Some talk of Torchwood and Doctor Who

[eumelia]

And why I still can't re-watch Torchwood: Children of Earth.

So I saw The Eleventh Hour yesterday and loved it.
Adored it even.
I jumped out of my skin when that snake thing/Prisoner Zero appeared... dear god, Moffat will be the death of me this season.

But.

I'm still mad at him. The Doctor, I mean.

I'm mad at him for not saving the Earth during the 456 debacle. Did he have a good reason? Possibly, fixed event in time and all that.

As explanations go, it's not a bad one. And still. The Doctor saves the planet when it's convenient for him to do so. When it's easy for him. I know, I know, it's never really easy for him, but all in all, if it doesn't affect him directly, or if he doesn't happen to be on earth, he doesn't care.

He doesn't, because he knows the bigger picture. Humanity will prevail, travel the stars, colonise Mars and the Boesahne Peninsula.

We make a Hero out of a Trickster and that's never a smart thing to do. Especially when the Tricksters themselves like the moniker of hero and never quite manage to be heroic.

Jack and The Doctor parallel each other in this. I'm quite sure that eventually Jack will simply be The Captain, once you live long enough, your title is what you're remembered for - names are as dynamic as the rest of you. Titles though, titles have to be forcibly taken.

Jack I think, would always rather be a lover than a fighter, his condition disables him from the nobility necessary to be a Hero.
The Doctor runs.
Always running for his life, whether it's towards danger or flinging his way out of it, it's always completely crazy and on the spot ingenuity.

Yet, I find myself mad at him. Still mad at him for his treatment of those who love him (Jack, Martha, Donna - the only one who didn't get the short end of the stick in that regard is Rose...) and I can't help but feel that we're more like Jack, Martha, Donna, Sarah Jane... we give everything and we're abandoned.
He comes back, different, happy-go-lucky and we forgive him.

That's what you do with people you love and who you know love you, but sorta suck at showing it.

The finale sequence, where The Doctor as he dies, flies around through time and gets him reward by saving his former companions was gorgeous. Self-indulgent and saccharine, but still gorgeous. Mainly because as far as goodbyes go, it was good closure. I mean, it sucked for Donna, but that was what he was able to give her. For Jack, his story isn't over, not really, but I doubt we'll see him soon with the Eleventh, not with the Tenth giving him a note enabling his to screw around, when before he was all "behave".

Jack can probably understand why the Doctor wasn't there to save him from his actions. Jack will survive, he has no choice and I can't really comprehend what he's do if he had the choice not to, but he moves on. His legacy won't. No one remains to remember Jack and that's probably the most horrible thing of all when it comes to immortality.

His promise to Ianto is hollow, because while I believe he'll remember Ianto, he'll become "I once dated an Archivist with a clothes fetish" and that's all Jack can contain. Jack isn't the Doctor, he wasn't meant to see the ages.

Where was I?

I have TW:CoE on DVD. It's being rerun on my television. I watched it three times in the seven days after it aired back in July '09.

I can't.

Because the Doctor, who we named (and he rolled with it) our hero abandoned humanity to be it's worst enemy.

The 456 could have been anything, Jack was forced to destroy his legacy, Ianto died because Jack doesn't have the Doctor's ingenuity and because Ianto believed in Jack as much as Jack believes in the Doctor.
As much as we do.

It didn't turn out very well.

The Doctor quoted the Shadow Proclamation to the Panopticonic warden aliens. He declared himself Earth defender.

The Doctor, is a liar.

But then, that's what one does when your main weapon of choice is talking at people.

I'm quite sure I'll re-watch TW:CoE when I do a Nu-Who-Verse re-watch sometime soon. But right now, I don't feel like I'm bigger on the inside. I love the Doctor. I'm still not sure that I totally forgive him for not making us better than we should have been and abandoning Jack.
Again.

How's that for silly, self-indulgent meta?

Comments

[st_aurafina]

Maybe Harriet Jones was right? He's not always going to be there, it's wrong to rely on him.

I do think it was an important part of the story that we see Jack trying to be everything the Doctor is, and not being able to measure up - it was a doomed situation for him, and for the team, because Jack isn't the Doctor, as much as he tries to convince everyone around him that he is. His methods were successful, but they were brutal and they cost him dearly.

Not that I've been able to rewatch COE either. It's too much for me. I'm sticking to SJA and Who - adult stories in this universe, when they're properly told like they were in COE are just too hard to bear.

[eumelia]

She was absolutely right, this is all very much retroactive thinking on my part - despite Gwen's message, I'm agree with lilacsigil, it was a minor threat in the grand scheme of the way the Doctor sees time, but so was Waters of Mars and look what had to happen in order for him to intervene... and it didn't make a difference in the end either.

I think it made a grand story, COE, in Jack's arch, him emulating the Doctor (and why do you say he didn't succeed in measuring up, he did what Nine would have done who was more flexible when it came to ethics... Ten's absolutism was very problematic for me, many times).

Still, I said this was self-indulgent meta, right?