Howling:Was Jack's wrist device always meant to be a vortex manipulator?

Did Jack always have a vortex manipulator? It seems that the first instance of this name in Doctor Who was in Utopia, 2 years after it was introduced. Jack used it to scan, project holograms and communicate with others. I know he was a time agent but they might have been issue time ships instead of a time travel device connected to their wrists. I think that after series 3 this version was just accepted as true so river and john hart were given this version. He never used it for teleportation on screen, especially when it would have been useful. Examples are as follows:

Most important 1-When the daleks were about to exterminate jack, why didn't he teleport out?

2) When jack, rose and the doctor were cornered either by the gas mask zombies or when they could not leave the room in the hospital (the one where the doctor and rose dance) in the episode the doctor dances. Jack instead used his ships teleport.

3)Again referring back to the doctor dances, why did jack not teleport out of his ship when it was going to explode? And it has been shown to work as an interplanetary teleporter as seen by his trip from satellite five in 200,100 to earth in 19th century and from malcassairo in 100 trillion to earth 21st century. So why not use it? --Coop3 ☎ 18:21, June 29, 2013 (UTC)

4) When they were rushing to save rose from the anne droid, when the doctor could not get in with the sonic, why not teleport in? Although you could argue the door blocked this function.


 * The vortex manipulator didn't always function as a teleport. It only did that after the Doctor "upgraded" it in "Utopia". So that's why they didn't use it as a teleport in all of those other instances. Ensephylon ☎  22:40, June 29, 2013 (UTC)


 * No, they were only called "vortex manipulators" because they could "manipulate the vortex", i.e. time and space travel without an external pod—that was the point of having them. Jack used his to teleport to Earth early 21st cent. from the Game Station satellite but missed and ended up in the 1800s, when it burnt out. The Doctor didn't upgrade it in "Utopia", he fixed it. Then he broke it again ("No teleports."), and again in "Journey's End" ("I said, no teleports."). The simple explanation is that the writers hadn't thought up a full range of functions for a potentially unnamed device during its first appearance, if it even appeared during Jack's introduction (I can't remember). —BioniclesaurKing4t2 - "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically, . . . run." 23:51, June 29, 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it was because the vortex manipulator is so unreliable that he didn't use it in those instances. It's all well and good to try and use it to get past the door when trying to stop the Anne-droid, but it would have been a lot less useful if in using it he landed on the other side of the Earth instead. Or maybe the teleportation function was broken during the time he was first travelling with the Doctor, then repaired it on Satellite 5 when he had no other way to leave and was surrounded with advanced technology, only to have it break again after managing to travel back to Earth. Imamadmad (Contact me) 06:21, July 5, 2013 (UTC)