Over the course of the past month, Chereth and I have watched every episode of Torchwood. It started innocently enough with a geeky summer Dr. Who fling. But once we met Cpt. Jack Harkness, a handsome, polyamorous immortal friend of the Doctor’s, we wanted more more more. This led us to the darker, dirtier, deeper spin-off.
On the show, Torchwood is the name of a secret British alien-hunting agency, and the branch in Cardiff, Wales, monitors a time rift through which all sorts of gnarly beings slip. Pause: yes, I said Cardiff, where both Dr. Who and Torchwood are/were filmed. But the rift and the aliens and all the sci-fi hullabaloo are what make the show genre, not what make it queer.
And the fact that Torchwood is unapologetically queer–decidedly and uniquely so–is what makes it stand out from most, perhaps all, other shows on television.
There have been plenty of gay shows. Cue The L-Word. And there are shows with gay characters on them, but Torchwood is queer, not gay, and it’s queer at its core, not as a side concern or as a backdrop for humor.
The queerness of Torchwood comes right back to Cpt. Jack, who defies labels. He’s already immortal, and therefore less concerned with what people may think of him than a mere mortal might be. His affections are neither traditional nor particular: he’s been around long enough that love and loss are tied up in one big (sometimes depressing) shag fest. In one notable arc, Buffy‘s James Marsters, with his usual swagger, shows up as one of Jack’s exes, adding a certain amount of star power to Jack’s myriad escapades. Jack’s a downright slutty guy who’s lived thousands of years, so a lover must have to be pretty stand out if he doesn’t want to be forgotten.
Certainly, as Torchwood moves through its four seasons, Jack notably has more men in his bed than women, though the show never worries about defining his sexuality. He speaks of boyfriends past, and we know he was married to at least one woman, but these are accepted as tales of a life well-lived. No one dwells on what it means to be bi-sexual or gay or any other thing: Jack is just queer, and this is celebrated nonchalantly.
In comparison, American television, even the best of it, tends to define its characters’ sexuality, noting who is gay or lesbian (the most typical), bi-sexual (only occasionally), or transgender (quite rare); on this side of the pond, we love to draw attention to our own open-mindedness, betraying, of course, a sense of othering. What is so truly queer about Torchwood is its ability to exist comfortably in a queer space. Jack’s snog sessions with Torchwood’s dapper guy Friday, Ianto Jones, are not differently defined from those between Gwen (the show’s other main character) and her boyfriend/fiance/husband, Rhys. What’s more, it’s not just Jack who leaps across the traditional barriers of sexuality: all but one of the show’s central characters has at least one same-sex snog. And that’s just season one.
Quick side note: if you Google “Captain Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones” and click on the image gallery, what you will find, in addition to various photos of the two locked in sweet embrace, is a smattering of photos in which bois and girls photograph themselves dressed as Jack and Ianto, recreating iconic moments from the show. In terms of Torchwood‘s queer reach, this is thoroughly compelling. Clearly, these two are not merely identified as a gay couple (Ianto, in fact, clarifies to his sister that he’s not necessarily gay–he’s just all about Jack) but as exemplars of queerness–categorically impossible to categorize, emulated for their ability to pass through binaries rather than be defined by them.
Now back to the show.
In season four, the U.S. happens, and things get a bit gayer.
In the show’s fourth season, which just wrapped a dual run on Starz and the BBC, Jack and Gwen go stateside when everyone on earth suddenly becomes immortal–and Jack Harkness is suddenly just a man. The American influence is keenly felt when Rex, a new addition to the team played by Mekhi Phifer, drops various comments about how Jack is gay. Suddenly, Jack has to defend his sexuality through jokes–for example telling a paramedic to take good care of his “boyfriend,” Rex. While it is understandable that some vestiges of homophobia are realistic in macho American society, situations like these whittle away at the accepted universe of Torchwood in which there are aliens and rifts in time and boys who like girls who like boys who like boys who like girls. In Torchwood of old, the aliens were the Big Surprise; the queer folk were just your every day human beings. In Torchwood: Miracle Day, aliens are only a passing part of the conversation, but Jack’s gayness, as he is now portrayed as almost solely interested in men, is part of what reminds us of his difference–the last mortal, a man out of time, and gay. What once made him human–proof that he was flesh and blood though, perhaps, a bit more “innovative” (according to Ianto) than others–now is a mark of his difference. And, while Miracle Day is an interesting story, I found myself missing my Jack Harkness–one not so set apart, not so easily defined by external perceptions.
The most standout episode of Miracle Day was penned by Jane Espenson, perhaps television’s greatest ringer writer. You need love and angst and sex and blood? Bring in Buffy and Battlestar Galactica alum Espenson. She’ll up the stakes, bring the funny, and deepen the emotion. There’s really no one better, and the episode detailing the sad and chilling tale of Jack’s 1927 affair with a newly immigrated Italian man, Angelo, who struggles with his sexuality and Catholicism, really delves into the complexity of Jack’s circumstance. Ultimately, though Angelo has to confront his own upbringing and feelings of difference, it is Jack’s immortality that he cannot accept. Honestly, I was missing Jack through most of Miracle Day. His presence had diminished, his flirtatiousness muted, his queerness tokenized. This episode, the season’s 7th of 10, is the first real, complex, and messy reminder of what makes Cpt. Jack Harkness so extraordinary–and so damn human. Hint: it’s not because he shags guys.
Which all leads to this: It’s not yet clear whether Torchwood will be back for another season. I hope it is. And if it does return, I hope it gets back to Torchwood Cardiff, where being queer does not make a person any more different than being Welsh does. But, if it does not return, I hope that Torchwood takes its rightful place in TV history for changing the conversation from one of binaries–in which all people are coded as gay/not gay, minority/not minority, attractive/funny looking–to one that celebrates the great primordial stew that is humanity.
