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Miscellany & Captain Jack Harkness
May. 31st, 2008 12:04 amFirst: cheers! Sameer Mishra won the National Spelling Bee! He’s a fellow Hoosier (in fact, I know his sister), so I am filled with pride.
They have a spelling test here where you can see if you have the mad spelling skillz to make the quarter finals. I got a 24 and discovered that I pronounce many, many words wrong.
***
Second: this awesome Torchwood spoof, recced by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
visualthinker11. Because it’s so, so funny. I am sad that I can’t read whatever it is that’s on Ianto’s nametag. And their Jack is very amusing.
***
On the topic of Captain Jack Harkness.
He’s charming, sexy, ruthless, and very close to clinically sociopathic. (Think how he leaves the team at the end of season one. Gwen is right there—he could have offered a capsule explanation to her even as he scuttled off to the Doctor—but no, Jack Harkness keeps his mouth shut, and his team spends months fretting about his disappearance.)
So a very flawed character, in all kinds of ways that could be interesting if his flaws were ever allowed to mislead him. Jack, despite his blind spots, his insensitivity—it’s not that he doesn’t notice others’ feelings; he notices and doesn’t care—is right. Always. End of story. And if it looks like he isn’t, the episode is going to look something like this:
Gwen/Owen/Team Torchwood demand information about the menace of the week. For no particular reason, Jack refuses to explain anything. Gwen/etc. gets mad and investigates, then wishes she hadn’t when she learns the Awful Truth. Generally something terrible will happen that wouldn’t have if silly Gwen/etc. had just listened to Jack’s sage, if condescendingly delivered, advice.
Thus, Jack’s questionable decisions are retroactively exonerated. Always. The Torchwood writers are trying to have it both ways—Jack is deeply flawed, yet also an always-correct mentor figure (episodes tend to end with him explaining life to Gwen/etc). It’s not a functional combination.
Once, just once, I want him to be wrong. Jack the deeply flawed mentor figure who knows a lot yet makes mistakes would be an interesting story. Jack the evil plaster saint makes me want to break my TV.
They have a spelling test here where you can see if you have the mad spelling skillz to make the quarter finals. I got a 24 and discovered that I pronounce many, many words wrong.
***
Second: this awesome Torchwood spoof, recced by
visualthinker11. Because it’s so, so funny. I am sad that I can’t read whatever it is that’s on Ianto’s nametag. And their Jack is very amusing. ***
On the topic of Captain Jack Harkness.
He’s charming, sexy, ruthless, and very close to clinically sociopathic. (Think how he leaves the team at the end of season one. Gwen is right there—he could have offered a capsule explanation to her even as he scuttled off to the Doctor—but no, Jack Harkness keeps his mouth shut, and his team spends months fretting about his disappearance.)
So a very flawed character, in all kinds of ways that could be interesting if his flaws were ever allowed to mislead him. Jack, despite his blind spots, his insensitivity—it’s not that he doesn’t notice others’ feelings; he notices and doesn’t care—is right. Always. End of story. And if it looks like he isn’t, the episode is going to look something like this:
Gwen/Owen/Team Torchwood demand information about the menace of the week. For no particular reason, Jack refuses to explain anything. Gwen/etc. gets mad and investigates, then wishes she hadn’t when she learns the Awful Truth. Generally something terrible will happen that wouldn’t have if silly Gwen/etc. had just listened to Jack’s sage, if condescendingly delivered, advice.
Thus, Jack’s questionable decisions are retroactively exonerated. Always. The Torchwood writers are trying to have it both ways—Jack is deeply flawed, yet also an always-correct mentor figure (episodes tend to end with him explaining life to Gwen/etc). It’s not a functional combination.
Once, just once, I want him to be wrong. Jack the deeply flawed mentor figure who knows a lot yet makes mistakes would be an interesting story. Jack the evil plaster saint makes me want to break my TV.
