Doctor Who #12.5 "Fugitive of the Judoon"

[jon-el87]

Captain Jack Harkness: "You missed me, right?"

More than you could possibly imagine. Must compliment the production crew for being able to keep Jack's appearance a secret, in today's world. Though, I thought that his appearance was a bit random. Even a bit distracting from the main plot, which deals with Jo Martin from Holby City being revealed to be a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor. My one real beef with this story is that I couldn't go in blind, as, while I'm only watching it now for the first time, it aired months ago (with the twist being all over the internet). Would've been fun to have gone into it, not knowing that Ruth was the Doctor.

I don't mind the reveal of a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor. It's not something that has no basis in the show until now. Not only did we have the War Doctor a few years back, but The brain of Morbius had shown images of what appeared (and, apparently, was intended) to be previously unseen incarnations of the Doctor.

[jon-el87]

Reflecting over Captain Jack's introduction in this episode, and his past on both Doctor Who and Torchwood, from a post-MeToo perspective, I'm not sure if he should be brought back for more stuff in the future.

I mean, in this episode, he grabs and kisses Graham... without consent. In his original introduction, in his first scene, he pinches a dude on the bottom. He hits on everybody, and makes sexual references to them. In "Bad Wolf", he starts groping the breasts of a robot. In an episode of Torchwood, Gwen walks in on Jack and Ianto having sex, and gets uncomfortable (having just walked in on two people doing it). Jack's response to the uncomfortable Gwen is "Always room for one more", and telling her that they could've used her an hour ago, for naked hide-and-go-seek. Jack is Gwen's workplace superior, so there's an obvious power imbalance (and would be classified as sexual harrasment in the workplace).

We're supposed to be living in a post-MeToo world, and Jack's behavior doesn't look too good from a contemporary perspective. Though, given the obvious hypocracy of the writers, I'm not shocked that they let Jack do it to Graham.

And that's not even going into the whole stereotyping bisexuals/pansexuals as promiscuous.

No, I think that this franchise might be better off leaving Captain Jack Harkness in the past.