Captain Jack Harkness

Portrayed by: John Barrowman
Travelled with: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor
Series: One, Three, Four

Captain Jack Harkness became a companion of the Ninth Doctor after his attempted con backfired. Captain Jack Harkness itself is a false name, assumed by the man who travelled with the Doctor, though his real name is unknown. When Jack first met the Doctor, he was revealed to be a 51st century ex-Time Agent with a proposition for the fellow time traveller. However, it turned out that the artefact Jack was attempting to sell was a Chula medical ship responsible for turning much of London's population into gas-mask wearing zombie like creatures. However, despite this, Jack assisted the Doctor in reversing the process, and risked his life when a bomb threatened to land on the medical ship, killing the Doctor. Jack took the bomb onto his own spaceship and flew away from Earth with it, residing himself to death when the TARDIS appeared, with the Doctor and Rose offering to take him away, where he then became a member of the TARDIS crew. Jack travelled with the Ninth Doctor and Rose for some time, visiting Cardiff where he attached the tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator to the TARDIS in Boom Town (Series 1 : Episode 11), as well as the Game Station in the year 200,100 in Bad Wolf (Series 1 : Episode 12). On the Game Station, Jack encountered the Daleks that had hidden following the end of the Last Great Time War, and assisted the Ninth Doctor in attempting to defeat them. He set up defences on the higher levels of the space station, and fought alongside his volunteers to give the Doctor time to build his Delta Wave generator, ultimately dying in battle against the Daleks.

Following Rose's absorption of the Time Vortex energy, she chose to resurrect Jack from his death as part of her attack on time and the Daleks, saying that she could bring life. Confused, Jack rushed back to the top level of the space station where he found the TARDIS leaving without him, due to the Doctor's instincts telling him to run away from Jack, as he now became a fixed point in time. To escape the space station, Jack used his Vortex manipulator on his wrist strap he had from the Time Agency, returning to Cardiff at the location of the space-time rift. However, Jack landed in 1869 and his manipulator burnt out, rendering him unable to leave. With nothing to do until the Doctor returned to refuel his TARDIS as he had in Boom Town, Jack began to work for Torchwood 3, based in Cardiff. Jack worked with Torchwood for over 100 years while he waited for the Doctor, eventually becoming its leader in 2000. Following the destruction of Torchwood One in the Battle of Canary Wharf, Jack began to remodel Torchwood based on the ideals he thought the Doctor represented. After the attempted Sycorax invasion of Earth in The Christmas Invasion (2005 Christmas Special), Jack acquired the severed hand of the Tenth Doctor after it fell to London during the latter's duel with the Sycorax leader, though he would eventually relinquish the hand to the Doctor. Eventually, after decades of waiting, the Tenth Doctor, along with companion Martha Jones, arrived in Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS, which Jack used to try and meet the Doctor. However, the Doctor, still worried about Jack being a fixed point in time, tried to dematerialise before Jack could enter the TARDIS, but Jack jumped onto the TARDIS and clung on as it travelled through the Time Vortex.

Captain Jack Harkness in World War Two

Jack survived the trip through the vortex thanks to his immortality, blessed after Rose's resurrection, and reunited with the Doctor, where the two sorted out their problems. Here, at the end of the universe, Jack met the Doctor's enemy, the Master. With the assistance of his Vortex manipulator, that the Doctor temporarily repaired, Jack, the Doctor and Martha travelled back to stop the Master. Jack became the Master's plaything after being captured on board the Valiant, where the Master killed him and waited for him to be resurrected for the fun of it. After Martha helped restore the Doctor, Jack destroyed the paradox machine the Master had built within the TARDIS. Following this adventure, the Jack was offered the chance to end his exile on Earth, but out of loyalty to his Torchwood team he chose to remain and assist them.

Later, when Earth was relocated to the Medusa Cascade by the Daleks in conjunction with Davros, Jack became part of the team who helped the Doctor find Earth's new location, and teleported to the Doctor's side when the Doctor landed, watching him get shot by a Dalek. Following the aborted regeneration of the Tenth Doctor, Jack assisted in trying to defeat the Daleks, and also helped with piloting the TARDIS when it towed the Earth back to its correct location in space. Following this adventure with the Doctor, Jack returned to Torchwood Three on Earth. As the Tenth Doctor came near to the end of his life after suffering radiation poisoning, Jack met the Doctor one last time on an intergalactic bar, where the Doctor revealed the name of Alonso Frame who came to sit next to Jack, before the Doctor departed.

Captain Jack Harkness alongside Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith and Sarah Jane Smith in Journey's End

Captain Jack Harkness' personality is wilfully enigmatic; he is fond of his persona as a 'mysterious time traveller', being a flippant time traveller and con man prior to his immortality. Jack loved travelling with the Doctor, though as a termed Omnisexual, he also enjoyed flirting and seducing beings through the galaxy on his travels. Jack also liked to drink, once commenting that after being sentenced to death, he requested four hypervodkas and ended up in bed with both of his executioners. He also claimed to be a coward prior to meeting the Doctor, and even said he might have been better off being so. Despite being immortal, Jack retains a sense of humour, often telling jokes and being cheerful and lively. However, underneath this cheerful demeanour, Jack is unsure whether he wants to die or not. Jack is surrounded by an air of mystery as he is an unreliable narrator of his own life, and no one even knows his real name yet. At one point, Jack mentioned that his childhood home was the Boeshane Peninsula, and as a child he was referred to as the Face of Boe, a being known to have lived for billions of years, though there is no evidence to suggest that Jack would become the Face of Boe in later life.