History Headscratchers / Torchwood

** Although, if Spears is using the Torchwood contact lenses, then likely she has the information previously recorded Lois, including the Chairwoman's decisions. If Spears DOES go public, then the Chairwoman will be just as disgraced as the Prime Minister and everyone else involved. The Chairwoman believes she will take over, but [[WhatAnIdiot really hasn't thought the implications through.]]

* Let's just make a brief recount of what they do wrong:
** '''Everything Changes''': They resurrect a dead guy without making sure that they can't be seen by anyone, which fails when Gwen watched them from a floor above them.
*** Even without Jack's leadership, Torchwood has been known for screwing up before. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts The Battle Of]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday Canary Wharf]] can attest to that.
** '''Day One''': They send Owen and leave him alone and without vigilance (Something they did when Gwen got affected because GirlOnGirlIsHot) with an alien possesing a girl who already killed some guys by having sex with them.
** '''Ghost Machine''': Gwen uses the strange device they just reassembled without knowing what it really does (It's an alien artifact. It may look as a salt pot and be a nuclear bomb), and at the end of the chapter, Sean (The thief) goes to the street where he said that he saw himself covered in blood and dead. Seriously man, if you believe that you're going to die out there, '''THEN DON'T GO!''' Yeah, he managed to fight fate, but if I didn't know that, I would have done everything I could to avoid that.
** '''Cyberwoman''': My first question is '''HOW THE HECK DID IANTO MOVE HIS ANDROID GIRLFRIEND AND THE MACHINE THAT TURNED HER INTO A HALF ROBOT WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING?''' I can believe that he brought the machine in pieces, but how did he bring her without anyone noticing? Second, why didn't they find about this earlier? I would think that an organization like this would make regular inspections on their rooms to check if there's anything wrong or missing (Even a wet cardboard box has more security than them).
** '''Smallworld''': I don't think that having the team blaming Jack is being idiots, just pissed off because they couldn't save the girl. But I still call them idiots for hating him when the fairies threatened to destroy Earth if they didn't give them the girl. I mean, seriously guys? Would you rather kill all mankind because of a single little girl?
*** Makes one wonder why nobody thought to call the Doctor, he'd have never let the Fairies take the girl. And he would have sent the little bastards packing too.
** '''Greek Bearing Gifts''': Tosh got laid with a woman who really was a criminal alien who lied to her, killed a lot of people and wanted to go back to her planet to avoid punishment. Alright, she didn't knew that at the time, but she's still an idiot for bringing her to Torchwood without telling anyone so she could get back her teleporter and go back home. Anyone else would think it's dangerous because she could use you to steal anything important and/or dangerous, but as I exposed, the guys from Torchwood are idiots.
** '''They Keep Killing Suzie''': This goes for Gwen, as she not only feels responsible for killing Suzie, but also takes her out of their secret base to meet her father and almost died in the process.
** '''End of Days''': Sure, let's open the rift and kill Jack because he doesn't want us to endanger the universe just because Gwen's boyfriend was killed. What's the worst that could happpen? Oh, I don't know. '''Maybe a giant demon who can kill anyone stepping on his shadow?!''' By this episode, Torchwood should've been dismantled, their members killed and all alien technology thrown in Area 51 to avoid any incidents like this.

** AWizardDidIt. To paraphrase a poster on [[Website/OutpostGallifrey The Doctor Who Forum]], this is a Verse with a giant talking head and regeneration -- and you're complaining about a guy who can't breath talking?

** '''Day One''': They send Owen and leave him alone and without vigilance (Something they did when Gwen got affected because girl on girl is hot) with an alien possesing a girl who already killed some guys by having sex with them.

** '''The End of Time''': Sure, let's open the rift and kill Jack because he doesn't want us to endanger the universe just because Gwen's boyfriend was killed. What's the worst that could happpen? Oh, I don't know. '''Maybe a giant demon who can kill anyone stepping on his shadow?!''' By this episode, Torchwood should've been dismantled, their members killed and all alien technology thrown in Area 51 to avoid any incidents like this.

** We know terrorists exist does that mean every body would be OK with MI6 blatantly riding roughshod over people's lives and rights to stop it?

** '''They Keep Killing Suzie''': This goes for Gwen, as she not only feels responsible for killing Suzie, but also takes her out of their secret base to meet her father (It doesn't really matters because she was already dead and was temporarily alive) and almost died in the process. I'm the only one who thinks that she deserved to die for being TooDumbToLive?

** '''They Keep Killing Suzie''': This goes for Gwen, as she not only feels responsible for killing Suzie (That bitch deserved it for killing people and later committing suicide), but also takes her out of their secret base to meet her father (It doesn't really matters because she was already dead and was temporarily alive) and almost died in the process. I'm the only one who thinks that she deserved to die for being TooDumbToLive?

** I always assumed that Bilis's powers got wiped out after Jack [[BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu punched out Cthulu]]. I agree that a depowered Bilis would be a great character in some Whoniverse episode, or a powered up Bilis from [[TimeyWimeyBall before he met Torchwood the last time]] would also be a great plotline. Maybe next year . . .

* In the episode Cyberwoman, why did no-one just shoot the cyberwoman in her (exposed) face?

** AnyoneCanDie

** Or he meant to emulate the Doctor--except when the Doctor does it, it actually work

** Isn't the rift still active dumping a bunch of aliens and time displaced people in Cardiff? And wouldn't the destruction of the Hub released a few SealedEvilInACan? Like weevils roaming the streets-- and what about GREY?

** Seriously! Doesn't anyone have the Doctor on speed dial? (Jack... Martha.. Mickey...?) The Doctor would have resolved the conflict of ''Children of Earth'' within half an episode and still have time to go out dancing. Allons-y!

*** On his honeymoon with Martha.

*** Oh, come on, folks, the Doctor may be a jerkass and the master of running away but can you ''really'' see him staying back whistling when millions of earth's children were about to be given to druggies, if he could in any way prevent it? He may be inconsistent sometimes, but standing aside while millions of innocents from his favourite planet are sentenced to a lifertime of torture? I really can't see him doing that. Not unless it were a Fixed Point and he had no choice but to stand and watch, or else genuinely didn't know it was happening (he can't possibly know everything that's possible, and if his companions didn't call hm... well, that's not exactly HIS fault.).
*** Additionally, just a point about the Doctor choosing not to help: watch The Beast Below. There's no way he'd let all those children be hurt if he could do anything. I agree with the others: he didn't know until he found out he wasn't there.

*** I see no reason to bring the fixed point theory into it. A long standing fan theory that was confirmed in season 6 (of Doctor Who) is that the Doctor may have some control over where he goes, but ultimately it is the Tardis that determines where he goes. And it sends him where he ''needs to go''. Humanity didn't ''need'' him for this. sure, things didn't go well for the shows heroes, but humanity got out of the situation perfectly fine without the Doctor. Expecting him to show up to fix every problem even when in the end things more or less turn out fine is pretty silly. What's next to blame on him, the black death maybe?

** Some FanWank I ran across was that the Doctor was off fighting the main blunt of the 456's race or dealing with some sort-of intergalactic war they were having (or something) and the 456 we saw were just petty scavengers trying to get away with raiding planets for drug-babys when their governments would be too busy with other things to stop them.

* Here's an interesting thought: Forget about asking why the Doctor wasn't on Earth during the 456 invasion; rather, ask '''what he's going to do when he gets back.''' He could barely tolerate Jack wielding a pistol. How is he going to react when he finds out Jack [[spoiler: sacrificed his own grandchild]] in order to save the Earth, on top of everything that lead to him having to make that choice? He doesn't turn his head from the Earth in shame; he turns away from one of his companions. A companion whom he trusted and thought that he taught better than that. And then he turns back, with fire in his eyes, because those who believe that the ends justify the means are exactly the kind of men that the Doctor puts a stop to.

** Unfortunately, having no other way out is no excuse in 10's poorly-written books. And... when did 10 show the slightest bit of remorse for the Family? The expression on his face certainly didn't look regretful- if anything it looked callous.
*** But having no other way out IS an excuse... or rather, it's a reason, and I think the Doctor would probably accept that. The Family didn't just steal the life they needed to live, they were malicious gits who clearly ''enjoyed'' causing pain and fear to those all around them. Jack wasn't that. When he did was a horrific choice for him. I can't think of a previous example in which the choice was such an utterly impossible one. Whatever we personally think of his actions against Harriet, the point is that she didn't ''have'' to shoot the Sycorax in the back. It may have been the most long term sensible choice in her eyes (well long-term as in "for the next few generations of humans" which is longish term for us but for a nine hundred year old man? Not so much), but it wasn't a "do or die" situation, and it went against his moral code -it may still have been bad form on his part to wreck our so called golden age with six words, but it wasn't an impossible choice for her. I'm trying to think of examples here where the choice really was an utterly totally impossible one, not just "very very difficult", but literally a do-or-die one to make... none are springing to mind (except possibly Gallifrey's end, and we still don't really know what happened there), but I have the feeling that if they happened, the Doctor would've ''accepted'' that there was no other way (at least not one they could think of without ''him''). He's not going to be happy about what Jack did, but that doesn't mean he's going to think Jack deserves to have hell's fury reigned down on him from above -anyway I reckon Jack's getting that all on his own, thank you very much. Also, the Doctor committed Genocide. He's not ''that'' big of a hypocrite.

* Okay, if [[spoiler:Ianto's death is fate's way of telling Jack that he needs to respect human life, doesn't that mean that by him running away and giving up his mission to do a job that the people on Earth can't really do for themselves despite their best efforts, he's trashing human life even more by throwing in the towel and either learning nothing from the whole mess or refusing to learn from it.]]

* Why establish Ianto as a [[spoiler:habitual liar]] when it can't be explained? [[spoiler:Are we supposed to just pin it on a lack of self-confidence since he was quiet? All the Torchwood staff lie out of necessity (even if their job is a [[EverybodyKnewAlready Not Secret]]) so is it really so shocking that Ianto maybe threw an extra one to boost his image. It's a sizeable fib, but it doesn't constitute a pathology.]]

** I always took it as a mixture of both. Original Jack had just never met someone keen and bold enough to pick up on his closely guarded feelings (being both in the 1940's AND the Military), but always knew he was "different"

* Why didn't Jack just get Frobisher to open his watch and remember he was the Twelfth Doctor? ( Sorry, couldn't resist ;) )

*** Tasering the bad guys in the forehead, people, I rest my case. Just because a character doesn't start the journey being mister BadAss Determinator doesn't make them completely incompetent.

** AWizardDidIt. To paraphrase a poster on TheDoctorWhoForum, this is a Verse with a giant talking head and regeneration- and you're complaining about a guy who can't breath talking?

** Well it's pretty strongly implied that no one pays that much attention to Ianto before "Cyberwoman", and it's also safe to assume that Ianto acted quiet and 'strange', always in the background, from the moment he was first hired. Plus, since Ianto was supposedly exchanging sexual favors with Jack by that point, Jack probably assumed he knew Ianto far better than he actually did and just let things slide. That, and, yeah, the characterizations in season 1 were inconsistent (to put it mildly).

*** Well, I'd say that series three certainly subverted any perceptions we had of Jack as "awesome"... And I think it was probably intended to. Barrowman always said he wanted to play Jack as "a hero" but it's at the point now where they can't entirely logically keep doing that...
*** Your milage may vary. I thought Jack was awesome in season three. I really loved his character development, more so in fact, than seasons one and two combined.

*** Well Jack is one of the few people who know enough to run things (particularly since the Slitheen killed off UNIT's top boffins) and BTW no, there is no one, not even [[Franchise/HarryPotter the minister for magic]], the head of the [[DanBrown Illuminati]] or [[SantaClaus Father Freaking Christmas]] who has control over them except perhaps Her Majesty Elizabeth II. The Prime Minister is not even supposed to know they exist! Or to put it another way they are the layer of the system that exclusively does the watching.

** '''They keep killing Suzie''': This goes for Gwen, as she not only feels responsible for killing Suzie (That bitch deserved it for killing people and later commiting suicide), but also takes her out of their secret base to meet her father (It doesn't really matters because she was already dead and was temporaly alive) and almost died in the process. I'm the only one who thinks that she deserved to die for being TooDumbToLive?
** '''The End of Time''': Sure, let's open the rift and kill Jack because he doesn't want us to endanger the universe just because Gwen's boyfriend was killed. What's the worst that could happpen? Oh, I don't know. '''Maybe a giant demon who can killl anyone stepping on his shadow?!''' By this episode, Torchwood should've been dismantled, their members killed and all alien technology thrown in Area 51 to avoid any incidents like this.

*** Okay here's the most basic explanation I can come up with for Torchwood's incompetence: we're a moderately primitive (SJA called us "level five" which apparantly means "smart enough to talk, not smart enough for lightspeed yet") species dealing with a stonking great rift in time and space. Said Rift reguarly throws out completely alien stuff at us which may be from places far technologically superior to our own, violent, or simply from a world not suited to cope with us carbon based lifeforms. One of Torchwood's primary objectives is to hoard and claim all this alien tech in the hopes that we can use it to further our own development and learn how to cope with whatever's coming, but saying they're the best ones prepared to deal with all these coming "changes" in the twenty first century is a bit like saying a mouse with a pistol is more capable of taking on a cat than a mouse without one: sure the mouse may have hoarded the technology and based on studies into the species intelligence, it could maybe even eventually work out how to push it around on the ground or nudge the sticky out bit or something, but that doesn't mean it ''knows how to use it effectively.'' Torchwood are completely out of their depth, trying to deal with stuff that's WAY over their heads. How do you think ''you'd'' cope? I'd say that most of the cast did well just to ''survive'' for as long as they did.

** Not really. At least till the episode of Greeks Bearing Gifts the series does its hardest to point out how awful a leader Jack. Lets see: he fails to notice Ianto is keeping his cyberwoman girlfriend in the basement or that the CCTV goes missing whenever he needs to sneak someone in (despite probably sleeping with him through this period), he has not kept his team from stealing alien tec for personal reasons (as demonstrated in ep 1), he runs the worst "secret" secret organisation in the world, he has lost touch with the real world and other people (Gwen joins this team for this very reason), the team gets on well without him inbetween season 1 and 2, and all the team are pissed at him for giving Jasmine over to the fairies/aliens. He is pretty awful.

*** Maybe what Jack actually meant was "I pay attention when my team act weird... or at least I've started to do so since I discovered that one of them was keeping a cyberwoman in the basement."

*** That doesn't tell us anything neccesarily romantic, Jack has an unstated love for a ''lot'' of people (he never ''said'' he was in love with Ianto in those exact words either, but just watch C o E Day 4 ad tell me soemthing wasn't up. Still, in the period he comes from the lines between platonic relationships, brotherly/sisterly ones and fuck buddies are no doubt a hell of a lot more blurred. What upset him about Gwen getting married was the fact that her 21st century mores would therefore limit ''any'' possibilities of their being close in ''that way'' -''"You twenty first century people and your quaint little categories"'', remember? Jack doesn't see why the hell someone being married means they can't sleep with someone else. It'd be nice to get a decent explanation of Jack's sexual morality besides just "will shag anything", really...

** According to Series Two: persistence, and helping capture a pteranadon (and landing on top of Jack while doing so, hem, hem).

*** It could have been that he was impressed by Ianto - you have to admit, a cyberwoman in the basement is not an easy thing to hide - and saw that he had the potential to do the morally grey stuff that the rest of the team do if he cared about it enough.

* Whose idea was it to put four people and a secretary in charge of handling all alien phenomena occuring across all of Wales? What happens if there are simultaneous crises in Cardiff, Newport, and Swansea?

*** there's a medical post and a tecnological post open, Martha has a medical degree and we know how good Mickey is with computers, hello?

** As for hiring troubled people, I suspect Jack was looking for people who had the skills he needed and had also fallen off the radar one way or another so there would be no relatives to ask what happened. These people only come around every so often so he has to snap them up pretty quickly. It just so happens to be that they have become troubled as a result of falling into these circumstances. Tosh [[spoiler:had been squirrled away by UNIT, so she could be considered as a missing person. Jack saw that she could be trusted and let off the leash a bit regarding family contact]] which is the only explanation I can think of for her going to her Grandpa's birthday party that doesn't result in {{Retcon}}. Owen [[spoiler:had just suffered a bereavement,''Adam'' suggests he's estranged from his family and his colleagues know he's having a breakdown so no one would notice till it was too late that he was gone.]] Ianto and Gwen [[spoiler:were hired down to a combination of convienience plus craving.]] As for Suzie, [[spoiler:methinks her dad probably abused in some way regarding her being troubled,]] but otherwise, I have no idea.

** True, but when the collective of eldritch abomination started threatening to kill even more people, Jack honestly didn't have much choice in the matter. And more to the point, he knew that the fairies weren't bluffing: he knew how overprotective they could be around their future members, having seen a whole train-car full of soldiers die because a few of them accidentally killed a child that the fairies had chosen. So, how exactly would he be expected to fight off said eldritch abominations? How could he possibly negotiate with them when ''they'' have a lot more to bargain with- ie the lives of everyone on the planet! So, how exactly would this situation be resolved without handing over the child?

* Question: What exactly is Gwen's job/what she was hired for? And why did Jack hire her in the first place? Jack is the leader, Owen is the medic, Suzie was the analyser/weapon's expert, Tosh is the computor geek, and Ianto keeps the place clean, makes coffee and interacts with the outside world. Gwen doesn't have the qualifications to replace Suzie, didn't know how to use a gun, and she knew nothing about aliens. Seriously [[FlatWhat What.]]

*** Sorry, could you elaborate a bit? I'm being dense and I'm not sure I fully get your meaning there. If what you're referring to is "why didn't the Doctor know about the COE event in advance due to it beng a fixed point?" then, well, if you think of time as being like a motorway and fixed points as being significant car crashes... there are gonna be a lot of big car crashes and a lot of fixed points, right? Hard to pick any one of them out of all that even if you DO see "all of time and space" in your head all the time -if the Doctor's time sense were infallible wouldn't half the episodes we see never occur because he'd know how to fix the problem the second he showed up?

*** But having no other way out IS an excuse... or rather, it's a reason, and I think the Doctor would probably accept that. The Family didn't just steal the life they needed to live, they were malicious gits who clearly ''enjoyed'' causing pain and fear to those all around them. Jack wasn't that. When he did was a horrific choice for him. I can't think of a previous example in which the choice was such an utterly impossible one. Whatever we personally think of his actions against Harriet, the point is that she didnt ''have'' to shoot the Sycorax in the back. It may have been the most long term sensible choice in her eyes (well long-term as in "for the next few generations of humans" which is longish term for us but for a nine hundred year old man? Not so much), but it wasn't a "do or die" situation, and it went against his moral code -it may still have been bad form on his part to wreck our so called golden age with six words, but it wasn't an impossible choice for her. I'm trying to think of examples here where the choice really was an utterly totally impossible one, not just "very very diffcult", but literally a do-or-die one to make... none are springing to mind (except possibly Gallifrey's end, and we still don't really know what happened there), but I have the feeling that if they happened, the Doctor would've ''accepted'' that there was no other way (at least not one they could think of without ''him''). He's not going to be happy about what Jack did, but that doesn't mean he's going to think Jack deserves to have hell's fury reigned down on him from above -anyway I reckon Jack's getting that all on his own, thank you very much. Also, the Doctor committed Genocide. He's not ''that'' big of a hypocrite.

* Pardon if someone already pointed this out, but in that episode about the circus/freak show people coming back to life from a movie, it is shown an old timey film of Jack using his immortality to do a sing routine while shooting himself in the head again and again. Last time I checked, when the team commited mutinity and Owen (was it Owen? Ianto? someone.) shot him in the head just before the team unleashed the demon, he stayed dead for a few minutes before waking up again. What happened to the ressurrection being to fast that he could keep up the timing of a song in between deaths?

*** Even without Jack's leadership Torchwood has been known for screwing up before [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts The Battle Of]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday Canary Wharf]] can attest to that.

*** Even without Jack's leadership Torchwood has been known for screwing up before [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E12ArmyOfGhosts The Battle Of]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS2E13DoomsDay Canary Wharf]] can attest to that.