The Death of Captain Jack (Torchwood audio)

[unfeathered]

Oh wow. I got this for Christmas and finally had a chance to listen to it today whilst doing my ironing (definitely livened up the ironing!) and, well, obviously it was going to be tremendous fun, with Jack Harkness and John Hart finally getting to play off each other again, but wow, it really was fun!

It took me a while to work out that it was an AU - and at what point the AU began - mostly because it had Time Agency (I *assume* they were both still at the Agency for the early parts; I don't feel it was made very clear) era Jack and John calling each other Jack Harkness and John Hart, which I thought was weird. I always assumed from their opening remarks in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that Jack didn't start calling himself Harkness until just before he met the Doctor in 1941, and that John only started calling himself John Hart shortly before he was reuinted with Jack. So that threw me quite a bit, especially given that Month 25 gave us a whole new presumably-mostly-canon (considering that it's used in his Wiki) name for Time Agency era Jack. I know it's complicated doing flashbacks and calling someone a different name to the character we know and love, but personally I'd always gone with Jack being his real name and him choosing other similar names over time, as a kind of compromise. But anyway, minor niggle.

This really did feel like a mega fanwork, considering the name-dropping of famous characters (I laughed when, right near the beginning, they got it on with Alexander the Great because I'd come up with him as a character Jack had got friendly with as a comment in a recent role-play thread!) and dropping-in of favourite Torchwood characters etc. I loved John's comment about the Blessing - yeah, let's just ignore that one! I loved the whole thing with Queen Victoria - it was so ridiculous it was just hilarious! I felt the ending, that Jack knew all along and had prepared for it, was a bit of a cop-out but, hey, that's not really what this was about. It was about exploring all the fun possibilities in an AU that really felt like it could have existed.

Great fun. Highly recommend. :-)

Comments

[auroracloud]

personally I'd always gone with Jack being his real name and him choosing other similar names over time, as a kind of compromise.

It also makes sense in a way; one of the things I always wonder about is how do you train yourself to have an automatic reaction to your "new" name the way you're likely to always stop and look/listen if you hear your own name called out, before you even think about it. Of course you're likely to learn it in time, but in the beginning it's probably not so automatic. So it'd be a lot easier, especially for someone leading such an action-heavy life as Jack, it'd make sense to adopt names that it's easy to train yourself to respond to.

(This is all based on conjecturing, of course, not real-life experience, because I've never tried operating under a different name, internet aliases and nicknames aside.)

Though maybe I'm just biased because I don't like the name given to Jack in that earlier audio (which I still haven't listened to, largely because I ran into the name first and didn't like it and felt annoyed by the idea of having to listen to him being called that). It just doesn't sound like him.

But I digress! Thanks for the recommendation, I do want to check this one out some time. :-)

[unfeathered]

Yes, exactly, that's exactly where my reasoning came from (apart from also making it easier to write fics/role-play without fussing about what to call him) - the automatic reaction thing, and not forgetting what you're called!

And oh, you really should give Month 25 a go because there is just so much there! I don't like the name they gave him either, but I didn't find it put me off when listening - perhaps because (unlike in a fic, for instance) you've still got JB's voice there, still sounding very Jack-like! Have a look at my review of that one, if you want some convincing! :-D