life without a plot

Author's note: It's funny how I never plan on these things and they happen anyway. I had absolutely no intentions of writing about Jack and Ianto again after the big post in 2009; more than 9.000 words of meta—what was there even left to write about? But then I wrote about death, life, and what it means to be human in DW and TW, and in the process of rewatching for that I had a (short) paragraph's worth of an idea that I didn't think would amount to more than that, but somehow kept... not so much nagging, as occasionally nibbling at my mind, and months and months later, I'm not sure how exactly, it suddenly turned out that there still was something I wanted to write after all before we get new canon. Which then developed a life of its own, took me to places I hadn't expected, and, well. Insert obligatory warning for excessive wordiness. It's also, I guess, a sort of post-CoE closure for me, because this time I managed to tie up all the threads running through the first three seasons in my mind.




Time - he's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me, boy

- David Bowie, Time -



The World Is Always Ending: Time in Torchwood's Jack/Ianto Arc

Time has always been Jack's theme. Before he travelled with the Doctor, he was a Time Agent turned time-travelling conman who lost two years of his life somewhere along the way. When he danced with Rose in The Empty Child, it was in front of the clock of Big Ben. But after Rose brought him back to life permanently and he accidentally got himself stranded in 1869 in the attempt of trying to meet the Doctor again, his relationship with time changed radically. He lost the relative freedom and control he used to have over it, and suddenly found himself once more chained to a linear timeline, no longer able to jump back and forth through the centuries and millennia, using history for his own purpose. He lost his mortality, something that, as DW canon also repeatedly emphasises, constitutes a basic element of what it means to be human, but at the same time he was forced to live his life in a very human fashion, day after day after day, without even the most basic freedom every human being has, to end it. Time became a burden.

Among the clutter on Jack's desk there are two objects that are a permanent fixture throughout both the first and second series of TW: the growing Tardis coral and an hourglass. Regardless of whether they were put there with this purpose in mind, between them they illustrate Jack's state of being, and his dilemma. The former is an obvious symbol for the Doctor, for what happened to Jack, for the ability to travel in time he is hoping to regain eventually: the power of (and, to an extent, the power over) space and time. It can be read to represent his new life that, in absolute terms, has only just begun and that he's still trying to get used to. The hourglass, on the other hand, traditionally symbolises the fleetingness of time, the brevity of human life; mortality and death. It is used briefly in Fragments to illustrate the passage of the years and decades Jack spent in Torchwood, but it can also stand for the old, human, life Jack lost, the humanity he's struggling to maintain, and, as a memento mori, for a heightened awareness of the death that is omnipresent in the world around him, but continues to elude him. If the sand running through the glass symbolises the human lifespan, then in Jack's case the hourglass gets turned around again and again with each death, and the sand starts running anew. It's between these two polar opposites that Jack has to find his way now.


( Part 1: Ten Minutes, and Counting )


( Part 2: Eight Thirty-Two, Thirty-One... )


( Part 3: Thirty Minutes )

No, I don't have a life (obviously). Yes, the pseudo-artistic reverse numbering is intentional. I don't really know any longer if it works, or if the whole thing is good, complete crap, or anywhere in between. The only thing I do know is that I don't want to re-, re- & re-write and -edit it until & beyond Christmas. Wonky tenses will just have to remain wonky. Not that I was even planning on writing anything this long again after the last CoE post. Maybe a few bullet points and screencaps for the Jack/Ianto stuff that didn't fit in there. Maybe. But then I stupidly thought, if this was—barring a flash-back/time travel episode in a potential fourth season—the last time I was going to use the jack/ianto tag I might as well try to write something slightly less slapdash. *buries face in hands*

Jack and Ianto, S1-3. Massively tl;dr. Managed to draw the line at footnotes. And there are pictures.

[ETA: An exploration of the time and mortality/immortality motifs in their relationship can be found here: The World Is Always Ending: Time in Torchwood's Jack/Ianto Arc.]




( VII. 'I love you.' — 'Don't.' )


( VI. 'It's all my fault.'— 'No it's not.' )


( V. 'The Jack I know would have stood up to them.' )


( IV. 'Why didn't you tell me. I could have helped.' )


( III. 'We better make the most of it then.' )


( II. 'Speak to me, Jack.' )


( I. 'No. You pretend that's all there is.' )


( VIII. 'Don't forget me.' — 'Never could.' )

Okay. I give up. I don't get it. I've rewatched the first two and a half episodes now, and I still don't understand where all that clingy!abused!Ianto and asshole!Jack and tragic!unrequited!love is coming from. I didn't see any of that the first time - in fact I had a lot less issues in this respect with CoE than I had with S2 -, but after everything I've read since I thought (was afraid, to be more precise) it'd be pretty much unavoidable. I'm still not seeing it.

( And the irony is... )

So I've really been wondering if I do have issues that I wasn't aware of on top of all the issues that I am aware of, or... actually I don't know what the alternative would be.


What I'm seeing is two people working out the terms of a very complicated relationship.

Take Day Three, the 'We better make the most of it' scene.

Jack clearly isn't happy to discuss his dying and coming back again, most likely because very probably every single discussion he's ever had about that with people he loved has been painful and doomed from the start, and even addressing the subject is a reminder of every person he lost over it, one way or the other. So when Ianto wants to discuss this now, after Jack's most recent and most dramatic death that took the Hub and the remainder of Torchwood with it, I think Jack more or less excepts Ianto to be finally unable to deal with it. He can't change it, he can't (and won't) lie about it, there's no point in sugar-coating the truth, so it may sound a bit brusque, but I think that's also because he's essentially preparing himself for Ianto to break off whatever relationship they've had so far. Especially when Ianto brings up the point about aging that bothered Alice so much she wanted Jack out of her life, just like her mother. Most recently a bare couple of days before. And Alice's other point, that Jack was dangerous to the people around him... well, the explosion already proved that, just in case Ianto (or Jack) needed another reminder.

And then it's a bit like the end of They Keep Killing Suzie all over again, with Ianto actually surprising Jack, pretty much declaring this a relationship - 'We better make the most of it then'. Because the thing is, Jack couldn't ask then, not after the whole Lisa disaster, and I don't think he believes he really has the right to offer a relationship that is fraught with so many issues and bound to be both painful and dangerous to the person he loved, so once again it has to be Ianto.

But looking at Jack's smile, I think it's pretty clear he's mostly happy about it. It's a bit bittersweet, not the usual brilliant movie star smile, because he can't ignore the knowledge that at one point this is going to hurt like hell, certainly him, more likely both of them, but it's genuine.



And considering all the 'love' vs. 'just sex' debates during S2, it's maybe worth pointing out that it's made very clear that Jack's reaction has nothing to do with kinky stopwatch sex this time ('the world is ending').

And at this point at the very latest? It's no longer unrequited.

I'm not even going to squint at my flist (or lj generally speaking) until I've watched S3, because I suspect I'm already a tiny bit spoiled anyway, but I'll just post my thoughts about the audio plays in the meantime. Since I'm usually a very visual person I wasn't sure at all how I'd do without the optic element, but scribbling happened anyway; I think it's something of a pavlovian reflex by now. Actual pen & paper scribbling even, in my computerless holiday state. Now posting that before actually watching S3 is clearly an exercise in masochism and superfluousness, but OTOH I'm kind of curious how my interpretations compare to actual canon. Plus, I have an unhealthy inability to throw away anything.

(And I'm almost willing to bet that I was & will be the only person to walk across the Möchsberg and the park in Hellbrunn with Jack and Gwen and Ianto saving the world in my ears, and a probably completely inane smile on my face. soavezefiretto was right, I so needed that IPod. *g*)


1. Asylum

Well, hallelujah. Thank you. Finally addressed at least to a certain extent some of the issues that needed addressing after the much too torture-happy S2. Wanted to hug PC Andy, several times. Really liked the story and would have loved to have a tv episode with it.

It only struck me just how wrong things have gone when Gwen gets the call that she's supposed to bring Frida to the Hub, and there was an alarm going off in my head. From a pure gut reaction, however nice Gwen was being about it, I didn't trust them, and Jack most especially, with that girl's well-being at all. Which is kind of problematic, if these are supposed to be the good guys. I have no idea if last season went intentionally in this direction, exploring the darker sides of TW, or if they looked at it and at least in retrospect realised that some of team TW's actions weren't looking so good especially in view of what happened over the last years during the Bushite 'war against terrorism', but the suggestion that TW itself might be the cause of violent anti-alien discrimination in the future certainly acknowleges that things are still far from right and that Jack isn't handling this as well as the thinks he is, or changed it as much as he wants to think he did.

After this episode I'm still not a hundred percent happy, but at least recognising something basic like that there are, oh, good and evil and all kinds of moral shades of grey aliens, and acting accordingly, is at least a start and makes me feel a bit easier. Given the admittedly very difficult situation they're working in that's at least something.

( Jack though... he's really a bit of mess, isn't he? )


2. Golden Age

Didn't do a lot for me, to be perfectly honest, the premise seemed a bit... extreme, maybe? Or maybe it's because I'm not British? And Ianto must be getting a bit tired by now of almost getting killed by Jack's psychotic exes...

'I just can't die, no matter how hard I try.' (Jack)

Was Jack actively trying at one point, hoping that it would finally stick, or did he just not care at all? (me, after Fragments and the 1300something deaths) Which I guess answers that question. And a pretty awful thing to say with that kind of offhandedness.

'I was only obeying orders.' And admittedly that phrase has very likely a less ominous ring to a British ear, but my brain can't stop itself from thinking, when else, where else, doing what else?

'Since when have you obeyed orders?' (Ianto)

Ianto is has probably made some educated guesses about Jack that are more right than wrong, but he's wrong here, because Jack clearly did then, even if it meant hurting someone he loved, and probably in a lot of other situations, because TW would hardly have tolerated someone who sabotaged them at every turn. They'd just have stuck him in the cell next to the weevil, or the contemporary equivalent thereof. The cell with the weevil, even. (Which, come to think of it, I wonder if they did, and how often, before he finally gave up.) Clearly the story about how exactly he came to join Torchwood is not one of Jack's favourite dinner time anecdotes.


3. The Dead Line

Good story, enjoyed it. Would have loved to see that one, too.

Really liked that Ianto has finally advanced to some kind of officially recognised boyfriend status, so that he gets to sit beside Jack while Gwen and Rhys go out to investigate, which is also where I could almost start to suspect that TPTB are actually reading my posts because that fixes my admittedly maybe not wholly rational S1 pet peeve with Gwen's death watch while Ianto secretly snuggles Jack's coat.

Ianto's speech was beautiful and quite heartbreaking (as was the music accompanying it, as well as the 'not just a blip in time' end), and didn't surprise me at all; this was pretty much what I expected from Ianto - no illusions about what he's doing and what he has and hasn't, and suffering from it. It shouldn't be so hard for him.

( But start *talking* to each, for god's sake. *sigh* )


What I do believe is that Jack will be fighting as long and as hard as possible that no one whom he was close to will ever be just a blip in time to him. This is after all the man who cares enough to regularly check on someone whom he's dated three decades earlier, for a few weeks, to see if she's okay. Jack's when, what & with whom anecdotes might be occasionally annoying, but he's clearly holding on to these memories.

Which is how I think he eventually turned into the Face of Boe - he didn't want to forget anyone and needed a bigger brain for that. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :)

Tired, cranky, headache. Don't want another family birthday. Even if it's my niece's. ::whine::


Since I never seem to have the time to actually sit/lie down and really read anything recently, I haven't much more than browsed through Russell T. Davis's book (although I have started at the beginning now, and it's rather fascinating. Also his frustration with TW 2.1, which I was going to say maybe was the reason why KKBB never completely worked for me, but apparently it got dumped on Chris Chibnall eventually...), reading a couple of pages here and there (so he wasn't completely happy with the Rose/Doctor.2 ending, either), but leafing through the pages I stumbled across this.

Put a man and a woman of roughly the same age on screen and you're telling a story. That's a love story. (Storytelling is very heterosexual in that sense. But that's why gay storytelling is exciting, because the images are still new.) The choice to put those two characters together on screen, in a story, is the crucial thing. Everything else is just detail. And luck. That's what makes you care. The archetypes. They run deep. [...] Man, woman, on screen = love story. Very little work necessary. (p 123)

Which I kind of agree with and kind of disagree, because while it's undoubtedly true, this (and I've said that before) is what for me makes so many of the heterosexual relationship on screen essentially uninteresting. Maybe/probably my brain is simply wired wrong, but if too much of the subsequent story relies just on this, and only this, I'll yawn and and switch off — or start slashing, depending on how interesting the rest of the show and the other characters are. It may be a love story, but it's also often (to me, at any rate) a boring love story. Now I'm not saying that I've never followed or enjoyed one of the will-they-or-won't-they-get-together storylines, but on the whole they don't make for the best storytelling, because once that question is resolved most of the time a) the show is over, b) they're heading towards break-up, or, special bullet point for Joss Whedon, c) someone gets killed.

So generally speaking putting a bit more work and character development into it is not actually a bad thing. The IMO still perfect example of Doing It Right are Sheridan and Delenn on Babylon 5, my OTPest OTP for something like a decade. It's hard to attempt looking at a show one has watched & rewatched with a fresh eye, but was there ever even the suspense of whether they'd get together? I don't think so, or at any rate one was rather more worried about them winning the war and saving the universe. Having a plot that encompasses and mingles action and romance rather than dividing it in two separate storylines, and upsetting a lot of tv gender clichés in the process is what made it so epic and unique. Thank you, MJS. :)

Now Joss Whedon frankly sucks at writing relationships, especially happy relationships, because as a rule he only sets them up to end them in the most painful way possible, but Buffy and Spike, in their own messed up way were a bit like that; even when it always was pretty clear they wouldn't have a happily ever after, they both learned something about themselves and each other in the process, which changed them for the better, it was plotty and not boring to watch. OTOH most of the male/female relationships on Angel were completely uninteresting; Cordelia/Angel as well as the Wesley/Fred/Gunn triangle, because they're indeed little more than man, woman, on screen = love story, and barely that, maybe partly because they never needed to work as relationships for the plot to go forward. I don't think saying that canonically Angel and Wesley had the most complex, if completely fucked up, relationship on that show has anything to do with slash googles, and one day I'm really going to write that essay. Or, Smallville, when I was still watching; Clark/Lex vs. Clark/Lana.

On a similar note, to be perfectly honest, Jack/Ianto would never have caught my interest, and certainly not got me writing all those endless rambling meta posts, if it hadn't come after Cyberwoman with the Fragments backstory and all the... if not exactly canonical, then at least canonically implied complexity and ambiguities resulting from that. So granted, once again a bit messed up, and maybe unhealthily codependent and whatnot, and apparently I've got a faible for that kind of thing, but take that away, and the banter-innuendo-coffee thing would be really kind of boring.

Well, in my opinion. It's pretty obvious that 90+% of fandom differs. Cf. above, brain wired wrong, and all that...

Quite embarrassingly long and rambling, and probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


( Torchwood 1.12 Captain Jack Harkness & 1.13 End of Days )


Plus a couple of questions...

- How much time elapsed between Jack's disappearance and his return? Weeks? Months? Is there any canon evidence that I missed? Fanon theories?

- Unless it occurred to Jack to disable the internal cameras and the CCTV outside between grabbing his coat and running after the TARDIS, there'd at least have been footage of Jack packing the jar with the hand and rushing outside, possibly even of the TARDIS, wouldn't there? They could trace Gwen's movements in the first episode after all, and the TARDIS landed right in front of the Millennium Centre.

- TW novels. ::sigh:: I've kind of given up on Another Life because it simply bored me. All the pieces are there, I could even see how that might work on screen, but in book form it never really comes alive in my head. So I'm just going to be shallow (more shallow, considering we're already talking tv tie-ins) and ask if there are worthwhile Jack/Ianto moments in any of the later ones that might persuade me to buy one or two of them... :)

( 1.05 Small Worlds & 1.06 Countycide )



Something that occurred to me is that for a show that has such brilliant emotional moments about love, loss, the meaning of life and everything, the actual relationship building on TW is generally a bit sketchy. It's not just Jack and Ianto, it's also Jack and Gwen - pushing that for about three episodes, then putting it on the back-burner for the rest of the season only to rekindle it with a vengance in S2. The most consistent relationship is the one between Owen and Toshiko, and there the changes are not so much about them, but Owen's character and attitude.

As for Jack/Ianto, looking at it from a writer's perspective I think the problem is that they've manoeuvred themselves into a bit of a corner with Jack's immortality, much like Joss Whedon did with Angel and the gypsy curse, which was a good idea for the Buffy/Angel storyline, but led to all kinds of awkwardness and ultimately a rather lame resolution in Smile Time.

I'm pretty sure that when resurrected!Jack got his own series no one thought about what it'd mean writing a relationship for him. What I could imagine is that Jack and Gwen were supposed to have this slightly angsty Mulder and Scully thing, only with Gwen and her boyfriend and Jack shagging the teaboy. And then they decided not to kill either Ianto or Rhys and were left with a bit of a problem, because while Gwen can easily marry Rhys and still have the impossible/unrequited love thing with Jack, to turn Jack/Ianto into some sort of actual relationship beyond 'just sex' takes a bit more of work, without being able to fall back on patterns and conventions. Love, even (or especially) on tv, needs at least the illusion of permanence, unless you're specifically setting out to make a point about the impossibility of that, and with Jack that isn't really an option any longer. What we learn about Jack and Estelle in Small Worlds is a reminder of that, and perhaps a hint that Jack/Gwen isn't going to happen. They can't blend out that aspect anymore after all the angsting Jack does about his immortality in S1 and having established in DW that although he will die eventually, this will be billions of years in the future. Ianto who? Or, for the matter, Gwen who?.

The only option left is to take a brutally realistic carper diem approach and try to build a relationship around that knowledge, which is essentially Jack saying "I can't give you what you want (or will want, eventually); I can't even promise I'll remember your name." and Ianto, saying "I recognise that, but let's try it anyway, and can we talk about the 51st century omnisexual slut thing now ", which is not uninteresting, and I think could be done, especially on TW, but as far as tv relationships go it's rather bleak, and would take more thought and development than the show has been willing to give any of its relationships so far.

As of today I'm officially the complete loser sister of a Frau Doktor with boyfriend and daughter. Strangly enough though I'm not even particualrly bothered, and I haven't quite been able to decide whether that's a good thing or not...



And now without further ado, onto the Torchwood rewatchage. *g*

( TW 1.01 Everything Changes )


( 1.02 Day One )