Captain Jack Harkness vs. Chuck Wendig

Relating to this very interesting link discussed on AW:
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/04/10/25-reasons-i-hate-your-main-character/
Point 4, "Punches puppies".

SPOILERS for "Children of the Earth" story arc.

Does anyone here watch Torchwood? That link mentioned one interesting point, which was the character crossing a line that the reader cannot tolerate ethically. I'd like to talk about a concrete example, because the topic itself is very interesting and I think I need councelling after that Torchwood incident...

Now Torchwood works like so: it's a Doctor Who spinoff, except that while DW is a family show about hope, optimism, curiosity, and hunger for life, TW, strictly for adults ON THEIR MEDS only, takes these things and crushes them slowly while you have your helplessness rubbed in your face, reminded that life is potentially pointless and if pain and suffering don't kill you, then death will. It's a cruel show.

The character shared by both series, is Captain Jack Harkness. In Doctor Who, he's the jovial, perky, fun guy who can't lay off the sexual innuendos. In Torchwood, he's a lot darker and often cruel or at least insensitive, even in the face of his walking-dead coworker, telling the guy who can no longer taste, drink/digest, get it up, eat/digest, or feel touch (while his only passions were booze and sex) to just get over himself... But he's always kind of stayed just behind the line.

Now there was one story arc though, where he had to make a tough choice. It goes like so:

1. Evil aliens take world hostage, able to kill all of humanity
2. The ransom is 10% of the children of Earth to get high on their child juices. You read that right.
3. Deadline is to be met
4. World leaders agree, because a couple million kids are a small price to pay for all of humanity. They only pick those kids who don't have much of a future. You see the military invading homes and schools grabbing children all over the place.
5. Captain Jack Harkness discovers a way to kill the aliens and save all the children: to channel a frequency through a child, at the aliens except this would kill the child.
6. To get a child, he doesn't take one in palliatives or a coma, nah, he kidnaps his own daughter's perfectly viable, happy and healthy little son by conveniently popping back into her life as if he cared, doesn't tell the boy what's about to happen, doesn't let her say goodbye, but sure as hell lets her watch him die a horrible death. His own grandson.

I sat in front of the screen gaping and shaking. I had "traveled" with Captain Jack Harkness for years, with DW and with TW. Liked him a lot, even when he had tough and perhaps cruel decisions to make. Murdering his own grandson, regardless of the millions of children this has saved, kinda ruined the character for me. That was like... Like The Lion King suddenly turning into A Serbian Film with Mufasa in the main role.

Like, sure, killing one to save millions makes sense. But your own? With the mom watching? Smiling your way into their home to get close? Also, yeah, the aliens needed to know that mankind could not be blackmailed, so the sacrifice of the millions needed to be refused. And yeah, just refusing the sacrifice without killing the aliens, would have gotten mankind exterminated. And sure, the only way to kill the aliens, was to channel a frequency through a child, frying his brain in the process.
So Captain Jack Harkness's move was basically sensible. EXCEPT DUDE WTF!?!?!??

What say you?

PS I must admit I ado applaud the balls to put that kind of scene in that kind of show, given its audience and Doctor Who origins.

Amadan said:

And Captain Harkness, rather than choosing someone else's child, decided that if he was going to be the one choosing the sacrifice, he would have to bear the cost. So he went through with it, and made sure he, personally, was spared nothing.

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Except, the mother who raised that kid didn't really owe to care about those concerns, did she? It's not his noble sacrifice when his daughter becomes the buffer for most of the pain.

Which distinguished him from the world leaders who made sure that they were excluded and distanced from the sacrifices they were imposing on others.

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But weren't their children all off-limits anyway because only kids from juvie, failing schools, and other kids with no concrete outlook were chosen? And as I said, it wasn't all that hard for him unlike the person closest to the child, who didn't get a minute's consideration or mercy - judging by how his daughter reacted to his return, his bond with the kid didn't seem like that much of a sacrifice.

Jamiekswriter said:

Spoiler question:

Did Jack know his grandson was going to grow up to do something awful? Because he can time travel, so he'd be able to see what kind of man his grandson would become. Or was it his grandson was dead already because of the aliens in his future would have killed him?

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That was never hinted at in the show. But still... regardless what the kid would have done with his life, or what greater evil this averted... calmly murdering your own grandson while allowing his mom to watch..?
The mere fact that he did it, no matter what the stakes, was what shocked me. It's like, if you were to show me a movie of 4-year-old absolutely adorable Adolf Hitler getting murdered by his own time-traveling grandparent, I'd still be shocked. Some actions can be justified and sensible and still absolutely horrifying.

Anyone else bothered by too much botox (or whatever) making the mother smile while watching her kid die?

Cyia said:

I must have only seen that part in the background or something while my mind was somewhere else because I thought Jack had brought his grandson in to keep him safe - at first. Then, it was suddenly "we need a kid and we need it now, but the little guy's gonna fry." and the grandson was the only one available.

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Yeah, I loved the wording especially. "Gonna fry", nah this isn't a child's life we're talking about... Whoa.

harmonyisarine said:

I found the sacrifice of his own grandson, due to the personal pain involved, not quite as horrific as if he'd just rolled the dice and picked a kid. Cearly him and his daughter weren't on the worst of terms, with how quickly he got into her life again. He loses his grandson, who yes, probably suffered at first, but he also loses his daughter, and that pain will live on and not go away whenever they see each other. More importantly, his way was about as fair as you can do it. If it wasn't his grandkid, it'd be another. A kid on palliative care is still alive, and still has family who would go through that pain, and you can hardly ask for volunteers when they're that young.

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Actually, isn't rolling the dice the fairest thing of all? And a kid in palliative or coma would be dying or taken off the plug anyway. Harsh as this may sound, since this is Torchwood we're talking about, that kid might as well save humanity doing it. Parents even pull the plug on their kid to donate his organs. Wouldn't it be even more heroic for that kid to save billions rather than 4? Like, lung, liver, kidney, heart....

And growing up in a low income area, on friendly terms with lots of kids who were failing school and generally told they had no future, I found the first option breathtakingly horrifying (especially after growing up and seeing many of these "lost causes" turn their lives around). Much more than the sacrifice of one's own grandkid, even without the knowledge of the mother.

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None of the options were fair, but neither is life. While a "better-off" myself in my childhood, most of my friends were the kids of hookers, alcoholics, asylum seekers etc. and I don't believe that people should be judged on their status.
But When a choice MUST be made, then this makes the most sense in a darwinist and otherwise pragmatic, future-oriented respect (although I don't understand why children who were known not to survive were excempt), not counting the option of the sacrifice of one single child that the world leaders knew nothing about.

Now, in the end, every choice was very very wrong in many ways. I also appreciated the balls of a show to do that and not offer any way out of the death of at least one innocent.

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Here I agree 100%.

This thread is sooooooooo messed up. "What kids should be sacrificed to feed aliens, or should we just murder one?" But, it's a nice way to vent - I work at a petshop. I adore kids. But 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, I don't.... Sooooo don't. Ayo, Captain Jack, come pick up some volunteers! Nah, they just act reluctant for added drama, come gettem!

Sage said:

(My "holy crap" moment of CoE was actually Frobisher's decision, not Jack's)

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I had to google who Frobisher was again.... OMG IT'S THE DOCTOR!!!!!!!!! But yeah, what he did was Torchwood on speakerphone. Like I said, Doctor Who shows you a cute little kitten playing in the flowers... and then Torchwood stomps through those flowers and crushes the little kitten.

Mr Flibble said:

No

It was a show

No one had a conniption over it

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And A Serbian Film was just a movie

Mr Flibble said:

Having never watched it I could not say

But to say the country that made a thing is less able to process a thing than a country several thousand miles away (and the same distance in cultural terms)..

Logic fail

And pretty insulting at the same time. Those Brits can't see iot in the same way,,,,even if they made it they don;t get it...

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Yeah, I didn't know which of the 2 Cyia was from, so didn't respond. But while I'm from neither, I feel like while in the usa there is a lot more (gratitious) TV/movie violence, actual cruelty seems better digested by the British. Like, american productions are full of BOOM and RATATATATA and THWACK FOTHERMUCKER but in the end it's all gonna be okay - you can blow up the planet just as long as there's a camera spinning around a bedraggled couple kissing. In British productions, licking the wounds of the audience seems low on the list of priorities.

In Israel, civilians don't cling to or cry for guns as if they're scared of the boogeyman, but we have soldiers and security forces everywhere with assault rifles. I'm so cynical I'm no longer bothered when I sit on the floor of a packed train and the rifles smack me in the face licke shlongs in a porn flick at every turn. I'm more bothered for the souls of the 18-year-olds carrying those rifles.