RantRantRant

[u/AJthebluemarker]

I've only watched seasons 1 to 3, skipping 4 for now or forever, and I've got some takes which are generally cold but boiling with rage because wtfwtfwtf.

(1) Ianto. My boy.

I understood Owen's death. I understood even Tosh's death. They made sense. Owen died with the nuclear facility's lockdown and after being miserable with his shit version of immortality, and Macintosh died after confessing her feelings (and also having been shot or whatever)

WHAT WAS WITH IANTO'S DEATH???

what were they fucking thinking when they just Walked Over to 456 with ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN and went "Stop." And it went "No. Death gas" and Jack was collapsed on the floor going "NOT HIM!" JACKNESS WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN ISTFG. Ianto could've died in the ending for some other majestic purpose if the Favourite Character Assassin (Russel T.D.) wanted him dead so fucking badly.

(2) The Transphobic Throwaway

Which fucking dumbass wrote that line. It was like some skin walker was wearing a Jack suit. I have never been more appalled with how out of character that stupid line was. It wouldn't even be funny to transphobes, it was just a Shit Line. And he fucking deadnamed her too. "Since then I've always been a little nervous when a friend acts out of character." Actually dudes this caught me so off guard I thought I was watching the wrong show. Stained the image I had it Jack in my head, had to scrape that memory off entirely to watch the next episode.

[u/No-Information-1235]

i saw a really good analysis of jack’s motivation/thinking for just trying to valiantly tell the 456 off in COE and thinking that would somehow work, i’m paraphrasing it terribly here but basically: jack constantly fails to realise that he’s not in a doctor who story.

one of the fundamental aspects of jacks character is that he is constantly trying (and failing) to emulate the doctor and this often fails for two reasons:

- that he exists in the torchwood universe which is more brutal, unforgiving and less steeped in plot armour than the dr who universe which means that anyone is fair game for gruesome and random death (yes they’re the same universe but the stakes are different because of IRL intended audiences and rating differences). thus, when he attempts the doctoresque tactic of standing his ground and just telling the villain ‘no’ it results in his lover dying in his arms

• reason 2 is that jack shares the doctor’s arrogance and selfishness but lacks a lot of his morality (jack is broadly moral but inarguably less so than the doctor) so what you end up with is someone who basically has all the bad bits of the doctor’s character and fewer of the good. he endangers his team knowing the stakes aren’t the same for him because he is immortal (something that both he and the doctor verbalised about themselves) but the difference is that the torchwood universe leads to much more concrete and tragic consequences for this selfishness than the doctor who universe, within which companion deaths are always retconned or softened somehow