an essay about children of earth.
I have been meaning to do this for ages.
Jack Harkness as the Anti-Hero. A 3000-word essay on Jack's morality, Children of Earth, how its events changed him, and what that has meant for his characterization and interactions in Camp.
The events of Children of Earth.
The very last line of S2 Torchwood is Jack's "The end is where we start from." He's quoting Eliot's Little Gidding, a poem which I think shares a lot of the same themes as Torchwood S3, "Children of Earth".
For those people who enjoy reading essays without knowing the canon, and don't mind spoilers, I'll give a brief rundown. Rather than the usual 13-episode format, Children of Earth was released as five episodes over five weekdays on British TV. It also deviated from Torchwood's usual mix of light-hearted comedy and zany alien hijinks into some serious and very nihilistic sci-fi.
The basic plot was: creepy and powerful aliens "The Four-Five-Six" make contact with Britain and demand ten percent of Earth's total children so they can harvest them for feel-good chemicals. lol my canon. The British government discuss behind closed doors how they will capitulate (and whether or not the selection of children should be random.) The horror isn't in the aliens, despite their eery, fog-shrouded appearances and awful raptor-scree noises: it's the straight-faced inhumanity of the people in charge.
Torchwood is on the run after the government kidnaps Jack, blows up The Hub, and declares Gwen and Ianto terrorists, but they still manage to find out what's going on and record the proceedings. They threaten to release the information to the public if they don't get their way, but when Jack and Ianto meet with The Four-Five-Six, both of them are killed. Jack gives up entirely until it is discovered that the aliens are "tuned in" to the children and they can use one child and a whole bunch of machinery to manipulate that connection and blow them the fuck up. Jack sacrifices his grandson to manage this. After travelling the globe in misery for six months as the world picks up the pieces, he decides he needs to get away and beams off the planet.
The total destruction of their huge secret base; the separation of Torchwood from the government; Gwen's pregnancy; the death of Ianto Jones; Jack's amoral decisions and subsequent abandonment of Earth; all of these elements broke up what was remaining of the Torchwood team, made the idea of S4 almost impossible, and made a lot of fans riotously angry. Personally, I actually really liked all these plot points, even if they broke my heart. But they still have changed the entire structure of the series and its characters, which obviously has an effect on how I RP from it.
Jack's Morality Before Children of Earth
Let me start out by saying, Jack Harkness has never been a good person. When we first meet him in Doctor Who, he's a conman who makes a living travelling to natural disaster spots or wars, selling junk he talks up before the owner can get a good look at it, and then letting it be "accidentally" destroyed by its location, whether that's an exploding volcano or a bomb during the Blitz. Before that, he was a soldier, a Time Agent, and more importantly the kind of guy who ran with people like John Hart, a guy whose modus operandi is to drink, fuck and fight as much as humanly possible, all over the galaxy.
In meeting the Doctor, he finds the motivation to stop being so self-absorbed, to desire to do good, and change the world for the better. He tells the Doctor in Parting of the Ways that Ninth has made him a better man. Over a hundred years later, on Planet Earth, he revamps Torchwood to be something the Doctor would approve of.
Before that happens, however, he works for them for a very long time, and there are lots of hints in the series and radio plays that Jack did some really shitty things while he waited for the Doctor's return. In the name of the xenophobic Torchwood he killed a lot of innocent aliens and hijacked their technology. He also personally screwed over Torchwood India. He ran a few con jobs and fought in a few wars and he had a lot of relationships with people, some of whom (Estelle and probably Suzie) never knew about his immortality and some (Melody and Alice's mother) who he was forced to watch die when he didn't. Children of Earth reveals that during the sixties he handed a handful of children over to some random aliens. No longer a rogue in it for the adrenalin rush, Jack's inability to die hardens him. (shut up Rose.)
Inheriting Torchwood marks a change; he recruits people at the end of their tether, with nowhere else to go. (A case could be made that some of his recruitment techniques in and of themselves were bastard moves.) Then he tries to change it, to find technology which does good, to help aliens and people who are stranded thanks to the rift, to imprison or send away those which are dangerous, to save people's lives. It's justice instead of revenge and an avoidance of shooting on site.
In S1 and S2, three things have a softening affect on Jack's personality.
Firstly, he recruits PC Gwen Cooper, who with her boyfriend (then fiancee, then husband) Rhys, and her bleeding heart, ties Jack to humanity and the real world in the way that he needs. Gwen questions his hard-ass policies and reminds him what Torchwood fights for.
Secondly, after hundreds of years of waiting, Jack is finally reunited with the Doctor at the end of S1 Torchwood and S3 Doctor Who. The Doctor's a different man, and the experiences Jack undergoes in the Year that Never Was are harrowing, but it provides a lot of closure for Jack about who he was and what he is.
Finally, John Hart returns as a representation of Jack's past, and Jack rejects him and the mindless violence he represents. Jack accepts his responsibilities. The trauma over losing his brother is also finally resolved, even if it's awful, and he forgives Gray and gets some pretty shitty closure.
However, Jack is still the guy who does what has to be done. He has pointed his gun at each member of his team at one point, and he still thinks in violence.Take this quote from The Sound of Drums.Jack: What say I use the perception filter to walk up behind him and break his neck.
The Doctor: Now that sounds like Torchwood.
Jack: Still a good plan.
For a S1 example, there's Small Worlds, where he chooses to allow an innocent young girl to be taken by the fairies in order to stop them destroying the human race out of malice. In S2's Sleeper he shoots Beth at point blank range for the alien memories inside her head that are a threat to the planet. In Adrift we discover he has been secretly institutionalizing people who were taken by the rift then spat out again as monstrous, broken shells. Jack no longer does evil, but he is willing to do terrible, even inhumane things, to save the world or the people who are important to him.
So obviously Jack was already an anti-hero figure, but he was a loveable one. He is funny, and flirtatious, and most importantly; he keeps on fighting. "Never say die", both literally and figuratively.
How Children of Earth changes Jack.
This is utterly, utterly destroyed in S3.
For starters, Jack once again undergoes some very traumatic deaths. He has a bomb sewn into his stomach, and as he confesses to Ianto; when it exploded, he felt it. The government collects the scattered fragments of his flesh and waits for him to slowly regrow everything. He revives multiple times along the way, skinless and screaming. When he is finally whole, handcuffed inside a metal cell, they fill the entire thing with concrete. If this doesn't qualify him for fmylife.com, idk what does.
But by now, Jack is pretty used to traumatic death. What scars him more is what he loses along the way.
For instance, when the Hub is blown up, he lost the place where he lived and had spent years of his life. Jack isn't hugely material, but he lost the TARDIS coral he was growing on his desk, the souvenirs of his adventures around the universe, and the priceless alien tech he had collected. He lost the cryogenicly-frozen body of his brother. He lost the pet pterodactyl which brought he and Ianto together. He lost decades worth of hard copy archives. For a while, he lost his goddamn trenchcoat. (Ianto buys him a new one at the army surplus.)
Then he loses Ianto. I am still not sure why Jack thought it would be a good idea to go confront the 456 with someone totally mortal, but when poisonous gas is released, Jack has to watch his lover die. While that's something Jack has done so many times over the years it's almost commonplace, I am pretty sure Ianto is special. It's not just the build of their relationship throughout the series (especially in semi-canon materials like Torchwood Archives and the four radio plays) but also in CoE itself. Jack finally accepts that they're very much a couple, Ianto seems to come to terms with his sexuality. This vid is a really good depiction of their relationship in S3, with a voiceover/monologue from one of the BBC radio plays.
This is when Jack gives up.
Seriously, he revives, they throw him in a prison cell, and he sits there staring at the floor. He truly believes there's nothing he can do. He blames himself for Ianto's death, and he blames himself for the fact that the British government is about to hand about one hundred thousand children over to aliens who want to hook them up to horrible machinery and shoot up on them, and he believes that there is nothing he can do about it.
The thing is, what Jack really loses in S3 is his humanity. This is mostly represented through the fact that Gwen, his tie to hope and love and goodness, loses hers. The cold-hearted actions of the government officials disgust them. Gwen considers aborting her baby because she doesn't want a child living in this world. Gwen says, "Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame." Gwen says, "That's what Torchwood does, you see. It ruins your life."
Are you miserable yet? Because we haven't even reached the best bit. See, in S3 we discover that Jack has a family; a daughter, Alice, in her forties, who ages properly and has a small son named Steven. They, too, get caught up in the fight against the 456, and they are present when the scientists tell Jack the last hope. Blah blah, the frequency that allows the 456 to make all the children speak in unison can be used against them, blah blah we can stick one child in this sci-fi machinary and blow them up, oh hey but did we mention it'll probably overload their brain? But the clock is ticking: where can we find a child?
Jack takes Steven, of course. He locks Alice out of the room and watches without looking away as his grandson is killed.
Even though he's crying, Jack's still expressionlessly blank. And when he loses his family, that's the turning point. Children of Earth does not show how Earth picks up its pieces over the next six months, but it does show that Jack wasn't there; he just went travelling, walked until the planet was too small for him. When Gwen begs him to come back, he refuses.
"You can't just run away from this," she says.
"Watch me," he replies, and beams away.
Jack in Camp.
At the end of S2, Jack is buried alive for a few thousand years, doomed to die and resuscitate over and over. When he wakes up, two of his team members, Tosh and Owen, are dead. This was where I took him from when I first brought him to CFUD. Camp helped Jack rehabilitate and deal with these things. Not only did it give him time with people he never thought he'd see again, like Rose and Tosh, it also gave him some time out from saving the world to heal, and he talked out a lot of his problems with various people.
This time around, that hasn't happened. Apart from a very brief discussion with the Doctor, Jack has avoided talking about the mess he left behind. None of his team-mates are here, and mostly he has thrown himself into catching up with his friends, meeting new people, and getting involved in Camp.
As anyone who's played CFUW with him probably knows, Jack is a consummate actor and most of the time, lies come easily to him. He's also very, very good at avoidance and changing the subject. He'll mention he spent the last six months travelling, which is totally true. What happened during the month before that, however, he hasn't really mentioned.
For starters, Jack hasn't told anyone about Ianto's death. And he won't unless it's forced out of him/mindread, or someone who knows turns up in Camp. And I don't plan to give him an "outing post" like I did for his immortality thing. He's grieving on his own time, but mostly he just doesn't want to acknowledge it. He didn't go to the funeral, he doesn't want closure.
Because he is still hung up on Ianto, Jack has become a lot more wary of becoming close to other people. If he had Social-Links like in Persona 4, a whole bunch would have gone down a few rankings. He doesn't want to watch anyone else he loves die and he's not ready for any sort of serious relationship and he doesn't want to "open up" or "talk about it". In fact, Jack's kind of avoiding the people who were usually able to worm the truth about things out of him, or he's being particularly cold to them. He has a lot of hidden resentment for the Doctor, but when is that not true? At the moment Rose is just about the only person who he cares to actually spend meaningful time with.
At the moment, Jack is keeping his relationships and his conversations at a shallow level, though because he is melodramatic as fuck he will probably make statements about shit that he will refuse to elaborate on, or he will have flashes of emotion he will cover with horrible jokes. He is also a lot more careless with his own body. A bit of pain and a bit of fighting might actually make him feel better about himself, since I think Jack wants to be punished. But sexually, as well; he has no-one to be loyal to now, so if you have ever wanted to be Jack Harkness' casual fuck, now is your chance. (oh, wait. CURSE YOU, CAMP.)
For all that he could do bad things, Jack has spent most of his life as an optimist, and that isn't true anymore. He's lost faith in humanity, become detached, and in some ways, callous. While he'd still take a bullet for pretty much anyone because he has a mile-wide martyr complex, he's less likely to get involved in camper's problems.
...Well. To a certain extent. He has "children" under his traumapings now, if you're aged down it's likely you'll be able to get him to do pretty much anything you want. (He still doesn't know what to make of Akazukin.)
Because he's able to put up such a good mask, however, playing him in Camp is still fun for me and I still get to do pleasant and cracky threads that don't touch on any of this stuff. But I'm hoping eventually I'll get to tackle some of these residual issues in the same way I did after S2. After all, the end is where we start from.
Jack's inability to deal with this stuff is as much related to my issues with regular threading as it is his own mental state, but I hope now everyone knows what they're getting into.
Oh man, writing this has helped clarify a lot for me. If you actually managed to read this monster, please have a cookie.
Jack Harkness as the Anti-Hero. A 3000-word essay on Jack's morality, Children of Earth, how its events changed him, and what that has meant for his characterization and interactions in Camp.
The events of Children of Earth.
The very last line of S2 Torchwood is Jack's "The end is where we start from." He's quoting Eliot's Little Gidding, a poem which I think shares a lot of the same themes as Torchwood S3, "Children of Earth".
For those people who enjoy reading essays without knowing the canon, and don't mind spoilers, I'll give a brief rundown. Rather than the usual 13-episode format, Children of Earth was released as five episodes over five weekdays on British TV. It also deviated from Torchwood's usual mix of light-hearted comedy and zany alien hijinks into some serious and very nihilistic sci-fi.
The basic plot was: creepy and powerful aliens "The Four-Five-Six" make contact with Britain and demand ten percent of Earth's total children so they can harvest them for feel-good chemicals. lol my canon. The British government discuss behind closed doors how they will capitulate (and whether or not the selection of children should be random.) The horror isn't in the aliens, despite their eery, fog-shrouded appearances and awful raptor-scree noises: it's the straight-faced inhumanity of the people in charge.
Torchwood is on the run after the government kidnaps Jack, blows up The Hub, and declares Gwen and Ianto terrorists, but they still manage to find out what's going on and record the proceedings. They threaten to release the information to the public if they don't get their way, but when Jack and Ianto meet with The Four-Five-Six, both of them are killed. Jack gives up entirely until it is discovered that the aliens are "tuned in" to the children and they can use one child and a whole bunch of machinery to manipulate that connection and blow them the fuck up. Jack sacrifices his grandson to manage this. After travelling the globe in misery for six months as the world picks up the pieces, he decides he needs to get away and beams off the planet.
The total destruction of their huge secret base; the separation of Torchwood from the government; Gwen's pregnancy; the death of Ianto Jones; Jack's amoral decisions and subsequent abandonment of Earth; all of these elements broke up what was remaining of the Torchwood team, made the idea of S4 almost impossible, and made a lot of fans riotously angry. Personally, I actually really liked all these plot points, even if they broke my heart. But they still have changed the entire structure of the series and its characters, which obviously has an effect on how I RP from it.
Jack's Morality Before Children of Earth
Let me start out by saying, Jack Harkness has never been a good person. When we first meet him in Doctor Who, he's a conman who makes a living travelling to natural disaster spots or wars, selling junk he talks up before the owner can get a good look at it, and then letting it be "accidentally" destroyed by its location, whether that's an exploding volcano or a bomb during the Blitz. Before that, he was a soldier, a Time Agent, and more importantly the kind of guy who ran with people like John Hart, a guy whose modus operandi is to drink, fuck and fight as much as humanly possible, all over the galaxy.
In meeting the Doctor, he finds the motivation to stop being so self-absorbed, to desire to do good, and change the world for the better. He tells the Doctor in Parting of the Ways that Ninth has made him a better man. Over a hundred years later, on Planet Earth, he revamps Torchwood to be something the Doctor would approve of.
Before that happens, however, he works for them for a very long time, and there are lots of hints in the series and radio plays that Jack did some really shitty things while he waited for the Doctor's return. In the name of the xenophobic Torchwood he killed a lot of innocent aliens and hijacked their technology. He also personally screwed over Torchwood India. He ran a few con jobs and fought in a few wars and he had a lot of relationships with people, some of whom (Estelle and probably Suzie) never knew about his immortality and some (Melody and Alice's mother) who he was forced to watch die when he didn't. Children of Earth reveals that during the sixties he handed a handful of children over to some random aliens. No longer a rogue in it for the adrenalin rush, Jack's inability to die hardens him. (shut up Rose.)
Inheriting Torchwood marks a change; he recruits people at the end of their tether, with nowhere else to go. (A case could be made that some of his recruitment techniques in and of themselves were bastard moves.) Then he tries to change it, to find technology which does good, to help aliens and people who are stranded thanks to the rift, to imprison or send away those which are dangerous, to save people's lives. It's justice instead of revenge and an avoidance of shooting on site.
In S1 and S2, three things have a softening affect on Jack's personality.
Firstly, he recruits PC Gwen Cooper, who with her boyfriend (then fiancee, then husband) Rhys, and her bleeding heart, ties Jack to humanity and the real world in the way that he needs. Gwen questions his hard-ass policies and reminds him what Torchwood fights for.
Secondly, after hundreds of years of waiting, Jack is finally reunited with the Doctor at the end of S1 Torchwood and S3 Doctor Who. The Doctor's a different man, and the experiences Jack undergoes in the Year that Never Was are harrowing, but it provides a lot of closure for Jack about who he was and what he is.
Finally, John Hart returns as a representation of Jack's past, and Jack rejects him and the mindless violence he represents. Jack accepts his responsibilities. The trauma over losing his brother is also finally resolved, even if it's awful, and he forgives Gray and gets some pretty shitty closure.
However, Jack is still the guy who does what has to be done. He has pointed his gun at each member of his team at one point, and he still thinks in violence.Take this quote from The Sound of Drums.Jack: What say I use the perception filter to walk up behind him and break his neck.
The Doctor: Now that sounds like Torchwood.
Jack: Still a good plan.
For a S1 example, there's Small Worlds, where he chooses to allow an innocent young girl to be taken by the fairies in order to stop them destroying the human race out of malice. In S2's Sleeper he shoots Beth at point blank range for the alien memories inside her head that are a threat to the planet. In Adrift we discover he has been secretly institutionalizing people who were taken by the rift then spat out again as monstrous, broken shells. Jack no longer does evil, but he is willing to do terrible, even inhumane things, to save the world or the people who are important to him.
So obviously Jack was already an anti-hero figure, but he was a loveable one. He is funny, and flirtatious, and most importantly; he keeps on fighting. "Never say die", both literally and figuratively.
How Children of Earth changes Jack.
This is utterly, utterly destroyed in S3.
For starters, Jack once again undergoes some very traumatic deaths. He has a bomb sewn into his stomach, and as he confesses to Ianto; when it exploded, he felt it. The government collects the scattered fragments of his flesh and waits for him to slowly regrow everything. He revives multiple times along the way, skinless and screaming. When he is finally whole, handcuffed inside a metal cell, they fill the entire thing with concrete. If this doesn't qualify him for fmylife.com, idk what does.
But by now, Jack is pretty used to traumatic death. What scars him more is what he loses along the way.
For instance, when the Hub is blown up, he lost the place where he lived and had spent years of his life. Jack isn't hugely material, but he lost the TARDIS coral he was growing on his desk, the souvenirs of his adventures around the universe, and the priceless alien tech he had collected. He lost the cryogenicly-frozen body of his brother. He lost the pet pterodactyl which brought he and Ianto together. He lost decades worth of hard copy archives. For a while, he lost his goddamn trenchcoat. (Ianto buys him a new one at the army surplus.)
Then he loses Ianto. I am still not sure why Jack thought it would be a good idea to go confront the 456 with someone totally mortal, but when poisonous gas is released, Jack has to watch his lover die. While that's something Jack has done so many times over the years it's almost commonplace, I am pretty sure Ianto is special. It's not just the build of their relationship throughout the series (especially in semi-canon materials like Torchwood Archives and the four radio plays) but also in CoE itself. Jack finally accepts that they're very much a couple, Ianto seems to come to terms with his sexuality. This vid is a really good depiction of their relationship in S3, with a voiceover/monologue from one of the BBC radio plays.
This is when Jack gives up.
Seriously, he revives, they throw him in a prison cell, and he sits there staring at the floor. He truly believes there's nothing he can do. He blames himself for Ianto's death, and he blames himself for the fact that the British government is about to hand about one hundred thousand children over to aliens who want to hook them up to horrible machinery and shoot up on them, and he believes that there is nothing he can do about it.
The thing is, what Jack really loses in S3 is his humanity. This is mostly represented through the fact that Gwen, his tie to hope and love and goodness, loses hers. The cold-hearted actions of the government officials disgust them. Gwen considers aborting her baby because she doesn't want a child living in this world. Gwen says, "Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame." Gwen says, "That's what Torchwood does, you see. It ruins your life."
Are you miserable yet? Because we haven't even reached the best bit. See, in S3 we discover that Jack has a family; a daughter, Alice, in her forties, who ages properly and has a small son named Steven. They, too, get caught up in the fight against the 456, and they are present when the scientists tell Jack the last hope. Blah blah, the frequency that allows the 456 to make all the children speak in unison can be used against them, blah blah we can stick one child in this sci-fi machinary and blow them up, oh hey but did we mention it'll probably overload their brain? But the clock is ticking: where can we find a child?
Jack takes Steven, of course. He locks Alice out of the room and watches without looking away as his grandson is killed.
Even though he's crying, Jack's still expressionlessly blank. And when he loses his family, that's the turning point. Children of Earth does not show how Earth picks up its pieces over the next six months, but it does show that Jack wasn't there; he just went travelling, walked until the planet was too small for him. When Gwen begs him to come back, he refuses.
"You can't just run away from this," she says.
"Watch me," he replies, and beams away.
Jack in Camp.
At the end of S2, Jack is buried alive for a few thousand years, doomed to die and resuscitate over and over. When he wakes up, two of his team members, Tosh and Owen, are dead. This was where I took him from when I first brought him to CFUD. Camp helped Jack rehabilitate and deal with these things. Not only did it give him time with people he never thought he'd see again, like Rose and Tosh, it also gave him some time out from saving the world to heal, and he talked out a lot of his problems with various people.
This time around, that hasn't happened. Apart from a very brief discussion with the Doctor, Jack has avoided talking about the mess he left behind. None of his team-mates are here, and mostly he has thrown himself into catching up with his friends, meeting new people, and getting involved in Camp.
As anyone who's played CFUW with him probably knows, Jack is a consummate actor and most of the time, lies come easily to him. He's also very, very good at avoidance and changing the subject. He'll mention he spent the last six months travelling, which is totally true. What happened during the month before that, however, he hasn't really mentioned.
For starters, Jack hasn't told anyone about Ianto's death. And he won't unless it's forced out of him/mindread, or someone who knows turns up in Camp. And I don't plan to give him an "outing post" like I did for his immortality thing. He's grieving on his own time, but mostly he just doesn't want to acknowledge it. He didn't go to the funeral, he doesn't want closure.
Because he is still hung up on Ianto, Jack has become a lot more wary of becoming close to other people. If he had Social-Links like in Persona 4, a whole bunch would have gone down a few rankings. He doesn't want to watch anyone else he loves die and he's not ready for any sort of serious relationship and he doesn't want to "open up" or "talk about it". In fact, Jack's kind of avoiding the people who were usually able to worm the truth about things out of him, or he's being particularly cold to them. He has a lot of hidden resentment for the Doctor, but when is that not true? At the moment Rose is just about the only person who he cares to actually spend meaningful time with.
At the moment, Jack is keeping his relationships and his conversations at a shallow level, though because he is melodramatic as fuck he will probably make statements about shit that he will refuse to elaborate on, or he will have flashes of emotion he will cover with horrible jokes. He is also a lot more careless with his own body. A bit of pain and a bit of fighting might actually make him feel better about himself, since I think Jack wants to be punished. But sexually, as well; he has no-one to be loyal to now, so if you have ever wanted to be Jack Harkness' casual fuck, now is your chance. (oh, wait. CURSE YOU, CAMP.)
For all that he could do bad things, Jack has spent most of his life as an optimist, and that isn't true anymore. He's lost faith in humanity, become detached, and in some ways, callous. While he'd still take a bullet for pretty much anyone because he has a mile-wide martyr complex, he's less likely to get involved in camper's problems.
...Well. To a certain extent. He has "children" under his traumapings now, if you're aged down it's likely you'll be able to get him to do pretty much anything you want. (He still doesn't know what to make of Akazukin.)
Because he's able to put up such a good mask, however, playing him in Camp is still fun for me and I still get to do pleasant and cracky threads that don't touch on any of this stuff. But I'm hoping eventually I'll get to tackle some of these residual issues in the same way I did after S2. After all, the end is where we start from.
Jack's inability to deal with this stuff is as much related to my issues with regular threading as it is his own mental state, but I hope now everyone knows what they're getting into.
Oh man, writing this has helped clarify a lot for me. If you actually managed to read this monster, please have a cookie.