Feature by CHRISTEL DEE
COSPLAY
The vampire girls try to enter Guido’s house via the window.
Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) sets his vortex manipulator in the Torchwood Hub.
FACT
The Tenth Doctor thought the vortex manipulator was a very primitive form of time travel, describing it as a “space hopper” compared to his “sports car” TARDIS.
The vortex manipulator is a pretty nifty piece of tech. Contained within an elegant, leather-covered wristwatch-like gadget, it offers the user the ability to time travel at the flick of a button. Using it might rip holes in time, but let’s not worry too much about that.
Along with Time Agent Captain Jack Harkness, the gadget made its Doctor Who screen debut in 2005’s The Empty Child. When the Doctor abandoned Jack on board a space station in the year 200,100 in The Parting of the Ways (2005), Jack tried to use his vortex manipulator to travel to the 21st century. However, because the gadget was damaged, he ended up in the mid-19th, forced to live through Earth history. During this time, Jack worked for Torchwood – and even got his own spin-off series.
Series 1 of Torchwood was broadcast in 2006, and by its second series in 2007 I was eager to cosplay Captain Jack Harkness. He is one of my favourite characters. I love his charm, wit, heroism, strong sense of justice, unforgettable one-liners and ability to flirt with anything. And I thought he looked majestic on screen, strutting about in that huge great coat of his. I wanted to be as cool as him.
So, I went out and bought a long, blue woollen coat from a charity shop, made my own lapels out of felt and sewed on some shiny gold buttons. I had long hair at the time so I got myself a short, brown wig and spray-painted a toy pistol black so I could pose with it at conventions. I also made his silver earpiece from pen lids, a couple of watch batteries and an earphone bud which I spray painted and finished off with a blue LED light.
However, the outfit simply wasn’t complete without a vortex manipulator. It is possible to buy a toy version of this prop, but it’s very expensive, not to mention a little small for adults. So I embarked upon making a bespoke one myself.