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sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:39 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:39 pm
Entry tags:
Torchwood Season Zero: Episodes 11 - 13 (History Arc)
0.11 Touching Four
Owen, arriving unusually early to the Hub one morning, has a rude wake-up call when he stumbles over a body by the fountain pool. The man isn't one of theirs, but he's unconscious and breathing, so Owen gets him into the medbay and is in the process of hooking up IVs and doing an exam when Jack appears. Jack is shocked to recognise the man as a member of Torchwood Four, a branch of Torchwood that disappeared ten years ago and hundreds of miles away. And Aaron Hansen looks exactly the way he did when they disappeared.
In the conference room, Jack briefs them on Torchwood Four's disappearance. An outpost in Galway, much like Cardiff, Torchwood Four was dedicated to information and debris retrieval at the westernmost edge of Torchwood's reach, the Atlantic ocean. Ten years ago, it disappeared -- the people and the building, without a trace remaining. Jack always suspected that a temporal shift was triggered by something that Four recovered, but there was no way of proving it. Now, it appears his assumption was only half-right.
Their visitor from Galway, Aaron, is putting out strange energy readings that seem to indicate he has recently crossed between universes. When he finally wakes, he is thrilled to see Jack Harkness, and asks after people that none of the current Torchwood Three team know anything about. It is left to Jack to inform Aaron that Four has been gone for ten years. Aaron, devastated, tells him that for Four it's only been a few months.
Four apparently didn't realise at first that they had stepped across universes. Isolated as they were, it took them a month to figure it out and another few to find a way to send someone "home". Tosh is fascinated by the technology, but Jack is wary, knowing that the last time the walls between universes broke down, Torchwood London was destroyed.
Aaron explains that he's returned to plant a trigger that will draw Four back into the universe proper, but Jack is unwilling to act immediately. For one thing, Torchwood Four has been absent for ten years. For another, the trigger must be planted in the Rift itself, which means activating the Rift manipulator, which hasn't been controllable in decades. Aaron also has "absent" spells, possibly a holdover from his trip back to their universe, and Jack is unwilling to risk maiming or killing the rest of Four if he doesn't have to.
Soon, however, the choice may be out of his hands: there is a new nuclear power plant being built in Cardiff, the Blaidd Drwg plant, and with a "rift storm" brewing Jack knows what that means. Even if he won't tell the others. If they don't activate the trigger soon, they won't be able to activate it at all.
Ultimately, Aaron decides to take control of matters: he takes Owen and Suzie hostage, demanding that Jack activate the trigger and draw Four back into their world. Jack agrees to change places with Owen and Suzie, and alone in the dark in the bowels of the Hub he and Aaron negotiate for the return of Torchwood Four. Aaron talks about how you can't feel like you belong in any other place but yours; Jack talks about how you have to anyway. Aaron, growing more and more agitated, continues to rant and threaten while Jack tries to find a way out for both his team and Four's.
In the end, it doesn't matter; Aaron can feel Four tugging him back as the machinery that brought him to Cardiff destabilises. With glowing gold eyes, he repeats something that someone else told Jack not long before: Bad Wolf Lives. Aaron has more information than that, however: She lives, and She is coming for them all.
Episode Quotes:
Aaron: You don't look a minute older than you did ten years ago.
Jack: I age well.
Aaron: So. You're in charge of Torchwood now. Never thought I'd see the day.
Jack: Me either.
Aaron: You like it?
Jack: Has its moments.
Aaron: Yeah. What happened, Alex finally retire?
Jack: He died.
Aaron: KIA, I hope.
Jack: He shot himself on New Year's Eve. Left Torchwood to me. As a gift, he said.
Aaron: Jesus Christ, Jack.
Aaron: Jack seems...happier.
Suzie: I'd hate to know what he was like ten years ago, then.
Aaron: Leadership suits him. Handpicked the lot of you, did he?
Owen: Somewhere between handpicking and kidnapping, really.
Aaron: Sounds like Jack. Figures, though.
Owen: How's that?
Aaron: Well, he's Jack, isn't he? Figures he'd pick the pretty ones.
Aaron: Jack. We don't fit there. Things are strange, we don't belong --
Jack: Sometimes you don't. I've had to live with that. You learn to survive.
Aaron: We don't want to survive. We want to come home.
Jack: There is more at stake here than homesickness. The world is bigger than you are.
Aaron: But it's not our world!
Suzie: By the way, your three months are up. The surveillance is off.
Ianto: Thank you.
Suzie: So now you can get rid of that cheap disposable phone you've been making private calls with, and the secret e-mail account.
Ianto: I...
Suzie: Listen, whatever it is, I don't want to know. Kinky pay-for-play sex, affair with a married...person, side business, I don't care. Unless it's drugs, then you should tell me. It isn't drugs, is it?
Ianto: No.
Suzie: Okay then. Carry on.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
TORCHWOOD IV - GALWAY - CHARTER
Mission Designation: The primary goal of an established Torchwood branch on the western coast of Ireland is as follows:
1. Coastal surveillance and recovery of alien technology
2. Defence against possible incursion
3. Import surveillance and auditing / anti-smuggling activity
Branch Structure: Torchwood IV represents a trend towards self-sufficiency and immediate on-site intellectual authority subject to but not subsumed by policy set at Torchwood I London. As follows:
SITE STAFF
SUPERVISING MANAGER, reporting to Torchwood I London. Autonomous control within Torchwood IV of all activity. Determines budget allocation, final hiring authority, all personnel management.
TECHNOLOGIST I: reporting directly to Supervising Manager. Authority to impound or confiscate alien technology for Torchwood's use. Well-versed in latest technological theory. Translation skills a plus.
TECHNOLOGIST II: Assists Technologist I in all activities and acts as liaison between IV and I.
MEDIC: Provides healthcare for all members, creates health and safety protocols for office use, subject to dictates of Torchwood I London.
ARCHIVIST: Provides proper storage, preservation, and research materials for artifacts deemed useless or whose functions are unknown. Prepares, packages, and provides transit for artifacts en route to Torchwood I London.
FIELD RECOVERY TEAM
TEAM CAPTAIN: Supervises all field activity. In field situation, supercedes all authority excepting branch Supervising Manager. May also fulfill the role of Public and Police Liaison.
SAFETY SUPERVISOR: Makes initial recon, including witness interviews and memory modification as necessary. Assesses safety of recovery, provides necessary equipment and containment units. Liaises with Medic on health and safety protocols in the field.
RECOVERY SPECIALIST: Devises recovery methodology and process. Recovers equipment, technology, and remains.
FIELD ASSESSOR: Accepts recovered material and ensures it is stored properly for transit. Initial assessment of usefulness and function. All items MUST BE CLEARED by Field Assessor before being returned to Galway Hub for study/archival.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -3
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 11
Alien activity: None.
Rift activity: Gearing up for the big one. I have to be ready. It's not there yet, but soon.
Security: Speculations regarding the disappearance of Torchwood Four (see investigation file #34432) are confirmed. Torchwood Four was not the victim of a temporal displacement, as suspected, but rather a dimensional displacement. They passed into another universe, and didn't even notice. I couldn't throw the Rift into chaos, not for that, not so close to the next major event.
Other security issues: Aaron took Suzie and Owen hostage. I successfully negotiated myself into their place and stalled Aaron long enough for him to be no danger to us. It felt...too much like old times, deceiving people I should be liaising with, sacrificing Four for the sake of my people, but I had no choice. More hung in the balance than Aaron's homesickness.
Staff: Owen and Suzie are unscathed. They're all looking at me...a little funny. The way I used to look at Alex when I knew he was doing something cruel but couldn't argue. I hate that look.
Other Staff issues: Suzie reminded me that Ianto's three-month probation was up a month ago. We haven't really bothered checking the surveillance much in the past two months, so now it's just a matter of shutting down the hardware. He's a good kid. Won't ever make field agent, but he doesn't seem to mind.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.12 Lockdown
Jack's team at Torchwood know that he's...different, weird, alien in a way they can't define. What they don't know is that a much younger, much different Jack was once in Cardiff to stop an alien threat long before he became a member of Torchwood and started doing it for a living. Once upon a time, Jack came to Cardiff with Rose Tyler and the Doctor, and they stopped a Slitheen from blowing away half the planet just to get the energy to get back home.
When Margaret Blaine was elected mayor of Cardiff, Jack knew that the time was coming when the Doctor would appear to stop her -- along with a younger copy of himself -- and inadvertently open the Rift. He can't let that version see him, and he can't let his team see that Jack, but the only way around it seems to be to put the entire Hub under lockdown. Once everyone is in the Hub for the morning and the blue box has appeared on the Plass, Jack triggers a total lockdown: no power, no connectivity to the outside world, no CCTV recording, no way to escape for twenty-four hours. The team thinks it's a malfunction in the decontam system, designed to keep alien microbes from escaping.
Trapped in the Hub for reasons they can't understand, the team react in different ways. Ianto, who seems especially upset, starts trying to rewire the generators to provide them with a minimal amount of power. Owen, worried about the cryo units, begins obsessively locking the doors. Tosh tries to treat the whole thing lightly, like some kind of camp-out, but without her technology she too is going a little insane. Suzie seems to be struggling with something, but nobody can figure out quite what.
Still, Jack feels confident that in a few more hours he can release his agents in the knowledge his other self has gone -- until he notices that it's past the time they should have felt the aftershock of the Rift opening, and nothing happened. Too late, he realises that unbeknownst to his younger self, Torchwood had a role to play in the events surrounding the arrest of Margaret Blaine, and they missed their cue while they were locked down in the Hub.
Jack, now frantic to escape and find out what went wrong, accidentally triggers a menace he thought was defused years ago, an anti-escape mechanism that is trained to hunt down and kill anyone who gets out. The team fends off flying mechanical monsters without question, giving Jack a chance to escape to the remote trigger and re-power the Hub. When he turns around after powering up the Hub (and deactivating the monsters), however, he finds himself face to face with...himself.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Episode Quotes:
Jack: No power. No lights, no computers, no sensors, no CCTV, no way to get out.
Owen: What about the cryo units?
Jack: When a power cut happens, do you open the fridge?
Owen: I dread to know what "eating all the ice cream before it melts" is in that little metaphor.
Ianto: How are you holding up?
Tosh: Fine. A little bored, but fine.
Ianto: I er. Brought you a book.
Tosh: Shame we haven't got any lights.
Ianto: [offers a torch]
Tosh: What would we do without you?
Ianto: I do my best.
Owen: What are you doing?
Jack: Getting out.
Suzie: Told you. Nobody could stay that calm. He was just waiting to boil over.
Jack: Are you going to psychoanalyze me or help me get out?
Suzie: I can do both!
Jack: Okay. Remote power restart. I can do this. Tosh, you reading me?
Tosh: Pull the panel off the wall. You should see three red handles. Pull the middle one, then the sides simultaneously.
Jack: That's it? Shouldn't we have this locked at least, or something?
Tosh: Oh.
Jack: Oh?
Tosh: I assumed you'd got the lock picked.
Jack: Dammit.
Ianto: It's a simple three-pin punch. Use your cufflink.
Jack: It frightens me how much you know about picking this lock.
Ianto: It's my job.
Jack: Okay, power should be coming back on...now.
Tosh: Yep. We have power.
Jack: Good, now Ianto and I can have a talk about...uh...
Tosh: Jack?
Jack: Hang on a minute, Tosh.
Tosh: What's going on?
Jack: Just ran into an old friend. Sit tight. I'll call you back in a minute. [hangs up] Captain Harkness.
Younger Jack: Captain Harkness.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
From: I. Jones
To: T. Sato
Subject: No Subject
Tosh, check camera 112. I just pulled this grab off the feed on the Plass.
Has Jack ever mentioned having a brother?
IJ
ATTACHED FILE:
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -2
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 12
NO ENTRY.
0.13 Know Then Thyself
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Jack locked down the Hub when he saw the Doctor arriving on the Plass, to prevent himself or his team from meeting a younger Jack Harkness. Then he realised Torchwood has a part to play in the events taking place topside, and manages to escape long enough to reroute power to the Hub and free his team. Only to discover that his younger self got curious and followed him...
Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood, doesn't have the time to explain things to Captain Jack Harkness, Companion of the Doctor. Something has gone horribly awry: Jack, Rose, Mickey, and the Doctor were supposed to capture Mayor Margaret Blaine, who was then supposed to trick them into opening the Rift so that she could escape. In turn this would cause her to be de-aged to egg form, and keep the Doctor and his Companions on schedule for Raxacoricofallapatorius, after which they would make their way to the Game Station and Jack's eventual, terrible destiny. As much as he'd like to change his immortality for a mortal life, Jack knows that what's done can't be undone, not by messing about with the past.
Instead of events unfolding the way Jack remembers, the Doctor and his Companions failed to capture Margaret Blaine, who escaped via teleportation and left them with an empty Mayor's office, a bit of alien tech a younger Jack is drooling to study, and an evening free of intrigue...or of Rift-opening. If Jack doesn't fix matters soon, time will alter drastically and his own personal timeline, not to mention that of his team and of the Earth, will be left hanging loose.
Jack and his younger counterpart determine that there are four "pressure points" to the event -- capturing the Mayor, the Doctor taking her away from the TARDIS for dinner, the Rift being thrown open, and the Mayor being attacked by the TARDIS itself. Each pressure point needs attention, but the longer the two Jacks are together the more dangerous everything will become.
In a fit of desperation, Jack forces his team topside and into an unguarded TARDIS. Together the two Captains steal the time-machine, taking it back a handful of hours. They leave Tosh at the first point, with instructions on how to recalibrate the Mayor's teleportation device to weaken the field. Ianto is next, charged with convincing a younger Jack Harkness to send the Doctor away for a few hours ("by any means necessary" and "use your sexual wiles" both left unsaid). Suzie is left to ensure that the proper switch is thrown, opening the Rift, and Owen is left with her, in charge of making sure the TARDIS defends itself against the Mayor when the time is right.
Tosh and Ianto manage their tasks without a hitch, although perhaps, in Ianto's case, not without a few suspicious bruises. Suzie completes her task and then sneaks out of the TARDIS to rendezvous with the others, but her first taste of freedom in hours is too much and she returns to the Hub, risking a fragmented timeline, in order to collect her knife.
Owen, on the other hand, has no idea how to control the TARDIS or do what Jack asked. He absorbs enough from the others to know that there's a panel he needs to open, but it requires sneaking around under the very noses of the TARDIS inhabitants -- three observant humans and an alien with ultraperceptive senses. Jack's younger self is doing a good job of distracting them, but Owen can only do so much at once.
With time running out, Owen manages to release the heart of the TARDIS, setting the timeline right and ensuring Jack's future, not to mention their own. Jack offers his young counterpart a parting drink, laced with Retcon, and his younger self agrees; after seeing him safe to the door of the TARDIS, Jack takes his team to a pub to celebrate and likewise spikes their drinks with Retcon, although this time he doesn't ask permission. With the last few hours extremely fuzzy, Owen isn't going to say no to a night off, nor is Tosh; Ianto finds himself oddly eager when Jack invites him back to the Hub for the evening, and Suzie -- well, Suzie, with the knife in her bag, assumes that she was going to go hunting, and disappears into the night just as the TARDIS vanishes from the Plass.
Episode Quotes:
Younger Jack: I felt you. Before. I got rid of the Doctor -- but you must remember this.
Jack: No, I don't. That's what's worrying me.
Younger Jack: You don't remember this.
Jack: Something's wrong.
Younger Jack: I guess you would know. You sound...so old. In my head. We don't look as old as you feel.
Jack: We moisturise.
Younger Jack: I like our hair. Very contemporary. What's up with the coat?
Jack: I really don't have time to explain my fashion decisions to myself.
Suzie: Who is he, Jack?
Jack: He's me.
Suzie: How?
Jack: I used to travel with this...guy. Amazing guy. Doctor. Something happened to me...and I came here. To wait for him. I've waited a long time.
Suzie: But he's here now.
Jack: But he's not. Not for me. What happened to me in my past hasn't happened to him, here and now, not yet.
Suzie: My head hurts.
Jack: Welcome to my life.
[Ianto, walking past Younger Jack, spills coffee on him.]
Ianto: Excuse me -- I'm so sorry.
Younger Jack: It's nothing, really.
Ianto: No, you're covered in -- here, let me -- [begins blotting Jack's trousers with his handkerchief]
Younger Jack: Hey, if you wanted to make friends you only had to ask.
Ianto: [pause] Want to make friends?
Younger Jack: God bless the twenty-first century. Captain Jack Harkness.
Ianto: Ianto Jones.
Younger Jack: You got a place?
Ianto: Yours is closer.
Younger Jack: You've been watching me.
Ianto: Does that spoil the mystique?
Younger Jack: It's a mystique all its own. I gotta ditch my roommates. Stay here.
Ianto: Breathless with anticipation.
Jack: You have to drink this.
Younger Jack: Because you didn't remember any of this.
Jack: That's right.
Younger Jack: How do we end up here? With...friends, lovers, but without the Doctor?
Jack: We die.
Younger Jack: And?
Jack: And Rose brings us back. And then we get left behind.
Younger Jack: Why?
Jack: You'll find out when I do. Drink up, kiddo.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -1
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 13
Alien activity: Alien known as The Doctor present in Cardiff for the better part of the day into the evening.
Rift activity: Sort of depends on how you look at it. From this perspective, not much out of the usual. From the other side of the equation, it was closed and now it's open. You know they try to prep you for stuff like this as a Time Agent but nothing really ever makes you ready for the way your brain tries to crawl out your ears when you think too hard about it.
Security: Got to work on some different protocols for Hub lockdown.
Other security issues: Doctor is not an ongoing security risk; TARDIS departed earlier this evening.
Staff: S. Costello, O. Harper, T. Sato, and I. Jones all encountered my younger self and his traveling companions to a greater or lesser degree. Retcon administered, seems to be holding.
Other Staff issues: Ianto has remained in the Hub with me this evening to monitor the Rift and inspect the infrastructure for damage after our lockdown. I am certain he will conduct his end of the investigation with the thoroughness for which he is fast becoming famous in some Torchwood circles.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
Owen, arriving unusually early to the Hub one morning, has a rude wake-up call when he stumbles over a body by the fountain pool. The man isn't one of theirs, but he's unconscious and breathing, so Owen gets him into the medbay and is in the process of hooking up IVs and doing an exam when Jack appears. Jack is shocked to recognise the man as a member of Torchwood Four, a branch of Torchwood that disappeared ten years ago and hundreds of miles away. And Aaron Hansen looks exactly the way he did when they disappeared.
In the conference room, Jack briefs them on Torchwood Four's disappearance. An outpost in Galway, much like Cardiff, Torchwood Four was dedicated to information and debris retrieval at the westernmost edge of Torchwood's reach, the Atlantic ocean. Ten years ago, it disappeared -- the people and the building, without a trace remaining. Jack always suspected that a temporal shift was triggered by something that Four recovered, but there was no way of proving it. Now, it appears his assumption was only half-right.
Their visitor from Galway, Aaron, is putting out strange energy readings that seem to indicate he has recently crossed between universes. When he finally wakes, he is thrilled to see Jack Harkness, and asks after people that none of the current Torchwood Three team know anything about. It is left to Jack to inform Aaron that Four has been gone for ten years. Aaron, devastated, tells him that for Four it's only been a few months.
Four apparently didn't realise at first that they had stepped across universes. Isolated as they were, it took them a month to figure it out and another few to find a way to send someone "home". Tosh is fascinated by the technology, but Jack is wary, knowing that the last time the walls between universes broke down, Torchwood London was destroyed.
Aaron explains that he's returned to plant a trigger that will draw Four back into the universe proper, but Jack is unwilling to act immediately. For one thing, Torchwood Four has been absent for ten years. For another, the trigger must be planted in the Rift itself, which means activating the Rift manipulator, which hasn't been controllable in decades. Aaron also has "absent" spells, possibly a holdover from his trip back to their universe, and Jack is unwilling to risk maiming or killing the rest of Four if he doesn't have to.
Soon, however, the choice may be out of his hands: there is a new nuclear power plant being built in Cardiff, the Blaidd Drwg plant, and with a "rift storm" brewing Jack knows what that means. Even if he won't tell the others. If they don't activate the trigger soon, they won't be able to activate it at all.
Ultimately, Aaron decides to take control of matters: he takes Owen and Suzie hostage, demanding that Jack activate the trigger and draw Four back into their world. Jack agrees to change places with Owen and Suzie, and alone in the dark in the bowels of the Hub he and Aaron negotiate for the return of Torchwood Four. Aaron talks about how you can't feel like you belong in any other place but yours; Jack talks about how you have to anyway. Aaron, growing more and more agitated, continues to rant and threaten while Jack tries to find a way out for both his team and Four's.
In the end, it doesn't matter; Aaron can feel Four tugging him back as the machinery that brought him to Cardiff destabilises. With glowing gold eyes, he repeats something that someone else told Jack not long before: Bad Wolf Lives. Aaron has more information than that, however: She lives, and She is coming for them all.
Episode Quotes:
Aaron: You don't look a minute older than you did ten years ago.
Jack: I age well.
Aaron: So. You're in charge of Torchwood now. Never thought I'd see the day.
Jack: Me either.
Aaron: You like it?
Jack: Has its moments.
Aaron: Yeah. What happened, Alex finally retire?
Jack: He died.
Aaron: KIA, I hope.
Jack: He shot himself on New Year's Eve. Left Torchwood to me. As a gift, he said.
Aaron: Jesus Christ, Jack.
Aaron: Jack seems...happier.
Suzie: I'd hate to know what he was like ten years ago, then.
Aaron: Leadership suits him. Handpicked the lot of you, did he?
Owen: Somewhere between handpicking and kidnapping, really.
Aaron: Sounds like Jack. Figures, though.
Owen: How's that?
Aaron: Well, he's Jack, isn't he? Figures he'd pick the pretty ones.
Aaron: Jack. We don't fit there. Things are strange, we don't belong --
Jack: Sometimes you don't. I've had to live with that. You learn to survive.
Aaron: We don't want to survive. We want to come home.
Jack: There is more at stake here than homesickness. The world is bigger than you are.
Aaron: But it's not our world!
Suzie: By the way, your three months are up. The surveillance is off.
Ianto: Thank you.
Suzie: So now you can get rid of that cheap disposable phone you've been making private calls with, and the secret e-mail account.
Ianto: I...
Suzie: Listen, whatever it is, I don't want to know. Kinky pay-for-play sex, affair with a married...person, side business, I don't care. Unless it's drugs, then you should tell me. It isn't drugs, is it?
Ianto: No.
Suzie: Okay then. Carry on.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
TORCHWOOD IV - GALWAY - CHARTER
Mission Designation: The primary goal of an established Torchwood branch on the western coast of Ireland is as follows:
1. Coastal surveillance and recovery of alien technology
2. Defence against possible incursion
3. Import surveillance and auditing / anti-smuggling activity
Branch Structure: Torchwood IV represents a trend towards self-sufficiency and immediate on-site intellectual authority subject to but not subsumed by policy set at Torchwood I London. As follows:
SITE STAFF
SUPERVISING MANAGER, reporting to Torchwood I London. Autonomous control within Torchwood IV of all activity. Determines budget allocation, final hiring authority, all personnel management.
TECHNOLOGIST I: reporting directly to Supervising Manager. Authority to impound or confiscate alien technology for Torchwood's use. Well-versed in latest technological theory. Translation skills a plus.
TECHNOLOGIST II: Assists Technologist I in all activities and acts as liaison between IV and I.
MEDIC: Provides healthcare for all members, creates health and safety protocols for office use, subject to dictates of Torchwood I London.
ARCHIVIST: Provides proper storage, preservation, and research materials for artifacts deemed useless or whose functions are unknown. Prepares, packages, and provides transit for artifacts en route to Torchwood I London.
FIELD RECOVERY TEAM
TEAM CAPTAIN: Supervises all field activity. In field situation, supercedes all authority excepting branch Supervising Manager. May also fulfill the role of Public and Police Liaison.
SAFETY SUPERVISOR: Makes initial recon, including witness interviews and memory modification as necessary. Assesses safety of recovery, provides necessary equipment and containment units. Liaises with Medic on health and safety protocols in the field.
RECOVERY SPECIALIST: Devises recovery methodology and process. Recovers equipment, technology, and remains.
FIELD ASSESSOR: Accepts recovered material and ensures it is stored properly for transit. Initial assessment of usefulness and function. All items MUST BE CLEARED by Field Assessor before being returned to Galway Hub for study/archival.
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -3
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 11
Alien activity: None.
Rift activity: Gearing up for the big one. I have to be ready. It's not there yet, but soon.
Security: Speculations regarding the disappearance of Torchwood Four (see investigation file #34432) are confirmed. Torchwood Four was not the victim of a temporal displacement, as suspected, but rather a dimensional displacement. They passed into another universe, and didn't even notice. I couldn't throw the Rift into chaos, not for that, not so close to the next major event.
Other security issues: Aaron took Suzie and Owen hostage. I successfully negotiated myself into their place and stalled Aaron long enough for him to be no danger to us. It felt...too much like old times, deceiving people I should be liaising with, sacrificing Four for the sake of my people, but I had no choice. More hung in the balance than Aaron's homesickness.
Staff: Owen and Suzie are unscathed. They're all looking at me...a little funny. The way I used to look at Alex when I knew he was doing something cruel but couldn't argue. I hate that look.
Other Staff issues: Suzie reminded me that Ianto's three-month probation was up a month ago. We haven't really bothered checking the surveillance much in the past two months, so now it's just a matter of shutting down the hardware. He's a good kid. Won't ever make field agent, but he doesn't seem to mind.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
0.12 Lockdown
Jack's team at Torchwood know that he's...different, weird, alien in a way they can't define. What they don't know is that a much younger, much different Jack was once in Cardiff to stop an alien threat long before he became a member of Torchwood and started doing it for a living. Once upon a time, Jack came to Cardiff with Rose Tyler and the Doctor, and they stopped a Slitheen from blowing away half the planet just to get the energy to get back home.
When Margaret Blaine was elected mayor of Cardiff, Jack knew that the time was coming when the Doctor would appear to stop her -- along with a younger copy of himself -- and inadvertently open the Rift. He can't let that version see him, and he can't let his team see that Jack, but the only way around it seems to be to put the entire Hub under lockdown. Once everyone is in the Hub for the morning and the blue box has appeared on the Plass, Jack triggers a total lockdown: no power, no connectivity to the outside world, no CCTV recording, no way to escape for twenty-four hours. The team thinks it's a malfunction in the decontam system, designed to keep alien microbes from escaping.
Trapped in the Hub for reasons they can't understand, the team react in different ways. Ianto, who seems especially upset, starts trying to rewire the generators to provide them with a minimal amount of power. Owen, worried about the cryo units, begins obsessively locking the doors. Tosh tries to treat the whole thing lightly, like some kind of camp-out, but without her technology she too is going a little insane. Suzie seems to be struggling with something, but nobody can figure out quite what.
Still, Jack feels confident that in a few more hours he can release his agents in the knowledge his other self has gone -- until he notices that it's past the time they should have felt the aftershock of the Rift opening, and nothing happened. Too late, he realises that unbeknownst to his younger self, Torchwood had a role to play in the events surrounding the arrest of Margaret Blaine, and they missed their cue while they were locked down in the Hub.
Jack, now frantic to escape and find out what went wrong, accidentally triggers a menace he thought was defused years ago, an anti-escape mechanism that is trained to hunt down and kill anyone who gets out. The team fends off flying mechanical monsters without question, giving Jack a chance to escape to the remote trigger and re-power the Hub. When he turns around after powering up the Hub (and deactivating the monsters), however, he finds himself face to face with...himself.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Episode Quotes:
Jack: No power. No lights, no computers, no sensors, no CCTV, no way to get out.
Owen: What about the cryo units?
Jack: When a power cut happens, do you open the fridge?
Owen: I dread to know what "eating all the ice cream before it melts" is in that little metaphor.
Ianto: How are you holding up?
Tosh: Fine. A little bored, but fine.
Ianto: I er. Brought you a book.
Tosh: Shame we haven't got any lights.
Ianto: [offers a torch]
Tosh: What would we do without you?
Ianto: I do my best.
Owen: What are you doing?
Jack: Getting out.
Suzie: Told you. Nobody could stay that calm. He was just waiting to boil over.
Jack: Are you going to psychoanalyze me or help me get out?
Suzie: I can do both!
Jack: Okay. Remote power restart. I can do this. Tosh, you reading me?
Tosh: Pull the panel off the wall. You should see three red handles. Pull the middle one, then the sides simultaneously.
Jack: That's it? Shouldn't we have this locked at least, or something?
Tosh: Oh.
Jack: Oh?
Tosh: I assumed you'd got the lock picked.
Jack: Dammit.
Ianto: It's a simple three-pin punch. Use your cufflink.
Jack: It frightens me how much you know about picking this lock.
Ianto: It's my job.
Jack: Okay, power should be coming back on...now.
Tosh: Yep. We have power.
Jack: Good, now Ianto and I can have a talk about...uh...
Tosh: Jack?
Jack: Hang on a minute, Tosh.
Tosh: What's going on?
Jack: Just ran into an old friend. Sit tight. I'll call you back in a minute. [hangs up] Captain Harkness.
Younger Jack: Captain Harkness.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
From: I. Jones
To: T. Sato
Subject: No Subject
Tosh, check camera 112. I just pulled this grab off the feed on the Plass.
Has Jack ever mentioned having a brother?
IJ
ATTACHED FILE:
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -2
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 12
NO ENTRY.
0.13 Know Then Thyself
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Jack locked down the Hub when he saw the Doctor arriving on the Plass, to prevent himself or his team from meeting a younger Jack Harkness. Then he realised Torchwood has a part to play in the events taking place topside, and manages to escape long enough to reroute power to the Hub and free his team. Only to discover that his younger self got curious and followed him...
Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood, doesn't have the time to explain things to Captain Jack Harkness, Companion of the Doctor. Something has gone horribly awry: Jack, Rose, Mickey, and the Doctor were supposed to capture Mayor Margaret Blaine, who was then supposed to trick them into opening the Rift so that she could escape. In turn this would cause her to be de-aged to egg form, and keep the Doctor and his Companions on schedule for Raxacoricofallapatorius, after which they would make their way to the Game Station and Jack's eventual, terrible destiny. As much as he'd like to change his immortality for a mortal life, Jack knows that what's done can't be undone, not by messing about with the past.
Instead of events unfolding the way Jack remembers, the Doctor and his Companions failed to capture Margaret Blaine, who escaped via teleportation and left them with an empty Mayor's office, a bit of alien tech a younger Jack is drooling to study, and an evening free of intrigue...or of Rift-opening. If Jack doesn't fix matters soon, time will alter drastically and his own personal timeline, not to mention that of his team and of the Earth, will be left hanging loose.
Jack and his younger counterpart determine that there are four "pressure points" to the event -- capturing the Mayor, the Doctor taking her away from the TARDIS for dinner, the Rift being thrown open, and the Mayor being attacked by the TARDIS itself. Each pressure point needs attention, but the longer the two Jacks are together the more dangerous everything will become.
In a fit of desperation, Jack forces his team topside and into an unguarded TARDIS. Together the two Captains steal the time-machine, taking it back a handful of hours. They leave Tosh at the first point, with instructions on how to recalibrate the Mayor's teleportation device to weaken the field. Ianto is next, charged with convincing a younger Jack Harkness to send the Doctor away for a few hours ("by any means necessary" and "use your sexual wiles" both left unsaid). Suzie is left to ensure that the proper switch is thrown, opening the Rift, and Owen is left with her, in charge of making sure the TARDIS defends itself against the Mayor when the time is right.
Tosh and Ianto manage their tasks without a hitch, although perhaps, in Ianto's case, not without a few suspicious bruises. Suzie completes her task and then sneaks out of the TARDIS to rendezvous with the others, but her first taste of freedom in hours is too much and she returns to the Hub, risking a fragmented timeline, in order to collect her knife.
Owen, on the other hand, has no idea how to control the TARDIS or do what Jack asked. He absorbs enough from the others to know that there's a panel he needs to open, but it requires sneaking around under the very noses of the TARDIS inhabitants -- three observant humans and an alien with ultraperceptive senses. Jack's younger self is doing a good job of distracting them, but Owen can only do so much at once.
With time running out, Owen manages to release the heart of the TARDIS, setting the timeline right and ensuring Jack's future, not to mention their own. Jack offers his young counterpart a parting drink, laced with Retcon, and his younger self agrees; after seeing him safe to the door of the TARDIS, Jack takes his team to a pub to celebrate and likewise spikes their drinks with Retcon, although this time he doesn't ask permission. With the last few hours extremely fuzzy, Owen isn't going to say no to a night off, nor is Tosh; Ianto finds himself oddly eager when Jack invites him back to the Hub for the evening, and Suzie -- well, Suzie, with the knife in her bag, assumes that she was going to go hunting, and disappears into the night just as the TARDIS vanishes from the Plass.
Episode Quotes:
Younger Jack: I felt you. Before. I got rid of the Doctor -- but you must remember this.
Jack: No, I don't. That's what's worrying me.
Younger Jack: You don't remember this.
Jack: Something's wrong.
Younger Jack: I guess you would know. You sound...so old. In my head. We don't look as old as you feel.
Jack: We moisturise.
Younger Jack: I like our hair. Very contemporary. What's up with the coat?
Jack: I really don't have time to explain my fashion decisions to myself.
Suzie: Who is he, Jack?
Jack: He's me.
Suzie: How?
Jack: I used to travel with this...guy. Amazing guy. Doctor. Something happened to me...and I came here. To wait for him. I've waited a long time.
Suzie: But he's here now.
Jack: But he's not. Not for me. What happened to me in my past hasn't happened to him, here and now, not yet.
Suzie: My head hurts.
Jack: Welcome to my life.
[Ianto, walking past Younger Jack, spills coffee on him.]
Ianto: Excuse me -- I'm so sorry.
Younger Jack: It's nothing, really.
Ianto: No, you're covered in -- here, let me -- [begins blotting Jack's trousers with his handkerchief]
Younger Jack: Hey, if you wanted to make friends you only had to ask.
Ianto: [pause] Want to make friends?
Younger Jack: God bless the twenty-first century. Captain Jack Harkness.
Ianto: Ianto Jones.
Younger Jack: You got a place?
Ianto: Yours is closer.
Younger Jack: You've been watching me.
Ianto: Does that spoil the mystique?
Younger Jack: It's a mystique all its own. I gotta ditch my roommates. Stay here.
Ianto: Breathless with anticipation.
Jack: You have to drink this.
Younger Jack: Because you didn't remember any of this.
Jack: That's right.
Younger Jack: How do we end up here? With...friends, lovers, but without the Doctor?
Jack: We die.
Younger Jack: And?
Jack: And Rose brings us back. And then we get left behind.
Younger Jack: Why?
Jack: You'll find out when I do. Drink up, kiddo.
BBC WEBSITE EXTRAS
CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Entry -1
Ongoing Archive Notes
Torchwood 3
Volume 71, Week 13
Alien activity: Alien known as The Doctor present in Cardiff for the better part of the day into the evening.
Rift activity: Sort of depends on how you look at it. From this perspective, not much out of the usual. From the other side of the equation, it was closed and now it's open. You know they try to prep you for stuff like this as a Time Agent but nothing really ever makes you ready for the way your brain tries to crawl out your ears when you think too hard about it.
Security: Got to work on some different protocols for Hub lockdown.
Other security issues: Doctor is not an ongoing security risk; TARDIS departed earlier this evening.
Staff: S. Costello, O. Harper, T. Sato, and I. Jones all encountered my younger self and his traveling companions to a greater or lesser degree. Retcon administered, seems to be holding.
Other Staff issues: Ianto has remained in the Hub with me this evening to monitor the Rift and inspect the infrastructure for damage after our lockdown. I am certain he will conduct his end of the investigation with the thoroughness for which he is fast becoming famous in some Torchwood circles.
Capt. Jack Harkness.
no subject
Masterpiece, really. :)
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