Torchwood: Series 1, Episode 12 – “Captain Jack Harkness” (2007)

I’ve talked before about how uneven Torchwood could be. It had some great stuff, some maddening stuff, and some downright stupid stuff, often within the course of a single episode. When it was great, though, it could be really great, and I’d say this episode qualifies.

Jack and Tosh are investigating possible Rift activity in an old music hall when they’re swept up in some Rift activity themselves. Without warning, they’re transported back to 1941 in the middle of the Cardiff blitz. While Tosh immediately sets to work trying to figure out how they’re going to get back, Jack is confronted by an unexpected additional blast from the past, finding himself face to face with the man whose identity he adopted as an alias over a century ago with the Time Agency.

This is the second of four episodes Catherine Tregenna wrote for the show. I like all of them (she also went on to kill it on new Who with “The Woman Who Lived,”) but I think this one edges out “Out of Time” as my favorite. Not that it’s perfect, because it isn’t. I’m not a fan of the whole angsty Owen thing going on in this late-series-1 arc, and so his dick-swinging at Ianto leaves plenty to be desired.

But for the most part? Damn good episode. The ones that focus more on time shenanigans than aliens tend to be some of my favorites, and that’s especially true for this episode. The central crisis is really neat: Jack and Tosh are stuck in the past and Tosh knows how the rest of the team can get them back, but she needs a way to get that information to them in the future. I eat up stuff like that, and Tosh is both a genius and a boss in this episode. Meanwhile, Jack’s more emotional plotline with the “real” Captain Jack Harkness is terrific, full of romantic wartime abandon. I don’t always like how Torchwood characterizes Jack, but I really like how he’s portrayed here, and it’s a great chance to give another of his teammates more of an insight into who he is.

The Whoniverse has some good heartfelt historical-war stories (the “damp little island” speech in “The Empty Child,” Tosh with Tommy in Torchwood’s “To the Last Man,” Clyde standing up to the Nazi officer in The Sarah Jane Adventures’s “Lost in Time,”) and this is a stellar addition to that collection. In addition to our heroes’ reactions to their own predicament, like Tosh’s knowledge that she’s stuck in an era when Japanese people are about to be very persecuted, the show also does well capturing the feeling of the era and the emotions of the characters who are meant to be there. Even in a music hall, where everyone is trying to spend a night not thinking about the war, it still presses in on them.

In other news, Bilis is an intriguing, creepy baddie (who, by the way, is used way more effectively here than in “End of Days,”) Gwen does well with her contribution to the time rescue, and even if Owen is insufferable, I like how Ianto stands up to him, a nice display of Ianto’s loyalty to Jack.