Jack Harkness

Latest revision as of 05:53, 20 March 2025

Jack Harkness is a male television character who features in Doctor Who.

Biography

Origin

Jack Harkness

It was known that he as an inhabitant of the 51st century. (Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) He had a younger brother who was known as Gray. (Torchwood: Adam) As a young boy, he was noted to had lived in a tiny place on the Boeshane Peninsula. (Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords) In those years, he spent time with his brother and father playing cricket where the family wold sing around a campfire. One day, their home came to be attacked by a host of creatures in what was described as the worst day of his life. He and his brother came to flee but ended up losing his brother Gray during the confusion after accidentally letting go of his hand. Upon returning home, he found his mother crying over his fathers dead body where he spent years looking for Gray without success. Eventually, he came to bury the memory of what happened along with all the happy memories of his father. (Torchwood: Adam)

He eventually came to be the first person from there to sign up with the Time Agency. (Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords) He was known to had gone undercover during World War II in 1941 where he assumed the identity of an American volunteer named Captain Jack Harkness who had died in the prior January. (Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness)

Later on, he came to work with a fellow Time Agent who went to operate under the name of John Hart where the both were partners both professionally and sexually. At one point, the pair spent five years in a two-week time loop where they became the equivalent of a married couple after spending so much time together. (Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)

Once he was sentenced to death, he ordered four hypervodkas as a last meal and ended up bedding both executioners at the same time. (Doctor Who: The Doctor Dances)

At some point, he came to acquire a small sleek Chula warship that had been fitted for human use and could turn invisible. Afterwards, Jack came to find out that the Agency had erased two years of his memory. He then left the Agency and became a time-travelling con artist where he ran scams using his knowledge of future events. Typically, he preferred schemes that involved collecting payment for items he knew would be destroyed before the buyer could see them. Thus, he would often find pieces of space junk that he directed at the future disaster site where he would sell the items to passers-by and allow the goods to be destroyed before the merchandise could be picked up by the buyer (Doctor Who: The Empty Child)

Doctor Who

The former Time Agent came to be a con man where one of his scams involved stealing a Chula ambulance with him crashing it during World War II during the London Blitz. Looking to sell his acquisition, he pretended to be an American volunteer in the Royal Air Force but was unwittingly responsible for unleashing a nanomachine plague on London in 1941. It was during this time that he first spotted Rose Tyler hanging from a barrage balloon where he saved her by taking her onto his ship. She came to quickly deduce that he was from the future and it was in this time that he met her companion the Doctor. He came to believe that they were freelancers like himself but the Ninth Doctor quickly determined that the site of the Chula ambulance was where the Empty Child plague had begun though Harkness denied any responsibility as he claimed that the ship was simply space junk. (Doctor Who: The Empty Child)

After visiting Kyoto, Japan in 1336, Jack, the Doctor and Rose were abducted by transmat beams, and awoke on the Game Station. Jack found himself on a makeover game show hosted by Trine-E and Zu-Zana. When the android hosts threatened him, he shot them, and improvised a more powerful gun out of their defabricator. Jack met up with the Doctor and an escapee from the deadly games, Lynda Moss, and tracked down Rose. They raced to save Rose from The Weakest Link hosted by a deadly Anne Droid; they were unsuccessful in preventing the Anne Droid from seemingly killing Rose. Completely heartbroken, Jack was tempted to shoot the staff behind the games and threatened to kill the guards when they arrested the Doctor and Lynda, only to get arrested himself for breaking in and out of the games. However, he and the Doctor physically overpowered the guards and set off to stop the deadly 'entertainment'. Taking 'hostages' in the control room, Jack found the TARDIS stowed away in an archive room. Using the TARDIS, he discovered the laser that 'killed' the games' losers was actually teleporting them across space. Puzzled, the Doctor discovered that the Game Station was unknowingly broadcasting a secondary signal to an empty location of space, which was where all the losers ended up. Disabling the signal, the Doctor was horrified to find two hundred Dalek battleships. Establishing contact, the Doctor learned his old foes had taken Rose hostage, but promised the Daleks that he would rescue her and destroy them for the final time. (Doctor Who: Bad Wolf)

Jack and the Doctor flew the TARDIS into the Dalek mothership, rescued Rose and discovered the Dalek Emperor was controlling the Game Station and turning the contestants into Daleks. Returning to the Game Station to prepare for the battle ahead, Jack formed a resistance group consisting of contestants and staff members to fight the Daleks. Knowing he was fighting a losing battle and would most certainly perish, Jack kissed Rose and the Doctor goodbye. In the ensuing battle, all of the resistance were killed and the Doctor sent Rose home in the TARDIS. Now the last man fighting, Jack was killed defending the satellite against the Daleks as they attacked the Game Station, and seemingly accepted his death. Rose Tyler, while holding the powers of the Time Vortex which turned her into the Bad Wolf, returned to the Game Station, destroyed the Daleks, and resurrected Jack. The TARDIS departed before Jack could rejoin them since his new immortal nature perverted the Laws of Time, and would interfere with the operations of the TARDIS. He was left stranded on the satellite. (Doctor Who: The Parting of the Ways)

He came to use the Time Agency's vortex manipulator he kept on his person to return to Cardiff that was the site of an active space-time rift. Jack reasoned that the TARDIS wold come to this site in order to refuel itself thus giving him an opportunity to reunite with the Doctor. Thus, he looked to go back to the early 21t century but accidentally ended up in 1869 with the vortex manipulator burning itself out leaving him stranded in that era. (Doctor Who: Utopia)

Torchwood

In 1899, Torchwood Cardiff agents Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd found out about Jack. They captured and tortured him to discover why he could not die and what connection he had to the Doctor, who the Torchwood Institute had designated an enemy. After telling them that the Doctor was a hero who would save them from aliens, Jack was released on the condition that he undertake a mission for Torchwood. Jack was sent to stop a criminal Blowfish, which he returned to Torchwood Three's Hub, only to see it killed by a shot to the head. Disgusted by Torchwood's methods, Jack walked away from the organisation. He ended up in a bar, where he drowned his sorrows alone until a young cartomancer offered to read him his fortune. She gave a completely accurate prophecy of the Doctor's eventual return to Cardiff 100 years into the future. Left with nothing to do but wait for a full century until his version of the Doctor coincided with his timeline, Jack reconsidered Torchwood's offer and began working for them and awaiting the Doctor's return. Jack continued working for Torchwood for over a hundred years, still pursuing his goal of finding the Doctor in the meantime. (Torchwood: Fragments)

Jack went to China during the Boxer Rebellion, where he worked with explosives. (Torchwood: The Blood Line) In 1909, Jack was travelling through Lahore by train with a group of soldiers under his command, when they were killed by Fairies. Some of the soldiers had recently run over and killed one of the Fairies' Chosen Ones. In revenge, the Fairies suffocated the soldiers by forcing rose petals down their throats. (Torchwood: Small Worlds)

The next year, after Angelo got out of jail, Jack returned claiming that he had only been playing dead. Angelo did not believe Jack, however, and assumed that Jack was the Devil. Angelo stabbed Jack and was shocked when Jack came back to life. Jack was then chained up and repeatedly killed, since people assumed that his immortality was either a miracle or a blessing. Jack then saw three men come to the room where he was chained, but he never learned who they were. Angelo decided to help Jack escape, but Jack jumped off of a building and disappeared from Angelo's life. (Torchwood: Immortal Sins)

During the war, he met Estelle Cole. The pair became lovers and spent some time in London together. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Somehow, however, this never happened, and they lost touch with one another. (Torchwood: Small Worlds)

Overview

Personality and attributes

After joining the Time Agency, people were proud that he was the first from the Boeshane Peninsula to join the organization and used to call him the Face of Boe. (Doctor Who: The Last of the Time Lords) The name Jack Harkness was actually an identity he stole from an American volunteer who had been killed in World War II. (Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness)

Powers and abilities

Due to being from the 51st century, he possessed a kind of pheromones that made him naturally smell nice with it being confused for being aftershave by earlier eras. (Torchwood: Fragments)

After his death, he was brought back to life by Rose Tyler after she looked into the heart of the TARDIS and gained god-like powers. This had the effect of turning Jack Harkness into a fixed point in time and space that was never meant to have happened. Thus, his existence was seen with revulsion by time sensitive beings who reacted impulsively to be away from him. (Doctor Who: Utopia)

Notes

• Jack Harkness was portrayed by actor John Barrowman where he featured in the setting of the Doctor Who universe.
• In naming the character, executive producer and head writer Russell T Davies drew inspiration from the Marvel Comics character Agatha Harkness.

In other media

Audio Books

Books

Appearances

• Doctor Who:
• Torchwood:

External Links

• Doctor Who Wiki Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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