Pop Culture
Written for TorchwoodFest on Tumblr. Day One: Favorite Character. Actually they're all my favorite, but I went with Jack by default. Standard fanfiction disclaimer here.
The flashback in Miracle Day is a continuity nightmare and it probably makes more sense he time traveled back there at some future point, but for the sake of a somewhat linear timeline below is my attempt to hand wave him having the coat during that time. Also technically Little Nemo stopped publication a year before Jack comes to America, but I'm ignoring that to give myself something familiar to work of.
Jack's grasp of popular culture is…sporadic to say the least. In the 1800s he mainly mopes around when not getting shot at by his psychotic bosses. He has the knowledge of the very early 21st century Rose had so enthusiastically shared with him. He has what he learned to blend in his travels. But he doesn't pick up much beyond the occasional novel and Gilbert and Sullivan show.
In World War I he has a basic grasp of what's popular. The theatre shows that were going on back home while he was on the front. The tunes he can hum without giving himself away. The fashions-he's so close to getting his greatcoat look back and once that happens he is not letting that thing go-what to reference to get the men and women he's most interested engaged. A date to see the pictures is starting to become a standard pickup tool. He maybe holds onto it so he can tell future Torchwood operatives he literally invented old dinner and a movie line. Charlie Chaplin is always good for a laugh, there's just something about his movements that is so universally funny. Maybe slapstick really is timeless.
A WWII style greatcoat finds its way through the rift. He wears it with pride.
Then he goes to America. It's horrible really, and he actively tries to forget the hurt and betrayal. The constant reminder that those people thought he was wrong. That cutting him up like that is something they firmly and truly believed to be right-he's still a time agent despite the goodness the Doctor tried to instill in him, and he still works for bloody Torchwood, so he had no allusions about the human spirit. Except that he does. Deep down he still believes in dreams and heroes. Still believes in the Doctor and all he stands for. That feeling of freedom from past sins he offered to Jack, the clean slate. And he wants to believe in just a little bit of escapism and wonder.
So while hes in America he reads the newspaper funnies. It's where he finds Little Nemo in Slumber land. The colors are vibrant, the worlds he reader is introduced to are wide and vast. It's ahead of its time in how it constructs the perspectives of dream world and plays with angles and spacial concepts. But more than that it's an escape to a literal dreamland for a few minutes a day. Sure, once an installment Nemo is forcefully awoken from his dream world and yelled at by an authority figure for his efforts-but Jack keeps going back to the pages just for those few minutes of escape to the fantastic with Nemo and his loyal companions.
On an unrelated note, he tries not be bitter when he loses his coat in America. It's only a few more years until he'll earn another one, but he really loved that damn coat.
World War II is when he goes all in. Part of its familiarity. He'd hidden out here before, and sometime soon his younger self will discover the force of change and good that his Doctor. Maybe, subconsciously, he latches on because he wants the Doctor to recognize him when they meet again. The distinctive style from when they first met and all. Maybe it's because he feels like he fits in here, that he understands this decade more than he understands a lot of the unknowable things that surround him. Maybe it's simply because he looks damn good in that coat. He buys all the records-he's a little, well a lot, wistful when he hears Glenn Miller but that doesn't stop him from listening to it on repeat. For the next several decades.
He has mixed feelings about the 50s. He doesn't want to give the 40s up, and clings desperately onto the era where he can. He makes it seem deliberate, like a choice, so his bosses don't realize just how much the years are starting wear on him. But the 50s have their upsides too. Rock and Roll is being born, which means so is the debauchery that follows. It's lame debauchery and there's better debauchery to come, but a little openness to free loving is on its way.
On September 8th 1966 Captain Jack Harkness sits firmly in front of his television set. And boldly goes where no man has gone before. When the characters say Mr. Spock's name part of him feels the same wistful feeling Glen Miller sweeps him in-memories so wonderful they start to burn with hurt because the people they feature are no longer tangibly there and so far away. Part of him wants to sit back and keep score at how hilariously wrong the cheesy sets are at depicting the future, while also marveling at the correct guesses at cell phones, tablets, voice recognition and transporters. And part of him wants to see this very optimistic future come to fruition because he's starting to feel dead inside.
The 60s are full of free love and the sexual revolution definitely has its advantages. But he's too hardened to take full advantage of it. He sees death and the worse of humanity each day. It gets harder and harder to connect with the good he knows, or that the Doctor knew he knew, that lies underneath. He's getting worse with compartmentalizing his missions-he really can turn it all off and not care when he sends someone off to die. Maybe he need a morality pet, another companion figure to keep him from the brink. He honestly isn't sure.
What he does know is that Beatlemania is greatest fad of all time and John Lennon is a really great lay.
Jack spends a lot of his time in the 70s watching genre films. Bad science fiction is a bit of a pastime-the more inaccurate the better. Maybe he's keeping score, maybe he's trying to distract himself like he did with the original Star Trek series, or maybe he just kind of likes them. It's probably all of those. He bounces Alice on his lap he watches, trying to think about how soon she'll be too big to want to spend time with him like this. Lucia will probably take her away before they can even get to that point in their relationship. But now she's his beautiful little girl laughing away at the Rocky Horror Picture Show (and way too young to tattle to Mommy about how thoroughly she's been corrupted).
Disco sucks. Some of the 80s music that is about to follow will suck worse so he might as well count his blessings. Oh he knows rock and roll will live on (the Doctor's appreciation for Queen rubbed off of on him when he was in the Tardis), but he's really not a Madonna guy. He likes her thing, the whole open sexuality thing, which will force humanity to take another few steps forward following their constant steps back, but the music itself really isn't his cup of tea. She is hell of a lover though.
He leaves the 70s with the firm conviction he prefers Star Trek to Star Wars, but that lightsabers are awesome as hell.
In the 80s he's glad he's fully rejecting any attempts at embracing the fashions of the day, because the tight leather pants that are trendy for the super fashionable of Great Britain right now look really uncomfortable. Guys look hot as hell in them, but they're really not his personal style.
The decade flies by with a slew of Spielberg films. He'll never admit it to anyone, but ET made him tear up a bit. The aliens at Torchwood don't usually make it home, and innocent kids on bikes don't escape Torchwood by flying away.
He doesn't see much of Alice these days and he knows she resents him already, but taking her to the movies is a nice, safe activity for his weekend dad duties. And it helps that Back to Future might be the best time travel film made to date. He is so singing a 90s song in a public setting his next opportunity.
What Jack remembers about the 90s is a bit of a blur. So much of the decade is taken up by thinking about how he is so close to Rose and Mickey. How the 21st century will change everything. It's all right there. And somehow even more painfully distant. Alice is well out of the Disney age, but it doesn't stop him from seeing Aladdin three times. The anachronism humors appeals to him.
He remembers a lot of really awful novelty songs. Britpop vaguely playing in the background. That one Spice Girls song that always sparked a discussion about the phrasing of "get with my friends". The time he had sex with Lance Bass.
The 21st century was supposed to be when everything changes, yet the mysterious enigma that was Ianto Jones is strangely indulgent of Jack's fondness for the aesthetic of a decade long since passed. He wonders how much of it is trying to impress him, but the interest in stopwatches, journal writing and fine suits had to be a least a little bit there before they'd met. It'd help if he were ever able to get a straight answer out of the guy. Not that he was one to talk, he's mastered cryptic over the years.
But with his arms tightly around Ianto, sitting in his cubby hole in the Hub, he's okay being just a tad bit behind on the times these days.