twincityhacker: hands in an overcoat's pockets (John Barrowman)
Okay, remember how everyone is confused over the whole "But there are no Captains in the RAF!" thing?

Though I have no idea what the hell that's about - unless in that universe Group Captain is just Captain - I have noticed something about Jack's rank. Or, numerous ranks.

Jack in The Empty Child )

When we first meet Jack in the Empty Child he's wearing Squadron Leader strips, and introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness. Jack explains that his rank came from the Time Agency.

Jack and Estelle )

Jack in Lahore )

When he flashes back to Lahore in Small Worlds, he's an Army Captain. (And the faries don't kill him, for reasons completely unknown.)

...

So, what's the point of this lovely pic-spam? I think that as time goes on, the rank that Jack takes in the military slowly climbs up the ladder. Not that it really narrows down in what order things happened for Jack, but I thought it was kind of nifty.


Comparison Rank Badges )
twincityhacker: hands in an overcoat's pockets (John Barrowman)
This came up in a locked post, but it just sort of crystallized some things I've been working on for Jack. Namely, why does he keep showing up in World War II? He's fought in the war there, he's met at least four of his great loves there (Rose, the Doctor, Estelle, Jack), and he looks like he's from the 1940s.

So, this is the part I get to speculate from.

First, I have to mention that 99% of the fandom codes the Daleks as Nazis. From their extreme efficiently to cause suffering for whom ever they run across to their emphasis on racial purity, their for all intensive purposes Nazis - only they time travel, and they're aliens.

This coding as Daleks equals Nazis allows us to extrapolate some of human history onto universal history. Which is probably because is somewhat petty, but it's all metaphor anyway, right?

Anyway, in "Captain Jack Harkness," Torchwood!Jack tells Real!Jack that he went to war as a boy, against the "worst possible creatures imaginable." We also leaned in "Bad Wolf" that he's seen those ships before, and that they were all supposed to be gone.

These statements taken together could mean that he fought against the Daleks, but... I can't help but think that he didn't.

During the War War II people allied together who wouldn't touch each other otherwise, and the alliance blew apart pretty much the second that they started fighting. But, it didn't go further than spying on the homefronts of the countries in question, though there was fighting between the two sides in other places on the globe.

But what if it didn't?

The Daleks started invading someplace, then one day they just vanished. And if they were holding off the Daleks, even just barely, those people must have been organized. But they were organized for war, and those who could organize for peace weren't at the top or dead in the war.

So, of course, someone does something stupid. A group betrays the alliance and tries to grab power, plunging the whole group to civil war. And everyone hates betrayal, usually worse than they hate the people who just go about killing things.

So, what does this all mean? Maybe Jack's "worst creatures you could possibly imagine" were betrayers to the alliance. And extending it he went to war "as a boy" against the betrayers, he was probably too young to fight against the Daleks. Which leaves him just watching something like the Blitz or Dresden or Warsaw just happen - which is why he recast himself in the RAF, so he could do something about it, on the definite "good guys" side.

Because, really, I'm not sure what side he was on earlier.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and he got caught up in the very beginnings of the Time War. Or he saw the Daleks while he was working at the Time Agency. Or any sort of thing, really.

Though, the idea that Jack had done a lot of things before we meet him in "The Empty Child" is obvious.

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