being immortal, could well still be alive by the end of the universe in the year 100,000,000,000,000. (Utopia)
LEGACY
Shortly before his regeneration began, the Twelfth Doctor dreamt of Jack saying his name. (The Doctor Falls)
As a member of Torchwood, Jack’s likeness was among those assumed by the intuitive hard-light simulations of the Torchwood Archive. (The Torchwood Archive)
Me remembered Jack, who was reported to have died long before, in the Cloisters at the end of the universe during a conversation with the Twelfth Doctor, (Hell Bent)
UNDATED EVENTS
Jack had a memorable experience once on a hunting expedition. (Boom Town)
Before meeting The Doctor, Jack was present for the Tenth Dalek Occupation, witnessing Dalek saucers (Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia) which he would recognise in the Battle of the Game Station. (Bad Wolf)
Jack once quipped about the time he got pregnant, a memorable experience, though not necessarily in a good way. (Everything Changes) He afterwards swore that he would never get pregnant again. (Everything Changes, Expectant)
Jack was involved in putting bromide in Cardiff’s water supplies some time after Owen had joined Torchwood. (Day One)
Jack had knowledge of the Cybermen of his own universe (Cyberwoman) and even stated that he knew what would happen in the Cyber-Wars of the future. (Captain Jack’s Monster Files)
Jack related to a captive that he had experience in torturing prisoners, and that, “a long time ago”, he had “quite a reputation as the go-to guy” in the event of needing to force information out of a person. (Countrycide)
He once had a friend named Vincent, who disappeared for a while and came back with a new name: Vanessa. (Greeks Bearing Gifts)
Jack made references to having romantic relationships with several 20th century notables, including Christopher Isherwood (Reset) and Marcel Proust. (Dead Man Walking)
Jack at some point in the 20th century had gotten married. (Something Borrowed)
Jack once had a boyfriend with no mouth. (Fragments)
Jack implied that he was present at the extinction of the dinosaurs and said that he had eaten some of them, stating that “… there was nothing else around after the meteor hit.” (Fragments)
Esther Drummond found photos of Jack in the CIA Archive dated 1925 and 1939. (The New World)
At some point prior to 2013, Jack was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have his record as a companion of the Doctor taken. His memories of the visit were subsequently erased and he was sent on his way. (The Day of the Doctor)
At another point, Jack was abducted by Adam Mitchell as part his plan to get revenge on The Doctor, in collaboration with the Tremas Master. He was placed in stasis alongside The Doctors’ multiple other companions, before being released by The Doctor’s first eleven numbered incarnations with the help of Frobisher. (The Choice, Endgame)
Jack worked as an enabler for the Committee on Kepri 5. He tried to direct them away from Earth, telling them it was a barren wasteland. (The Conspiracy)
Jack met River Song at some point before first encountering the Tenth Doctor. He knew she was the Doctor’s wife. (Piece of Mind)
Jack attended the memorial of Sarah Jane Smith from afar, saluting to her memory before quietly departing. (Farewell, Sarah Jane)
PARALLEL WORLDS
DONNA’S WORLD
In a parallel world where Donna Noble never saved the Tenth Doctor, Jack lost fellow Torchwood members Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, who sacrificed their lives to save the Earth from the Sontarans’ plan involving ATMOS, and was transported to Sontar, the Sontaran homeworld. (Turn Left)
Alternate timelines
John Hart once created an alternate timeline by marrying Queen Victoria. Jack came to stop him and John shot him, discovering his inability to die. He used Torchwood technology to siphon energy off him, and used it to extend his life. Jack took back what was stolen from him and told John that when he died, the world would return to normal and John would be trapped. (The Death of Captain Jack)
In an alternate timeline created when Rassilon allied with the Cyberiad, the Cybermen used Time Lord resources to conquer all of history. The Ninth Doctor, Jack and Rose fought on the Cyber-Earth in 2006, rescuing Jackie Tyler. When they tried to reclaim the TARDIS, the ship exploded. As the group evacuated, Rose fell victim to the Cybermen’s techno-virus and was upgraded into a Cyber-Warrior, shooting Jack dead. This sequence of events was later undone by the Twelfth Doctor with the aid of a remorseful Rassilon. (Supremacy of the Cybermen)
PERSONALITY
Jack Harkness’ personality was wilfully enigmatic. He enjoyed his persona of “mysterious time traveller”, much of which remained constant in his experiences with Torchwood and The Doctor. Before being cursed with immortality, he was a flippant former con man who loved adventuring with The Doctor and seducing beings throughout the universe. Jack automatically flirted with most people he met, not caring about their gender or if they were human, alien or even robots. The Doctor often told him to stop and Jack would often reply, “I’m just saying hello”. But as the Doctor pointed out, “For you, that’s flirting”. (Bad Wolf, Utopia, Journey’s End, The End of Time)
Besides being a flirt, Jack was a drinker. He once remarked that on one occasion when he was sentenced to death, he got drunk and ended up in bed with both his executioners. (The Doctor Dances) He told Rose that he preferred to discuss business while he was drinking. (The Empty Child) He smoked but gave up in the 1980s. (A Mother’s Son) Jack claimed to the Ninth Doctor that before he met him he had been a coward and said that he might have been better off that way. (The Parting of the Ways)
Despite the fact that he was incapable of dying even if he wanted to, Jack retained a sense of humour, frequently telling jokes and being lively and cheerful. However, underneath his cheerful demeanour, Jack was unsure if he wanted to die or not. (Utopia) Living forever (or at least as near to forever as a human could live) brought him to an existential viewpoint. While he joked about grey hairs and remained silent about mortality, Jack saw death as the ultimate end of being; there was no afterlife and no one waiting for him from his past lives. Jack expressed annoyance at people in the 21st century being unable to figure out that aliens exist, believing the Sycorax invasion on the Christmas of 2005 and the Battle of Canary Wharf were more than enough proof that they did. (The Christmas Invasion, Doomsday, Everything Changes) While escaping a Dalek saucer, Jack gleefully told the surrounding Daleks that “I’m Captain Jack Harkness and I’m immortal.” (Revolution of the Daleks)
Although friendly and flirtatious, Jack could also be ruthless at times and did not hesitate to kill anyone or anything that he felt was a threat. He was also equally unwilling to do anything that could endanger the Torchwood facility. This sometimes got him into trouble with his allies who disapproved of his lack of compassion. An example of this was when he tried to force Ianto Jones to execute his girlfriend Lisa Hallett, who had been turned into a Cyberman, instead of letting someone else do it. He reasoned that the entire thing was Ianto’s responsibility and even threatened to kill them both if he didn’t do it, causing Ianto to say “You like to think you’re a hero, but you’re the biggest monster of all”. (Cyberwoman) Another example of his ruthlessness was when he refused to open the Rift despite it being their best chance to change everything back to normal, even insulting the rest of the team when they attempted it. This caused Owen Harper to shoot him because he felt that Jack didn’t care about what they had lost. (End of Days) Because of these incidents, the entire team was surprised by Jack’s desire to save the Cash Cow, with Gwen Cooper going so far as to imply she thought he didn’t have a heart. (Meat) Indeed, although he could be aggressive, Jack still cared deeply about his allies and was devastated when any of them were killed. (Exit Wounds, Children of Earth: Day Five)
Always a vocal, unreliable narrator of his own adventures, Jack was as much of a mystery to the people he met as the countless lives he claimed to have led. Jack continued to protect himself with an air of mystery. No one he encountered knew his real name or many details about his career or life. He often told anecdotes about his sex life, but no one knew how many were real, however since he was a successful flirt, it is likely a lot of his tales were true. He rarely told his teammates anything about himself or his past unless the situation demanded it; Gwen even once lamented the fact that they knew almost nothing about him and that he just came and went whenever he felt like it. This was because Jack believed that his past didn’t matter and that who he was now was important. He was shown to greatly dislike being reminded of his past, such as his desperation to remove Captain John Hart from his life as he was a reminder of his past. In contrast to this mysterious nature, Jack could also be brutally honest at times, such as when he bluntly told Beth Halloran that she was a ruthless killing machine and that there was nothing they could do to change that. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Sleeper)
Despite being immortal, and so coming back after being killed numerous times, Jack continued to have a fear of death, which he acknowledged during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. He remained ever uncertain whether his next death would be his last. (What Have I Done?)
Though he professed “responsibility” as his motto after the Year That Never Was, the utter devastation Jack experienced in the space of five days over the course of the 456 incident and the deaths of his grandson and Ianto Jones left him wrecked with guilt and grief, unable to remain on Earth. When he returned to Earth, Jack seemed to be a shadow of his old self because he had lost so many people he cared about, although he had recovered enough to stay on Earth in order to defend it. (Children of Earth: Day Five, Miracle Day)
Jack was haunted by the loss of his younger brother Gray and spent many decades searching for him. He blamed himself for Gray’s disappearance because he’d let go of his hand when they were fleeing from aliens during their childhood, describing it as the worst day of his life. Jack loved his brother deeply and, even after Gray turned against him, Jack told him that he forgave him. However, Gray refused to give him absolution and Jack had no choice but to chloroform him and seal him in the cryo-chambers. John Hart insisted that killing him was the only option, believing that Gray would never recover from the trauma, but Jack refused, believing that there had been enough death. (Adam, Exit Wounds)
Jack possessed a deep hatred of the Daleks due to their being responsible for his first death and was only too gleeful at the chance of destroying them. (Revolution of the Daleks)
After becoming a companion of the Ninth Doctor, Jack retained a great loyalty to The Doctor as a whole, aiding The Doctor’s various incarnations as much as he could. After not having seen The Doctor for a very long time, Jack attempted to warn The Doctor, now in their thirteenth incarnation, about the Lone Cyberman and the Cyberium and told Team TARDIS that if The Doctor ever needed him, he would be there for her. (Fugitive of the Judoon) After learning that the Doctor had been imprisoned, Jack purposefully allowed himself to be arrested and imprisoned for 19 years just to break her out and enjoyed aiding The Doctor and her companions in defeating the renewed Dalek threat before going his own way again. (Revolution of the Daleks)
In a private conversation with Yasmin Khan, Jack revealed his understanding of the pain of getting left behind by The Doctor and not knowing if they would ever return or were still alive. Due to his long history with The Doctor, Jack knew better than anyone that companions had no choice when their time ended, whether the companion chose to leave or got left behind in the end. However, Jack encouraged Yaz to enjoy her time travelling with The Doctor, as he knew that the joy was worth the pain that would inevitably come. (Revolution of the Daleks)
OTHER INFORMATION
SKILLS AND ABILITIES
PHEROMONES
Like other men in the 51st century, Jack possessed evolved human pheromones which made him naturally nice-smelling and attractive to others. Ianto thought Jack was wearing aftershave. (Fragments)
IMMORTALITY
After he was first killed when shot by a Dalek, he was resurrected by Rose Tyler as the Bad Wolf. While using the power of the Time Vortex to restore Jack, Rose couldn’t totally control the power she wielded, and she brought him back forever by accident. As such, Jack became a singularity in a fixed point of time, an immortal being that the Doctor had trouble even looking at, and even the TARDIS tried to get rid of him. While undoing Jack’s functional immortality was beyond even The Doctor’s ability, (Utopia) Jack still aged, albeit very slowly, having grown a few grey hairs in two centuries’ time. (Last of the Time Lords) When Jack reunited with the Thirteenth Doctor, he had visibly aged, his wrinkle lines becoming more prominent. (Revolution of the Daleks) In the far future, at a time where the Vampires thought the Time Lords to be myths, Jack’s hair had turned completely grey. (Mighty and Despair)
Since his first resurrection, whenever he did die, he automatically came back to life almost instantly, each time awaking with a very deep gasp of breath as his respiratory system resumed its functions, (The Parting of the Ways, Everything Changes etc.) though he once reanimated without the gasp. (Journey’s End) However, on occasion his resurrection was delayed if experienced enough trauma. (End of Days, Children of Earth: Day One) While not understanding the mechanics of his condition, his just-deceased body is apparently held in stasis while time ran backwards over it, repairing wounds and mending the damage. (Bay of the Dead) Jack could sense what was done to his body during his brief periods of death, such as when Martha Jones unsuccessfully attempted to resuscitate him using the kiss of life. (Utopia) Jack viewed this power as a curse as much as a blessing, (Everything Changes) Jack describes the process of resurrection as being “hauled over broken glass.” (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)
Jack could survive heat and radiation which would have burned or vaporised regular humans. (Utopia) He also didn’t need an immune system, as his body never needed to build up any resistance, although this meant he would easily fall ill without his immortality. (Rendition) Jack’s immortality granted him regenerative powers far beyond those of the Time Lords, allowing him to automatically restore himself to perfect condition without changing his appearance or personality as Time Lords were forced to do when they regenerated. Jack could fully regenerate an infinite number of times as opposed to a Time Lord’s fixed set of twelve regenerations. However severe enough trauma could delay his resurrection, such as suffering the pallor of a corpse before returning to full health. He could even re-grow his whole body; when he was blown up after having a bomb implanted in his stomach, he fully regenerated from just an arm, a shoulder, and part of his head in a bit over twelve hours. His regeneration process began with growing bones, followed by his internal organs, and lastly his flesh and skin. He also retained all his memories and knowledge as well.
The process of resurrection could often be very painful, especially in this instance. He regained consciousness before his healing was complete, with his eyes and his flesh yet to regrow, but the ability to feel pain intact, causing Jack to scream for hours on end and hold extreme resentment to those who planted the bomb inside him. (Children of Earth: Day Two) Pain appeared to be dependent on the amount of damage to the body, with more pain in cases where foreign objects remained within the wound. (Fragments, Children of Earth: Day Two) Jack’s body would heal around objects lodged inside his body, such as bullets or shrapnel, but would otherwise remain completely healthy. (Web of Lies) Asphyxiation in an airless environment would make him die and instantly revive in cycle endlessly if he was never unearthed. (Exit Wounds) It is theorized that there is a limit to how much he can regenerate from as after being asked by Ianto what would happen if his body were totally destroyed, Jack merely said “Maybe we ought to try it some time”. (Bay of the Dead) Notably, although Jack quickly recovered from fatal injuries, minor injuries sustained like a cut lip or a black eye will remain and heal at the rate of a normal human. (Cyberwoman, Fragments)
An interesting side effect, used only once on record, was the ability to heal another being, allowing that person to recover very quickly, although this may have only been possible as the subject was possessed by a gaseous entity that drew life energy from others to sustain itself. (Day One) Tosh could not use Mary’s telepathy pendant to read his thoughts, although he could project thoughts to Tosh if he so chose. Tosh likened it to trying to read a dead man, and Jack confirmed that he knew someone was trying to read his mind. (Greeks Bearing Gifts)
Jack had no other superhuman abilities as such, but was in excellent physical condition and an expert in various firearms. (Ghost Machine, The New World, Last of the Time Lords) He was physically strong enough to rip the bolts of chains he had been bound with by the Master out of the wall, which ultimately resulted in the use of special clamps on his restraints. (Last of the Time Lords) He also demonstrated extremely fast reflexes, such as when he noticed and fired on a Dalek seconds after teleporting from Cardiff to London. (The Stolen Earth) He was also a skilled fighter, capable of taking out several trained soldiers and CIA bodyguards with little assistance, (Bad Wolf, Rendition) and successfully tackled and pinned Angelo Colasanto. (Immortal Sins) He even went toe to toe with fellow time agent John Hart. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) He was overpowered, however, by Angelo and Gwen Cooper, the latter of which disabled him with a single punch. (Immortal Sins, End of Days) Rhys Williams also punched Jack to the ground. (Something Borrowed)
FUTURE AS THE FACE OF BOE
Jack had mentioned that in his childhood home, the Boeshane Peninsula, he was referred to as the “Face of Boe,” a poster-boy name resulting from being the first one ever to sign up to the Time Agency. This led The Doctor and Martha to speculate that Jack may in fact become the Face of Boe himself. (Last of the Time Lords) Jack had previously mentioned that he did know of the Face of Boe, a being that existed for billions of years. (The Stealers of Dreams) Remaining unsure of his continued ageing process due to seeing grey hairs over hundreds of years, Jack inquired of the Tenth Doctor about his facial appearance if he were to live for a million years and was told he was an “impossible thing,” knowing something he had already been told before with no concise answer as to his fate. (Last of the Time Lords)
MULTIPLE JACKS
Due to Jack’s immortality and time travel, there were occasions in which several Jacks existed on Earth at the same time. At the time of Jack’s first encounter with the Ninth Doctor in World War II, there were three versions on Earth: the young mortal Jack who subsequently joined the Ninth Doctor and Rose; (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) the immortal Jack working for Torchwood (location at this point in time unknown); (Utopia, Fragments) and a still older Jack being kept in cryogenic sleep at the Torchwood Three Hub in Cardiff. (Exit Wounds) Later, when The Doctor, Rose, and Jack arrived in Cardiff prior to the Blaidd Drwg power station incident, they were only feet away from the Torchwood Three Hub where the older Jack was based and the cryogenically frozen Jack awaited resurrection. (Boom Town, Exit Wounds) Yet another trio of Jacks existed on Earth, again during World War II, when the immortal Jack accidentally passed through a rift in time back to World War II, when in fact not only were there three Jacks (the 21st century Jack, the 1940s Torchwood member Jack and the frozen Jack) but a fourth as the original user of the name was also present. (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Captain Jack Harkness, Fragments, Exit Wounds)
At the end of the two years missing from a younger Jack’s memories, he encountered an older Jack who was investigating his history, and the pair slept together. (Month 25)
POSSESSIONS
When Rose and the Ninth Doctor first met him, Jack owned a small Chula ship, fitted out for human use, as well as psychic paper and a store of nanogenes in the ship. When saving The Doctor and Rose by carrying a German bomb a safe distance away from London, the bomb exploded inside the ship; luckily, The Doctor and Rose saved him. (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) In contrast to The Doctor, Jack Harkness was far more willing to use weapons and was capable of modifying equipment to that end. Jack owned a sonic blaster. (The Doctor Dances) He also managed to store a compact laser deluxe away somewhere “you really don’t wanna know”, in case of emergencies. (Bad Wolf) During his travels with The Doctor, he modified the defabricator to be capable of destroying a Dalek. (The Parting of the Ways) As the leader of Torchwood Three, Jack liked to carry a World War II Webley. (Everything Changes)
Jack’s most significant possession was his vortex manipulator, a device from his life as a Time Agent that often functioned as Jack’s version of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Even after the time travel and teleport functions burned out, (Utopia) Jack kept and continued to use the device. The vortex manipulator was fully repaired by the Tenth Doctor, (The Sound of Drums) but he twice disabled the time travel and teleport functions to keep Jack from having free use of time travel and teleportation. (Last of the Time Lords, Journey’s End) Following one of his deaths, Jack bequeathed his vortex manipulator to UNIT where it was eventually taken by Clara Oswald in order to reunite with the Eleventh Doctor in Elizabethan England. (The Day of the Doctor) By the time of Jack’s reunion with the Thirteenth Doctor, he had somehow managed to reacquire his vortex manipulator and repair at the very least the teleport function. (Revolution of the Daleks)
ROMANTIC INTERESTS
Given his long life and Jack’s comment, “If you went through my back catalogue, we’d be here ’til the sun exploded”, Jack had numerous to uncountable relationships through the hundreds of years he was alive. (Day One) His charismatic and flirtatious nature combined with his naturally evolved pheromones would seem to confirm this.
Although once described as gay by Owen Harper, Jack was, correctly, omnisexual, in that he found not only both human males and females attractive, but members of alien races as well. He had many lovers of both sexes and of numerous species. By nature, Jack flirted with nearly everyone he met. The earliest known example was his Time Agency partner Captain John Hart, (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) but Jack also recalled lovers from his Time Agency days such as his would-be executioners (a couple) and a boyfriend with no mouth. (The Doctor Dances, Fragments) He was considered to be sexually prolific by his Time Agency colleagues and by future norms of relationships. (Month 25) When a time travelling Jack travelled back to his Time Agency era, the younger and older Jacks had sex, although the younger Jack dosed them both with retcon beforehand. (Month 25)
Operating as a Time Agent alongside John Hart, Jack and he made a habit of having sex together with several historical figures, namely Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, and Christopher Marlowe. (The Death of Captain Jack)
During his stint as a con man during World War II, Jack had an affair with a soldier named Algy. (The Doctor Dances) While travelling at their side, Jack appeared to develop romantic feelings for Rose Tyler and the Ninth Doctor, kissing them both on the mouth upon leaving them to fight The Daleks. (The Parting of the Ways) The Doctor chose neither to encourage nor discourage Jack, though he did playfully tease Jack at one point. (Boom Town)
While stranded on Earth, Jack alluded to countless romances. He was known to have dated notables Christopher Isherwood (Reset) and Marcel Proust, (Dead Man Walking) and may have had a sexual relationship with Alan Turing. (The Twilight Streets) Other mentions included acrobatic twins and the possibility of relationships with other coworkers and acquaintances, such as Duchess Eleanor. (Golden Age) In 1927, Jack had a brief relationship in New York with Italian thief Angelo Colasanto, whom Jack likened to being his “companion”, similar to those of the Doctor. Jack left him after Angelo, and later the wider Italian-American community, attempted to kill him after Angelo was released from prison the following year. (Immortal Sins)
Of his more significant relationships, in the early 1940s, Jack fell in love and developed a relationship with a Torchwood coworker named Greg Bishop. (The Twilight Streets) Later in the 1940s, he had a relationship with Estelle Cole but seemingly disappeared out of her life forever one day. (Small Worlds) In this period, Jack also became married — as black and white photos showed — but outlived his wife. (Something Borrowed) The Eleventh Doctor implied that he knew Jack to have been married, or at least engaged several times. (The Wedding of River Song) In the late 1960s, Jack met and had a brief relationship with involuntary time-traveller Michael Bellini. (Trace Memory) Later still, with Torchwood agent Lucia Moretti, Jack was the father to Alice Carter, who in turn produced a grandson. (Children of Earth: Day One, Children of Earth: Day Three) Jack was vague when asked precisely how many children he had fathered. (Immortal Sins)
In the early 21st century, Jack recruited Gwen Cooper, with whom he had a great deal of sexual tension. (Everything Changes, Day One) Gwen ultimately chose her boyfriend Rhys Williams, whom she later married. (Something Borrowed) Jack had also recruited Ianto Jones, with whom he developed a romantic relationship. (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Fragments) Despite these burgeoning relationships, Jack met the real Captain Jack Harkness after travelling back in time and the two developed a romantic bond, culminating in a kiss upon their pained farewell. (Captain Jack Harkness)
On Malcassairo, Jack also met and was attracted to Martha Jones, the Tenth Doctor and even fleetingly to the Malmooth Chantho, as well as a human male refugee. (Utopia) On witnessing Martha’s obvious unrequited love for The Doctor, Jack commented, “You, too, huh?” showing that like with the Ninth Doctor, Jack also had feelings for the Tenth. (The Sound of Drums) When he returned to Earth and John Hart departed, (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) he began an exclusive relationship with Ianto, though he continued to flirt with everyone he met. During the Medusa Cascade incident, Jack confessed to being a fan of Sarah Jane Smith, citing specifically her triumph against the Slitheen, which did include some brief flirting. (The Stolen Earth)
The relationship with Ianto, however, was close enough for him to surrender the world to the 456 to stop them killing Ianto. This did not save him, and the relationship was tragically ended. (Children of Earth: Day Four) It was also close enough for Jack to attempt to stay in the Rift after it closed forever, not wanting to live in a world without Ianto. Ianto tricked Jack into not attempting suicide, killing himself (or, technically, his spirit). Before Ianto died for the second time, though, the two finally confessed their love to each other. (The House of the Dead)
He was later introduced to Alonso Frame by the Tenth Doctor during his last farewells prior to regenerating into the Eleventh Doctor. (The End of Time) However, a meteor shower forced them to separate soon after they met, having been caught up in the onslaught of Mother Nothing. (One Enchanted Evening)
RELATIVES
Jack’s known relatives were his father, Franklin, his younger brother, Gray, and his mother. His father was killed during an attack on the Boeshane Peninsula. (Adam) Gray later turned against his brother and was eventually cryogenically frozen in the Torchwood Hub; the Hub’s subsequent destruction during the 456 incident rendered Gray’s fate unclear. (Exit Wounds, Children of Earth: Day One)
He also had many spouses. When the Eleventh Doctor explained to Dorium Maldovar the possibilities a time machine could bring, he said he could go on all of Jack’s stag parties. (The Wedding of River Song) At least one of his spouses was female. (Something Borrowed)
On Earth he had a daughter, Melissa Moretti (later known as Alice Carter), and a grandson, Steven Carter; Steven died at the resolution of the 456 incident, and Jack’s relationship with his daughter became estranged. (Something Borrowed, Children of Earth: Day Three, Children of Earth: Day Five)
The fact his daughter was ageing and his grandson died indicated that Jack’s immortality could not be passed genetically. By this time, Jack’s only known living relative was his daughter, Alice. (Children of Earth: Day Five)
ALIAS AND NICKNAMES
The Face of Boe
Given by the people of the Boeshane Peninsula. Stems from the time when Jack became a poster boy for the Time Agency.
Captain Jack Harkness
Used by Jack as his permanent alias. Originally the name of an American pilot during World War II. Jack took his name while stationed in this period working as a con artist.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Given by Mickey Smith.
Fly boy
Given threateningly by Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen.
The Doctor
Used by Jack after taking the place of the injured Sixth Doctor, during which time Jack posed as a new incarnation
Captain James Harper
Used by Jack when encountering the real Captain Jack Harkness.
Ken
Used by Jack while undercover at Serenity Plaza. Meaning “handsome”.
The Man Who Could Not Die
Given as a stage name for when he was undercover looking for the “Night Travellers”.
Captain Cheesecake
Given by Mickey Smith in reference to Jack’s “cheesy” demeanor. Jack amended “cheesecake” to “beefcake”.
Captain Cheese
Given by Nina Rogers, before she knew Jack’s name, based on his cheesy demeanour.
Owen Harper
Used while pretending to be in the FBI to gain access to a secure room in a hospital. Refers to a previous associate of Jack’s who was a member of Torchwood.
World War Two
Given by Rex Matheson. Reference to Jack’s World War II attire.
John Smith
Used by Jack when working a con on Nicolas Frumkin. An alias more commonly used by The Doctor.
Mortal Man
Given by Esther Drummond. Refers to Jack’s mortality following Miracle Day.
Red Baron
Given sarcastically by Allen Shapiro. In real life, the “Red Baron” was Manfred von Richthofen. He appeared alongside Snoopy, also mentioned by Shapiro, in the Peanuts comic strip where Snoopy would battle the Baron.
Wingman42
Used by Jack as a username on a hookup website.
BEHIND THE SCENES
THE FACE OF BOE?
The implication that Jack is destined to become the Face of Boe is not considered set in stone due to Russell T Davies waffling over the issue during the DVD commentary for Last of the Time Lords, in which he would not commit absolutely to Jack becoming the Face in the future. However, in media and public (i.e. science fiction convention) statements, producer Julie Gardner, John Barrowman and David Tennant have all gone on record as saying that Jack is the Face of Boe.
While promoting Torchwood: Miracle Day, Davies insisted that the idea of Jack living to become the Face of Boe is just a conjecture, and the possibility of Jack not surviving Torchwood remained. [2]
On May 30, 2020, during the New Earth and Gridlock #NewNewYork tweetalong on Twitter, Davies officially confirmed that Jack is indeed the Face Of Boe. [3][4]
TORCHWOOD WEBSITE
The Torchwood website gave more information about Captain Jack Harkness. The series 1 version of the site, which no longer exists as of 2013, though the individual pdf files still exist on the BBC website as of then, shows a letter addressed to an undisclosed boss referring to a scam to pull diamonds away from soldiers guarding a diamond mine in 1908 Lahore, conveniently making a shipment go “missing”. [5] It also shows letters dated February 1944, June 1944 and August 2004 from Estelle Cole after they had met. In the 2004 letter, reminded of when her father told her not to bother with an address, as His Majesty would see to it being properly delivered regardless, Estelle wrote that she sent it off without an address, just a name. She had noticed that Jack, whom she spotted outside a Newport pound shop, either hadn’t aged a day since his supposed death in “secret combat”, or had fathered a son that was identical in appearance to “haunt” her. [6]
AGE
The Time Traveller’s Almanac provided estimates of Jack’s age across his televised appearances and other notable events. By this reckoning, he joined the Time Agency between the age of 15 and 20, left the Agency to become a conman between the age of 20 and 35, was 35 when he encountered the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler in 1941 and as late as his arrival in 1869 following the Bad Wolf Incident. It was at the age of 58 that Jack realised his immortality after being shot at Ellis Island in 1892. Aged 157-166 in the 1990s, Jack watched over Rose at the Powell Estate. In 2006, Jack, aged approximately 172, was working at Torchwood Three in Cardiff whilst his younger self, aged 35, was present for the Cardiff Earthquake. Having waited 139 years for a version of the Doctor who coincided with his own personal timeline, Jack, aged 174, joined the Tenth Doctor in the TARDIS before being embroiled in the Toclafane invasion. Having lived through the Year That Never Was, Jack rejoined Torchwood at the age of 175. He was 2,157 when he and Torchwood Three were embroiled in the Planetary Relocation Incident in 2009.
DOCTOR WHO: LEGACY
In the story of Doctor Who: Legacy, Jack uses the Cardiff Space-Time Rift as a focal point for creating artificial time paradoxs to reach The Doctors and their companions, joining them as they travel through time to stop and fix the damage caused by the Sontarans’ attacks throughout history.
OTHER MATTERS
Jack Harkness’ first name was originally “Jax”, in Russell T Davies’s original production outline. In this, Jack’s proper name was Jax, and he was using the Jack alias as a cover in World War II. The name was later abandoned due to its similarity to other names in the wider Doctor Who universe.
Barrowman auditioned for the role with Scottish, English and American accents. The writers decided that he use his American accent.
Davies has said he got the surname “Harkness” from Agatha Harkness, a recurring character from the Fantastic Four comic book. This is not the first time he has used the name Harkness. He used it previously in one of his earlier works, Century Falls.
John Barrowman revealed that Jack does sleep and that he has a bed located down a ladder underneath a manhole cover near his office (revealed on The Friday Night Project, a late-night talk show). This bed and manhole are seen in Small Worlds.
Jack Harkness has the distinction of being the first ongoing character in the televised Doctor Who universe to be definitely confirmed within that era as non-heterosexual. Specifically, Jack is described as omnisexual. However, in the expanded Doctor Who universe he is far from the first, as Seventh Doctor companion Chris Cwej was revealed to be bisexual in the 1996 Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods (written by Russell T Davies), while Third Doctor-era recurring character Mike Yates was “outed” as gay in Happy Endings (although there is no suggestion of this in the televised episodes, which showed him flirting with Jo Grant on occasion). The Doctor Who Magazine Eighth Doctor comics featured recurring character Fey Truscott-Sade, and The Doctor’s companion Izzy Sinclair came out as a lesbian in her final regular appearance in Oblivion. Companion Sam Jones was bisexual: she had kissed a female classmate before travelling with The Doctor (Bounty) and later had a long relationship with a woman named Chris. (Seeing I) Retroactively, television companion Adric, from the Fourth and Fifth Doctor’s eras, would later be confirmed bisexual in A Full Life, and Tegan and Nyssa would go on to be a couple in Farewell, Sarah Jane.
Much like Nicola Bryant’s portrayal of Peri and various guest actors portraying Americans, sometimes Barrowman used word choices and pronunciations that an American wouldn’t use. The most obvious example was his way of saying “estrogen” in Everything Changes. (This is mainly because the word is spelt oestrogen in British English.) Unlike Peri, Canton Delaware, Lt.Gen. Sanchez, and others, however, Jack is from a distant future where those British usages may well have become the norm. He is also not actually American per se, but rather a human from another planet entirely. Finally, in most of his appearances, he had lived in Britain for many decades and would presumably have adopted vernacular.
Jack Harkness wore the rank slide of a Group Captain but has been addressed, incorrectly, as “Captain”. However, in his initial appearance in Doctor Who he was incorrectly wearing the cap and insignia of a Squadron Leader.
The Pete’s World counterpart of Jack Harkness was planned to appear in the scrapped Rose Tyler: Earth Defence spin-off.
Had Christopher Eccleston returned for season two, Jack would have returned and the season would have focused on his missing memories. It was decided that David Tennant needed room to establish his Doctor without another, more established male companion around. Furthermore, Russell T. Davies wanted to explore the effects of the Doctor’s regeneration on Rose, believing that Jack would take it in his stride.
Jack was originally slated to appear in The Doctor Who Series 6 episode A Good Man Goes to War, working with the Eleventh Doctor’s army. However, John Barrowman was unable to appear due to the filming of Torchwood: Miracle Day.[7]
Jack’s true name has never been revealed on screen. As of 2020, the name Javic Piotr Thane has only been spoken in Month 25 and R&J.
Harkness appears in the 2015 game LEGO Dimensions as a companion of all thirteen Doctors.
He is the first male companion to kiss The Doctor in a televised story.
Captain Jack Harkness was set to feature in a graphic novel by Titan Comics, however following sexual harrasment accusations against John Barrowman, plans were shelved. [8] Absent Friends was also cancelled.
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