A thought about the Time Agency

[woodencoyote]

I was watching Girl in the Fireplace with my mother this evening and I had a thought about the time agency.

The ship SS Madame de Pompadour is a massively powerful 51st century vessel with the ability to open multiple holes in time and space. Of course with Jack Harkness being a 51st century time agent, it's not a great leap to say that the ship

Comments

[cieria]

Bare in mind that John is a compulsive liar so you should be careful when taking what he says as fact. He may have been telling Jack the truth at that point but there is the chance that he wasn't.

[woodencoyote]

That's a good point, he could have been trying to make Jack feel isolated, or make him think it was safe to come with him now that there's supposedly no agency to chase him.

[cieria]

Personally I believe that it's so that Jack doesn't think the time agency is still chasing him. But that's mainly because I like the idea of him doing secretive stuff to avoid capture. lol

[totally4ryo]

I guess Hart wouldn't know that it wasn't a concern of Jack's, since he was seeking out Time Agents in "The Empty Child" to con.

But it's still an interesting theory. It's possible it did somehow diminish its numbers, even if not as bad as what Hart tells Jack. I never saw Girl In the Fireplace, but now I want to. I think you might have helped me gel some disjointed ideas for one of my fics. Thanks!

[hoppytoad79]

That's an interesting theory, and that the slaughter onboard the spaceship could have shut down the Time Agency makes it even more intriguing.

[tlanti]

That's a really intruiging thought.... :)

[rose_cat]

Interesting! The "51st century" detail got right by me. (Maybe I was distracted by the snogging and "dancing." :D ) If nothing else, you've spawned a plotbunny! Maybe the ship was a Time Agency experiment?

(Edited to fix punctuation oopsy.)

[allfireburns]

I always assumed that the SS Madame de Pompadour belonged to the earlier 51st century, whereas from everything I've been able to work out, Jack and John belong (primarily, because they're Time Agents, after all) to the latter end of the 51st century. There's also the bit where the robots were punching holes in time, which is probably exactly the sort of thing the Time Agency was meant to prevent - the Time Agency's version of time travel is much more finely controlled and though it's crude by Time Lord standards, doesn't cause any damage to the fabric of time.

My theory is that time travel began to be developed in the earlier part of the 51st century. But, of course, because people are stupid and don't always use these things wisely, they started damaging history, time, whatever. The Time Agency was then developed in order to set some sort of controls over how time travel was used, and prevent things like punching holes in time from ever happeningI would imagine, just from the fact that there were enough Time Agents flitting about

[woodencoyote]

That's a good idea, that the agency evolved to deal with the rampant stupidity that might lead one to have a ship that punches holes in time and features a murderous robot crew.

John says Jack was "rear of the year" in 5094, which is the end of the 51st century, you're right.