“They’re not ghosts,” Jack says once it looks like he and Tosh have traveled back in time. “It’s a simple temporal shift.” Uh-huh: simple. What a life. And, indeed, we do get all sorts of juicy tidbits about Jack and his timey-whimey life in this episode. And I don’t mean just his little story about “the worst possible creatures you can imagine” that he fought as a boy with the friend he convinced to join up. I mean, sure, that’s intriguing, but I’m talking more about the things we learn -- or that are hinted at -- about Jack the man now.

Like this: he seems kinda excited at the prospect of living through World War II again. Tosh is mad -- she has a life back there in 2006 --- but for Jack it’s all one big adventure, and this, apparently, was one of the more fun eras... and that first time around was when he was still mortal and could have been killed by a bomb or a bullet or whatever. Maybe it’d be even better now that he knows he can’t be killed. No, wait, this would be his third time around, that we know of (based on knowledge we now have from Season 2 of Torchwood). He was here, as a mortal Time Agent/con artist from the 51st century when he first met the Doctor and Rose during the Blitz, and after Bad Wolf Rose accidentally made him immortal, he traveled back to 19th-century Earth and would have had to live through World War II again (as an immortal) to get himself into position to pick up Torchwood in the early-21st-century. (Unless he somehow traveled off Earth during some of that long stretch of time.) So the Ritz dance hall is at least his third visit to World War II.

Jack’s timeline is another thing that makes my head want to explode.

“Who were you before you took his name?” Tosh asks, when they meet the real American volunteer Captain Jack Harkness (which begs the question: if our Jack chose to assume the identity of an American, does that mean he did not speak with an American accent before that?). We still don’t know the answer to that, except for the very vague references to being a Time Agent. (There’s a bit more coming in Season 2... but not enough.)

Awww, and Jack, for all his cocky bluster, is a romantic. We kinda already knew that, but the way he looks at the real Jack in the cellar bomb shelter: it’s not just about physical attraction -- it may not even be about that at all, for all that our Jack comments that he “didn’t realize he was so hot.” It’s about the heroism and the adventure and the tragedy of the real Captain Jack Harkness -- you know, the romance. I wonder how much of their dance -- or that kiss! -- was real, and how much was fantasy. It’s hard to imagine anyone being that bold in 1941, particularly a man who is a leader of other men. If it was all real, did the presence of our Jack change things, maybe even lead to the death of the real Jack? I mean, perhaps seeing this unexpected side of their leader made some young soldier to reconsider his captain’s worthiness as a commanding officer of other men, and did something that led to Jack’s death, or didn’t do something that would have prevented it. Men can be such macho idiots sometimes...

I also can’t help but imagine that our Jack is thinking of himself when he tells the other Jack to kiss his girl good-bye, to “live every night like it’s your last.” Is our Jack thinking about how he said good-bye to Rose, or to the Doctor?

Random thoughts on “Captain Jack Harkness”:

• Vote Saxon!

• Is Owen is a polymath -- he’s brilliant at medicine and physics? Or have they all just picked up some Rift physics in the course of their work? (Not that you wouldn’t need to be a genius to “pick up some Rift physics”...)

• Hmmm... that central column of the Rift machine makes me think of the time rotor of the TARDIS console:

• Man, Owen is such an asshole sometimes -- most of the time -- and then we discover it’s all in aid of Jack. “The Rift took my lover,” he says to Ianto, “and my captain.” Wow. As we’ve seen over, especially, this episode and the last one, Owen is never more a jerk than when he’s hurting. Which, in turn, creates:

• Ianto: no more Mr. Tea Boy!

(next: Episode 13: “End of Days”)

[Torchwood screencap from The Institute]