Double Drabble: Changes

[bk_forever]

Title: Changes
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 593: Champion at tw100.
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack is determined to remake Torchwood into a force for good.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.




Torchwood Three wasn’t the same as Torchwood One, not anymore. Way back when he’d first been conscripted into the super-secret organisation, Three had followed One’s orders to the letter. It had been nothing more than a branch office, toeing the party line, its leaders doing very little thinking for themselves. Aliens were found, captured, and either killed for dissection or imprisoned, regardless of whether they were hostile or harmless.


As the decades had passed Jack had worked hard behind the scenes to change things, trying to mellow the attitude of Torchwood Three’s operatives towards aliens who weren’t a threat, but it wasn’t until Alex handed over the reins before killing himself that Jack was really able to effect changes.


Now, with Torchwood One destroyed, there was nothing to stop him; his first act was to change the Doctor’s classification from enemy to friend. He’d stood firm as Earth’s champion on so many occasions; he deserved to be respected, not criminalized.


Jack wanted to turn Torchwood into something the Doctor could be proud of. From now on it would champion the cause of peaceful aliens while protecting earth from the ones that intended harm.


There’d be more than enough senseless killing.



The End

Comments

[pfyre.livejournal.com]

I do love Jack. For all of his surface vanity and enthusiasm for life and love no matter the packaging, he is so much more. We've seen what can happen to a person of lesser character when faced with immortality (i.e. Ashildr/Me). He could so easily have fallen into the trap of self-pity and self-indulgence with no redeeming qualities and actions. Is Jack perfect? Of course not; he wasn't perfect before he met the Doctor and he certainly wasn't perfect after Rose made him immortal. But underneath all that superficiality, there is a good man there - a man with the right mindset to make the best decisions. He makes the decisions that are not necessarily easy or happy or even on the surface 'good'. AND he lives with those decisions, with the consequences. Unlike the Doctor for the most part Jack is stuck in the same area as the incidents he deals with; he usually cannot escape to another planet or another galaxy or even another time. Hell, he is such a responsible person that he even returned to Earth after a bit of galaxy travel after Children of Earth.

Jack's first encounter with the Doctor during 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances' didn't so much make him a better man as to wake up his conscience, reawaken the man he really was before The Time Agency and its own questionable morals warped his view of himself and reality. I think it is totally admirable that he decided to remake Torchwood into something the Doctor could be proud of, but in reality I don't think the Doctor truly lives up to that shining spotlight of the pedestal that Jack put him up on. Don't get me wrong - I love the Doctor - I've loved him since watching my second episode with the Fourth Doctor, but there are times when I've been more than a tiny bit disgusted with him.

While I love Jodie's Doctor, I can't say that I'm enamored with the Doctor at the moment. I get that the Doctor is very old and possesses the knowledge and the supposed wisdom of the Time Lords but as we've seen the Time Lords overall are not necessarily good or even a true force of benevolence. When Jack appeared in that episode and warned that Doctor MUST not give the Lone Cyberman what he wanted. We just knew that of course the Doctor would come up with a reason why she would have to give the Lone Cyberman exactly what he wanted no matter any warnings to the contrary because of course the Doctor knew best. It didn't matter what sort of warnings she had had before. It didn't matter that Jack gave the warning and depending up on his personal timeline he would know exactly what needed to be done and/or warned against. It appears to count for naught that Jack would not have facetiously warned the Doctor; that the Doctor should believe in Jack no matter what. *sigh* Sorry, not sorry, but I'm apparently more than a bit salty in regards to Doctor and his treatment of Jack. *g*

Sorry. Thank you this. I do love that Jack remade Torchwood into something the Doctor could be proud of. Too bad it really doesn't appear to be something that the Doctor even cares about. Thank you for making me think about this and all the tidbits that always plague when I think of Jack and his role in the Doctor Who universe.

[bk_forever]

Thank you!

Yes, Jack has depths that the Doctor has never recognised or even acknowledged as possible, he's a far better man than he's given credit for, but the Doctor always seems to dismiss him as either frivolous or not particularly bright, neither of which is true.

I haven't seen the latest series of Doctor Who, it clashes with Dancing On Ice this year, and that had John Barrowman as one of the judges, but it doesn't surprise me a bit that the Doctor dismissed Jack's advice. Jodie's Doctor is a lot like av female version of Ten, who always was rather arrogant, so it's no surprise that side of the Doctor's character is making itself felt again. One day maybe the Doctor will realise Jack knows what he's talking about and deserves to be listened to.

[pfyre.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that Dancing on Ice conflicted with Doctor Who. I love John and if it were easier I'd probably be watching DOI over DW cause Jodie's Doctor has yet to overwhelm me and make me a great fan yet - I mean I'd probably be a Doctor fan forever but that doesn't mean I always love or even like the character at times. In all honesty I'm liking her companions more this series than I'm liking the Doctor. I don't know if it is just me and where I am in my life and thoughts or if it is truly the current incarnation of the Doctor how she's being written and/or portrayed but my sympathies for the Doctor are on the low ebb at the moment.

As much as I was ecstatic over Jack returning in his surprise appearance - part of me suspected from that very moment that in the end the Doctor would dismiss/ignore Jack's warnings. Add to that there is speculations that the nanogene thing that Jack mentions just before he leaves in that ep is the start of how Jack becomes the Face of Boe and yet it appears to have been a waste of Jack's time and efforts (as well as the personal cost to him) in regards to the Doctor - it just disgusts me. In the comparatively small amount of time that we've known Jack in comparison to the Doctor - I think John's portrayal of Jack has more depth, richness in it's detail and contradictions and pain and rawness than we've truly gotten with the Doctor over 50 years. Yeah - the early stuff with the Doctor was not a era when the depths of the Doctor were explored with detail or even resonating canon - how many times have things contradicted canon but we as the audience are just forced to swallow without pause. Not that the various actors portraying the Doctor haven't been good or even great actors or even that the writing has at times been superb, but overall the Doctor is not given a rich fabric to draw upon or even at times build upon. Contradictory character details are one thing, but the Doctor's background has been rewritten and rewritten and overwritten so many times that it becomes more and more difficult to simply accept what we were given. Along side the obvious bias of TPTB - RTD's absolute LOVE of Eve Myles and the character of Rose, other Showrunners enamour with Clara (Jenna Coleman) or hell the over the top love of Maisie Williams (and by extension her character Ashildr)... and yet the way they treat John and his character Jack in contrast.... *sigh* I don't know where I was going with that other than John and Jack deserve better treatment in the Doctor Who 'verse AND by TPTB in the production.

[bk_forever]

I agree, and John always goes back to play Jack whenever he's asked, even though the character is being systematically destroyed by the writers.

I've lost faith, to be honest, that Jack will ever be treated the way he deserves. I swear the fans understand the character better than the show writers do.

I'm not a fan of Jodie's, I watched the last series more for the companions than the Doctor, who seems a bit ineffectual now, as well as too much like a female version of the tenth Doctor. She's not ringing anything new to the role aide from her gender.

The DoI final is next week, I have no regrets about watching that show rather than Doctor Who, and as a lifelong Who fan, that's saying something.

[pfyre.livejournal.com]

My friend and I watched the series finale last Sunday evening and I can say... "Meh...." Okay - they once again rewrote the Gallifrey origins, they rewrote the Doctor's origins and left us on a cliffhanger. *rollseyes* I'm still not impressed with Jodie's Doctor. Frankly, I'd rather know more about Jo Martin's Doctor. Somehow with a bare-handful of scenes and dialogue - HER Doctor pulled me in in away that Jodie's Doctor has not. I get how in a long long term show that origins can be retconned repeatedly but as pointed out by many fans and articles it would NOT have taken much effort to couch even a few of the 'changes' in ways to make it all resonate with what we'd already learned and believed about the show and the Doctor. But of course they didn't bother to make the effort - it's far easier for them to simply write it all as a Shock Value rewrite of history.

*sigh* On a much brighter note - I am more than a tiny intrigued by John's post mentioning that he had been filming something secret in the UK just very recently - got us speculating, wishing, hoping - maybe it would be something Torchwood related - my only issue with that is no doubt if it is Torchwood they will be shoving Eve Myles and Gwen Cooper-Williams down our throats once again. I'm certain that Eve is a great person but I am far far less than impressed with her acting abilities and I cannot stand how they write her character - I was absolutely nauseated by the way they wrote her character in Miracle Day - by the end of that series I wanted her to be dead, dead, DEAD and was just so done with her - done, done, DONE. What annoyed me even more were the various articles and interviews with Eve around the series. Eve commenting that Gwen had grown tremendously since the first Torchwood series and that she was more than ready and capable of running the WHOLE damned show - all of Torchwood the organization and that Eve was more than ready, willing and able to shoulder the responsibilities of the production itself. In reality it came across as if she wanted John to no longer to be a part of Torchwood since she more than apparently was ready to be the absolutely STAR of the show and production. *gag* *retch* Eve doesn't have the chops - she still does the 'wide-eyes-of-[insert necessary character emotion/reaction here]' schtick more often than not.

[bk_forever]

That's typical of the laziness of TV writers these days. They think the fans won't notice, then they're surprised when people complain. At this point I honestly don't care that I missed the series. Watching John on Dancing on Ice was better. TV writers go for cheap shocks instead of intelligent writing.

I almost hope there isn't more Torchwood being filmed because it'll just serve to destroy Jack further, sacrificed at the altar of Gen Cooper. Frankly, Gwen should't be in charge of anything, she'd trough anyone under the bus if it served to make her look better or give her more power. She didn't grow at all throughout the series as far as I could see, just got more selfish and know-it-all. Her 'fame' went to her head.