Mumblings to myself: Torchwood
Apr. 14th, 2015 07:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkBefore I start, full disclaimer: I have not watched all of the Torchwood episodes (or basically any of the Doctor Who episodes with Jack Harkness in them), so if I'm totally wrong in my evaluations, someone please point me to the relevant episodes.
The thing that disappoints me about Jack Harkness as he appears in Torchwood (again, from the episodes I've seen) is that in certain ways, he lacks depth. And I mean this as a writing problem, not as an acting problem, because John Barrowman is fantastic and he does show emotional depth in situations involving his brother, for example, and the 1940s Captain Jack Harkness who died.
It's just...other than those situations (and apparently Children of Earth/Season 3, which I didn't watch), Jack Harkness is so...not angsty. And I mean, it's not like I want his character to be a brooding emo loner. But think about it.
Jack has been alive for centuries. His immortality is of the sort that he literally does die, he just spontaneously revives after dying, but he experiences the full pain of death each time. So, he's been killed countless times (not to mention the horror show that was him being buried alive for almost two millenia (?)). He's been stranded from his home time for centuries. He's had to watch many of the people he loved and cared about die time and time again. He was even tortured for an indeterminate amount of time in the 1920s (specifically, he was killed over and over again by people who were trying to understand his immortality).
You'd think going through these things would make someone at least a little upset.
But Torchwood barely (if at all) touches upon what these kinds of experiences would do to a person.
The thing that disappoints me about Jack Harkness as he appears in Torchwood (again, from the episodes I've seen) is that in certain ways, he lacks depth. And I mean this as a writing problem, not as an acting problem, because John Barrowman is fantastic and he does show emotional depth in situations involving his brother, for example, and the 1940s Captain Jack Harkness who died.
It's just...other than those situations (and apparently Children of Earth/Season 3, which I didn't watch), Jack Harkness is so...not angsty. And I mean, it's not like I want his character to be a brooding emo loner. But think about it.
Jack has been alive for centuries. His immortality is of the sort that he literally does die, he just spontaneously revives after dying, but he experiences the full pain of death each time. So, he's been killed countless times (not to mention the horror show that was him being buried alive for almost two millenia (?)). He's been stranded from his home time for centuries. He's had to watch many of the people he loved and cared about die time and time again. He was even tortured for an indeterminate amount of time in the 1920s (specifically, he was killed over and over again by people who were trying to understand his immortality).
You'd think going through these things would make someone at least a little upset.
But Torchwood barely (if at all) touches upon what these kinds of experiences would do to a person.
