sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 11:10 am
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 11:10 am
Entry tags:
Second City Torchwood, 3/3
Title: Second City Torchwood, Part III: Episodes 1x15 - 1x20
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: In the final sweeping episodes of the season Jack and Tosh are flung backwards in time only to encounter the Doctor, while the rest of the team works frantically to save them -- and then to save themselves from the Rift, thrown wide and producing monsters out of their worst nightmares. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Torchwood creative team still has many obstacles to overcome.
Second City Torchwood
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x15: From Out Of The Rain
Story & Teleplay by: Edgar van Scyoc
INT - EVENING - MUSIC BOX THEATER
IAN and JACK are sitting in the back row of the theater; JACK has an enormous box of popcorn.
IAN
I love movies.
JACK
Me too. The cinema, really, though. Popcorn...[offers IAN some; IAN waves it off] Sticky candy...making out in the dark, in public --
IAN
I was going to say that my dad used to take me here on weekends. Thanks for that, though.
JACK
I don't get to go to the cinema very often. It's exotic, to me.
IAN
Apparently so.
JACK
Listen, I...[long pause]
IAN
Eloquent.
JACK
I may have been something of an arse lately.
IAN looks at him questioningly.
JACK
Would you like to get something to eat when we're done here? Barring any alien invasions or hauntings or whatnot.
IAN
Are...are we on a date?
JACK
Do you want it to be?
IAN
I'm not making out with you during the movie.
JACK
But that's a ye --
IAN
Yes, all right? [deep breath] Yes. Sure.
JACK grins.
JACK
All right then.
***
Spoilers for Episode 1x16, "Captain Jack Harkness":
Word for "Captain Jack Harkness" is that it will involve Jack traveling backwards in time for a long-denied reunion; John Barrowman will reprise his role as the mysterious Doctor for at least part of the episode. It is said to be light on Gwen, though there will be plenty of action for Ian, Owen, and the twins. It is even rumored that Ian will shoot one or both of the twins in order to stop them from committing a disastrous mistake.
Later Season Spoilers:
In an interview with People Magazine, David Tennant confirmed that he will return for a second season as Captain Jack Harkness, though he warned that there will be changes: "Torchwood's not a promise of a very long life, in fact quite the reverse. People die all the time; people change. Torchwood is going to undergo some very big changes in the last few episodes of the season."
He declined to confirm the rumor that his loyal lieutenant, Owen Harper, will die in the season finale.
***
Tosh had never seen Jack's face light up as thoroughly as it did when they walked into the abandoned dance hall just west of the river and walked out of the 21st century entirely.
"It's a temporal displacement," he said happily, bouncing on his toes. "My god! This is brilliant."
They were standing on the edge of a dance floor as people swirled around them -- the men almost all in uniform, the women wearing dresses that looked like something out of a historical romance. Which it almost was, Tosh realized; the posters on the walls were for war bonds.
"1942," Jack said, consulting a sign on the door that read KISS THE BOYS GOODBYE DANCE. "We're in 1942."
"Uh, Jack," Tosh said.
"Come on, I think I know that horn," he said, dragging her around the edge of the floor, towards the band-box. He stopped and stepped around her, so that she was standing staring at the band and he was holding her shoulders. A black man jumped out of his chair as they stopped and began a furious, energetic horn solo.
"That's James Ragtime," he said in her ear, voice full of awe. "He was the biggest jazz trumpeter in Chicago, bigger than Louis Armstrong in his day."
"Jack, people are staring," Tosh whispered.
"At us?"
"At me. I'm a little Japanese for 1942 in America," she whispered.
"Relax, you're with the Captain," he said.
"We should be finding a way back out of the displacement."
"Just one song," Jack said, and when she looked up at his face it was so pleased, so utterly at peace for the first time ever, that she bit her tongue and held herself still and listened.
***
"How long since they called in?" Owen asked, sifting through the loose pages and files on Jack's desk as if the answer might lie there somewhere.
"They ended radio contact at about 2:30, nothing unusual," Ian answered, biting his lip. "I tried to call them up at four to see if they'd be back here and if I should order dinner, didn't get a reply."
"I'm getting to the warehouse now," Gwen said over their comms.
"It's a dance hall," Ian corrected.
"It looks a lot like a warehouse from here."
"It probably was before they converted it."
"Okay, you know what I'm bored by? Chicago architectural history," Owen announced. "Tommy, how are you coming with those Rift activity reports?"
"I'm not," Tommy said sourly. "Tosh left a program compiling with a deadlock against interrupting it. I'm trying to hack the deadlock now, but I can't get to the monitor records until I get past the compiler."
"The SUV is here," Gwen said. "No sign of Jack or Tosh."
"Got it!" Tommy said as the computers, in unison, flickered and groaned. "Oh man, Tosh's gonna kill me."
"Rift activity?" Owen prompted.
"Yeah, yeah -- oh. Uh," Tommy said. "Ian, what was the address they were at?"
"Canal and -- "
"-- Polk," Tommy joined in grimly. "There was a Rift spike right there."
"When?" Owen barked.
"Two-thirty-eight this afternoon."
Ian tapped his comm. "Gwen, don't go in the warehouse. Jack and Tosh may have gotten swept up in a Rift spike."
"Excuse me?" Owen said. "Gwen, it's fine, there's no activity now, you can go in."
"And what if she -- "
"Shut up, Ian," Owen snapped. "We won't find out anything by staring at it."
"There's a manager's office around to the side," Gwen said. "I'll see if I can find anyone to talk to."
"Ian, start researching the dance hall, see what you can come up with," Owen said, and Ian stopped staring gapemouthed at him and obeyed. "Tommy, keep on the monitor. The first time that area shows any activity, tell Gwen to get out. We'll get them home."
***
The song was ending and Tosh was getting ready to really insist that they had to find a way back to, you know, the next century, when someone stepped up to them and punched Jack hard in the shoulder.
Jack lost his balance for a second, knocking into Tosh and then catching her before she fell, shooting a hand out to prop himself against the wall. He turned, ready for a fight --
"Captain Jack Harkness," the man said with a grin. "I thought you were shipping out last night."
Jack stared at him, heat rising in his cheeks, heart in his mouth.
"Marcus," he said. Marcus gave him a look, his patented Not in front of the straight people look.
"What happened, did you go AWOL to hear James Ragtime?" he asked. "Who's your friend?"
"Ah! Uh. No, we were delayed," Jack said. "This is Toshiko Sato, she's a special translator -- I'm flying her out tomorrow."
"One last night in town, huh?" Marcus asked.
"Yeah," he said shakily, and gave Marcus his best smile, the one for really special occasions, the one that said we will be having sex at some point in the next hour.
***
"Found them!" Ian called triumphantly, and the conference-room screen lit up with an enlarged scan of a newspaper clipping. Tommy looked up and made a soft, desperate sound.
In the photograph, Jack and Tosh were standing in a doorway with another man in uniform and an elderly gentleman in a cravat. They looked all right -- surprised, but not injured or frightened.
"Tosh was wearing that this morning," Owen said, pointing at her dress.
"Why were you staring at her dress?" Tommy asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, for christ's -- all it means is that it can't be that long between them disappearing and this picture getting taken."
"May of 1942," Ian called.
"Springtime for Hitler," Owen muttered.
"The picture was taken at something called the Kiss The Boys Goodbye Dance," Ian said. "The newspaper says that's Captain Marcus Graham, Captain Jack Harkness, Special Translator Toshiko Sato, and dance-hall manager Bilis Manger."
"Bilis Manger?" Gwen asked in their ears. "That's the same name as the manager now."
"His son, maybe?" Ian said.
"He's kind of old, but could be. I think he's more of a caretaker than a manager, this place hasn't been used in years. Apparently the ground floor is mostly collapsed into the basement, which is sinking, and the walls aren't very stable."
"And that's because of...." Ian tapped a few keys into the computer. "A series of earthquakes off the New Madrid faultline that hit Chicago in..."
"Wait, let me guess," Owen said drily. "May of 1942."
"The same evening that photograph was taken," Ian confirmed. "Five or six people died...no mention of a Captain Jack Harkness or Toshiko Sato on the list of the injured or dead, but that doesn't mean much, another five bodies were never recovered, probably washed out into the river."
"We gotta get them out of there," Owen said.
"There isn't any mention of Tosh in any records I can access past that, so there's a pretty good chance we did," Ian said. "Did? Will?"
"Tosh was working on a formula to predict Rift spikes, maybe even create artificial ones," Tommy said. "If we have enough information from this one, we might be able to build our own. Bring them back."
Ian and Owen both looked at Tommy, who was already at work on the computer again.
"Problem is you need information from the past side of the Rift..." Tommy paused. "Which Tosh would know! Gwen, are you still there?"
"Still here!" Gwen said, sounding as if she'd gone back outside.
"If Tosh knew of a way to open the Rift she'd have left a message for us. For me. Look around and see if you can find something durable that would protect a message -- a canister or a box."
"The basement was never cleared out, that's probably where she'd hide it," Gwen said. "I'll get Bilis to let me in. Nice old guy."
"This is weird," Ian said, standing at the computer.
"What's that?"
"There's no official military record for Captain Jack Harkness in the US Army Air Forces or in the RAF," Ian said. "But I've got three newspaper hits on his name as a pilot. One in 1943, two in 1945."
"Maybe we got Tosh out and not Jack," Tommy said hollowly.
"We'll get them both," Owen snarled.
***
"Jack," Tosh said, as she sat at one of the small tables and worked at the equations Tommy would need to save them. "Who is Marcus?"
"Captain Marcus Graham," Jack said, watching Marcus watch him from across the room. He'd edged them away with an excuse, that he needed to chaperone Tosh; it would give him time to regain his composure.
"He knows you," she said, carefully not looking up. "You've been in this time period before."
"Yeah," he replied, hoping she wouldn't press further.
"Are we in any danger of running into you tonight? Because that would really fuck up my math."
Jack chuckled. "No. The other Jack Harkness -- volunteer from the RAF to train the new boys -- he shipped out yesterday."
"And Marcus?"
Jack shrugged. "Marcus was...a good time. I doubt I was much more to him. He was shot down, he died...he dies about a week from now."
Tosh looked up at him finally.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Me too."
"Do you think it's -- "
"Fate? The thought crossed my mind."
Tosh fiddled with her pen. "This is going to take me a while, Jack. You should go. Over there. Where he is. You know."
"This era...this was a great time," he said softly, absently. "Beautiful music, beautiful girls, beautiful boys, and everything was so -- urgent, because of the war. It was delicious, like the tang in a good orange. But it had its down-sides, as well." He pushed himself out of the chair. "Still, I can -- "
He froze, the relaxation from the music overtaken by an all-body tension as he looked up. Tosh turned to look too; a man in black jeans and a very non-military leather jacket was wandering through the crowds, face set and dark.
"Isn't that -- "
"The Doctor," Jack breathed. "Stay here."
He took off across the dance floor, the fastest way to the other side of the room, dodging and darting around the spinning couples. A few people laughed; others moaned at the lack of decorum soldiers had these days. Just before Jack reached him, and seemingly without effort or even notice, the Doctor turned and slipped through a doorway. Jack disappeared after.
Tosh bent back to her mathematics. If she could get the formula to Tommy in time, they might be able to open a localized Rift -- enough to get her and Jack at least close to home.
***
Transcript from the DVD Extras, Torchwood, Season One: The Doctor Sings
John Barrowman: This is, hahah, this is for the DVD extras, everbody dance! No, okay, not yet. I am here to do a little number as long as we have this beautiful 1940s set and these beautiful 1940s people here today, and I think that while you may not like him right now, you'll find this a very fitting number for the Doctor in the end.
Here we go. Take one, singing I Would Do Anything For You by the late, great Fats Waller. Ready? Camera! And! Action!
I would swim the ocean wide,
I would cross the great divide
I would do
Anything for you --
I would take a trip to Mars
I would even count the stars
I would do
Anything for you...
***
"Doctor," Jack said, and his voice echoed in the empty room.
The man in the leather jacket didn't turn around; he seemed to be studying one of the storage closet's walls. He was a handsome man -- tall, broad-shouldered, with brown hair a trifle shorter than Jack's own. He wore his clothing well. Thick, steady boots on his feet, useful for running.
"Do I know you?" the Doctor asked. The same American accent, a hint of a drawl through perfect white teeth.
"You might," Jack said. "You could find out for sure if you turned around."
The Doctor pivoted slowly. His eyes were cold and hard and old, older even than the eyes Jack saw when he looked in the mirror every morning.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said, offering his hand. The Doctor glanced down at it, then back up at Jack. "And you're called Doctor."
"That's right."
"Doctor who?"
"Just Doctor. The Doctor for formal occasions," the Doctor said.
"You're a time-traveler."
"Among other things. I don't like labels," the Doctor added.
"Why are you here?"
"One of life's most difficult questions. Metaphysically, spiritually, ecologically, who knows?" the Doctor gave him a faint and cruel smile. "Geographically and temporally, well. There's something a little amiss around here. Turns out it's you. Kinda. Do you have any idea how wrong you are?" he asked.
Something broke inside Jack, a tight knot of tension. "Yes," he whispered.
The Doctor studied him clinically. He tilted his head, pursed his lips. "What happened to you?"
"I -- " Jack groped for words. "I thought you might know."
"I don't have a clue, sorry."
Jack rubbed his face. It had been a century at least since he'd had to do any serious non-linear timelining, and it was killing his head.
"I'm stuck in the wrong time," he said finally, because that was at least something the Doctor could help with. "One of my people -- she and I are stuck here. We're not supposed to be in 1942. I'd get us back but my strap..." he gestured to his wrist, where the useless, bloody useless, wrist-strap lay dark and silent. "You have your ship. You can take us back to our own time."
"I don't take on hitchhikers," the Doctor replied. If it were possible, he grew that much harsher, that much more still. "Not anymore."
Jack moved forward, hoping to grab him or get him on his knees, something -- he was willing to take the man prisoner if it meant getting him and Toshiko back to 2008. He was halfway there when the Doctor shot from the hip and his world filled with electric-blue pain.
The Doctor checked the power level on the sonic blaster, nodded, and holstered it under his coat again.
"What am I going to do with you, Captain Jack Harkness?" he sighed.
***
"Tommy, I think I've found something from Tosh," Gwen said over the radio. Tommy sat up straight from his hunch over the computer, and Ian glanced at Owen.
"Read it out, Gwen," he said, and typed furiously as she read off a complex formula. His hands were still poised expectantly over the keys when she stopped. "Is that all?"
"All except for a note -- she says to tell you she loves you," Gwen said.
"No, that's not the end of the formula! There's another three digits at least!"
"It looks like they've been burned out, I can't read them," Gwen said.
"But this is -- this is pointless without them!"
"We'll get there, Tommy, it's okay," Owen said.
"No, it's not! Someone's deliberately trying to stop us. Something wants my sister and Jack stuck in 1942! Someone wants them dead!" Tommy said hysterically.
"There's one other option," Owen said softly. Ian glanced at him.
"No. Nonononono, we're not going to just slam the disc down in the Rift Manipulator and throw it wide," he said.
"Just for a second," Owen said.
"It might resonate up against the last Rift spike," Tommy said thoughtfully. "It'd open a direct gate between 1942 and now."
"Are you listening to yourselves? We're not going to deliberately open a rift in space and time in the middle of urban Chicago!"
Tommy looked at Owen. "We have to do it before another spike."
"I have the safe code," Owen said.
"I can crack the electric code on the interior lock."
"You can't do this!" Ian said, following them, though he made no move to stop them.
"Watch us," Owen snarled.
***
When she couldn't find Jack immediately, Tosh did the sensible thing; she got a spare metal martini shaker from the bar, stuffed the equations inside it, and climbed down into the basement to hide it behind an electrical panel, where -- hopefully -- nobody would think to look for about sixty-five years.
She was climbing the stairs back to the dance floor when she felt it -- a slight little tremor, nothing bigger than you could feel on the El platform as the train roared past. Still, they weren't near any trains, certainly none that existed in 1942.
It happened twice more as she searched the crowds, and she wondered if maybe it was her; too much math, too many people in a too-hot room. She picked her way carefully to the front door and stepped out into the balmy May evening.
Jack was there, sitting on the steps -- or rather, a hunched figure in Jack's coat.
"Jack?" she asked, and from behind Jack another figure practically shot into the air.
"Hello," the man said -- the Doctor, smiling disarmingly at her. "Jack needed a little fresh air."
She was about to say that Jack could speak for himself if he were conscious, which it didn't look like he was, when she saw the glint of brushed steel in the Doctor's hand, and a second later she was falling stunned into his arms.
***
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x16: Captain Jack Harkness
Story & Teleplay by: Ellis Graveworthy
Directed by: David Tennant & Edgar van Scyoc
INT - HUB - EVENING
IAN is trying to get to TOMMY to stop him from cracking the safe.
IAN
This is a trap. This is a bad idea. Opening the Rift will incite chaos and destruction. Why do you think the call to the dance hall was anonymous? Someone is screwing with us and you're falling for it! We have time!
TOMMY
I'm not afraid of the Rift! I know what it does, I know how it works!
IAN
This isn't about getting Tosh and Jack home! This is about you -- this is about Diane!
TOMMY
Don't say her name. [the lock clicks open] Aha. Come to daddy.
OWEN
What the hell is that?
TOMMY
It's a key. It activates the Rift Manipulator.
OWEN
Jesus Christ.
IAN breaks away from OWEN and lunges for TOMMY; TOMMY backhands him and kicks him away while OWEN is still staring in shock. IAN groans.
TOMMY
Let's do this already, Owen.
***
Later, after a lot of things had gone down, some good and some terrifying, Tosh went looking for the security-camera footage of the Hub during her and Jack's absence. It was missing -- well, that wasn't so strange, given the mild concussion the mainframe must have had when the Rift was thrown wide -- but if it had been there...
She would have seen Tommy and Owen emerge from Jack's office and walk straight to the central column of the manipulator, Tommy carrying the key like a prize. Without audio she might not have understood all that was said, but she could see that while they fitted the key into the manipulator neither of them spoke. Nobody, probably, spoke again until Ian emerged from Jack's office, wiping blood from his nose and carrying a gun in one hand.
It would have been easy enough to imagine what he said -- "I can't let you, Tommy" or perhaps, "Owen, get out of the way".
It would have been flattering to have heard Tommy's reply -- "The Rift took my lover and my Captain. I won't let it take my sister as well."
"This isn't what Jack or Tosh would want," would be the next logical reply from Ian, who was cocking the gun as he spoke. And it was easy enough to imagine how Tommy would react to that.
"Give it your best shot, errand boy. Don't tell me you don't want your part-time fuck back."
But everything was still silent even when Ian pulled the trigger without flinching, and the little puff of gunpowder residue clouding around his hand was the only sure sign he'd fired. Other than Tommy, a bright red blossom spreading across his shirt, his hand going up to touch the blood from the gunshot wound in his shoulder.
And then slamming down on the key, pressing it into the machine.
She would have seen Owen drop to his knees next to Tommy, silently demanding to know what Ian had done, and Ian staring dazedly at the Rift Manipulator, until the entire Hub began to shake and pieces began to fall away. She would have seen a tendril of light snake out and snap around Ian's body, which would disappear when the light did.
But the files were gone, corrupted beyond repair or deleted by intention, and she never saw.
***
Jack woke on a metal-grating floor to a rough, metallic whooshing noise, sort of like a set of keys being dragged along a piano wire.
He opened his eyes without moving; from his vantage point on the floor he could see a pair of boots, a portion of what looked like a dry wooden tree trunk, and some of a wall.
He remembered, even after two hundred years; remembered the ship, the one that had flung him back in time and sentenced him to immortality. He remembered the Doctor. He remembered being stunned. He even knew the sensation; the roaring in his ears and the tingling over his skin were the aftereffects of a sonic blaster.
"You might as well get up," said a voice, and he pushed himself up on his elbows to see the Doctor looking over at him, sharp blue eyes not at all afraid or wary. "Miss Sato is over there," he added with a jerk of his head, and Jack saw Tosh lying on the other side of the room.
"What've you done?" he croaked.
"That's great. That's really great, coming from you. What I've done is get you and her out of a building about to be destroyed by an earthquake caused by the Rift opening. What you've done is given your people an unstable equation for a localized dual-point rift tunnel, and what they've done with that is tried to end causality. Why do I bother?"
Jack gaped at him.
"Humans," the Doctor said viciously, throwing a lever on the control console. "You blunder your way around space-time doing exactly what you want without any sense at all of what you're screwing up. Can you hear the heart of a TARDIS singing? Can you feel time on your skin? No, but does that stop you? It's like watching a deaf man tune a piano."
Jack latched onto one thing.
"What's a TARDIS?" he asked.
"What's a -- you mean you stole my ship, broke into my control room, ripped her poor wires out of her console, crossed them like you were hotwiring a Chevy, and you don't even know what this is?" the Doctor snarled, one hand lifting off the console to gesture at the room. "TARDIS! Time And Relative Dimensions In Space! Keep up, Harkness!"
"I'm sorry if I'm a little confused after you stunned and kidnapped me," Jack retorted.
"Saved your life and hauled you along so you could fix the hole your people ripped in reality? Yeah, sue me," the Doctor answered.
"Where are you taking us?"
"The point of error," the Doctor answered. "The collapse of the universe. All of existence has coalesced into a single point and it must be healed, and since it's your hands all over this you have to heal it."
"We're going to the end of the universe?" Jack asked.
"Yep. And it's happening in 1945." The whooshing noise stopped and the Doctor strode to the door, throwing it open. Jack got unsteadily to his feet and joined him, looking out.
"This is Chicago," the Doctor said, his voice gentler now. "Near the end of the second world war."
"I recognize it," Jack answered, and he did; he'd lived in Chicago then, he knew what the skyline looked like.
"Somewhere out there is some unreal thing made material. And now because of you I have to find it and destroy it. Way to go," the Doctor added. "Get Miss Sato. Time to save the universe again."
***
From Torchwords.com, official Torchwood behind-the-scenes blog: Ellis Graveworthy, post-airing writeup of The Empty Child.
We were castigated quite strongly for The Empty Child by professional critics, or at any rate paid ones. It is often considered a mistake to use an entire episode of one television show to launch a new spinoff show, but that honestly wasn't in my mind at all when I sat down to write The Empty Child. I wanted to make a point about war, and leading in from Captain Jack Harkness seemed to me like the perfect time to do so. We bookended the second world war in America fairly neatly, 1942 and 1945.
It must be said that while the critics were not thrilled with The Empty Child, it garnered the same sort of support from actual fans that CountryCide and From Out Of The Rain had received. Thinking people enjoy the arc of a plot over several episodes or even several seasons; Babylon 5, I think, amply proved that. But there is also a sort of charm in a small, self-contained, thoroughly complete story told in forty-two minutes. The mathematical exactness of it appeals. This episode combined the arc of plot -- Jack and Toshiko, falling through time with the Doctor -- and the precision of a small story, the story of a little boy looking for his father.
I liked that I didn't have to make him a real little boy, actually, that even within the confines of the story he was a metaphor, the "unreal thing made material". He represented the ceaselessness of war. Armed conflict ends only one of two ways: when the enemy is so thoroughly destroyed it can no longer fight back, or when intelligent people lay aside their bitterness and strike a peace accord. But that takes action, active thought, and very few wars throughout history have ended before one country has in effect been wiped from the map. As Americans I invite you to consider Sherman's march, as well as the Trail of Tears.
I think that Jack, who is essentially a warlike man, comes through an enormous change in The Empty Child. He takes responsibility for someone nobody else is willing to touch, claims the boy as his blood, and in doing so he does what nations never do: he owns up that he is at fault. None of them can be free until the boy is free; the Doctor and Toshiko can't leave, and that forces Jack into the position of putting other people above his own pride. If he can't take responsibility for his actions, the universe will end.
I think it's quite a lovely story, myself.
Still, it was nice to be scolded for artistic ineptitude rather than rampant homosexuality for a change. At least in this my skills as a writer are challenged, rather than my politics.
***
ALL NEW TORCHWOOD
Saturday night, 8/7 Central
EPISODE 1.18: Origins
Torchwood is fragmented, lying in ruins. Jack and Toshiko are trapped in the past; Tommy is bleeding to death next to an unconscious Owen on the floor of an unsteady Hub, and Ian has been drawn into the heart of the Rift itself. As Gwen races to save those she can, Ian, Tommy, and Owen experience the way in which they came to be part of Torchwood. Can Gwen get Tommy and Owen to safety? Will Jack and Tosh ever return? Will any of them be able to close the Rift before it shakes the earth free from reality, even if it means losing Ian forever to time?
***
Tamaki remembered.
USPAT, the United States Paranormal and Alien Taskforce, imprisoned him unfairly, he knew that. All he did was have the bad luck to be kidnapped, a hostage used to force Toshiko to finish their work on the sonic resonator and turn it over to whoever had him captive. He should have been set free; Toshiko should have been forgiven and they should have gone back to the university and kept working.
Instead here they were, imprisoned without trial in cells without windows, given a bucket to piss in and "food" that barely passed nutritional standards on a good day. He begged the voice in the ceiling to let him see Toshiko, just see her, just a glimpse, but it was five weeks before he was led out of his cell at the wrong time for exercise, the wrong time for the daily search.
He was shown into a room with a window set in one wall, a window looking out on a large empty space with a table and two chairs -- a two-way mirror. As they strapped him to a pipe and gagged him so he couldn't speak, he watched a man walking out to the table on the other side of the glass, tall and skinny but imposing in a long woolen military coat.
And then there was Toshiko, hair tied messily back in a ponytail, all but swallowed in her orange prison uniform. He strained against the pipe, and one of the guards simply slapped him on the back before both guards left the room.
He could hear every word that was spoken -- this Captain Harkness person persuading, flattering, cajoling his sister, offering her freedom in return for five years of service to Torchwood, offering her a way out. Toshiko, bless her, was defiant and sullen by turns, but Tamaki wanted to shout at her -- take the job! Get out of here! Leave me if you have to! though he knew he'd be heartbroken if she did. They were all each other had.
"What about my brother?" she asked finally, and Tamaki strained around the gag to make some sound, any sound.
"I don't need your brother," Captain Harkness said. "I need you. You can send him letters."
A bitter laugh from Toshiko. "Yeah, they'll totally deliver those."
"Take it or leave it, Toshiko Sato. Think what you'll be giving up. It's not like you get to see him anyway."
Tamaki will never forget the way Toshiko's eyes looked when she lifted her head.
"Not without Tommy," she snarled. "I'd rather rot here than leave him behind."
Tamaki fought the bindings frantically. Tosh, don't be a moron!
"Both or neither," Toshiko said. "That's the way it is, Captain Harkness."
Tamaki watched in horrified fascination as a grin spread across Captain Harkness's face.
"You're wonderful, Toshiko Sato," he said sincerely. "You pass. Come with me; we'll collect your brother and leave this place."
***
Owen Harper met Jack for the first time in the biology lab at Torchwood New York. At the time he was dissecting something grey and lumpy that had been scrounged from the harbor and was either an alien or a gigantic wad of used alien toilet paper. At the moment it could have gone either way. He remembered a gangling man with hair even bigger than his own and -- of course, the woolen RAF coat.
"Nice coat," he drawled, when he caught some stranger in his lab, poking at his rats.
"Nice hair," the man replied, and gave him a lascivious wink.
"I was going for a post-1940s look," Owen said.
"It's certainly post-something," Jack answered, and that was when he and Jack Harkness became friends.
He found out fairly quickly what Jack was about, from scuttlebutt around the office; the head of Torchwood Chicago, the only survivor of the New Year's Eve massacre in 2001, a story that still circulated more as gossip than as any kind of real account. Chicago only had about half a dozen agents, not a real Torchwood at all in Owen's book. Still, he guessed they had to be pretty hardy souls to hold down the Rift and put up with the Cubs.
Jack came around every few weeks, asked reasonably intelligent questions about his work, and then one day asked if he wanted a beer. Owen was sort of waiting for Jack to ask if he dated men, which seemed like the next logical step given Jack's MO of flirting with anything that moved, but instead Jack asked him if he was happy in New York.
"Of course I'm happy in New York, what've you got against New York?" Owen asked, scowling.
"Nothing at all. One place in America is very much like another to me. Just idle curiosity, that's all," Jack said, sipping his beer. "You don't find it...I don't know. Don't you feel as though the outside world is just passing?"
"Passing?" Owen asked suspiciously.
Jack shook his head. "Never mind."
And then came the overdose.
Well, that was a bad word for it; it was only alcohol poisoning, but he still woke up in the hospital. A handful of people from Torchwood came by that morning, but none of them stayed long; it wasn't until he was eating lunch, in anticipation of being cut free that afternoon, that his last visitor came.
Jack walked in and sat down. He didn't say anything, just watched Owen eat, and Owen watched Jack watch him, until finally Jack spoke.
"Life is passing," he said.
"It's my life," Owen retorted.
"It's not your life, it's not a life at all. You go into your lab, you run your experiments, you do your dissections, and that's well and good, but then at night you go out and drink and take home strange women whom you kick out of bed before daylight," Jack said.
"Have you -- you've been stalking me?"
Jack laughed and shook his head. "Set aside your personal outrage -- "
"It's my personal outrage! You've been stalking me!"
"Owen," Jack said, and held a finger up. "Stop. Just stop, and listen for a moment. I know you're capable of distancing yourself, even if you never do. Please, for just a moment, won't you?"
Owen looked at Jack's dark eyes, looked down at the empty food tray in front of him.
"All right," he said.
"Does this life you lead truly satisfy you?" Jack asked. "Do you feel that you, Owen Harper, are -- are going anywhere? Or are you treading water?"
Owen was planning on making a smart remark, or maybe just calling the nurse to have Jack thrown out, but Jack was still staring at him and the man had a piercing gaze.
"I know you're an ambitious soul. I know you fight life all the time, but you're fighting the wrong battles, son," Jack said softly. "I don't think you want to die choking on your own vomit in a gutter, but that is what will happen if you stay here, in New York, groping for meaning. I want to give your life meaning, Owen. As a gift, from me to you. Come work for me in Chicago. Come fight the right battles."
"Yes," Owen said, without even thinking about it.
Once he'd told Tosh this story and she'd laughed and said he was a disciple, but in the nice way Tosh had, that meant she was impressed as well.
Owen loved Toshiko. Had, for a long time, even when he and Gwen were fucking. But he would have died for Jack, and he refused to risk giving up this new, better Torchwood for the chance to tell her. In a club in New York he wouldn't have looked twice at her, but in Chicago, at work, he was happier to be Torchwood and never touch her than have her and lose Torchwood.
***
Ian couldn't feel his body, which was a strange and terrifying feeling; he wasn't sure how he could see, or think, but he knew somehow that he could see. Things seemed to coalesce with glacial slowness, as if he were watching the collision of galaxies or the death of a star.
It began to make sense, at some point in the millennia that passed; he understood that he was in the Rift, not through it, and somehow outside of time. If he concentrated he could see time, which was not as frightening as it should have been; it looked like a gyroscope, or a very antique globe. Not a line, not a crumpled ball of paper or a pond, all metaphors that he'd heard used in the past; time was a ball, spinning slowly on an axis.
The Doctor was right, he thought giddily. A ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff.
As if the thought, the actual forming of mental sentences, was enough to break him free, he realized that he was certainly in trouble. He had to find something to hold onto, or he'd fall away from time entirely; the ball was at once small enough to fit in the palm of a hand he didn't have anymore, and large enough to pull everything into some kind of time...gravitational...field.
He focused and concentrated; if he could just latch on to one piece of time, one series of moments, one small slice of the ball, an irregularity or a hand-hold --
And just like that he broke back into reality, gasping and heaving, his body suddenly immensely heavy around his consciousness, vision cloudy through physical eyes sending messages to a physical brain.
He was standing in an alleyway, the familiar smell of Chicago washing over him, lakewater and bus exhaust and age. He might even be home, or at least within a few weeks of home.
And then he saw the Weevil, and Jack, and Jack being savaged by the Weevil --
It was pure instinct, reaching for the lid of the nearest trash can, heaving it up and running forward to beat the shit out of the Weevil, except...except his hand passed through the trash can and he saw himself, coming from the opposite direction, in clothing he would never wear to work, a thick piece of metal piping in his hand.
He watched in shock as his other self beat the Weevil with the pipe, separating it from Jack, breaking its jaw (he remembered the sickening crunch) and sending it backwards against the wall. Jack bounced up just like he had in the past, sprayed the Weevil in the face, clapped a bag over its head...
"Thank you," Jack said, and Ian closed his eyes. He knew what came next. Faintly embarrassing, actually. "And you are...?"
"Ian -- Gianni. Leone," the other Ian said.
"Nice to meet you, Ian Gianni Leone," Jack said.
"Lucky escape. You're, uh, bleeding..." Ian reached out to touch Jack's face and Jack jerked away.
"Flesh wound, that's all," he said. "You always hang out in alleys off Halsted with a metal pipe?"
Ian saw himself smile. "Pipe optional. Looked like a Weevil to me, huh?"
Jack looked even colder. Even now it made Ian flinch.
"I've no idea what you're talking about," he said. "You'd best run on. His mates might be around here."
"In that case, take the pipe," Ian said, offering it to him. This did earn him a faint smile as he backed out of the alley. "By the way -- nice coat."
There was the sickening sensation of falling again, of the sphere of time rotating, and he clutched at what he could: the brief contact of Jack's fingers as he gripped the pipe, the way Ian's heart had fallen at his own failure, his determination to do better -- to be better -- to be enough to get into Torchwood again.
Stepping in front of Jack's SUV outside Daley Plaza, in a suit that would have made an executive in any downtown high-rise proud. For just a second he slipped into the other Ian, but the doubling of his vision made him dizzy and he stumbled back, watching as Jack cut him down neatly with threats of running him over, with the assurance that there was no place for him in Torchwood anymore, that he should try and find another life.
"You don't even know me," he heard himself protest.
"Oh? Gianni "Ian" Leone, born August 19th, 1983. Good student, born and bred in Chicago, Cubs fan, something of a drifter as a teenager -- one minor conviction for shoplifting, purged on majority -- moved to New York, joined Torchwood there as a junior researcher. Girlfriend, Lisa Hallett, native of New York -- "
"Deceased," he heard himself say. God, he'd been so full of hope that he wouldn't lose her, that he'd finally been able to save someone he loved...
"I'm sorry," Jack said, not sounding sorry at all.
"Look, you obviously checked me out -- "
"Yes, and now that I know who you are I know that you have no place here."
Ian saw himself play his final, desperate card.
"So you're not going to help me catch this pterodactyl, then?" he asked.
Without the blinders of desperation and pain, Ian could see Jack more clearly and more thoroughly appreciate the absolutely poleaxed look on the other man's face. It almost made up for being incorporeal, for being half-outside of time.
He jumped again, but he was getting the hang of this now, and it was almost effortless to find himself and Jack in the old south-side warehouse, Jack clutching precariously to one of Belladonna's legs as she struggled to get free.
There it was, the moment when Jack jabbed the needle home -- shot the sedative into the vein -- and Belladonna sent him tumbling into Ian, both men going down in a tangle of arms and legs. Jack flipped him over and rolled as Belladonna crashed into the ground, and there they were. Laughing, triumphant, pressed together chest to thigh.
Ian put out his hands and shouted, "STOP!"
Time slowed and ceased to be. It became one endless moment, Jack's breath warm on his cheek, the smell of him in his nostrils, his dark eyes level with Ian's.
Ian composed himself, curled up on the cement floor he couldn't quite feel, and closed his eyes. He could wait here, wait for them to come get him, wait for them to save him. They would save him, they would pluck him out of the Rift and bring him back into home-time.
And if they didn't, there were worse ways to spend eternity than endlessly looped in one brilliant second, one moment where he'd been happy.
***
Taken from Torchwood Classics, the Discerning Recs List:
TYPEWRITER by hija_paloma | (Ellis/Edgar, RPS, R) | Summary: Ellis likes old things. Edgar isn't old, but Ellis likes him anyway.
TWO PAIR by kikura_s | (Gwen/Jack, Gwen/Ryan, Jack/Ian) | Summary: Jack didn't always know what was best for him. That was why he and Gwen got along so well. This is the fic that first got Torchwood America on fandom_wank, of course.
A TOURIST'S GUIDE TO CHICAGO by sam_storyteller | (Gen, Humor, hints of J/I) | Summary: Everything you ever wanted to know about the second city and some things you probably didn't, by Ian Leone.
GIVING UP THE STRAIGHT CARD by mmk_mmk | (Ian/Various, NC-17) | Summary: Ian was still willing to consider the idea that he was straight, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
TEN THINGS TO DO IN CHICAGO WITH A STOPWATCH by a_fell_crowley | (Jack/Ian, NC-17) | Summary: "I can think of at least ten fun things to do with a stopwatch." "That's good, because I couldn't come up with any."
FANART: QUIET MOMENT and CAN'T STOP THE J-ROCK by bluejeans07 | (Jack/Ian and Tosh&Tommy, both PG)
***
Sam's Three Things About Torchwood, Episode 1.19: End Of Days
1. I always wondered how Jack could dismiss Torchwood Las Vegas so casually. I thought it was some kind of joke, when he mentioned it in the pilot, but it's nice to see that it's coming full circle. I'd go crazy homicidal too if I was stuck in the same twelve hours in Las Vegas, over and over again, for five years.
2. That being said, I'm not sure I buy slaughtering Evil Torchwood Las Vegas as a premise for the climax of the episode, and also, I'm not sure how Jack and Gwen are going to escape their clutches at this point, and cliffhangers? SUCK.
3. IS IT NEXT WEEK ALREADY, come on, I don't know if you've noticed but Ian and like half of Chicago are STUCK IN THE RIFT.
3a. The Doctor is deeply, deeply creepy. John Barrowman is a genius.
***
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x20: Armageddon.
Story by: Edgar van Scyoc
Teleplay by: Ellis Graveworthy
INT - HUB - DAY
IAN and TOSH are working on repairing some piece of equipment in the Hub; TOSH wipes her eyes now and again as she works, still grieving for her brother. IAN shoots her uncertain looks.
A newly-revived JACK emerges from the shadows, holding GWEN's hand. TOSH notices first; she drops her toolbox and runs across the Hub.
TOSH
Oh my god, oh, my god --
IAN looks up and sees her hugging JACK; he hesitates, then straightens and follows. JACK meets him halfway; at first IAN attempts to wave, then shake his hand, then spreads his hands, confused. JACK hauls him forward and into a hug.
IAN
We thought you were dead --
JACK
Not that easy to get rid of me.
IAN
We left you there.
JACK
Gwen was with me. It's okay.
IAN
It's not okay. Tommy and Owen -- and the Doctor --
JACK
We'll make it okay. We're still here.
IAN
But what do we --
JACK
Shh. The end is where we start from.
JACK pulls back, out of the hug, and touches IAN's face gently; as GWEN and TOSH look on, they kiss passionately.
END OF SEASON ONE
***
Transcript from David Tennant's appearance on The Today Show, June 9, the Monday after the airing of the season finale, Armageddon.
David Tennant: Well, I don't think -- I mean, perhaps some people haven't watched yet, so turn down your sets if you don't want to be spoiled, that's your fair warning.
Matt Lauer: *laughs*
David Tennant: But I think really the season finale could be summed up pretty quickly as, Rift opens, giant hellbeast, oh no lots of death, Jack dies, Jack revives, big gay kiss.
Meredith Vieira: I think I know the part we're all interested in!
David Tennant: Oh, no...
Meredith Vieira: Everyone wants to know about the kiss. What did it mean? Was it fun?
David Tennant: Well, it's acting, you know. I mean I always have fun when I act, but of course neither of us fancy men, so it was just another stage kiss, really. Bit like kissing a sibling actually. Erm. He's very much my little brother, you know, behind the scenes. We're all a family, really.
Matt Lauer: So what happens next? I mean, we have two regular characters from the show and one character who's supposed to be getting his own show, all dead in the...
David Tennant: The medical grotto, yes. Owen Harper and Tamaki Sato, and of course the Doctor. By the way I do think it's a terrible mistake giving John Barrowman his own show, because he'll only use it to get boys with.
Meredith Vieira: *laughs*
David Tennant: Graveworthy said he'd pay me ten dollars to say that on air.
Matt Lauer: But you can't tell us anything that happens.
David Tennant: Well, I don't know yet. We've had a few talks about what the second season will hold, but I can't really divulge any of that, and I don't know anything about the spinoff --
Meredith Vieira: Doctor Who?
David Tennant: Yes, in my case more like Doctor What. People keep asking me what it's all about, and I just don't know! But I do know that it will be on following Torchwood next season, and hopefully Jack Harkness hasn't seen the last of the Doctor yet.
***
Excerpt from FOX News Sunday:
Edgar van Scyoc and his homosexual agenda have declared a holy war, a jihad, on the American way of life and morality.
From Torchwords.com, official Torchwood behind-the-scenes blog: Edgar van Scyoc, in response:
Apparently I've declared a jihad on American values. This is pretty cool.
I didn't realise sarcasm was all it took to declare Jihad, because I thought it was a serious term that referred to bloody religious wars fought over scriptural interpretation and water rights. If sarcasm is all that's required, though, I think you ought to know I've also declared a jihad on the service at several local restaurants, the writing on most TV drama, light jazz, and hipster fashion. Jesus, think of the bloodshed I could cause if I employed satire. Moliere was a terrorist, you know.
I don't want anyone to die. I don't believe anyone should die because they don't share my morals, though I think fewer people would die if they did. I'm not interested in tearing down America, I like America, it's the only place you can get Byron's hamburgers and I would really miss cable television. I don't want anyone to fuck dogs or marry their parakeets. I'm not an anarchist, though I do find Emma Goldman oddly sexy. I'm not even a communist, because I'm really bad at sharing.
What I want is to drag America kicking and screaming into one brief moment, one second even, of cultural self-examination, because right now as a culture we kind of suck. I want us to stop sucking, because if we don't stop sucking it won't be my fault when America does collapse and, like I said, I'd really miss Byron's hamburgers. So I will shamefully confess, if asked while under oath, that I want America to relearn the definition of the words "tolerance" and "irony" because as a life-philosophy they've both served me extremely well.
I want to make you people love George Bernard Shaw, so help me god. And I will need the help, because he's a hard man to love.
Oh hey, as long as I'm declaring jihads, I totally call jihad on beat poetry.
Ellis Graveworthy, on hearing the statement read aloud to van Scyoc by reporters at a charity dinner in Chicago:
Edgar, why didn't you tell me you had a homosexual agenda? I would have bought you a nice leather case for it.
***
Transcript of Ellis Graveworthy, speaking at TorchGathering, the first ever national Torchwood fan convention, Chicago, June 2008.
Well, obviously the Doctor doesn't stay dead. I hardly think that's a spoiler, he has his own television spinoff, it would be dreadfully boring if Doctor Who featured a corpse as its star player. Not that John Barrowman doesn't make a fine corpse, but he's much more interesting when he's moving about and talking.
What else can I tell you...well, the first few episodes of Torchwood's new season are in our heads, Edgar's and mine. There will be passion, of course, and the Doctor might not be the only one who can't stay dead. Confessions, confessions make for excellent drama. New monsters, new aliens, new moral dilemmas for our heroes to deal with. I think we'll learn a good deal more about Gwen's past, her growing up in Chicago, and of course she's engaged to Ryan now. Yes, I imagine there will be the requisite "wacky wedding" episode, though I'm trying to persuade Edgar to retain some shred of his dignity in that respect.
I'd like to write a story about Wrigley Field being haunted, too. That would be tremendous. And -- and I'd like very much to continue to annoy stupid people of all races and creeds. It's been great fun so far. I'm so glad that the egalitarian nature of America allows a foreigner to be excoriated with the same vehemence as one of your own sons. I feel really very welcomed by all the vitriol that's been flung at me.
So, in all, lots of sex, lots of violence, hopefully a talking-point or two, and what I believe the kids these days are calling "wank" over all of it.
We live to entertain and educate, you know. It should be a wonderful new season.
***
Archive photograph of the original downtown Torchwood red line station in Chicago, outside what is now Daley Plaza. The station is no longer in use but should re-open in 2009 after extensive renovations. Edgar van Scyoc relates that he always felt Torchwood Station looked like the entrance to a secret underground lair, and has made a deal with the city of Chicago for Torchwood's production company to "adopt" Torchwood Station on its reopening (as the Cubs have done with Addison and Sheridan stations on the north side).
Story Notes
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: In the final sweeping episodes of the season Jack and Tosh are flung backwards in time only to encounter the Doctor, while the rest of the team works frantically to save them -- and then to save themselves from the Rift, thrown wide and producing monsters out of their worst nightmares. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Torchwood creative team still has many obstacles to overcome.
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs
Second City Torchwood
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x15: From Out Of The Rain
Story & Teleplay by: Edgar van Scyoc
INT - EVENING - MUSIC BOX THEATER
IAN and JACK are sitting in the back row of the theater; JACK has an enormous box of popcorn.
IAN
I love movies.
JACK
Me too. The cinema, really, though. Popcorn...[offers IAN some; IAN waves it off] Sticky candy...making out in the dark, in public --
IAN
I was going to say that my dad used to take me here on weekends. Thanks for that, though.
JACK
I don't get to go to the cinema very often. It's exotic, to me.
IAN
Apparently so.
JACK
Listen, I...[long pause]
IAN
Eloquent.
JACK
I may have been something of an arse lately.
IAN looks at him questioningly.
JACK
Would you like to get something to eat when we're done here? Barring any alien invasions or hauntings or whatnot.
IAN
Are...are we on a date?
JACK
Do you want it to be?
IAN
I'm not making out with you during the movie.
JACK
But that's a ye --
IAN
Yes, all right? [deep breath] Yes. Sure.
JACK grins.
JACK
All right then.
***
Spoilers for Episode 1x16, "Captain Jack Harkness":
Word for "Captain Jack Harkness" is that it will involve Jack traveling backwards in time for a long-denied reunion; John Barrowman will reprise his role as the mysterious Doctor for at least part of the episode. It is said to be light on Gwen, though there will be plenty of action for Ian, Owen, and the twins. It is even rumored that Ian will shoot one or both of the twins in order to stop them from committing a disastrous mistake.
Later Season Spoilers:
In an interview with People Magazine, David Tennant confirmed that he will return for a second season as Captain Jack Harkness, though he warned that there will be changes: "Torchwood's not a promise of a very long life, in fact quite the reverse. People die all the time; people change. Torchwood is going to undergo some very big changes in the last few episodes of the season."
He declined to confirm the rumor that his loyal lieutenant, Owen Harper, will die in the season finale.
***
Tosh had never seen Jack's face light up as thoroughly as it did when they walked into the abandoned dance hall just west of the river and walked out of the 21st century entirely.
"It's a temporal displacement," he said happily, bouncing on his toes. "My god! This is brilliant."
They were standing on the edge of a dance floor as people swirled around them -- the men almost all in uniform, the women wearing dresses that looked like something out of a historical romance. Which it almost was, Tosh realized; the posters on the walls were for war bonds.
"1942," Jack said, consulting a sign on the door that read KISS THE BOYS GOODBYE DANCE. "We're in 1942."
"Uh, Jack," Tosh said.
"Come on, I think I know that horn," he said, dragging her around the edge of the floor, towards the band-box. He stopped and stepped around her, so that she was standing staring at the band and he was holding her shoulders. A black man jumped out of his chair as they stopped and began a furious, energetic horn solo.
"That's James Ragtime," he said in her ear, voice full of awe. "He was the biggest jazz trumpeter in Chicago, bigger than Louis Armstrong in his day."
"Jack, people are staring," Tosh whispered.
"At us?"
"At me. I'm a little Japanese for 1942 in America," she whispered.
"Relax, you're with the Captain," he said.
"We should be finding a way back out of the displacement."
"Just one song," Jack said, and when she looked up at his face it was so pleased, so utterly at peace for the first time ever, that she bit her tongue and held herself still and listened.
***
"How long since they called in?" Owen asked, sifting through the loose pages and files on Jack's desk as if the answer might lie there somewhere.
"They ended radio contact at about 2:30, nothing unusual," Ian answered, biting his lip. "I tried to call them up at four to see if they'd be back here and if I should order dinner, didn't get a reply."
"I'm getting to the warehouse now," Gwen said over their comms.
"It's a dance hall," Ian corrected.
"It looks a lot like a warehouse from here."
"It probably was before they converted it."
"Okay, you know what I'm bored by? Chicago architectural history," Owen announced. "Tommy, how are you coming with those Rift activity reports?"
"I'm not," Tommy said sourly. "Tosh left a program compiling with a deadlock against interrupting it. I'm trying to hack the deadlock now, but I can't get to the monitor records until I get past the compiler."
"The SUV is here," Gwen said. "No sign of Jack or Tosh."
"Got it!" Tommy said as the computers, in unison, flickered and groaned. "Oh man, Tosh's gonna kill me."
"Rift activity?" Owen prompted.
"Yeah, yeah -- oh. Uh," Tommy said. "Ian, what was the address they were at?"
"Canal and -- "
"-- Polk," Tommy joined in grimly. "There was a Rift spike right there."
"When?" Owen barked.
"Two-thirty-eight this afternoon."
Ian tapped his comm. "Gwen, don't go in the warehouse. Jack and Tosh may have gotten swept up in a Rift spike."
"Excuse me?" Owen said. "Gwen, it's fine, there's no activity now, you can go in."
"And what if she -- "
"Shut up, Ian," Owen snapped. "We won't find out anything by staring at it."
"There's a manager's office around to the side," Gwen said. "I'll see if I can find anyone to talk to."
"Ian, start researching the dance hall, see what you can come up with," Owen said, and Ian stopped staring gapemouthed at him and obeyed. "Tommy, keep on the monitor. The first time that area shows any activity, tell Gwen to get out. We'll get them home."
***
The song was ending and Tosh was getting ready to really insist that they had to find a way back to, you know, the next century, when someone stepped up to them and punched Jack hard in the shoulder.
Jack lost his balance for a second, knocking into Tosh and then catching her before she fell, shooting a hand out to prop himself against the wall. He turned, ready for a fight --
"Captain Jack Harkness," the man said with a grin. "I thought you were shipping out last night."
Jack stared at him, heat rising in his cheeks, heart in his mouth.
"Marcus," he said. Marcus gave him a look, his patented Not in front of the straight people look.
"What happened, did you go AWOL to hear James Ragtime?" he asked. "Who's your friend?"
"Ah! Uh. No, we were delayed," Jack said. "This is Toshiko Sato, she's a special translator -- I'm flying her out tomorrow."
"One last night in town, huh?" Marcus asked.
"Yeah," he said shakily, and gave Marcus his best smile, the one for really special occasions, the one that said we will be having sex at some point in the next hour.
***
"Found them!" Ian called triumphantly, and the conference-room screen lit up with an enlarged scan of a newspaper clipping. Tommy looked up and made a soft, desperate sound.
In the photograph, Jack and Tosh were standing in a doorway with another man in uniform and an elderly gentleman in a cravat. They looked all right -- surprised, but not injured or frightened.
"Tosh was wearing that this morning," Owen said, pointing at her dress.
"Why were you staring at her dress?" Tommy asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, for christ's -- all it means is that it can't be that long between them disappearing and this picture getting taken."
"May of 1942," Ian called.
"Springtime for Hitler," Owen muttered.
"The picture was taken at something called the Kiss The Boys Goodbye Dance," Ian said. "The newspaper says that's Captain Marcus Graham, Captain Jack Harkness, Special Translator Toshiko Sato, and dance-hall manager Bilis Manger."
"Bilis Manger?" Gwen asked in their ears. "That's the same name as the manager now."
"His son, maybe?" Ian said.
"He's kind of old, but could be. I think he's more of a caretaker than a manager, this place hasn't been used in years. Apparently the ground floor is mostly collapsed into the basement, which is sinking, and the walls aren't very stable."
"And that's because of...." Ian tapped a few keys into the computer. "A series of earthquakes off the New Madrid faultline that hit Chicago in..."
"Wait, let me guess," Owen said drily. "May of 1942."
"The same evening that photograph was taken," Ian confirmed. "Five or six people died...no mention of a Captain Jack Harkness or Toshiko Sato on the list of the injured or dead, but that doesn't mean much, another five bodies were never recovered, probably washed out into the river."
"We gotta get them out of there," Owen said.
"There isn't any mention of Tosh in any records I can access past that, so there's a pretty good chance we did," Ian said. "Did? Will?"
"Tosh was working on a formula to predict Rift spikes, maybe even create artificial ones," Tommy said. "If we have enough information from this one, we might be able to build our own. Bring them back."
Ian and Owen both looked at Tommy, who was already at work on the computer again.
"Problem is you need information from the past side of the Rift..." Tommy paused. "Which Tosh would know! Gwen, are you still there?"
"Still here!" Gwen said, sounding as if she'd gone back outside.
"If Tosh knew of a way to open the Rift she'd have left a message for us. For me. Look around and see if you can find something durable that would protect a message -- a canister or a box."
"The basement was never cleared out, that's probably where she'd hide it," Gwen said. "I'll get Bilis to let me in. Nice old guy."
"This is weird," Ian said, standing at the computer.
"What's that?"
"There's no official military record for Captain Jack Harkness in the US Army Air Forces or in the RAF," Ian said. "But I've got three newspaper hits on his name as a pilot. One in 1943, two in 1945."
"Maybe we got Tosh out and not Jack," Tommy said hollowly.
"We'll get them both," Owen snarled.
***
"Jack," Tosh said, as she sat at one of the small tables and worked at the equations Tommy would need to save them. "Who is Marcus?"
"Captain Marcus Graham," Jack said, watching Marcus watch him from across the room. He'd edged them away with an excuse, that he needed to chaperone Tosh; it would give him time to regain his composure.
"He knows you," she said, carefully not looking up. "You've been in this time period before."
"Yeah," he replied, hoping she wouldn't press further.
"Are we in any danger of running into you tonight? Because that would really fuck up my math."
Jack chuckled. "No. The other Jack Harkness -- volunteer from the RAF to train the new boys -- he shipped out yesterday."
"And Marcus?"
Jack shrugged. "Marcus was...a good time. I doubt I was much more to him. He was shot down, he died...he dies about a week from now."
Tosh looked up at him finally.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Me too."
"Do you think it's -- "
"Fate? The thought crossed my mind."
Tosh fiddled with her pen. "This is going to take me a while, Jack. You should go. Over there. Where he is. You know."
"This era...this was a great time," he said softly, absently. "Beautiful music, beautiful girls, beautiful boys, and everything was so -- urgent, because of the war. It was delicious, like the tang in a good orange. But it had its down-sides, as well." He pushed himself out of the chair. "Still, I can -- "
He froze, the relaxation from the music overtaken by an all-body tension as he looked up. Tosh turned to look too; a man in black jeans and a very non-military leather jacket was wandering through the crowds, face set and dark.
"Isn't that -- "
"The Doctor," Jack breathed. "Stay here."
He took off across the dance floor, the fastest way to the other side of the room, dodging and darting around the spinning couples. A few people laughed; others moaned at the lack of decorum soldiers had these days. Just before Jack reached him, and seemingly without effort or even notice, the Doctor turned and slipped through a doorway. Jack disappeared after.
Tosh bent back to her mathematics. If she could get the formula to Tommy in time, they might be able to open a localized Rift -- enough to get her and Jack at least close to home.
***
Transcript from the DVD Extras, Torchwood, Season One: The Doctor Sings
John Barrowman: This is, hahah, this is for the DVD extras, everbody dance! No, okay, not yet. I am here to do a little number as long as we have this beautiful 1940s set and these beautiful 1940s people here today, and I think that while you may not like him right now, you'll find this a very fitting number for the Doctor in the end.
Here we go. Take one, singing I Would Do Anything For You by the late, great Fats Waller. Ready? Camera! And! Action!
I would swim the ocean wide,
I would cross the great divide
I would do
Anything for you --
I would take a trip to Mars
I would even count the stars
I would do
Anything for you...
***
"Doctor," Jack said, and his voice echoed in the empty room.
The man in the leather jacket didn't turn around; he seemed to be studying one of the storage closet's walls. He was a handsome man -- tall, broad-shouldered, with brown hair a trifle shorter than Jack's own. He wore his clothing well. Thick, steady boots on his feet, useful for running.
"Do I know you?" the Doctor asked. The same American accent, a hint of a drawl through perfect white teeth.
"You might," Jack said. "You could find out for sure if you turned around."
The Doctor pivoted slowly. His eyes were cold and hard and old, older even than the eyes Jack saw when he looked in the mirror every morning.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said, offering his hand. The Doctor glanced down at it, then back up at Jack. "And you're called Doctor."
"That's right."
"Doctor who?"
"Just Doctor. The Doctor for formal occasions," the Doctor said.
"You're a time-traveler."
"Among other things. I don't like labels," the Doctor added.
"Why are you here?"
"One of life's most difficult questions. Metaphysically, spiritually, ecologically, who knows?" the Doctor gave him a faint and cruel smile. "Geographically and temporally, well. There's something a little amiss around here. Turns out it's you. Kinda. Do you have any idea how wrong you are?" he asked.
Something broke inside Jack, a tight knot of tension. "Yes," he whispered.
The Doctor studied him clinically. He tilted his head, pursed his lips. "What happened to you?"
"I -- " Jack groped for words. "I thought you might know."
"I don't have a clue, sorry."
Jack rubbed his face. It had been a century at least since he'd had to do any serious non-linear timelining, and it was killing his head.
"I'm stuck in the wrong time," he said finally, because that was at least something the Doctor could help with. "One of my people -- she and I are stuck here. We're not supposed to be in 1942. I'd get us back but my strap..." he gestured to his wrist, where the useless, bloody useless, wrist-strap lay dark and silent. "You have your ship. You can take us back to our own time."
"I don't take on hitchhikers," the Doctor replied. If it were possible, he grew that much harsher, that much more still. "Not anymore."
Jack moved forward, hoping to grab him or get him on his knees, something -- he was willing to take the man prisoner if it meant getting him and Toshiko back to 2008. He was halfway there when the Doctor shot from the hip and his world filled with electric-blue pain.
The Doctor checked the power level on the sonic blaster, nodded, and holstered it under his coat again.
"What am I going to do with you, Captain Jack Harkness?" he sighed.
***
"Tommy, I think I've found something from Tosh," Gwen said over the radio. Tommy sat up straight from his hunch over the computer, and Ian glanced at Owen.
"Read it out, Gwen," he said, and typed furiously as she read off a complex formula. His hands were still poised expectantly over the keys when she stopped. "Is that all?"
"All except for a note -- she says to tell you she loves you," Gwen said.
"No, that's not the end of the formula! There's another three digits at least!"
"It looks like they've been burned out, I can't read them," Gwen said.
"But this is -- this is pointless without them!"
"We'll get there, Tommy, it's okay," Owen said.
"No, it's not! Someone's deliberately trying to stop us. Something wants my sister and Jack stuck in 1942! Someone wants them dead!" Tommy said hysterically.
"There's one other option," Owen said softly. Ian glanced at him.
"No. Nonononono, we're not going to just slam the disc down in the Rift Manipulator and throw it wide," he said.
"Just for a second," Owen said.
"It might resonate up against the last Rift spike," Tommy said thoughtfully. "It'd open a direct gate between 1942 and now."
"Are you listening to yourselves? We're not going to deliberately open a rift in space and time in the middle of urban Chicago!"
Tommy looked at Owen. "We have to do it before another spike."
"I have the safe code," Owen said.
"I can crack the electric code on the interior lock."
"You can't do this!" Ian said, following them, though he made no move to stop them.
"Watch us," Owen snarled.
***
When she couldn't find Jack immediately, Tosh did the sensible thing; she got a spare metal martini shaker from the bar, stuffed the equations inside it, and climbed down into the basement to hide it behind an electrical panel, where -- hopefully -- nobody would think to look for about sixty-five years.
She was climbing the stairs back to the dance floor when she felt it -- a slight little tremor, nothing bigger than you could feel on the El platform as the train roared past. Still, they weren't near any trains, certainly none that existed in 1942.
It happened twice more as she searched the crowds, and she wondered if maybe it was her; too much math, too many people in a too-hot room. She picked her way carefully to the front door and stepped out into the balmy May evening.
Jack was there, sitting on the steps -- or rather, a hunched figure in Jack's coat.
"Jack?" she asked, and from behind Jack another figure practically shot into the air.
"Hello," the man said -- the Doctor, smiling disarmingly at her. "Jack needed a little fresh air."
She was about to say that Jack could speak for himself if he were conscious, which it didn't look like he was, when she saw the glint of brushed steel in the Doctor's hand, and a second later she was falling stunned into his arms.
***
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x16: Captain Jack Harkness
Story & Teleplay by: Ellis Graveworthy
Directed by: David Tennant & Edgar van Scyoc
INT - HUB - EVENING
IAN is trying to get to TOMMY to stop him from cracking the safe.
IAN
This is a trap. This is a bad idea. Opening the Rift will incite chaos and destruction. Why do you think the call to the dance hall was anonymous? Someone is screwing with us and you're falling for it! We have time!
TOMMY
I'm not afraid of the Rift! I know what it does, I know how it works!
IAN
This isn't about getting Tosh and Jack home! This is about you -- this is about Diane!
TOMMY
Don't say her name. [the lock clicks open] Aha. Come to daddy.
OWEN
What the hell is that?
TOMMY
It's a key. It activates the Rift Manipulator.
OWEN
Jesus Christ.
IAN breaks away from OWEN and lunges for TOMMY; TOMMY backhands him and kicks him away while OWEN is still staring in shock. IAN groans.
TOMMY
Let's do this already, Owen.
***
Later, after a lot of things had gone down, some good and some terrifying, Tosh went looking for the security-camera footage of the Hub during her and Jack's absence. It was missing -- well, that wasn't so strange, given the mild concussion the mainframe must have had when the Rift was thrown wide -- but if it had been there...
She would have seen Tommy and Owen emerge from Jack's office and walk straight to the central column of the manipulator, Tommy carrying the key like a prize. Without audio she might not have understood all that was said, but she could see that while they fitted the key into the manipulator neither of them spoke. Nobody, probably, spoke again until Ian emerged from Jack's office, wiping blood from his nose and carrying a gun in one hand.
It would have been easy enough to imagine what he said -- "I can't let you, Tommy" or perhaps, "Owen, get out of the way".
It would have been flattering to have heard Tommy's reply -- "The Rift took my lover and my Captain. I won't let it take my sister as well."
"This isn't what Jack or Tosh would want," would be the next logical reply from Ian, who was cocking the gun as he spoke. And it was easy enough to imagine how Tommy would react to that.
"Give it your best shot, errand boy. Don't tell me you don't want your part-time fuck back."
But everything was still silent even when Ian pulled the trigger without flinching, and the little puff of gunpowder residue clouding around his hand was the only sure sign he'd fired. Other than Tommy, a bright red blossom spreading across his shirt, his hand going up to touch the blood from the gunshot wound in his shoulder.
And then slamming down on the key, pressing it into the machine.
She would have seen Owen drop to his knees next to Tommy, silently demanding to know what Ian had done, and Ian staring dazedly at the Rift Manipulator, until the entire Hub began to shake and pieces began to fall away. She would have seen a tendril of light snake out and snap around Ian's body, which would disappear when the light did.
But the files were gone, corrupted beyond repair or deleted by intention, and she never saw.
***
Jack woke on a metal-grating floor to a rough, metallic whooshing noise, sort of like a set of keys being dragged along a piano wire.
He opened his eyes without moving; from his vantage point on the floor he could see a pair of boots, a portion of what looked like a dry wooden tree trunk, and some of a wall.
He remembered, even after two hundred years; remembered the ship, the one that had flung him back in time and sentenced him to immortality. He remembered the Doctor. He remembered being stunned. He even knew the sensation; the roaring in his ears and the tingling over his skin were the aftereffects of a sonic blaster.
"You might as well get up," said a voice, and he pushed himself up on his elbows to see the Doctor looking over at him, sharp blue eyes not at all afraid or wary. "Miss Sato is over there," he added with a jerk of his head, and Jack saw Tosh lying on the other side of the room.
"What've you done?" he croaked.
"That's great. That's really great, coming from you. What I've done is get you and her out of a building about to be destroyed by an earthquake caused by the Rift opening. What you've done is given your people an unstable equation for a localized dual-point rift tunnel, and what they've done with that is tried to end causality. Why do I bother?"
Jack gaped at him.
"Humans," the Doctor said viciously, throwing a lever on the control console. "You blunder your way around space-time doing exactly what you want without any sense at all of what you're screwing up. Can you hear the heart of a TARDIS singing? Can you feel time on your skin? No, but does that stop you? It's like watching a deaf man tune a piano."
Jack latched onto one thing.
"What's a TARDIS?" he asked.
"What's a -- you mean you stole my ship, broke into my control room, ripped her poor wires out of her console, crossed them like you were hotwiring a Chevy, and you don't even know what this is?" the Doctor snarled, one hand lifting off the console to gesture at the room. "TARDIS! Time And Relative Dimensions In Space! Keep up, Harkness!"
"I'm sorry if I'm a little confused after you stunned and kidnapped me," Jack retorted.
"Saved your life and hauled you along so you could fix the hole your people ripped in reality? Yeah, sue me," the Doctor answered.
"Where are you taking us?"
"The point of error," the Doctor answered. "The collapse of the universe. All of existence has coalesced into a single point and it must be healed, and since it's your hands all over this you have to heal it."
"We're going to the end of the universe?" Jack asked.
"Yep. And it's happening in 1945." The whooshing noise stopped and the Doctor strode to the door, throwing it open. Jack got unsteadily to his feet and joined him, looking out.
"This is Chicago," the Doctor said, his voice gentler now. "Near the end of the second world war."
"I recognize it," Jack answered, and he did; he'd lived in Chicago then, he knew what the skyline looked like.
"Somewhere out there is some unreal thing made material. And now because of you I have to find it and destroy it. Way to go," the Doctor added. "Get Miss Sato. Time to save the universe again."
***
From Torchwords.com, official Torchwood behind-the-scenes blog: Ellis Graveworthy, post-airing writeup of The Empty Child.
We were castigated quite strongly for The Empty Child by professional critics, or at any rate paid ones. It is often considered a mistake to use an entire episode of one television show to launch a new spinoff show, but that honestly wasn't in my mind at all when I sat down to write The Empty Child. I wanted to make a point about war, and leading in from Captain Jack Harkness seemed to me like the perfect time to do so. We bookended the second world war in America fairly neatly, 1942 and 1945.
It must be said that while the critics were not thrilled with The Empty Child, it garnered the same sort of support from actual fans that CountryCide and From Out Of The Rain had received. Thinking people enjoy the arc of a plot over several episodes or even several seasons; Babylon 5, I think, amply proved that. But there is also a sort of charm in a small, self-contained, thoroughly complete story told in forty-two minutes. The mathematical exactness of it appeals. This episode combined the arc of plot -- Jack and Toshiko, falling through time with the Doctor -- and the precision of a small story, the story of a little boy looking for his father.
I liked that I didn't have to make him a real little boy, actually, that even within the confines of the story he was a metaphor, the "unreal thing made material". He represented the ceaselessness of war. Armed conflict ends only one of two ways: when the enemy is so thoroughly destroyed it can no longer fight back, or when intelligent people lay aside their bitterness and strike a peace accord. But that takes action, active thought, and very few wars throughout history have ended before one country has in effect been wiped from the map. As Americans I invite you to consider Sherman's march, as well as the Trail of Tears.
I think that Jack, who is essentially a warlike man, comes through an enormous change in The Empty Child. He takes responsibility for someone nobody else is willing to touch, claims the boy as his blood, and in doing so he does what nations never do: he owns up that he is at fault. None of them can be free until the boy is free; the Doctor and Toshiko can't leave, and that forces Jack into the position of putting other people above his own pride. If he can't take responsibility for his actions, the universe will end.
I think it's quite a lovely story, myself.
Still, it was nice to be scolded for artistic ineptitude rather than rampant homosexuality for a change. At least in this my skills as a writer are challenged, rather than my politics.
***
ALL NEW TORCHWOOD
Saturday night, 8/7 Central
EPISODE 1.18: Origins
Torchwood is fragmented, lying in ruins. Jack and Toshiko are trapped in the past; Tommy is bleeding to death next to an unconscious Owen on the floor of an unsteady Hub, and Ian has been drawn into the heart of the Rift itself. As Gwen races to save those she can, Ian, Tommy, and Owen experience the way in which they came to be part of Torchwood. Can Gwen get Tommy and Owen to safety? Will Jack and Tosh ever return? Will any of them be able to close the Rift before it shakes the earth free from reality, even if it means losing Ian forever to time?
***
Tamaki remembered.
USPAT, the United States Paranormal and Alien Taskforce, imprisoned him unfairly, he knew that. All he did was have the bad luck to be kidnapped, a hostage used to force Toshiko to finish their work on the sonic resonator and turn it over to whoever had him captive. He should have been set free; Toshiko should have been forgiven and they should have gone back to the university and kept working.
Instead here they were, imprisoned without trial in cells without windows, given a bucket to piss in and "food" that barely passed nutritional standards on a good day. He begged the voice in the ceiling to let him see Toshiko, just see her, just a glimpse, but it was five weeks before he was led out of his cell at the wrong time for exercise, the wrong time for the daily search.
He was shown into a room with a window set in one wall, a window looking out on a large empty space with a table and two chairs -- a two-way mirror. As they strapped him to a pipe and gagged him so he couldn't speak, he watched a man walking out to the table on the other side of the glass, tall and skinny but imposing in a long woolen military coat.
And then there was Toshiko, hair tied messily back in a ponytail, all but swallowed in her orange prison uniform. He strained against the pipe, and one of the guards simply slapped him on the back before both guards left the room.
He could hear every word that was spoken -- this Captain Harkness person persuading, flattering, cajoling his sister, offering her freedom in return for five years of service to Torchwood, offering her a way out. Toshiko, bless her, was defiant and sullen by turns, but Tamaki wanted to shout at her -- take the job! Get out of here! Leave me if you have to! though he knew he'd be heartbroken if she did. They were all each other had.
"What about my brother?" she asked finally, and Tamaki strained around the gag to make some sound, any sound.
"I don't need your brother," Captain Harkness said. "I need you. You can send him letters."
A bitter laugh from Toshiko. "Yeah, they'll totally deliver those."
"Take it or leave it, Toshiko Sato. Think what you'll be giving up. It's not like you get to see him anyway."
Tamaki will never forget the way Toshiko's eyes looked when she lifted her head.
"Not without Tommy," she snarled. "I'd rather rot here than leave him behind."
Tamaki fought the bindings frantically. Tosh, don't be a moron!
"Both or neither," Toshiko said. "That's the way it is, Captain Harkness."
Tamaki watched in horrified fascination as a grin spread across Captain Harkness's face.
"You're wonderful, Toshiko Sato," he said sincerely. "You pass. Come with me; we'll collect your brother and leave this place."
***
Owen Harper met Jack for the first time in the biology lab at Torchwood New York. At the time he was dissecting something grey and lumpy that had been scrounged from the harbor and was either an alien or a gigantic wad of used alien toilet paper. At the moment it could have gone either way. He remembered a gangling man with hair even bigger than his own and -- of course, the woolen RAF coat.
"Nice coat," he drawled, when he caught some stranger in his lab, poking at his rats.
"Nice hair," the man replied, and gave him a lascivious wink.
"I was going for a post-1940s look," Owen said.
"It's certainly post-something," Jack answered, and that was when he and Jack Harkness became friends.
He found out fairly quickly what Jack was about, from scuttlebutt around the office; the head of Torchwood Chicago, the only survivor of the New Year's Eve massacre in 2001, a story that still circulated more as gossip than as any kind of real account. Chicago only had about half a dozen agents, not a real Torchwood at all in Owen's book. Still, he guessed they had to be pretty hardy souls to hold down the Rift and put up with the Cubs.
Jack came around every few weeks, asked reasonably intelligent questions about his work, and then one day asked if he wanted a beer. Owen was sort of waiting for Jack to ask if he dated men, which seemed like the next logical step given Jack's MO of flirting with anything that moved, but instead Jack asked him if he was happy in New York.
"Of course I'm happy in New York, what've you got against New York?" Owen asked, scowling.
"Nothing at all. One place in America is very much like another to me. Just idle curiosity, that's all," Jack said, sipping his beer. "You don't find it...I don't know. Don't you feel as though the outside world is just passing?"
"Passing?" Owen asked suspiciously.
Jack shook his head. "Never mind."
And then came the overdose.
Well, that was a bad word for it; it was only alcohol poisoning, but he still woke up in the hospital. A handful of people from Torchwood came by that morning, but none of them stayed long; it wasn't until he was eating lunch, in anticipation of being cut free that afternoon, that his last visitor came.
Jack walked in and sat down. He didn't say anything, just watched Owen eat, and Owen watched Jack watch him, until finally Jack spoke.
"Life is passing," he said.
"It's my life," Owen retorted.
"It's not your life, it's not a life at all. You go into your lab, you run your experiments, you do your dissections, and that's well and good, but then at night you go out and drink and take home strange women whom you kick out of bed before daylight," Jack said.
"Have you -- you've been stalking me?"
Jack laughed and shook his head. "Set aside your personal outrage -- "
"It's my personal outrage! You've been stalking me!"
"Owen," Jack said, and held a finger up. "Stop. Just stop, and listen for a moment. I know you're capable of distancing yourself, even if you never do. Please, for just a moment, won't you?"
Owen looked at Jack's dark eyes, looked down at the empty food tray in front of him.
"All right," he said.
"Does this life you lead truly satisfy you?" Jack asked. "Do you feel that you, Owen Harper, are -- are going anywhere? Or are you treading water?"
Owen was planning on making a smart remark, or maybe just calling the nurse to have Jack thrown out, but Jack was still staring at him and the man had a piercing gaze.
"I know you're an ambitious soul. I know you fight life all the time, but you're fighting the wrong battles, son," Jack said softly. "I don't think you want to die choking on your own vomit in a gutter, but that is what will happen if you stay here, in New York, groping for meaning. I want to give your life meaning, Owen. As a gift, from me to you. Come work for me in Chicago. Come fight the right battles."
"Yes," Owen said, without even thinking about it.
Once he'd told Tosh this story and she'd laughed and said he was a disciple, but in the nice way Tosh had, that meant she was impressed as well.
Owen loved Toshiko. Had, for a long time, even when he and Gwen were fucking. But he would have died for Jack, and he refused to risk giving up this new, better Torchwood for the chance to tell her. In a club in New York he wouldn't have looked twice at her, but in Chicago, at work, he was happier to be Torchwood and never touch her than have her and lose Torchwood.
***
Ian couldn't feel his body, which was a strange and terrifying feeling; he wasn't sure how he could see, or think, but he knew somehow that he could see. Things seemed to coalesce with glacial slowness, as if he were watching the collision of galaxies or the death of a star.
It began to make sense, at some point in the millennia that passed; he understood that he was in the Rift, not through it, and somehow outside of time. If he concentrated he could see time, which was not as frightening as it should have been; it looked like a gyroscope, or a very antique globe. Not a line, not a crumpled ball of paper or a pond, all metaphors that he'd heard used in the past; time was a ball, spinning slowly on an axis.
The Doctor was right, he thought giddily. A ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff.
As if the thought, the actual forming of mental sentences, was enough to break him free, he realized that he was certainly in trouble. He had to find something to hold onto, or he'd fall away from time entirely; the ball was at once small enough to fit in the palm of a hand he didn't have anymore, and large enough to pull everything into some kind of time...gravitational...field.
He focused and concentrated; if he could just latch on to one piece of time, one series of moments, one small slice of the ball, an irregularity or a hand-hold --
And just like that he broke back into reality, gasping and heaving, his body suddenly immensely heavy around his consciousness, vision cloudy through physical eyes sending messages to a physical brain.
He was standing in an alleyway, the familiar smell of Chicago washing over him, lakewater and bus exhaust and age. He might even be home, or at least within a few weeks of home.
And then he saw the Weevil, and Jack, and Jack being savaged by the Weevil --
It was pure instinct, reaching for the lid of the nearest trash can, heaving it up and running forward to beat the shit out of the Weevil, except...except his hand passed through the trash can and he saw himself, coming from the opposite direction, in clothing he would never wear to work, a thick piece of metal piping in his hand.
He watched in shock as his other self beat the Weevil with the pipe, separating it from Jack, breaking its jaw (he remembered the sickening crunch) and sending it backwards against the wall. Jack bounced up just like he had in the past, sprayed the Weevil in the face, clapped a bag over its head...
"Thank you," Jack said, and Ian closed his eyes. He knew what came next. Faintly embarrassing, actually. "And you are...?"
"Ian -- Gianni. Leone," the other Ian said.
"Nice to meet you, Ian Gianni Leone," Jack said.
"Lucky escape. You're, uh, bleeding..." Ian reached out to touch Jack's face and Jack jerked away.
"Flesh wound, that's all," he said. "You always hang out in alleys off Halsted with a metal pipe?"
Ian saw himself smile. "Pipe optional. Looked like a Weevil to me, huh?"
Jack looked even colder. Even now it made Ian flinch.
"I've no idea what you're talking about," he said. "You'd best run on. His mates might be around here."
"In that case, take the pipe," Ian said, offering it to him. This did earn him a faint smile as he backed out of the alley. "By the way -- nice coat."
There was the sickening sensation of falling again, of the sphere of time rotating, and he clutched at what he could: the brief contact of Jack's fingers as he gripped the pipe, the way Ian's heart had fallen at his own failure, his determination to do better -- to be better -- to be enough to get into Torchwood again.
Stepping in front of Jack's SUV outside Daley Plaza, in a suit that would have made an executive in any downtown high-rise proud. For just a second he slipped into the other Ian, but the doubling of his vision made him dizzy and he stumbled back, watching as Jack cut him down neatly with threats of running him over, with the assurance that there was no place for him in Torchwood anymore, that he should try and find another life.
"You don't even know me," he heard himself protest.
"Oh? Gianni "Ian" Leone, born August 19th, 1983. Good student, born and bred in Chicago, Cubs fan, something of a drifter as a teenager -- one minor conviction for shoplifting, purged on majority -- moved to New York, joined Torchwood there as a junior researcher. Girlfriend, Lisa Hallett, native of New York -- "
"Deceased," he heard himself say. God, he'd been so full of hope that he wouldn't lose her, that he'd finally been able to save someone he loved...
"I'm sorry," Jack said, not sounding sorry at all.
"Look, you obviously checked me out -- "
"Yes, and now that I know who you are I know that you have no place here."
Ian saw himself play his final, desperate card.
"So you're not going to help me catch this pterodactyl, then?" he asked.
Without the blinders of desperation and pain, Ian could see Jack more clearly and more thoroughly appreciate the absolutely poleaxed look on the other man's face. It almost made up for being incorporeal, for being half-outside of time.
He jumped again, but he was getting the hang of this now, and it was almost effortless to find himself and Jack in the old south-side warehouse, Jack clutching precariously to one of Belladonna's legs as she struggled to get free.
There it was, the moment when Jack jabbed the needle home -- shot the sedative into the vein -- and Belladonna sent him tumbling into Ian, both men going down in a tangle of arms and legs. Jack flipped him over and rolled as Belladonna crashed into the ground, and there they were. Laughing, triumphant, pressed together chest to thigh.
Ian put out his hands and shouted, "STOP!"
Time slowed and ceased to be. It became one endless moment, Jack's breath warm on his cheek, the smell of him in his nostrils, his dark eyes level with Ian's.
Ian composed himself, curled up on the cement floor he couldn't quite feel, and closed his eyes. He could wait here, wait for them to come get him, wait for them to save him. They would save him, they would pluck him out of the Rift and bring him back into home-time.
And if they didn't, there were worse ways to spend eternity than endlessly looped in one brilliant second, one moment where he'd been happy.
***
Taken from Torchwood Classics, the Discerning Recs List:
TYPEWRITER by hija_paloma | (Ellis/Edgar, RPS, R) | Summary: Ellis likes old things. Edgar isn't old, but Ellis likes him anyway.
TWO PAIR by kikura_s | (Gwen/Jack, Gwen/Ryan, Jack/Ian) | Summary: Jack didn't always know what was best for him. That was why he and Gwen got along so well. This is the fic that first got Torchwood America on fandom_wank, of course.
A TOURIST'S GUIDE TO CHICAGO by sam_storyteller | (Gen, Humor, hints of J/I) | Summary: Everything you ever wanted to know about the second city and some things you probably didn't, by Ian Leone.
GIVING UP THE STRAIGHT CARD by mmk_mmk | (Ian/Various, NC-17) | Summary: Ian was still willing to consider the idea that he was straight, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
TEN THINGS TO DO IN CHICAGO WITH A STOPWATCH by a_fell_crowley | (Jack/Ian, NC-17) | Summary: "I can think of at least ten fun things to do with a stopwatch." "That's good, because I couldn't come up with any."
FANART: QUIET MOMENT and CAN'T STOP THE J-ROCK by bluejeans07 | (Jack/Ian and Tosh&Tommy, both PG)
***
Sam's Three Things About Torchwood, Episode 1.19: End Of Days
1. I always wondered how Jack could dismiss Torchwood Las Vegas so casually. I thought it was some kind of joke, when he mentioned it in the pilot, but it's nice to see that it's coming full circle. I'd go crazy homicidal too if I was stuck in the same twelve hours in Las Vegas, over and over again, for five years.
2. That being said, I'm not sure I buy slaughtering Evil Torchwood Las Vegas as a premise for the climax of the episode, and also, I'm not sure how Jack and Gwen are going to escape their clutches at this point, and cliffhangers? SUCK.
3. IS IT NEXT WEEK ALREADY, come on, I don't know if you've noticed but Ian and like half of Chicago are STUCK IN THE RIFT.
3a. The Doctor is deeply, deeply creepy. John Barrowman is a genius.
***
Excerpt from the shooting script for Episode 1x20: Armageddon.
Story by: Edgar van Scyoc
Teleplay by: Ellis Graveworthy
INT - HUB - DAY
IAN and TOSH are working on repairing some piece of equipment in the Hub; TOSH wipes her eyes now and again as she works, still grieving for her brother. IAN shoots her uncertain looks.
A newly-revived JACK emerges from the shadows, holding GWEN's hand. TOSH notices first; she drops her toolbox and runs across the Hub.
TOSH
Oh my god, oh, my god --
IAN looks up and sees her hugging JACK; he hesitates, then straightens and follows. JACK meets him halfway; at first IAN attempts to wave, then shake his hand, then spreads his hands, confused. JACK hauls him forward and into a hug.
IAN
We thought you were dead --
JACK
Not that easy to get rid of me.
IAN
We left you there.
JACK
Gwen was with me. It's okay.
IAN
It's not okay. Tommy and Owen -- and the Doctor --
JACK
We'll make it okay. We're still here.
IAN
But what do we --
JACK
Shh. The end is where we start from.
JACK pulls back, out of the hug, and touches IAN's face gently; as GWEN and TOSH look on, they kiss passionately.
END OF SEASON ONE
***
Transcript from David Tennant's appearance on The Today Show, June 9, the Monday after the airing of the season finale, Armageddon.
David Tennant: Well, I don't think -- I mean, perhaps some people haven't watched yet, so turn down your sets if you don't want to be spoiled, that's your fair warning.
Matt Lauer: *laughs*
David Tennant: But I think really the season finale could be summed up pretty quickly as, Rift opens, giant hellbeast, oh no lots of death, Jack dies, Jack revives, big gay kiss.
Meredith Vieira: I think I know the part we're all interested in!
David Tennant: Oh, no...
Meredith Vieira: Everyone wants to know about the kiss. What did it mean? Was it fun?
David Tennant: Well, it's acting, you know. I mean I always have fun when I act, but of course neither of us fancy men, so it was just another stage kiss, really. Bit like kissing a sibling actually. Erm. He's very much my little brother, you know, behind the scenes. We're all a family, really.
Matt Lauer: So what happens next? I mean, we have two regular characters from the show and one character who's supposed to be getting his own show, all dead in the...
David Tennant: The medical grotto, yes. Owen Harper and Tamaki Sato, and of course the Doctor. By the way I do think it's a terrible mistake giving John Barrowman his own show, because he'll only use it to get boys with.
Meredith Vieira: *laughs*
David Tennant: Graveworthy said he'd pay me ten dollars to say that on air.
Matt Lauer: But you can't tell us anything that happens.
David Tennant: Well, I don't know yet. We've had a few talks about what the second season will hold, but I can't really divulge any of that, and I don't know anything about the spinoff --
Meredith Vieira: Doctor Who?
David Tennant: Yes, in my case more like Doctor What. People keep asking me what it's all about, and I just don't know! But I do know that it will be on following Torchwood next season, and hopefully Jack Harkness hasn't seen the last of the Doctor yet.
***
Excerpt from FOX News Sunday:
Edgar van Scyoc and his homosexual agenda have declared a holy war, a jihad, on the American way of life and morality.
From Torchwords.com, official Torchwood behind-the-scenes blog: Edgar van Scyoc, in response:
Apparently I've declared a jihad on American values. This is pretty cool.
I didn't realise sarcasm was all it took to declare Jihad, because I thought it was a serious term that referred to bloody religious wars fought over scriptural interpretation and water rights. If sarcasm is all that's required, though, I think you ought to know I've also declared a jihad on the service at several local restaurants, the writing on most TV drama, light jazz, and hipster fashion. Jesus, think of the bloodshed I could cause if I employed satire. Moliere was a terrorist, you know.
I don't want anyone to die. I don't believe anyone should die because they don't share my morals, though I think fewer people would die if they did. I'm not interested in tearing down America, I like America, it's the only place you can get Byron's hamburgers and I would really miss cable television. I don't want anyone to fuck dogs or marry their parakeets. I'm not an anarchist, though I do find Emma Goldman oddly sexy. I'm not even a communist, because I'm really bad at sharing.
What I want is to drag America kicking and screaming into one brief moment, one second even, of cultural self-examination, because right now as a culture we kind of suck. I want us to stop sucking, because if we don't stop sucking it won't be my fault when America does collapse and, like I said, I'd really miss Byron's hamburgers. So I will shamefully confess, if asked while under oath, that I want America to relearn the definition of the words "tolerance" and "irony" because as a life-philosophy they've both served me extremely well.
I want to make you people love George Bernard Shaw, so help me god. And I will need the help, because he's a hard man to love.
Oh hey, as long as I'm declaring jihads, I totally call jihad on beat poetry.
Ellis Graveworthy, on hearing the statement read aloud to van Scyoc by reporters at a charity dinner in Chicago:
Edgar, why didn't you tell me you had a homosexual agenda? I would have bought you a nice leather case for it.
***
Transcript of Ellis Graveworthy, speaking at TorchGathering, the first ever national Torchwood fan convention, Chicago, June 2008.
Well, obviously the Doctor doesn't stay dead. I hardly think that's a spoiler, he has his own television spinoff, it would be dreadfully boring if Doctor Who featured a corpse as its star player. Not that John Barrowman doesn't make a fine corpse, but he's much more interesting when he's moving about and talking.
What else can I tell you...well, the first few episodes of Torchwood's new season are in our heads, Edgar's and mine. There will be passion, of course, and the Doctor might not be the only one who can't stay dead. Confessions, confessions make for excellent drama. New monsters, new aliens, new moral dilemmas for our heroes to deal with. I think we'll learn a good deal more about Gwen's past, her growing up in Chicago, and of course she's engaged to Ryan now. Yes, I imagine there will be the requisite "wacky wedding" episode, though I'm trying to persuade Edgar to retain some shred of his dignity in that respect.
I'd like to write a story about Wrigley Field being haunted, too. That would be tremendous. And -- and I'd like very much to continue to annoy stupid people of all races and creeds. It's been great fun so far. I'm so glad that the egalitarian nature of America allows a foreigner to be excoriated with the same vehemence as one of your own sons. I feel really very welcomed by all the vitriol that's been flung at me.
So, in all, lots of sex, lots of violence, hopefully a talking-point or two, and what I believe the kids these days are calling "wank" over all of it.
We live to entertain and educate, you know. It should be a wonderful new season.
***
Archive photograph of the original downtown Torchwood red line station in Chicago, outside what is now Daley Plaza. The station is no longer in use but should re-open in 2009 after extensive renovations. Edgar van Scyoc relates that he always felt Torchwood Station looked like the entrance to a secret underground lair, and has made a deal with the city of Chicago for Torchwood's production company to "adopt" Torchwood Station on its reopening (as the Cubs have done with Addison and Sheridan stations on the north side).
Story Notes
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
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of course, all the meta and interviews and torchwood_el were even cooler.
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You know what would be cool? If they got Joss Whedon on the project. Him and RTD working together... Who knows what they'd come up with?
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Sorry. Not a huge Whedon fan, or a huge RTD fan really. I'm not nuts about the idea of Torchwood America.
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Not why not Whedon or RTD, although I wouldn't mind you explaining your dislike of Uncle Rusty, not being that big of a fan of his myself (I prefer Steven Moffat, although his formula of taking something ordinary and making it terrifying is wearing kind of thin,) why not Torchwood USA?
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That's not to say they shouldn't make it; just that my interest level in watching it is zero.
After all, I already wrote my own. :D