Yvonne Hartman (Pete's World)
Yvonne Hartman was a parallel universe counterpart of Yvonne Hartman, the leader of Torchwood One.
Biography
Early life
Yvonne was terrified of the dark. She told Andy that her father used to lock her in a dark cupboard if she misbehaved, but refused to confirm whether or not it was true. (AUDIO: See No Evil)
Yvonne worked at Torchwood One. She met Jack Harkness and was vaguely aware of Ianto Jones, who worked in administration and made bad tea. (AUDIO: Poker Face)
In 2007, Yvonne happened to be in the right place at the right time (AUDIO: Day Zero) and was able to travel through the Void to N-Space after the Battle of Canary Wharf. She went into hiding (AUDIO: Poker Face) and became an associate of the Committee. (AUDIO: Flight 405) She considered herself to be working with them rather than for them and believed that they could cleanse Earth and have it populated only by the worthy. (AUDIO: Day Zero, Thoughts and Prayers)
At Torchwood Three
Taking control
Yvonne kept her eye on Torchwood Three and, after seeing Jack Harkness fraternising with Xander Vaughn of Red Doors, decided to make her move to take over the organisation. She placed fireworks around Cardiff (AUDIO: Poker Face) before entering the Hub and telling Jack that she would soon be taking over. (AUDIO: The Empty Hand)
Locked away in the cells, Yvonne tricked Jack into taking what seemed to be the trigger device to the fireworks, which she claimed were glitterbombs, and used her fireworms to expose Jack's association with the terrorists. Having brought St John Colchester, Ng and Orr to her side, she took over and pushed Jack from a building after telling him to join Red Doors, declaring a new and beautiful dawn for Torchwood. (AUDIO: Poker Face)
Mr Colchester, Ng and Orr told Yvonne that they would be happy to work for her and she set about making repairs to the Hub, using a drill to repair the boardroom. (AUDIO: Tagged)
The Sorvix occupation
Yvonne brought everyone bagels for their first day working for her and had Mr Colchester analyse one of the Meme's cards, also telling Orr to become a target for hate online to draw it out. She joined Mr Colchester and Serena in a restaurant and used her lack of guilt to defeat a card before telling Serena to begin a new life. Mr Colchester was able to take a blood sample from her, allowing him to track down the Meme. Yvonne apologised to Orr, saying that she would never do it again unless she absolutely had to, and introduced herself to Andy Davidson of South Wales Police, inviting him to dinner. (AUDIO: Tagged)
Having suspicions that the Escape Room was being run by a mad Sorvix, Yvonne suggested that Ng and Mr Colchester go there with Rhys Williams and Colin Colchester-Price. They proved her right. (AUDIO: Escape Room)
Putting Mr Colchester in charge of the fluctuating Rift, Yvonne met with Ro-Jedda and brokered a deal on behalf of the Prime Minister, Felicity, for the betterment of the British economy. She joined 3Sol in finally defeating Red Doors and returned to Ro-Jedda at City Hall, where the pair were caught in an explosion. From the collapsing roof, she witnessed the Rift open and heard Ro-Jedda declare that God was arriving. (AUDIO: Herald of the Dawn)
God's arrival
Yvonne imprisoned Ro-Jedda in the Torchwood cells, ostensibly for her own protection, and planted Ng in the cell next to her to extract information from her. She went looking for the Sorvix at an empty building, the Cardiff Bay Intelligent Hotel and Spa and 3Sol, coming to the conclusion that they had left. She met Colin at Mr Colchester's funeral and took him to the Hub to see his husband's last message, then shooting Ro-Jedda. (AUDIO: Future Pain)
Brent Hayden was aware of Yvonne and imagined her as subordinate to Jack and happy for him to slap her on the bottom. (AUDIO: The Man Who Destroyed Torchwood)
When an alien predator cloaked Cardiff with darkness, Yvonne used night-vision goggles to see and met with Andy, using him to gather people in Bute Park. She then used Andy himself as bait, allowing her to shoot and kill it, and removed her goggles before the darkness faded per Andy's request that she let herself be vulnerable. She invited him back to her flat. (AUDIO: See No Evil)
That night, Yvonne was at the Hub when the Night Sun put the city to sleep and was kept awake by her caffeine ring. Making physical contact with Jack and Ng, she was able to search the Hub with them for a mysterious figure that she saw, although it did not reappear until she let go of Ng for being not entirely trustworthy and Jack for saying that she had failed. She saw a waking nightmare of Andy, who taunted her as her ring ran out and she fell asleep. In the morning, she apologised to Ng and brought back Norton Folgate with the pharadyne projector, although she claimed to have been trying to bring back Ianto Jones. (AUDIO: Night Watch)
Aware that Norton was working for the Committee as well, Yvonne accompanied him on his mission to recover the Lens from Flight 405, also being joined by Andy. The three were successful in preventing the plane from crashing and in recovering the artefact, later surprising Norton by showing up at Bide-a-Wee Care Home. (AUDIO: Flight 405)
Yvonne allowed Tyler Steele to live in a repurposed cell in the Hub on the condition that he use his computer skills for Torchwood. She showed him that Kirsty was outside calling for him, but he said that he did not wish to see her. (AUDIO: Hostile Environment)
Yvonne and Andy's bodies were switched by God using Evolved technology, leading to Yvonne attending his performance review with Andrea Davenport in his place. She retconned her three times to make sure that the review was a success, which it only was after she admitted her shortcomings. Once their bodies were switched back, Andy confronted Yvonne about her allegiance to the Committee, but she refused to talk about, causing Andy to storm out. (AUDIO: Another Man's Shoes)
On orders for the Committee, Yvonne sent Jack, Ng, Mr Colchester and Norton to the Sorvix power plant with the Lens, ready to do nothing should the mission go wrong. However, when a tsunami approached Cardiff, Tyler convinced her to do something about it. She opened the Rift to give it "a mouthful" of tsunami, called for an evacuation and alerted the authorities, standing in the Hub with Tyler as it filled with water. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm)
After the tsunami
Yvonne was aware that the Committee intended on making a scapegoat of her with an official inquiry and thus used retcon to keep the witnesses from remembering about Torchwood. However, she was exposed when Bethan Foster removed the retcon and Captain Martin Okombe revealed that she had contacted the HMS Brighton hours before the emergency services. She congratulated Bethan and offered her retcon to remove her memories of her son. (AUDIO: A Mother's Son)
As a result of the inquiry's findings, the Disaster Recovery Committee sealed the Hub and Torchwood was left unpopular and without resources. (AUDIO: ScrapeJane)
Yvonne tried to help Andy on Day Zero, but he rejected her help and she was forced to flee from a security guard and the angry press with Jack. She went looking for God, finding her in a café, and was prepared to give up trying before God restored her belief in herself. She went looking for Andy and told him where God was. Despite this, he arrested her. (AUDIO: Day Zero)
Put under house arrest, Yvonne was rescued by Tyler, who was able to deactivate her ankle bracelet. They headed to the Hub, chased by an angry mob, and found that the Committee had built a brand new Rift Manipulator to transport their final form to take over Earth. She used the Lens to direct Orr's powers through the dimension bridge to destroy Erebus and the Committee, after which they were saved from the collapsing Hub by Jack. Whilst the rest of Torchwood fled Cardiff, Yvonne remained to see Andy, who arrested her. (AUDIO: Thoughts and Prayers) Immediately after Andy arrested her, she used Retcon to condition him so he’d unknowingly aid her eventual escape. (AUDIO: At Her Majesty’s Pleasure)
Imprisonment
Yvonne was tried in secret and imprisoned at HMP Whitcastle. During her trial she kept making peace signs; a message to Tyler to use Emergency Plan 22 for her eventual escape. (AUDIO: At Her Majesty’s Pleasure)
Whilst imprisoned, Yvonne was able to direct Torchwood remotely via a temp agency, directing Ng and Orr to a cul-de-sac, (AUDIO: Pariahs) which they discovered was an experiment in influencing behaviour via nudges, (AUDIO: Aliens Next Door) and sending Orr to investigate Voloshnik, (AUDIO: Pariahs) which was centre of a propaganda effort to promote a new weapon. (AUDIO: Propaganda) Yvonne concluded there was another force working in the same shadows as Torchwood, but was unsure to what end. (AUDIO: Pariahs)
As she’d planned, Yvonne was able to escape with Tyler’s aid, through exploiting Block Transfer Computations and manipulating Andy whilst he visited her in prison. (AUDIO: At Her Majesty’s Pleasure)
Leading the fight against Friend
Yvonne directed Torchwood to ensure the inquiry into Phlobos was a success, knowing the company was connected to the force moving in the shadows and wanting to expose it. When the inquiry appeared to be going wrong she arrived in person, to the surprise of the team who were unaware of her escape other than Tyler. (AUDIO: Pariahs) After the inquiry was killed by a DNA weapon, leaving only Torchwood team alive to stop them up, and with the tram being closed in on by armed police, Yvonne stole a tank and used it to rescue the team. As the team filled her in on the true enemy, Friend, they made their way to Cardiff and set up base in Yvonne’s temping agency, Temporary Solutions. (AUDIO: How I Conquered the World)
Yvonne talked Tyler back into the fold after he spent weeks at a safe house following the botched investigation of PeopleFluid. She organised a heist in Carcassonne to target the headquarters of DeadCoin as it was the centre of a auction of Friend’s DNA weapon. In truth the heist was a feint to distract Friend, as Yvonne was aware Torchwood’s Icelandic counterparts were investigating DeadCoin too and looking to one-up Torchwood. After she broke into the villa of the DeadCoin’s non-existent CEO, she revealed this to Friend, who was infuriated and decided to instigate their endgame, as Yvonne had intended. (AUDIO: Heistland)
Yvonne led the effort to foil Friend’s plan to activate the DNA weapons worldwide via a broadcast of Janet's Late Teatime, appearing on the show herself where she revealed the extent of Torchwood’s actions to undermine internet infrastructure through spreading conspiracy theories and targeted sabotage just at the right moment, causing Friend to lose their connection. Afterwards she reflected on her actions with Janet, noting that she’d filled the streets with anger whereas the Doctor would have filled it with hope. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Starts at 6PM)
Undated events
Yvonne broadcast a message, asking people to stay at home during a worldwide crisis. (WC: Incoming Message)
Dealing with the photon cloud
This section is excessively detailed
When a Quarshi spaceship crash landed on Middlesbrough, Yvonne was infuriated by the government’s refusal to initiate the Icarus Protocol, eventually discovering the Defence Secretary Alfie Scott had reallocated the budget to a bypass in his constituency and Moonstrike missiles. Unable to convince him to take proper action even when she made contact with the Quarshi who were warning of the engines exploding and releasing a photon cloud, Yvonne poisoned his tea with a drug that made him more stubborn, resulting in him running on a bypass and getting hit by a lorry. As the photon cloud began to spread, Yvonne saw to the removal of the crisis response commander, Mo Simister, by driving her mad by implanting the sound of an app pinging in her head constantly, and took over her team. Yvonne used alien technology to make journalist Lancelyn Green invisible and forgotten, to stop him spreading misinformation that was getting people killed by the cloud. Yvonne devised a cross-party solution with the aid of MPs Torchwood had information on to blackmail but was unable to convince the Leader of the Opposition, Jill Kerr, to support it. Eventually she used an alien device to incapacitate Jill by transporting her spine into a different dimension. Yvonne found the Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser as he was fleeing London to escape the oncoming cloud, but he refused to give her an audience with the Prime Minister. She blinded him with an alien flare to force him to stop but he attempted to run her over, ending up driving into the cloud. Yvonne finally confronted the Prime Minister personally and told them what she’d done, reminding them she’d save the country at any cost and demanding their support. (AUDIO: The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough)
Personality
Yvonne was highly organised and efficient. (AUDIO: Another Man's Shoes) She was scared of the dark, telling Andy that her father used to lock her in a cupboard when she misbehaved. (AUDIO: See No Evil)
Although many assumed that she favoured fancy food, Yvonne loved eating chips with brown sauce. (AUDIO: Tagged)
Behind the scenes
- This version of Yvonne made her first live-action appearance in the Incoming Message, written by Russell T Davies in 2020 as part of the Doctor Who: Lockdown! watch-along series due to worldwide pandemic COVID-19.
- In this story she urges people to stay safe and stay indoors or else she would send someone out to people's houses, noting that it won't be pleasant.
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