Brief CoE thought

[itsnotmymind]

It's interesting that Jack is talking so much when he and Ianto are challenging the 4-5-6, and doing so little.

When he kills Steven, he says nothing.

Actions speak louder than words.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That, and when Jack and Ianto are challenging the 4-5-6, he's a) following up on Ianto's dare to be heroic, and b) basically performing the part of the Doctor. Which goes disastrously wrong. It's a standard Doctor-and-bad-guys scenario from Doctor Who: showing up in the enemy hq, distract villain with banter while villain thinks he's got the Doctor at his mercy, and either amazing improvised plan then materializes or companion back-up does. Seriously, it's the deconstruction of a trope and that works on both a Doylist and Watsonian level; Watsonian, because Jack must have seen the Doctor do this dozens of times and pull it off, and Doylist, because many a TW viewer was also a DW viewer and thus conditioned to believe this would work as well. At the time CoE was first broadcast, DW s4 had just been shown before that. And in s4, you have the Library two parter, in a climactic scene of which there is even a "Look me up" (i.e. my records) remark to the Vashta Nerada almost identical in phrasing to Ianto's "He's Jack Harkness, look him up". Now, RTD as a writer likes his light and dark flipsides; he did it within DW itself, too, where Midnight is a very deliberate deconstruction of the Voyage of the Damned scenario (both episodes written by him, only in the former the Doctor gains the trust of the small group of passengers in the stranded vessel and is able to save them as per usual whereas in Midnight they all turn on him and are ready to throw him to the sci fi wolves to save themselves. So I think that was a deliberate parallel/contrast in CoE, pulling the rug under both viewers and characters for their expectations.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Very true. And I have seen the library episodes, but it's been awhile. They were good, though.

It's very ironic that Jack was acting in part to impress Ianto, and he ended up getting Ianto killed.