16 JUNE
UTOPIA
In the year 100 trillion, the Doctor at last re-encounters Captain Jack. But an even unhappier reunion awaits…
By ALAN BARNES
Jack’s Back
Utopia’s pre-titles sequence resolves a dramatic cliffhanger… not from the previous episode of Doctor Who, but from the final episode of the first series of the spin-off series Torchwood, shown five-anda-half months earlier. Inside the Torchwood Three Hub in the closing moments of End of Days (broadcast 1 January 2007), former TARDIS traveller turned Cardiff-based alienhunter Captain Jack Harkness had observed the disembodied hand he kept in a storage canister begin to flex, heard the TARDIS materialisation sound… and moments later, was found to be missing by his comrades: “Something’s taken him. Jack’s gone!”
In fact, it had been strongly implied that Jack had boarded the TARDIS when it materialised inside the Hub – papers had blown about in the wake of the ‘vworping’ effect, and the Torchwood staffers coming in from the main entrance hadn’t seen Jack pass by. It turns out, however, that he’d actually had time to pack the hand in a backpack, re-gel his hair and somehow evade his comrades on his way out of the Hub, before running across Roald Dahl Plass and leaping onto the Doctor’s ship before it disappeared.