Jack Harkness


 * This article is about the 51st century con man known as Captain Jack Harkness. For other uses of Jack Harkness, see Captain Jack Harkness (disambiguation)


 * '"Captain Jack Harkness, and who are you!"

Captain Jack Harkness (sometimes simply "Captain Jack" to those close to him, or as the Doctor refers to him Captain), was the name adopted by a con man from the 51st century and an associate of the Doctor. His original identity remains a mystery, whenever asked he refuses to answer. Reluctantly immortal and stranded on early 21st century Earth, he headed Torchwood 3.

Biography

 * Given his frequent time travelling, much of Jack's personal chronology remains confused. However, we can say with some certainty that certain events happened to Jack before he met the Doctor, and others afterwards. However, we cannot necessarily regard everything Jack says as accurate.

Youth and Escapades
Jack was brought up on the Boeshane Peninsula, in a sandy beach-like area. He often played with his brother Gray and his father, Franklin. They played cricket and sang around campfires. Then one day an alien race invaded his homeland and killed many of the inhabitants. Jack was told by his father to run away with Gray while he went back for Jack's mother. Jack accidentally let go of Gray's hand while running. He returned to his home hoping to find him, but all he found was his dead father. Jack claims it was the worst day of his life. He spent many years searching for his brother, but never found him.(TW: Adam)

Originally, Jack used a different name, though we do not know what it was. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) He grew up sometime around the year 5000, an era differing attitudes to sex to those prevalent in the 21st century. Humans had begun to expand outwards to explore the universe, and, meeting other species, often pursued sexual relationships with them, regardless of differences of gender or species. (DW: The Doctor Dances) Although human stereotypes of "bisexuality" and "homosexuality" have been applied to Jack (i.e. Owen Harper once indicated to Gwen Cooper that Jack was "gay" (TW: Day One)), the most accurate term for Jack would be "pansexual" or "omnisexual".

As a young man, he persuaded a friend to "join up" with them to fight against some unspecified enemies that Jack did not describe or name — other than to call them "horrible". Considering Jack's friend to be the weaker of the pair, the enemies tortured him as a lesson for Jack. Jack bore the guilt of his friend's fate. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness)


 * It is likely these creature were the same ones who invaded the Boeshane Peninsula.

Once, when sentenced to death, he ordered four hypervodkas as a last meal and ended up bedding both executioners (at the same time). (DW: The Doctor Dances)

He also had a memorable experience once on a hunting expedition. (DW: Boom Town)

As a Time Agent


Jack worked as a time agent with a friend called John Hart. At some point, they spent five years trapped in a two-week time loop, with the two becoming the equivalent of a married couple after spending so much time together (Hart eventually conceded that he was "a good wife", which closed the argument about which of them was the wife). (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)

Jack Harkness worked as a Time Agent until he discovered that the Agency had erased two years of his memory, two years he wanted to have back. (DW:The Empty Child)

As a Con Man
Having left the Time Agency, Jack became a time-travelling con artist, performing various scams using his knowledge of future events, such as demanding money for items that he knew would be destroyed before the buyer could see it. Finding pieces of space junk and directing them to soon-to-be disaster sites, Jack would intend on selling them to passers by, then allowing the items to get destroyed before the buyers could pick up their merchandise. He would, at some point, improperly acquire a small, sleek Chula spacecraft, fitted for human use, which could turn invisible. (DW: The Empty Child)



In 1941, he assumed the alias of an American volunteer Captain Jack Harkness, who had died in action that January. The impostor knew very little about the "real" Jack, other than basic information, such as the former's date and manner of death. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness). While pulling a con with a Chula Ambulance during the London Blitz, he spotted Rose Tyler hanging from a barrage balloon and rescued her, taking her aboard his ship. Quickly deducing that Rose came from the future, he suspected that other Time Agents had discovered him. (DW: The Empty Child) Shortly after, Rose introduced him to the Ninth Doctor. Together, the trio worked to stop the Empty Child plague brought about by the Ambulance's nanogenes. Although he was almost killed carrying in his ship a German bomb about to explode, the Doctor and Rose rescued him just before the ship exploded. (DW: The Doctor Dances)

Abandonment
Jack was aboard Satellite 5 when the Dalek fleet launched their assault on Earth and was exterminated while defending the satellite from their advance. He was resurrected by Rose Tyler, who at that time had the powers of the Time Vortex which turned her into the Bad Wolf. Jack discovered he was now immortal, although he was unable to rejoin the Doctor and Rose before the Doctor's TARDIS departed, and was left stranded on the satellite. (DW: The Parting of the Ways) The Doctor, who had just regenerated, told Rose that he believed that Jack could begin the process of "rebuilding the Earth". (DW: Children in Need Special). However, this may have been a simple ruse to disguise the fact that the Doctor's instincts told him to run because from this point on Jack became a "fixed point" in time. (DW: Utopia)



Arrival in the 19th century
After Jack was left on Satellite 5, he employed the Vortex Manipulator in his Time Agency wrist strap to go back to Cardiff, the location of an active space-time rift. Jack ended up in 1869, and unfortunately his Vortex Manipulator burned out and he was unable to leave (it was later repaired by the Doctor but disabled twice by him afterwards). (DW: Utopia)


 * Coincidentally or not, the Doctor had first encountered the Cardiff rift in that year. (DW: The Unquiet Dead): thus, Jack may have accidently instructed the manipulator to trace the Rift to its point of origin, rather than to locate a specific point in its being, presumably in a haste to relocate the Doctor.

Regardless, he chose to remain in the city, knowing that the Doctor's TARDIS could re-fuel itself using the rift and that the Doctor would one day return there. (TW: Fragments)

Jack's second death and resurrection occurred when he was shot in 1892 during a fight on Ellis Island. (DW: Utopia) Jack would find that he still aged, but very slowly, could recover from any injury and from death itself, given a few minutes time. (DW: Last of the Time Lords)

In 1898 he helped save a boy, Anthony, from a Lawphorum, which had fallen to Earth. Anthony, a travelling stage show boy, had failed to predict the future of Jack when he asked him how he would die. (DWF: Best Friends) Probably he decided to take up this idea and so he joined a travelling show and was billed as "the man who couldn't die" in order to investigate the Night Travellers. (TW: From Out of the Rain)

In 1899, Torchwood Cardiff agents Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd found out about Jack's immortality and about the Doctor. They captured Jack and tortured him trying to discover why he couldn't die and what connection he had to Torchwood's enemy, the Doctor, who they knew Jack had mentioned in various conversations around the city. He was released on the condition that he worked for them, an offer which he intially refused outright. The two asked him to reconsider this option, and Jack wound up in a bar, alone until a young cartomancer offered to read him his fortune. To his immense surprise and bewilderment, she imparted a completely accurate prophecy of The Doctor's eventual return to Cardiff 100 years into the future. Left with nothing to do but wait for a full century, Jack reconsidered Torchwood's offer and began working for them. On his first mission he had to go stop a criminal Blowfish, which he returned to the Hub only to see it killed by a shot to the head. (TW: Fragments)

20th century
In 1909 Jack was travelling by train with a group of soldiers under his command, when they were all killed by fairies. Acting out of revenge for running over and killing a chosen one, the soldiers all died by suffocation, each having rose petals forced down their throats. (TW: Small Worlds)


 * As the officer in charge, and obviously distressed by the death of his men, it is logical to assume this took place when Jack was stuck in the 20th century. The fairies spared Jack, for unknown reasons, perhaps because, having already gained immortality by then, he couldn't die. It is also possible that he was spared simply because he wasn't with them at the time they ran over the Chosen One.


 * Whether Jack fought in World War I, or whether he had already remains unknown, though he did seem absent from Gerald Carter's Torchwood 3 during that time.

Prior to February 1944, he met Estelle Cole. (WEB: torchwood.org.uk) The pair spent some time in London together. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Somehow, however, this never happened, and they lost touch with one another. (TW: Small Worlds)

He continued working for Torchwood for about a hundred years, still pursuing his attempt to find the Doctor in the meantime. (TW: Fragments)


 * Jack's long involvement with Torchwood overlaps the Doctor's involvement with UNIT, supporting the notion that Jack may have played a role in Torchwood not becoming involved in the Doctor's UNIT exploits; this is supported by his comment in Utopia about waiting for the right incarnation of the Doctor to come along, suggesting observation of earlier incarnations.

Jack became leader on New Year's Day 2000 when the then-current leader, Alex Hopkins, knowing Jack couldn't die, shot to the death the rest of the team, before committing suicide himself. That left Jack as Torchwood 3's leader and only member. (TW: Fragments)



21st century
Jack recruited Toshiko Sato in either 2003 (TW: Fragments) or 2005 (TW:Greeks Bearing Gifts) and Owen Harper was recruited in 2006. (TW: Fragments) At some stage, Suzie Costello, his second-in-command joined the team. (TW: Fragments)

Jack's activities at the time of the Blaidd Drwg incident in Cardiff - which involved Jack's younger, non-immortal self - are unknown, even though it is known that he was in charge of Torchwood 3 and based mere feet from the TARDIS' arrival at the time. (DW: Boom Town)

After the destruction of Torchwood 1 in the Battle of Canary Wharf, Jack still continued to run Torchwood 3. With Torchwood 1 gone and Torchwood 4 having "gotten lost", Jack ran Torchwood 3 with more or less complete freedom and decided to run it according to the ideals he thought the Doctor represented. (DW: The Sound of Drums) He took in Ianto Jones, after some heavy persuasion by Ianto himself. (TW: Fragments)

Jack, though, held on to the hope of re-establishing contact with the Doctor, whom he believed could help him. He kept the Doctor's hand (which he had lost, but re-grown on Christmas Day, 2006) in a portable hyperbaric chamber in Torchwood 3's nerve centre, the Hub. (TW: Everything Changes-TW: End of Days)

Lastly, after his second-in-command Suzie Costello got exposed as a serial murderer and shot herself, he took in Police Constable Gwen Cooper. (TW: Everything Changes)

He revealed very little of himself or his origins to his team, even when pursuing a flirtatious relationship with Gwen Cooper (TW: Ghost Machine) and a more physical one with Ianto Jones. (TW: They Keep Killing Suzie) Although he rarely confided in his team, preferring to keep his past secret - Gwen was the first person to learn about his immortality - he nevertheless often showed great compassion for them and other innocents who got caught up in Torchwood's missions (TW: Out of Time), even as he demonstrated a far more ruthless side in dispatching the team's enemies than the Doctor might have exercised (TW: Countrycide). Transported back to 1941 by the Cardiff rift, Jack met his namesake, the original Jack Harkness, and briefly romanced him, before returning to the 21st century. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness)



After the Cardiff rift was finally opened by Owen Harper, Jack was forced to confront Abaddon, released from the rift by Bilis Manger. Abbadon was destroyed while attempting to leech Jack's life, though the exertion resulted in Jack remaining dead for three days, his immortality apparently unable to save him. He was brought back to life by a kiss from Gwen. (TW: End of Days) Minutes after his resurrection, Jack noticed the Doctor's hand begin to glow. From inside of the Hub, Jack recognised the sound of the TARDIS materialising, elated after decades of waiting by the knowledge that the young cartomancer's prophecy had been fulfilled and that a version of the Doctor he knew was returning to refuel. By the time the rest of the Torchwood team arrived to investigate the sound, Jack had gone. (TW: End of Days)

Reunion with The Doctor
Having heard the TARDIS, Jack fled from the Hub chasing after the sound. Seeing the TARDIS and crying out the Doctor's name, desperate to be noticed as he ran, the Doctor (presumably still harbouring a fear or prejudice towards his immortality) once again sent the TARDIS into a swift take-off, intending to leave Jack behind a second time. In spite of this, and determined by all those years of waiting, Jack leaped into the air and grabbed onto the outside of the ship just as it was dematerialising. The TARDIS reacted extremely violently to this, throwing itself into convulsions as it tried to shake him off, sending the Doctor, Martha Jones and Jack hurtling at full speed into the year 100 trillion. (DW: Utopia)

When the TARDIS had landed, The Doctor emerged grim and unpleasantly surprised, though nevertheless very impressed that Jack had managed to follow them to the end of the timeline itself. After Martha briefly panicked (beleiving him to be dead), Jack resurrected and was finally reunited with the Doctor. In spite of expressing a bitter resentment at being 'abandoned' by the Doctor (an act which the Time Lord casually brushed off), he was nonetheless thrilled to discover that Rose Tyler had not been killed in the Battle of Canary Wharf, a beleif he had presumably adopted without the Doctor to confirm otherwise until then.

After catching up with one-another, the trio discovered a human being being hunted by the carnivorous, tribal Futurekind, an act for which the Doctor's exteme displeasure leads them to join the chase (an event which rekindles Jack's long-dormant memories of running with the Doctor with vigour) and attempt to save the human by taking him back to the TARDIS. Surrounded, they were instead forced to run to a base where they discovered the last Humans were hiding from the Futurekind. Jack revealed that he has brought the Doctor's Hand with him, describing it as a 'Doctor detector', after they all had met with the troubled Professor Yana. Jack, along with the Doctor and Martha helped to activate and launch the ship headed to the apparent 'Utopia' by entering a chamber flooded with Stet radiation and fixing the power canisters, which would be fatal for a mortal Human. At this point, he confronted the Doctor on his immortality. The Doctor revealed that Rose's lack of control when manipulating the Time Vortex had, as opposed to simply restoring Jack to life instead brought him back permanently, resulting in immortality; the Doctor recognises Jack as a 'fixed point' in the timeline, a fact. Jack, essentially is a living, breathing historical event imprinted onto Time itself, which means he cannot fade away from history, or 'die' as it were. It leaves the Doctor - sworn never to interfere with established history by the Time Lord Code - extremely uncomfortable with any interaction with him.

When Yana was discovered to be the Master, the rogue Time Lord took the Doctor's hand and went back in time to the 21st century after stealing The Doctor's TARDIS. Jack, the Doctor and Martha followed in hot pursuit, returning to the 21st century using Jack's Vortex Manipulator to escape from the Futurekind that had been let loose by the reconstituted Master. While Jack attempted to stop the Master, who was Prime Minister as Harold Saxon, he was captured on the Valiant along with the Doctor, but gave his Vortex Manipulator to Martha, allowing her to escape by teleporting to Earth. (DW: The Sound of Drums)

After being imprisoned within the Valiant for one year, he managed to release himself and destroyed the Master's Paradox Machine with a machine gun. The Master tried to escape in the confusion, but a returning Jack caught him as he attempted to get away. He witnessed the death of the Master and later decided to return to Torchwood. (DW: Last of the Time Lords)

Coming back to Torchwood 3
After being on-board the Valiant with the Doctor and the Master for a year of an erased time line, Jack returned to Torchwood and the team, saving the life of a woman being menaced by a Blowfish. While this took place, there was some Rift activity and his old friend Captain John Hart from the Time Agency appeared in Cardiff. Jack tracked him to a bar, where they reunited with a passionate kiss, followed by a lengthy bar brawl. He told Jack that there were three alien radiation bombs nearby, and the team split up and searched for them. Hart disabled the team one-by-one after conning them into finding the pieces, which he combined with a segment kept by the Blowfish. Though he believed that it would show him the location of a rare Arcadian diamond, in reality it was a DNA-locking bomb, set to kill John Hart. Hart subsequently handcuffed himself to Gwen with deadlock sealed cuffs and he raced to the rift, while Jack and Owen concocted a means of confusing the bombs DNA scanner, arriving just in time to save Hart's life, throwing the bomb into the rift. The resultant explosion caused all of the events prior to Hart's arrival to reset to before he arrived. As Hart left through the rift, he mentioned to Jack that he knew where Gray was. (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)

After Jack met Martha Jones when fighting the Master, he invited her onto the team for a few days. He asked her to investigate the Pharm, a medical organization that could cure diseases that were incurable. He ordered Toshiko to close it down. But the Pharm manager shot Owen Harper and then Jack shot him. Martha stayed for a few more days and he put her in charge as Medical officer. (TW: Reset) Jack found the other resurrection glove and resurrected Owen Harper. It worked but Jack had released an extradimensional alien, the embodiment of death, Durac. Owen saved the day by not giving his soul to Death and survived. (TW: Dead Man Walking)

Jack met his younger brother Gray again when John Hart came back and bombed a warehouse in an attempt to kill all the members of the Torchwood 3 team. This failed and Jack found a message from John on his Vortex Manipulator, which included an appearance by Gray himself. Left shaken, Jack immediately went back to the Hub to confront Captain Hart, leaving the other members of the team to deal with their respective challenges. (TW: Fragments) On meeting John again, Jack is killed before being chained up and made to listen whilst John explains his predicament. Jack's rogue partner then detonates stratgically-placed bombs in and around Cardiff, obliterating the city to Jack's horror before forcibly kidnapping him and sending both of them back through time to Cardiff in 27 AD. Here, Jack discovered that John was being manipulated by Gray, whose return is marked by his instantaneous, remorseless murder of his brother. He vengefully forces John to bury Jack alive 20 feet underground in the land that would become Cardiff. Gray, transformed into a merciless, sadistic psychopath by a lifetime of horrific torture had blamed Jack for letting go of his hand when they were children, and wanted Jack to experience a similar never-ending pain by choking on dirt, thrashing on the edge of life every time he revived, only to die again. (TW: Exit Wounds) Before totally burying Jack, John, finally pushed too far by the awareness of how wrong his actions were, slipped a signet ring into the grave with him, hoping that the signal it emitted could be used to locate Jack with the help of Torchwood 3, far ahead into the 21st century.

Stuck in a cycle of death and resurrection for centuries, Jack was discovered by Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell of the Torchwood of 1901, who had picked up the signal of John's ring (an act which confused his Time Agent partner, who had returned to the 21st century to rescue him, thinking that the ring, despite being 'guaranteed 5 millenia', had malfunctioned). Back in the early 20th century, Jack, insistent that he could not be allowed to cross his own timeline (for by now two versions of Jack were present - his past self and present self) demanded to be placed in cryopreservation for 110 years until the present day. Despite being baffled, the two granted him this request and Jack awoke again inside Torchwood 3 concurrent to Gray's mayhem - and coincidentally preventing him from finishing off Toshiko with a bullet. Jack forgives his brother of his trespasses despite Gray's own unwillingness to absolve Jack, begrudging him everything. Left with no other option, a tearful Jack chloroformed and cryopreserved Gray, refusing to kill him, but the damage had already been done, as Gray had been responsible for the deaths of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. Jack and John part ways on better terms, with John travelling the world in the 21st century, determined to find out why Jack finds the time period so interesting, and Torchwood Three reduced to Jack, Ianto and Gwen. (TW: Exit Wounds)

On September the 9th, Martha phoned Jack for help with the CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He, Ianto and Gwen flew there, met up with Martha, and investigated 12 accidents, and found a creature that fed on neutrons. (BBCR: Lost Souls)

The Medusa Cascade
An undisclosed amount of time later, the Earth was relocated by the Daleks to the Medusa Cascade. Initially, Jack was powerless to do anything, but he later found himself involved in the Sub-Wave Network, allowing him to speak to various allies of the Doctor. After getting vital information from Martha that allowed him to reactivate his vortex manipulator, Jack teleported near to where the Doctor and Rose Tyler's reunion was interrupted by the Doctor being shot by a Dalek. (DW: The Stolen Earth)

Subsequently, after the Doctor's regeneration aborted, Jack boarded the Crucible and surrendered to the Dalek forces. In order to infiltrate the vessel, he attempted to shoot the Supreme Dalek and was "exterminated". He subsequently burrowed into the Crucible and linked up with Sarah Jane Smith (to whom he expressed admiration), Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler. Using Sarah Jane's Warp star, he attempted to bluff the Daleks into calling off the detonation of the reality bomb but was ultimately transported to Davros' chamber instead. Later, after the Daleks were defeated by the "DoctorDonna", he helped pilot the TARDIS as it returned the Earth to its original location. Afterwards, he was last seen offering Martha Jones a position with Torchwood, and soon after was joined by Mickey - but not before the Doctor re-deactivated his vortex manipulator. (DW: Journey's End)

Undated events

 * As indicated above, Jack has worked for Torchwood since the late 19th century; to date only a handful of his missions prior to the recruitment of Gwen Cooper are known (TW: From Out of the Rain, Fragments, Exit Wounds)


 * Jack once quipped about the time he got pregnant, a memorable experience, though not necessarily in a good way. (TW: Everything Changes)


 * Jack had direct or indirect knowledge of the Cybermen of our universe, (TW: Cyberwoman) and even states that he "knows what will happen" in the Cyber-Wars of the future. (CJMF: Cyberman)


 * In 1909, while working for an unknown employer, he stole diamonds from a mine in Lahore. (torchwood.org.uk)


 * Jack related to a captive that he had experience in torturing prisoners, and that, "a long time ago", he had "quite a reputation as the go-to guy" in the event of needing to force information out of a person. (TW: Countrycide)


 * Given that he wanted to frighten a prisoner into divulging information at the time, he may have lied or stretched the truth.


 * He once worked for an employer named Victor, who surprised "his" staff by coming out as a male-to-female transsexual. (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts)


 * Jack once had a boyfriend with no mouth. (TW: Fragments)


 * Jack implied that he was present at the extinction of the dinosaurs, and said that he had eaten some of them, stating that: "...there was nothing else around after the meteor hit". (TW: Fragments) Jack appears to be unaware that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused not by a meteor, but a spaceship that exploded, killing the Fifth Doctor's companion, Adric (DW: Earthshock)


 * At some point, and over an unknown period of time, Jack made a number of top secret video recordings providing information on the various alien races encountered by planet Earth. The timing of these recordings and why they were made, remains unknown. (WC: Captain Jack's Monster Files)


 * The canonicity of the Captain Jack's Monster Files recordings, some of which appear to show Jack in the Torchwood 3 hub, is not confirmed.


 * Although not necessarily "adventures" per se, Jack has made references to having romantic relationships with several notable 20th Century humans, including Christopher Isherwood (TW: Reset) and Marcel Proust (TW: Dead Man Walking).

Special abilities
Since his resurrection by the Bad Wolf entity (DW: The Parting of the Ways), Jack could "die" and come back to life almost instantly (TW: Everything Changes onwards). He has "died" of such things as a gunshot to the head (TW: Everything Changes, TW: End of Days) and multiple electrocutions (TW: Cyberwoman). By the time John Hart killed him in a warehouse bombing, he had died at least 1,392 times, (DW: Fragments). However as a benefit Jack is immune to any attack that would destroy him, like a Judoon laser gun. While this is never directly stated, it is implied in Fragments. The technology used by the the victorian Torchwood, while never named, used a device that should have either killed or destroyed him. In some circumstances, such as when in a scrape with a Weevil (TW: Combat) or pterodactyl (TW: Fragments), Jack heals of all wounds incurred instantly, but he does not necessarily heal from such minor injuries as a bloody lip (TW: Cyberwoman). Jack's confrontation with Abaddon forced him as close he could come to true death. (TW: End of Days) Jack views this power as a curse as much as a blessing, as each time he has died he has not experienced anything at all, good or bad, (TW: Everything Changes) although the process of resurrection is described as like being "hauled over broken glass" (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang).

Like other men in the 51st century, Jack possesses evolved human pheromones which make him naturally nice-smelling and attractive to others. (TW: Fragments)

Tosh could not use Mary's telepathy pendant to read his thoughts, although he could project thoughts to Tosh if he so chose, with Tosh apparently saying how it was like reading a dead man, and Jack confirming that he knew someone was trying to read his mind. (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts)


 * The may be from the psychic training that Torchwood Institute has. (DW: Army of Ghosts)

Future as the Face of Boe?
Jack has mentioned that in his childhood home, the Boeshane Peninsula, as result of being the first one ever (whether of the Peninsula or of the Time Agency generally remains unclear) he had been a poster boy and so was nicknamed the Face of Boe. (DW: Last of the Time Lords) Jack had previously mentioned that he did know of the "real" Face of Boe. (NDA: The Stealers of Dreams)


 * Whether this would make the immortal Jack the actual future Face of Boe remains unknown.

Donna's World
If Donna Noble had turned right, instead of left, stopping herself from ever meeting and saving the Doctor. Jack would have lost fellow Torchwood members, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, who sacrificed their lives to save the Earth from the Sontarans' plan involving ATMOS and would have been transported to Sontar, the Sontaran homeworld. (DW: Turn Left)

Possessions
When Rose and the Doctor first met him, Jack owned a small Chula Warship, fitted for human use, as well as psychic paper and a store of nanogenes in the ship. When saving the Doctor and Rose by carrying a German bomb a safe distance away from London, the bomb explodes inside the ship, but luckily, the Doctor and Rose saved him. (DW: The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances)

In contrast to The Doctor, Jack Harkness was far more willing to use weapons, and was capable of modifying equipment to that end. Jack owned a sonic blaster. (DW: The Doctor Dances) He also managed to store a Compact Laser Deluxe away somewhere "you really don't wanna know"', in case of emergencies. (DW: Bad Wolf). During his travels with the Doctor, he modified the Defabricator, to be capable of destroying a Dalek. (DW: The Parting of the Ways) As the leader of Torchwood 3, Jack liked to carry a World War II Webley. (TW: Everything Changes onward).

Romantic interests
As an extremely long-lived man, Jack has had many lovers, both male and female and not all strictly human. By nature, Jack flirts with nearly everyone he meets. The earliest we can trace is his Time Agency partner Captain John Hart (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), but Jack has also recalled lovers from his Time Agency days, such as his would-be executioners (a couple) and a boyfriend with no mouth. Some time after this while stationed in London in World War II, he carried on a serious relationship with Estelle Cole (TW: Small Worlds) but seemingly disappeared out of her life forever one day (possibly DW: The Doctor Dances), and around this time he also had an affair with a soldier named Algy. While travelling at their side, Jack appeared to develop romantic feelings for Rose Tyler and the Ninth Doctor (DW: The Parting of the Ways).

While stranded on Earth between 1869 and 2007, Jack alludes to countless romances. He is known to have dated notables Christopher Isherwood (TW: Reset) and Marcel Proust (TW: Dead Man Walking) and developed a relationship a Torchwood coworker named Greg Bishop (TWN: The Twilight Streets). Other mentions include acrobatic twins and the possibility of a relationships with other coworkers and acquaintances. During this period Jack also became married, but outlived his wife (TW: Something Borrowed). In the late 1960's, Jack met and had a brief relationship with involuntary time-traveller Michael Bellini (TWN: Trace Memory). Later, Jack recruited Gwen Cooper, who is romantically drawn to him, and Ianto Jones whom he develops a romantic relationship with. Despite these burgeoning relationships, Jack meets the real Captain Jack Harkness after time travelling back in time and the two develop a romantic bond, culminating in a kiss upon their pained farewell. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) Jack also meets and is attracted to Martha Jones, the handsome Tenth Doctor and even fleetingly to the Malmooth Chantho and a human male refugee. (DW: Utopia)

Key life events

 * Jack's home planet is invaded by an unidentified race of aliens, resulting in his father being killed and his brother vanishing, leaving only him and his mother. (TW: Adam)


 * Jack enters the military with a friend, who also joins, at Jack's urging. The friend undergoes torture by their foe.


 * Jack works for the Time Agency until, finding two years of memory gone (DW: The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances), leaves the Agency and met with another Time Agent, John Hart around this time. (TW: ''Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)


 * Jack has two years of memories stolen by the Time Agency, and leaving them behind escapes to begin a new career as a time travelling con man. (DW: The Empty Child)


 * Jack joins up with the Doctor and Rose Tyler. (DW: The Doctor Dances)


 * Jack is killed by a Dalek aboard Satellite Five.


 * Rose Tyler resurrected him using the power of the Time Vortex and made him immortal. The Doctor subsequently left him behind on Satellite Five. (DW: The Parting of the Ways)


 * Transported to Earth in 1869 using his Vortex Manipulator he used as a Time Agent. The Manipulator burnt out after this journey and forced Jack to live through the 19th and 20th centuries (DW: Utopia), and he is blackmailed into working the Torchwood Institute as a freelancer, but continues for over a century in hopes of locating the Doctor (TW: Fragments).


 * After the death of his entire Cardiff team in the year 2000, he takes over Torchwood 3 (TW: Fragments). Over the next couple years, he recruits Suzie Costello, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper.


 * Jack Harkness re-unites with the regenerated Doctor. (DW: Utopia)


 * During the Year that Never Was, he undergoes multiple deaths and resurrections by the Master. (DW: The Sound of Drums).


 * The Master defeated, Jack re-joins Torchwood 3. (DW: Last of the Time Lords, TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)


 * Jack is transported to 27 AD where he is buried alive by his brother Gray and is not found until 1901 where he is cryopreserved until he can reawaken in 2009, forced to cryopreserve Gray and mourn the losses of Toshiko and Owen (TW: Exit Wounds).


 * Jack and the Torchwood 3 help the Doctor and his allies defend the Earth against the Daleks. (DW: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)

Behind the Scenes

 * Jack Harkness' first name was originally "Jax", in Russell T Davies's original production outline. In this Jack's proper name was Jax, and he was using the Jack alias as a cover in World War II. The name was later abandoned due to its similarity to other names in the wider Doctor Who Universe.
 * Davies has said he got the surname "Harkness" from Agatha Harkness, a recurring character from the Fantastic Four comic book.
 * John Barrowman revealed that Jack does sleep, and that he has a bed located down a ladder underneath a manhole cover near his office. (Revealed on The Friday Night Project, a late-night talk show.) This bed and man hole are seen in Small Worlds
 * Jack Harkness has the distinction of being the first ongoing character in the televised Doctor Who universe to be definitely confirmed as being non-heterosexual (although, as described above, it is not strictly correct to refer to him as homo- or bisexual, either, more omnisexual). However, in the expanded Doctor Who universe he is far from the first, as Third Doctor-era recurring character Mike Yates was "outed" as gay in Happy Endings. The Doctor Who Magazine Eighth Doctor comics have featured Fey Truscott-Sade and the Doctor's companion Izzy Sinclair came out as a lesbian in Oblivion.
 * Much like Nicola Bryant's portrayal of Peri, sometimes Barrowman uses word choices and pronunciations that an American wouldn't use. The most obvious example is in his way of saying "estrogen" in Everything Changes. (This is mainly because the word is spelt oestrogen in British English.)