Actor John Barrowman is upset that no one called him to be part of the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who.
“Everyone on Twitter tries to make it like it’s my decision, but the bottom line is I was not asked,” Barrowman told them. “[The Powers That Be] don’t want to put Jack in it. And I know fans are really upset about it, as was I.”
Barrowman says that one rumor circulating is that his schedule made it difficult for him to be part of the production. He refutes that.
“People have tried to say it’s my schedule; it’s absolutely not,” he said. ”I was told by the producers of Arrow that if I was asked to do the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who they’d let me go and do it. It was nothing to do with my schedule. It’s just a matter of fact that I wasn’t asked.”
Barrowman says he knows the production team is trying to make the special accessible to as wide an audience as possible. And that may be why he’s not part of it.
Now, if only he’d quit complaining about not being part of it….
Unnecessary dig at the end there.
I wish fans could all get the message and stop bothering him about it. He tries to be pleasant on Twitter, but even if all his twitter feed did was announce every 5 minutes how he won’t be there, he’d still get barraged with the same question.
Really don’t see what the big deal is…Jack Harkness was never really a chosen companion of the Doctor…he was just temporarily along for the ride. If is was a Torchwood special I can see getting upset but Doctor Who…time to move on.
Seeing as how RTD went out of his way to make Jack an integral part of of the main storyline for 2 Doctors and I think in 3 seasons, how is that temporarily along for the ride?
One companion inhaled the power of the TARDIS and made him more than immortal. Another companion got distracted by her own hair and forgot to tell the Doctor that she’d found another Time Lord, causing the Doctor to get the keys to the TARDIS stolen from him by the Master, and Jack chooses to save everyone again because no one else could survive what was about to happen… something he could only do because of what happened to him when a previous Companion was loopy on Universal Power, and then when he gets back from that and the Master’s been put back in a cage of whatever, we find out that he becomes this legendary never-ending being that The Doctor has known forever.
How is that being temporarily along for the ride, or not being accessible? Most of the people who currently know about Doctor Who all know about Captain Jack, and love his character (occasional deus ex machina safety valve or not). Now, if by “accessible” Moffatt means “I don’t want to remind everyone of things that were done better before I took over the reins”, then yes, I can see why he’d lock Captain Jack out of the special.
So for his sake, there had better be no one else besides Doctors and Companions, because if just one other side character shows up, the fan backlash will cause him to more than just go running away from Twitter.
And people wonder why I stopped watching when he turned the show into a hot mess.
You kind of prove the “temporary” point when you include him as a part of the “just one other side character” crowd. Truthfully I don’t expect Mickey(another side character if you will) to show up either…honestly I don’t think Mickey ever would have been on the TARDIS in the first place if it wasn’t for Rose.
Everyone has their favorite character and some people are going to get upset when their favorite isn’t on but to please everyone they would have to bring back everyone and that might not be possible for what they are trying to do. I have to agree with the writer of the article…Barrowman needs to just move on and quit talking about it…he had Torchwood and now Arrow…that’s more than some of the actors who played on Doctor Who got. Reminds me too much of Shatner going on and on about the Star Trek reboot (and I like Shatner) but it gets old after a while.
But he can’t be considered “temporary” given how much his character affected the course of the Doctor’s journey, as much as a real Companion did. He was introduced that way and set up to be that way.
If he was supposed to be “just another temporary side character”, they wouldn’t have had Rose bring him back to life, right? They wouldn’t have gone out of their way to let everyone know he’s the Face of Boe, nor that he’d played such an integral part of the world’s interaction with alien civilizations because of Torchwood, knowledge he had from exposure to those worlds because of technology he got because of The Doctor.
So I stand by my assessment, and everyone else’s. Moffatt is peeved that an RTD character from the new Doctor series is more popular and better thought out than any he’s created so far, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge the foundation that was so wonderfully laid down for him has been royally totalled when they handed him the keys.
That’s not everyone else’s assessment…there are people besides me who disagree with you….and I really don’t know how he could be considered anything other than temporary when even the chosen companions of the Doctor are temporary…none of them are permanent…they are always replaced with someone new.
As for accusing Moffat of being peeved…I think that is taking it a little too far. I do agree that Jack Harness was much more developed in Torchwood than he ever was in Doctor Who (I actually liked Torchwood better…don’t shoot me) but that’s the problem…I didn’t like it when he went back to Who…it was too much like trying to put the genie back into the bottle or Pandora back in the box. Why make Captain Jack Harkness play second fiddle to the Doctor when it’s so obvious he had moved on from that. I could see them doing it to get the explanation as to what Rose had done to him but after that there really isn’t any reason to return. I just think the complaining about not being asked to be on Who could be better served if Barrowman was instead asking when they were going to make another Torchwood.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not talking a major role here. Why couldn’t he just be on the streets of Cardiff, busy with his own goings-on, and there’s a wink-wink in passing between the two? Nothing major, just a simple acknowledgement.
The special is about the Doctor and rightly should be focused on the Doctor’s incarnations, but completely ignoring a character who had such a profound effect on 2 different Doctors is beyond rude.
And yes, for a while there, Torchwood was the more fun show. I think they should have scrapped Miracle Day and gone back to the drawing board for an entirely different premise, but there you have it.
Totally agree on Miracle Day…it was the only one I didn’t entirely like…it had a few moments but not many…I’d hate to see it go out on such a low note…hope that eventually they’ll get another good script and we’ll see Torchwood once again.
Not only is Captain Jack not a “temporary companion” of Doctor Who, he was and remains an integral part of the Whoverse since his first introduction by RTD, so for those currently in charge of Who production to alienate one of that franchises more central characters is a crime. I don’t blame John for being upset. I too consider it more than just an oversight, it is a downright slight and it stirs up my ire as well. When I think of Doctor Who there are at least three things that always come to mind other than the main protagonist and they are – The TARDIS, Sarah Jane & Captain Jack. Of course there are many more but those, history will show, are the top 3.
In my mind, Jack is no more or less integral a part of the Who-niverse than any other companion — classic or new series.
He was good in series one but as time went along, I found less was more of Captain Jack. A lot of this is probably from the fact that I didn’t care for the way the character developed on Torchwood and I really don’t want to see him back for the 50th anniversary.
Of course, I also didn’t want to see Rose back either…..her story was done.
Michael, that is blasphemy. 😉
Meant to say top 4 – old age – DALEKS!