Whatever happened to Captain Jack?

I love this picture...

So, having waited the best part of a year to catch up with Torchwood: Children of Earth (and even then managing to miss the bloody finale), I indulged in a catch up Torchwood: Miracle Day on iPlayer last week. I must say that, while Torchwood remains a show I enjoy rather than love, I am rather enjoying this new Transatlantic incarnation. (Even if, for some reason, I had convinced myself it was only five episodes long, so spent most of the final episode thinking, blimey, they've got a lot of ground to cover in not a lot of time - I only realised my mistake in the last five minutes, when it became clear this wasn't the finale.)

Gwen, for a start, seems to have transformed from irritating whiner - constantly stressing about the conflicts between home and work - into a kick-ass momma bear, her marriage finally being both likeable and believable. I know many people who have always loved Gwen, but equally many who hate her, but I find myself having moved from latter to former camp. (Also, Eve Myles is looking smoking in this series, so clearly being kick ass suits her).

I like the set up: clever and intriguing and, like Children of Earth, not afraid to make us face up to difficult and often unpalatable moral choices. There's a lot of fun to be had from the 'lost in translation' teaming of the Welsh and American cast, and I like the fact that the show hasn't jettisoned any of its baggage: there's been no easy reset button, and everyone is still dealing with the fallout of earlier losses. Good to see, also, that Davies retains his ability - and willingness - to create likeable characters and then have them meet horrible and unpredictable fates, so no one is ever entirely safe.

But what puzzles me is the writers seem to have done a fairly major overhaul on Captain Jack. Leaving aside the fact that John Barrowman is looking disconcertingly tight-faced and shiny - so either he's had some work done or the make up team's attempts to preserve his character's near-eternal youth have badly misfired, so that on occasion he looks like one of the plastic mannequins from 'Rose' come to life. But also... why is he now gay?

Readers of this blog will know that I am not averse to gay characters - I've argued fairly vehemently that sci-fi should include more gay people, to be truly representative - and its my long-held opinion that nearly every story is improved with the addition of a bit of manlove. (Oh, come on, you know you agree). But one of the joys of Jack in his original incarnation was that he was defiantly 'pan-sexual'. He came from a place where Earthly distinctions in sexuality were meaningless, and he routinely mocked attempts to pigeonhole him as gay or straight as a quaint quirk of those old-fashioned Earthlings. The Captain Jack of Doctor Who and early Torchwood was the man that flirted interchangeably with the Doctor and whatever Assistant was to hand: there was a lightness and a charm to him that made him irresistable. That seems to have vanished.




Let's be clear I' not complaining about this...


It's fair enough, of course, that the death of his lover and his grandchild might strip away some of that joie de vivre, but it's interesting to note that, so far in this series at least, Jack's sexuality is manifesting strictly in one direction. It feels as if the writers didn't quite trust us enough to introduce an actual gay man into a populist show, but once they realised the audience was quite happy to accept - indeed even to love - him, and saw just how invested viewers had become in the Jack/Ianto relationship, they could drop all pretence of 'pan-sexuality' and just let him be gay.

In fact, I had a pleasantly heated debate on this subject yesterday (I do love a geek fight), with my Doctor Who loving chum, writer and critic-about-town Tom. Tom's (clearly informed) take on this was that I was wrong in this assertion: that it was far more the case that Jack is now being overshadowed by the popularity of the actor who plays him. With John Barrowman now a staple of Saturday evening TV (I don't watch any of those shows, but he does seem to pop up with alarming regularity in the schedules, and he is usually singing) and a 'personality' as much as an actor, it's becoming increasing difficult to separate John from Jack - and John is, of course, a gay man. Barrowman is both completely open about, and comfortable with, his sexuality, and it's an accepted part of his public persona (his wedding pictures were in OK!, for God's sake - though, in fairness if I'd married someone as good looking as his newly acquired spouse, I would personally send the photos to every single person in the world). The fact that Barrowman's 'light entertainment' incarnation has much in common with his most famous acting role - they are both charming, funny and confident to the verge of cocky - means the line is even more blurred. This argument goes that so established is Barrowman's homosexuality that it would be nigh impossible for Captain Jack to revert to his lady-loving ways.

The problem with both of these arguments is they do enormous disservice to the viewing audience. We're grown ups: we can accept a character's homosexuality, just as we can accept that an actor is playing a role that is, you know, not actually him. If we can believe in the happily-engaged-to-a-man-father-of-two Neil Patrick Harris as an irresistable serial womaniser for seven seasons of How I Met Your Mother, I think we can cope with John Barrowman flirting with a girl. Because, nice as it is seeing Jack cop off with a hot barman (and it was very nice), the idea of his 'pan-sexuality' was a bold and entertaining stroke, and it made him a more interesting, unpredictable and compelling character. I'd hate to think we were losing out on that because the actor who plays him is having too much success singing Andrew Lloyd Webber songs to the nation on a Saturday night.

Whatever happened to John? Can we have HIM back?

(Post script: while doing my usual scrawl for photos to illustrate this blog, I failed completely to find any pictures of Jack snogging a girl, and after looking at dozens of photos of John Barrowma - see how I suffer for you? - I am left once again thinking, bloody hell, he really is hot, isn't he?)