Owen Harper


 * For other individuals of the same name, see Harper.

Owen Harper (1980-2009) performed medical and dissection duties for the Torchwood Three team. Moody and forthright, Harper wasn't slow to show his dissatisfaction with Jack Harkness' decisions.

Early life
Born 14 February 1980 (TW: Exit Wounds), Owen Harper had a difficult relationship with his mother, so much so that, on his tenth birthday, his mother declared that she did not have to like him, only love him. (TW: Adam) He did not appear to have been close to his father though both parents were still alive at the time of Owen's death. (WEB: torchwood.org.uk)

Recruitment
Owen was a doctor. He was engaged to Katie Russell, who, unknown to both of them, had an alien parasite in her brain. Though Owen did not understand this, both knew that she had a degenerative neurological condition. Before Jack Harkness arrived on the scene, the alien inside had killed the surgical team who had removed the top of her skull in surgery. Jack appeared, explained and left the scene with Katie's body. After Owen told others an unbelievable story about aliens, Jack re-appeared and offered him a job with Torchwood Three. Owen reluctantly accepted. (TW: Fragments)

On his first day on the job, he was hungover and unable to assist UNIT in investigating a "Space Pig" incident in 2006. Toshiko Sato covered for him that day. (DW: Aliens of London, TW: Exit Wounds)

Life at Torchwood
At around age twenty-seven, Owen's personal life appeared to mostly revolve around the pursuit of casual sex, which he was happy to use alien technology to facilitate. He was indirectly responsible for bringing Gwen Cooper onto the team by ordering pizza to be delivered to the Torchwood Hub under the name "Torchwood". (TW: Everything Changes)

Gwen released the sex gas from a meteor by mistake. Owen captured Carys Fletcher, who became host to the gas, inside a portable prison cell. He tested the gruesome effects the gas' pheromones had on a rat, dubbing it "rat jam". Carys escaped the Torchwood Hub during a medical scan, but Owen had cornered it at the Conway Clinic. There, Jack tricked it into escaping into the portable cell, where it succumbed to the Earth's poisonous atmosphere. (TW: Day One)

Owen had an affair with Gwen that lasted several months which he enjoyed. According to him, Gwen was capable of many techniques that caused him extreme sexual pleasure. The thought of Gwen's body or various ways she would pleasure him caused him to become aroused. (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts) However, later her skills began to bore him. (TW: Combat) The closest that he ever appeared to come to a serious relationship was with Diane Holmes, a pilot from 1953 whose airplane, the Sky Gypsy, fell through the Cardiff Rift. (TW: Out of Time)

His team mate Toshiko Sato nursed a crush on him. When the alien Adam altered his personality and memories, turning him into a shy, sheltered nerd, he stumblingly declared his love for her. (TW: Adam) Though neither of them remembered the incident, Tosh haltingly asked him out on a date (despite his flirting with temporary Torchwood Three agent Martha Jones) and he accepted, although circumstances would intervene and prevent this from occurring. (TW: Reset)

First death
Owen was shot and killed by Aaron Copley, the director of the Pharm, who was in turn killed by Jack. (TW: Reset) Prior to his autopsy by Martha, Jack used the second resurrection gauntlet to temporarily restore Owen to life so that he could say goodbye to his friends (and, ostensibly, so Jack could obtain the passcode to the morgue). Although it was assumed that he would only regain consciousness for two minutes before dying forever (per how the first gauntlet worked), for reasons unknown Owen remained conscious, having been returned to a state of partial life. A consequence of Owen's resurrection was the manifestation of an old entity known as "Duroc", which Owen vanquished. (TW: Dead Man Walking)

Although once again conscious and sentient, Owen Harper, post-death, found he had limited bodily functions. His wounds would not heal, he could not breathe (or blow air) and he couldn't sleep. He could swallow liquids and food, but he had no sense of taste and he did not digest food; it had to be removed or somehow expelled from his body. After an unsuccessful attempt to get drunk, Owen stood on his head to allow gravity to drain fluids from his system. His lack of blood flow made erections impossible.

Owen was encouraged to maintain regular physical exercise to prevent rigour mortis from setting in; there's no indication it had any effect on weight or muscle condition. Normally painful stimuli did not hurt. He injured his left hand twice by cutting it and then by deliberately breaking a finger. These injuries did not heal and he had to wear a bandage/splint on the hand thereafter, which permanently limited his dexterity; he had to recruit Rhys Williams to use the singularity scalpel at one point. (TW: Dead Man Walking, A Day in the Death, Something Borrowed)

Due to his inability to heal, Jack was initially hesitant to allow Owen to take part in regular operations again, and demoted him to "tea boy", but soon Owen was back out in the field. His lack of breathing and other bodily functions proved useful to the team when he was able to circumvent a heat-based alarm system (TW: A Day in the Death) and at least twice he suffered no harm at the hands of Rift-based creatures who found him unpalatable and confusing. (TW: Something Borrowed, From Out of the Rain)

As a doctor, Owen was distressed at being unable to perform artificial respiration on a dying man because he could not breathe. Yet, by telling his tale to a suicidal woman, he was able to prevent her from throwing herself off a building. (TW: A Day in the Death)

Owen coped with his self-pity and managed to pull himself together enough to go back to work and to carry on, which included a deepening, if somewhat strained, friendship with Toshiko. (TW: A Day in the Death)

Martha Jones indicated to Owen that the energy used to keep him "alive" began to dissipate after the defeat of Durac, but considered it impossible to predict when it would run out and "final death" would occur. She told Owen it could take anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty years. (TW: Dead Man Walking)

Owen's original response to his change of status in life and in Torchwood)led to him briefly alienating his colleagues, and at least once he tried to commit suicide by jumping into Cardiff Bay. This was ineffectual (TW: A Day in the Death). To a degree, Harkness - himself accustomed to immortality - tried to help Owen, but was at first rebuffed given that Jack's immortality didn't prevent him from enjoying pleasures such as food and sex.

Final death
Several weeks after his death, Owen was tasked to stop a nuclear reactor near Cardiff from going into meltdown during events precipitated by the arrival of Jack's brother, Gray. Unfamiliar with nuclear reactors, Owen kept in communication with Tosh back in the Hub, who talked him through the shutdown procedure. Unknown to Owen, Tosh had just suffered a mortal injury and Tosh tried to keep this from him. During the shutdown, the control room was locked down, and Tosh and Owen realised the radioactive waste would be vented through the room, destroying Owen's body. Owen became defiant and angry and said he wasn't going to die quietly, which upset Toshiko, who was herself dying. After Tosh cried that he was breaking her heart, he relented and asked what was going to happen. As he was "dead" and could not feel the pain, Owen expected to watch as his body fall apart. He talked over the com with Toshiko, discussing the date they had never gone on and the "Space Pig" incident Toshiko covered for. As the reactor went critical, he appeared philosophical and reassured Tosh with the words "It's all right." The waste entered the room and the comm signal from Owen was snuffed out. (TW: Exit Wounds)

Owen left a resounding impression on the Torchwood staff. His photograph was still pinned up on Gwen's desktop (TW: Children of Earth: Day One) and Gwen also expressed her desire to "go out fighting, like Owen, like Tosh" when faced with a Dalek invasion of the Hub (DW: The Stolen Earth); the loss of Owen and Tosh continued to emotionally affect the survivors of Torchwood 3 for months. (BBCR: Lost Souls)

After the 456 incident, Jack revealed that he felt responsible for Owen's death, along with those of all the other Torchwood operatives who died under his command. (TW: Children of Earth: Day Five)

Other information

 * Owen Harper kept a UNIT ID card in his wallet. (TW: Ghost Machine)
 * He was Torchwood officer 565. (TW: Dead Man Walking)
 * Whether this meant he was the 565th member to join Torchwood 3, or the Torchwood Institute overall, is unclear.
 * Three of his favourite things were eating, sleeping and 'shagging'. (TW: Dead Man Walking)
 * Owen was twenty-seven at the time of his death. (TW: Dead Man Walking)
 * Of the Torchwood 3 team in place following the death of Suzie Costello, Owen was the only one never to, in some way, meet the Doctor.

Personality
A habitual womaniser, Owen rarely turned down an opportunity for seduction. He was, at first glance shown to be the only member of the Torchwood team that was completely heterosexual, except for certain occasions when he would sleep with, or just kiss men to get the girl. He had a dark side, willing to manipulate people. (TW: Everything Changes) Owen was a narcissistic genius who was perfectly aware of his own considerable intellect. He possessed a quick, sardonic wit and often lightened dark situations with his humour. However Owen's cavallier exterior hid a soul in constant torment. His constant rage, usually under control, would occasionally explode. While he pretended to be largely self-interested, Owen had empathy as shown by his obsession with avenging Lizzy Lewis's death. He was also deeply loyal to the Torchwood team and had a protective relationship with Gwen Cooper. Owen liked to project an aura of callous indifference; he himself was often unaware of his own feelings, most likely including his love for Toshiko Sato.