Talk:Jack Harkness: Difference between revisions

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==the great Face of Boe debate==
{{ArchCat}}
===Face of Boe===


Why does the Face of Boe have to be a redirect here? He maybe Jack according to [[Last of the Time Lords]], but still I think the face still deserves his own article. The evil dudeKorak 14:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
== Jack's Timeline ==


:Perhaps the Face of Boe article should be reverted back, it's more or less like the Doctor, the Face of Boe is Jack's "future incarnation" with his own personality and identity (and adventures) separate from Jack Harkness. --[[User:Tangerineduel|Tangerineduel]] 15:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't the burial of Jack in 27 AD and reappearance in the early 20th century in Exit Wounds appear not at the end of the timeline but at the beginning? I realize this means Jack crosses his own timelines but it's odd to read of his activities in Torchwood in the 1900s without acknowledgment that his team unearthed a later version of him back then.[[Special:Contributions/69.125.134.86|69.125.134.86]]<sup>[[User talk:69.125.134.86#top|talk to me]]</sup> 16:29, December 17, 2012 (UTC)
: N-no, no it shouldn't... [[User:OttselSpy25|OS25]] ([[User Talk:OttselSpy25|talk to me, baby.]]) 16:40, December 17, 2012 (UTC)


Pregnancy: surely the mention of being pregnant in some way relates to Boe's pregnancy in [[The Long Game]]?
== Policy question ==
I have a question about policy regarding comments by actors.  In explaining why Jack is immortal, John Barrowman stated:


:It is theoretically possible, though the suggestion is that Jack has been pregnant in his past, but Boe (Jack's future self) has/will be pregnant as his 'Boe self' (rather than Jack himself). --[[User:Tangerineduel|Tangerineduel]] 13:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
""Now you're really getting me into the fan boy stuff here, it takes us all the way back to the first time Jack actually died and came back to life because we thought it was the time, uh.uh .the TARDIS that him brought him back to life. But it was..you know .because of the death you know from the Dalek, that all happened and it was Rose. It turns out that his blood is actually alien blood. So there's more to him than we ever thought. So it is his blood that keeps him alive, it was not time. You know there's all those questions now which NEED to be answered".


=== Hmm... ===
- JB, Dragon Con 2012, Starting at the 12 minute mark. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=R8V9D_K0MA8#t=726s]


I'm pretty sure it hasn't been explicitly stated that Jack is the same Face of Boe, as the one that the Doctor meets on New Earth, so this should be written into the article as being speculation at best. Russell T Davies has said it is only "theory" anyways, so we shouldn't take it as being fact. &mdash; <b>[[User:Beeurd|<span style="color:black">beeurd</span>]]</b> <sup>[[User talk:Beeurd|talk]]</sup> 20:53, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Are insider comments by the actor considered noteworthy to add to the Skills and Abilities (Immortality) or Other Matters section of Jack's wiki?  It appears to subvert canon and rewrite his known history.


=== jack IS boe ===
Thanks.
~ ~ ~ ~ kpattersonraven
:For future reference, these kinds of questions can be asked at [[Board:The Panopticon|The Panopticon]], since it's a policy question. It will gain more attention there. Also, don't add spaces between the tildes (so <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> instead of ~ ~ ~ ~), as it's unhelpful.
:To answer your question though, according to [[T:SOURCES]], only narrative sources are allowed for information on in-universe pages such as this. What [[John Barrowman]] says happened is irrelevant to the article. Anyways, read through [[Tardis:Valid sources]], and you'll get an answer much more in-depth than I can possibly give you.
:But, specifically, no, actors' comments on their characters '''cannot''' go in the main body of an in-universe page, and they '''cannot''' be used as sources for information on the character. Hope that helps!<br>--[[user:SmallerOnTheOutside|SOTO]] [[User talk:SmallerOnTheOutside|☎]] 06:55, April 2, 2013 (UTC)


i know there have been other discussions about this but i now have proof that jack IS boe (i think) boe dies in the year 5 billion and 53 (or some time near that) BUT he knows about yana who exists in the year something TRILLION, a bit more than a billion, so how else could boe know about yana unless he is actually jack and also i think its very unlikely the doctorwho writers will throw in a wild gosse chase about a charecter we are probably never going to see again[[User:81.108.233.59|81.108.233.59]] 18:03, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
==Deaths, buried under Cardiff==
*I'm sorry, but that is still speculation, not proof. Face of Boe could have known about Yana because Yana said that he was found as a child on the coast of the Silver Devastation, which is the area previously identified as where the Face of Boe comes from. &mdash; <b>[[User:Beeurd|<span style="color:black">beeurd</span>]]</b> <sup>[[User talk:Beeurd|talk]]</sup> 23:22, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Jack was buried underneath Cardiff in 27AD and released in 1901, which means he was buried for 1874 years.


but boe still died in 5billion and 23 and i think yana wouldnt live from 5billion and 23 to about the year 10trillion without dying of old age (remember he did make himself human) and even if he did how would the face of boe know that he was a timelord[[User:81.108.233.59|81.108.233.59]] 08:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Presuming that it takes him four minutes to be revived each time he dies of things which don't require his entire body to re-grow itself (based on how long it took him to revive after Suzie shot him), and that it takes him six minutes to suffocate (brain death occurs roughly four minutes after loss of consciousness), he dies 52.595 times per year.


:There is the possibility that the Face of Boe was either A) Guessing in a generalised sense that 'Your are not alone' was in fact just that, and it was just a coincidence that it spelled YANA. B) That the Face of Boe was a psychic (which is possible and there have been psychics previous in stores), and was genuinely able to foretell the future. This option is less unlikely than it might seem, the Face of Boe is already telepathic, and as a Face/head he doesn't have much else to master body wise, so mental abilities could be one of the abilities of Boekind.
That means he died 98.563.030 times while buried underneath Cardiff. --[[User:Danniesen|DCLM]] [[User talk:Danniesen|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:38, October 31, 2015 (UTC)
:But also, there isn't a direct chain of events that lead between Jack and Boe, there is only supposition that leads to the assumption that Boe and Jack, it's enough to suggest the possibility but not enough to say for certain that they are the same person. A name isn't proof, so for now (until more information comes to light that is). --[[User:Tangerineduel|Tangerineduel]] 10:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
:So technically we '''can''' calculate how many times Jack has died. Shall we put it on the main page? perhaps as "it can be estimated that Jack has died.....[[User:Snivystorm|Snivystorm]] [[User talk:Snivystorm|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:05, December 19, 2015 (UTC)
::This debate was left unfinished. I'd very much like some other voices on this topic. To me, this makes sense, and I propose an edit on this topic. --[[User:Danniesen|DCLM]] [[User talk:Danniesen|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 15:37, December 8, 2016 (UTC)
:::Honestly, all this seems to me like speculation. Can we '''really''' be sure it took him four minutes to revive after Suzie shot him? Can we '''really''' be sure it takes him the same time to come back to life every time he dies? Can we be '''really''' sure he kept coming back to life while burried? [[User:OncomingStorm12th|OncomingStorm12th]] [[User talk:OncomingStorm12th|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 15:57, December 8, 2016 (UTC)
::::I typed all this out and there was an edit conflict. Since I'm too lazy to rewrite, I"ll just repost what I had already written.


=== Exlicit Face of Boe stuff ===
::::I'm going to rule against this idea. It's never a good idea to use dates to calculate something we don't know, because you never know what DWU authors are going to do next. For all we know, some future author will say that year so-and-so lasted for four hundred days instead of 365, or something like that, which would throw off the calculations. More importantly, this whole post is based on speculation: "presuming" that it takes a certain amount of time for Jack to revive in certain circumstances. If we aren't given the exact time it takes, we can't calculate the number of deaths. [[User:Shambala108|Shambala108]] [[User talk:Shambala108|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:00, December 8, 2016 (UTC)


The following statement, rather than showing the possibility that Jack is the Face of Boe, actually assumes it. I put it here to make it easier for someone to reword and fix if they can figure out how..
== Handsome Jack ==
: ''He could also project messages onto the Doctor's psychic paper after he became the Face of Boe.'' ([[DW]]: ''[[New Earth (TV story)|New Earth]]'')


[http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/user:trlkly <span style="color:#BB88FF;">Commodore Sixty-Four</span>]<sup>[[User_talk:Trlkly|<span style="color:lightgreen;">(talk)</span>]]</sup> 05:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I did a little digging, but wasn't able to figure out how to edit the main page to update it.


The reference to Handsome Jack of Borderlands fame needs a cite.


== Simularities ==
https://web.archive.org/web/20160229111528/http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/1099


Jack shares many Phyiscal simularities and previous occupations with a Character from Knights of the Old Republic 2, (Video game) Atton "Jaq" Rand. But that's only my personal opinion.
The real article is no longer available.  


== Character History Continuity Error? ==
Inside the Box: You (Still) Don't Know Jack
10.28.13 - Anthony Burch
...
That said, combining our new story (“kill this one dude named Handsome Jack or whatever he ends up being called, by the way we definitely can’t ship the game with him being called Handsome Jack because that’s just a Doctor Who reference I pulled out of thin air”) with answering the old BL1 questions was one of the trickiest narrative problems Paul and I tried to solve during preproduction.
...


When Jack first appears in ''Doctor Who,'' he is named "Jack Harkness."  But later in ''Torchwood,'' we find that his real name is James Harper and he picked up the name "Jack Harkness" during WWII.  A Captain named "Jack Harkness" went out on a mission, was killed, and James (our Jack) assumed his identity.
HTH,
Bsinkk


But then, how did he come by the name "Jack Harkness" in ''Doctor Who''? Jack, after he was finished with the Doctor and Rose, was left back in early Earth and had to live through its history to get to the present.  Thus, he would have assumed the identity of "Jack Harkness" '''after''' he met the Doctor and Rose.
== Married to River Song? ==


Now, it is true that Jack meets the Doctor and Rose during WWII but at that point in his timeline, he's still got his hypertech and isn't trying to blend in on Earth. He's merely using that point in time because he happens to know that on Date X, Time Y, a bomb will fall on location Z. He isn't interacting with any locals and has no need to assume anybody's identity.
This page and River Song's list each other as spouses, but it is not discussed or written on the actual page that I can find - as in it's only listed in the top right - and I can't remember or find a referenced time where either someone in-universe or not said they were married or it was shown. Am I wrong and they are married/were married? or can I edit that off? (sorry if this doesn't make sense, this is my first time trying to edit a fandom wiki!!) [[User:Kindaliketeal|Kindaliketeal]] [[User talk:Kindaliketeal|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 15:43, April 10, 2020 (UTC)
:I'm not 100% sure because I haven't hear the story myself, but the information was added just one day after ''[[R&J (audio story)|R&J]]'' was added, so I'll assume the events happened/were mentioned in that story, but perhaps [[User:BananaClownMan]] can confirm if that's the case or not, since he was the one who added it to the page. [[User:OncomingStorm12th|OncomingStorm12th]] ([[User talk:OncomingStorm12th|talk]]) 16:20, April 10, 2020 (UTC)
:: I can’t remember if I saw it in Jack's page, or if u read it in their timeline pages, but I definitely found out from one of them.[[User:BananaClownMan|BananaClownMan]] [[User talk:BananaClownMan|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:37, April 10, 2020 (UTC)
::: They do have a wedding in ''R&J'', and make their vows, but the wedding is interrupted, and they drop the idea after dealing with Snorvlast. Whether or not River can be put in under partner is also questionable, because they dance around the idea of pursuing a relationship, but ultimately (I think; I'll have to relisten for proper chronology) River tells Jack that they'll have to remain friends "for now".{{User:SOTO/sig}} 17:48, April 10, 2020 (UTC)


So where did James really acquire the name of "Jack"? -- Rrhain
== Name assumptions ==


:I don't see why he doesn't have enough time to pick up the identity before ''[[The Empty Child]]''. I mean, his boyfriend would have gotten a bit suspicious if he had arrived suddenly with no identification and no reason to be there.  
For reasons I outline at [[Talk:Gray Thane#Full name]], I propose that the subject out not to be referred to as Thane (as if that is clearly his sole surname) in prose. [[User:CdeDBD|DBD]] [[User talk:CdeDBD|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 12:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)


:Of course, my memory is still a bit fuzzy about that episode. It's been a while. -<[[User:Azes13|Azes13]] 12:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)>-
== Main image change ==
[[File:Captain Jack Harkness Last of the Time Lords.png|thumb|left]]
Not a big fan of Captain Jack's current infobox pic, it's a little too close up. I've uploaded this image to the left that I think offers a better look at the character from "Last of the Time Lords". -- [[User:MattTheNerd42|MattTheNerd42]] [[User talk:MattTheNerd42|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
:A: Pictures should, if possible, face left.<br>
:B: I think the current one ''absolutely'' fits him better. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:39, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


:I'm pretty sure he was interacting with the locals at the beginning of the episode, around the time that he spotted Rose. {{:User:Ghelæ/sig}} 15:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
::I agree with Najawin. The current image suits him, and I think it's fine. — [[User:FractalDoctor|Fractal Doctor]] [[User talk:FractalDoctor|<span title="Send a space-time telegraph">@</span>]] 20:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 
::But why would he have had any need to assume the identity of Jack Harkness?  He certainly wasn't going to be sticking around.  He was there to con some money out of the suckers in the time machine.  He planted a lure at the site of a future bomb drop, was going to get his money, and run.  Why would he have gone to the trouble of finding someone who died, altering the records so that it looked like he survived, and taken over his life? -- Rrhain
 
:::Possibly so that he doesn't get in trouble with the army at the time. I seem to remember that the ship landed in a restricted area (or maybe it became restricted because the ship landed there, I don't remember). Jack would need an excuse for waiting around for other time travellers, or else he'd probably be arrested for trespassing. -<[[User:Azes13|Azes13]] 19:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)>-
 
::::But he isn't staying on earth.  He's staying in his ship.  He wasn't even really on Earth until he noticed a time traveller (the TARDIS) and set up the decoy of the ambulance capsule.  After all, they've only got two hours to do the deal before the bomb lands on it.  He also uses Pompeii for these cons. -- Rrhain
 
(outdent) You sure that's his real name? Cuz it isn't in the article, and I've never heard of it (I am in the US, though.) From what I read in the artilce, I thought Captain James was a separate character. -- [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/user:trlkly <span style="color:#BB88FF;">Commodore Sixty-Four</span>]<sup>[[User_talk:Trlkly|<span style="color:lightgreen;">(talk)</span>]]</sup> 05:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 
:Captain James Harper was just the name he made up so he wouldn't have to say Captain Jack Harkness. [[User:AnimeNoKyouran|AnimeNoKyouran]] 01:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 
== His childhood ==
What we know of his childhood comes from Adam.  Do we know that the memories Adam gave Jack were authentic? [[User:Jccalhoun|Jccalhoun]] 01:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 
:not really, but by the season finale, though, I strongly suspect we will know one way or another. --[[User:66.31.44.71|66.31.44.71]] 02:24, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 
==certain sections need trimming==
specifically the section dealing with ''Doctor Who'' [[Series 2]] and ''[[Torchwood]]'' season 2 needs trimming. far too much extra detail. (I did such an edit just now and then the computer hiccuped, losing the edit.) --[[User:24.61.13.0|24.61.13.0]] 03:10, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 
== Timeline crossing ==
In theory, shouldn't Jack, Tosh, Owen and possibly Suzie be in the Torchwood Hub directly underneath the TARDIS during the events of [[Boom Town]]?  Should this be mentioned as an error? [[Special:Contributions/90.192.94.251|90.192.94.251]] 20:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
:The [[TWN]] [[The Twilight Streets]] states that the Totchwood team (including Suzie) had been ordered to stay in the hub during the events. So no, it's not an error. --[[User:OZOO|OZOO]] 21:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 20:04, 29 August 2023

Archive.png
 Archives: #1, #2

Jack's Timeline[[edit source]]

Shouldn't the burial of Jack in 27 AD and reappearance in the early 20th century in Exit Wounds appear not at the end of the timeline but at the beginning? I realize this means Jack crosses his own timelines but it's odd to read of his activities in Torchwood in the 1900s without acknowledgment that his team unearthed a later version of him back then.69.125.134.86talk to me 16:29, December 17, 2012 (UTC)

N-no, no it shouldn't... OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 16:40, December 17, 2012 (UTC)

Policy question[[edit source]]

I have a question about policy regarding comments by actors. In explaining why Jack is immortal, John Barrowman stated:

""Now you're really getting me into the fan boy stuff here, it takes us all the way back to the first time Jack actually died and came back to life because we thought it was the time, uh.uh .the TARDIS that him brought him back to life. But it was..you know .because of the death you know from the Dalek, that all happened and it was Rose. It turns out that his blood is actually alien blood. So there's more to him than we ever thought. So it is his blood that keeps him alive, it was not time. You know there's all those questions now which NEED to be answered".

- JB, Dragon Con 2012, Starting at the 12 minute mark. [1]

Are insider comments by the actor considered noteworthy to add to the Skills and Abilities (Immortality) or Other Matters section of Jack's wiki? It appears to subvert canon and rewrite his known history.

Thanks. ~ ~ ~ ~ kpattersonraven

For future reference, these kinds of questions can be asked at The Panopticon, since it's a policy question. It will gain more attention there. Also, don't add spaces between the tildes (so ~~~~ instead of ~ ~ ~ ~), as it's unhelpful.
To answer your question though, according to T:SOURCES, only narrative sources are allowed for information on in-universe pages such as this. What John Barrowman says happened is irrelevant to the article. Anyways, read through Tardis:Valid sources, and you'll get an answer much more in-depth than I can possibly give you.
But, specifically, no, actors' comments on their characters cannot go in the main body of an in-universe page, and they cannot be used as sources for information on the character. Hope that helps!
--SOTO ☎ 06:55, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

Deaths, buried under Cardiff[[edit source]]

Jack was buried underneath Cardiff in 27AD and released in 1901, which means he was buried for 1874 years.

Presuming that it takes him four minutes to be revived each time he dies of things which don't require his entire body to re-grow itself (based on how long it took him to revive after Suzie shot him), and that it takes him six minutes to suffocate (brain death occurs roughly four minutes after loss of consciousness), he dies 52.595 times per year.

That means he died 98.563.030 times while buried underneath Cardiff. --DCLM ☎ 16:38, October 31, 2015 (UTC)

So technically we can calculate how many times Jack has died. Shall we put it on the main page? perhaps as "it can be estimated that Jack has died.....Snivystorm ☎ 22:05, December 19, 2015 (UTC)
This debate was left unfinished. I'd very much like some other voices on this topic. To me, this makes sense, and I propose an edit on this topic. --DCLM ☎ 15:37, December 8, 2016 (UTC)
Honestly, all this seems to me like speculation. Can we really be sure it took him four minutes to revive after Suzie shot him? Can we really be sure it takes him the same time to come back to life every time he dies? Can we be really sure he kept coming back to life while burried? OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:57, December 8, 2016 (UTC)
I typed all this out and there was an edit conflict. Since I'm too lazy to rewrite, I"ll just repost what I had already written.
I'm going to rule against this idea. It's never a good idea to use dates to calculate something we don't know, because you never know what DWU authors are going to do next. For all we know, some future author will say that year so-and-so lasted for four hundred days instead of 365, or something like that, which would throw off the calculations. More importantly, this whole post is based on speculation: "presuming" that it takes a certain amount of time for Jack to revive in certain circumstances. If we aren't given the exact time it takes, we can't calculate the number of deaths. Shambala108 ☎ 16:00, December 8, 2016 (UTC)

Handsome Jack[[edit source]]

Ok, I did a little digging, but wasn't able to figure out how to edit the main page to update it.

The reference to Handsome Jack of Borderlands fame needs a cite.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160229111528/http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/1099

The real article is no longer available.

Inside the Box: You (Still) Don't Know Jack 10.28.13 - Anthony Burch ... That said, combining our new story (“kill this one dude named Handsome Jack or whatever he ends up being called, by the way we definitely can’t ship the game with him being called Handsome Jack because that’s just a Doctor Who reference I pulled out of thin air”) with answering the old BL1 questions was one of the trickiest narrative problems Paul and I tried to solve during preproduction. ...

HTH, Bsinkk

Married to River Song?[[edit source]]

This page and River Song's list each other as spouses, but it is not discussed or written on the actual page that I can find - as in it's only listed in the top right - and I can't remember or find a referenced time where either someone in-universe or not said they were married or it was shown. Am I wrong and they are married/were married? or can I edit that off? (sorry if this doesn't make sense, this is my first time trying to edit a fandom wiki!!) Kindaliketeal ☎ 15:43, April 10, 2020 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure because I haven't hear the story myself, but the information was added just one day after R&J was added, so I'll assume the events happened/were mentioned in that story, but perhaps User:BananaClownMan can confirm if that's the case or not, since he was the one who added it to the page. OncomingStorm12th (talk) 16:20, April 10, 2020 (UTC)
I can’t remember if I saw it in Jack's page, or if u read it in their timeline pages, but I definitely found out from one of them.BananaClownMan ☎ 16:37, April 10, 2020 (UTC)
They do have a wedding in R&J, and make their vows, but the wedding is interrupted, and they drop the idea after dealing with Snorvlast. Whether or not River can be put in under partner is also questionable, because they dance around the idea of pursuing a relationship, but ultimately (I think; I'll have to relisten for proper chronology) River tells Jack that they'll have to remain friends "for now".
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 17:48, April 10, 2020 (UTC)

Name assumptions[[edit source]]

For reasons I outline at Talk:Gray Thane#Full name, I propose that the subject out not to be referred to as Thane (as if that is clearly his sole surname) in prose. DBD ☎ 12:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Main image change[[edit source]]

Captain Jack Harkness Last of the Time Lords.png

Not a big fan of Captain Jack's current infobox pic, it's a little too close up. I've uploaded this image to the left that I think offers a better look at the character from "Last of the Time Lords". -- MattTheNerd42 ☎ 17:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

A: Pictures should, if possible, face left.
B: I think the current one absolutely fits him better. Najawin ☎ 18:39, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Najawin. The current image suits him, and I think it's fine. — Fractal Doctor @ 20:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
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