The problem with trying to refute the theory is that we even know how Jack's transformation was INTENDED to happen. He was meant to be one of the many return characters for A Good Man Goes To War, but John was too busy at the time (likely doing Putting It Together, Zero Dark Thirty or All Stars), with HIM being the one beheaded instead of Dorium and the Headless Monks' sabres preventing his body from regenerating. (will delete this if this is addressed in the video). Edit: Yea, it was just skated past. The Headless Monks' bodies are also able to function autonomously of their head and fire energy beams from their hands. Their abilities are shown to function far more akin to traditional magic - ie, science we don't understand yet. Just as the Bad Wolf did, which is how Jack was resurrected in the first place. Edit 2: Isn't the Curator meant to be the very last incarnation of the Doctor? This even has actual evidence with him telling the Doctor that he'll revisit a couple of faces in the future - just the old favourites. Now Tennant is back Edit 3: I think that while Death of the Author is a fair way to refute fan theories that extrapolate unknown spaces, it doesn't really apply here. This is because instead of going OUTSIDE of a timeline we know, we've seen the beginning of Jack's immortality, we know the intention and we've seen its endpoint. As such, we're *inter*polating instead.
there is multiple articles saying that it was intended, and even back in s3 its very very heavily implied that he was the fob. they said they cant know how he would age and that he wouldnt always look the same.@@HarboWholmes
I never really considered this a fan theory, I always assumed it was canon and the contradictions in the FoB backstory were things he made up or agreed to out of convenience, in torchwood its shown he doesn't like telling people he's immortal, he prefers to keep it a secret, he pretended to be the son of himself in one episode to hide his immortality while wanting to stay in touch with someone
It was confirmed by the writer of the episode. This guy just hates this revelation so he’s trying to convince himself and others it’s just a fan theory. I rolled my eyes so hard at this guy being SO BUTT HURT 17 YEARS LATER. Like dude, get over it. Plus, it never occurred to this moron THAT JACK was the progenitor of Boe kind? When you are BILLIONS of years old, it’s possible to be the origin of a whole species.
@@colleens1107Way to not get heated over canon/fan theories, the guy was just sharing his thoughts and opinions and then backed it up, no need to get so agro
Technically speaking, we only assume the "Boe kind" are real because the cat lady said so, but who's to say she ever saw them? It could've been a rumour started by FoB/Jack himself to make the universe THINK there used to be more than one of him to hide the fact that he's actually an ageless humanoid and/or create a new identity for himself.
@@Christobanistanfirst of all, Jack's intention might have been to fool OTHER PEOPLE, not strictly the doctor! Second, the doctor is smart but he doesn't know EVERYTHING, and he CAN be deceived, as we've clearly seen in multiple episodes! Third, 5 billion years is a long ass time with potentially hundreds of world shattering events, so a relatively minor deception like that would not be hard to pull off in that time span.
Or, you know, Jack later had babies when he became the Face of Boe which subsequently bred and had more babies who bred and had more babies and subsequently descended from him to create the rest of the species.
RTD confirmed it during the 2020 twitter watch along but given he'd been off the show for 10 years by then I don't think that counts. Sounds more like throwing the fans a bone to me
We never see what the rest of the Bo-kind look like, but we do know Jack is from Boshane Peninsula. It’s entirely possible the humans that settled there could have named themselves the Bo-kind, because like Cassandra says, when the humans left Earth they mingled and devised new names for their species. So when it is said he is the last of the Bo-kind it could be referring to the massacre that happened on Jacks home world that we see in Torchwood series 2.
Bo-Kind are the rest of the people that were resurrected on Satellite 5 and would have been given the same immortality as Jack. So if he became a big face in a billion years so would they.
@@parodysam We've only seen Jack resurrected, because Rose/Bad Wolf didn't care for anyone else at that moment. We hear her say "I bring life" and then Jack is shown, no one else. The Doctor in Utopia also mentioned only Jack being an anomaly, if there was more of them, he would probably mention that. Jack was a one of a kind event.
Idk if this matters, but there's an official Doctor Who poster I have that says "Things I learned from Doctor Who" and the last bullet point is "being immortal can give you a big head."
idk technically it never went further than that one scene in last of the time lords. And, like Harbo said, in torchwood jack is blown up and reduced to literally just bits of bone and gore, but reforms back to normal over time
@@kindachaos9775that's fair, but as established by the 10th doctor's horrible goblin form in the S3 finale and as alluded by RTD's tweet, someone's true age being somehow shown in their physical form can drastically change their appearance. I always assumed that as Jack got super old, his age drastically changed how he looked and diminished his regenerative abilities a bit. Or maybe the face of boe does secretly have a body and it's just super tiny and dangles at the bottom of the tank lol. For me, the only hole in the theory is the aforementioned boekind, but as others said maybe that's what the boeshane peninsula humans just called themselves
@@kindachaos9775 In Torchwood it also establishes that he's still aging and his regenerations aren't perfect. That's how he's supposed to become the Face of Boe.
I don't think its that much of a stretch for Jack to have developed psychic powers as he aged. There are already humans on earth with "low-level psychic energy," so who's to say he didn't have that potential but could only tap into it by living long past his natural lifespan? Or, maybe he got them some other way. Remember, the timelords didn't always have regeneration...
According to canon for over 50 years timelords did always have regeneration. The concept of the timeless child will suffer the same fate as the Doctor being half-human from the TV movie. Old status quo always returns.
@@fiddlesticks443 There are. Plenty of examples. For example in "The dead planet" the black woman could hear the voices of the dead. Its part of the universe lore and you see it popping up in plenty of episodes. It tends to be very intelligent people who are blessed with it, so maybe jack acquired that intelligence. Or maybe he had some kind of surgery in the future once his vocal chords wouldn't work.
I don't think the death of the author/authorial intent thing really applies here, that's moreso for themes and allegories and stuff like your example with tolkien, with something like this it's very obvious what the point of that final scene with jack martha and 10 was I think it's totally fine to dislike this narrative decision (I'm not a fan of it either it clashes with the previously established backstory of the face of boe and forces you to hc it as "maybe he made up that history" or something) but to pretend it's a "theory" and not just like an implicit fact in the show's universe is a bit silly imo
RTD has literally said countless times that Jack being the Face of Boe is NOT confirmed canon, and is merely a possible answer that you can choose to accept only if you want to. RTD, the literal author, says it's open to interpretation. If you don't like Jack being Boe and want to believe something else, then literally nobody is stopping you from thinking otherwise except for yourself.
Wasn’t it confirmed by Moffat that he wanted Captain Jack in the doctor’s “army” during A good man goes to war. And he wanted Captain’s head to be cut by the monks and separated from his body. Do to conflicting schedules he had to be replaced with Dorium Maldovar.
For a long time I wasn't even aware that it was a theory, because I'd thought the dialogue in Last of the Time Lords was explicit and undeniable confirmation. Even now it feels weird to call it a vague allusion.
Exactly. This is what I’ve always thought. Whatever power the monk’s swords have, it keeps you alive as a head, so Jack would have stayed that way, and eventually I guess his head mutated and grew.
@@challengetime1174when Jack was blown up they had to put his body parts close to each other to reform his body. He only started to reform after the parts were put together.
@@prof.evilpictures8696I feel like he’d just regenerate an entirely new body from his head in that scenario. Also Jack being decapitated by the headless monks is a completely unconfirmed fan theory. There’s a rumour that he was planned to come back in that story, but no evidence that he was to become a headless monk, and even if that was the plan it never happened anyway.
He literally said in the show he would be called The Face of Boe to the doctor, it’s not a theory, it’s confirmed and it has been for a decade. However, it doesn’t really matter that much to the story, it’s just a bit of a fun surprise at the end of the episodes to keep people interested.
the face of boe, they called me= meaning when he was a teenager, who happened to grow up 3 thousand years in martha`s future. he never said they`ll call me the face of boe in the future.
IMO Jack is Boe. When Martha mentioned Boe in Utopia, Jack figured out that he'd eventually become something unrecognisable known as "The Face of Boe", but didn't mention it because they had to stop The Master, and only mentioned it after The Master was defeated. Maybe Rose only made him immortal until he said "You are not alone"? Also I don't think anything happened to make Jack the Face of Boe, I think that's just what a human becomes after millions of years of aging.
And The Face of Boe was literally dying that whole time, so the regeneration was clearly puttered out an extremely long time ago. He was on the verge of death and died in The Doctor's arms, after all.
@@dominickeijzer5844 is he not? I'm pretty sure he is, he was of the Time Agency in the 51st Century, and looking him up the TARDIS wiki definitely states that he's human like, a lot
@@tzarg I think I might've gotten the years muddled up for when he was from, and the seemingly more primitive clothes and buildings seen doesn't help that.
So... hold on. The writer of the episode and co-creator of the character, the actor who plays the character, and the actors who play the characters closest to him all agree that Jack is the Face of Boe and you get to disbelieve it because you don't like it? That's kind of like saying you don't believe in mavity because you don't like what it says about it in books.
i can imagine jack being so flirty and had all the time to evolve through dying genetically just made his own race and civilization, that even could of died out making him the last
Why does HOW Jack turned into the FoB need to be explained? Something weird could have happened to him just once every thousand years, and that would literally mean millions of times during his ridiculously long lifespan.
I don't think regular Humans turn into gremlin creatures, that therefore means that the thing from Last of the Time Lords with The Doctor's voice that appears where the Doctor was and transforms into the Doctor can't be The Doctor! They're not Human, they can age and grow differently. It doesn't need to be explained because, and I'm sure most people forget this, CAPTAIN JACK ISN'T HUMAN.
It is literally confirmed in series 3 that jack is the face of boe, not a theory but cannon lore confirmed in the tv show and explained by Russel t davies and john barrowman. Is this an out of season April fools joke?
@@kezia8027alluded to is as good as confirmed imo, Jack saying he was called Face of Boe and the Doctor and Martha reacting is good enough of evidence
i always thought the reason why Jack went from basic humanoid "a few limbs and a face" to just a face was that, if you're gonna live to the year 5 billion your body is probably gonna go through all the millennia of human evolution THAT would be happening over thousands of generations. Especially if Jack continues to travel the universe after humans fully vacate earth, the evolution jack goes through would change depending on the environs he lives in, leading him to becoming something entirely unique... like a giant head in a jar
I always just assumed that each reboot wasn't perfect (kind of like normal cell regeneration that leads to aging or cancer), so his body just deteriorated or mutated over time.
@@Lucy-qj8ui Well, that's true. Evolution doesn't happen during your life, it happens only during the process of reproduction (though mutations accumulate over your lifetime). If jack's regeneration acts like reproduction, he could evolve. However, a different kind of evolution could happen to a being that old. Each cell could accumulate changes, then during regeneration those changed cells might be reproduced as is. Over time, his body would accumulate changes that way, with each cell evolving entirely separately, and only dying if they could not survive in the larger system. Given millions of years, an organism would literally become like a colony of countless different species. I don't see that organism remaining a coherent single organism, but slowly splitting into many. Freaky!!
@@Christobanistan this^^ it could also explain his gained psychic powers too. I think Jack changes just a little every time he dies. But again, this is a sci fi show so anything can kinda be explained away with wibbly wobbly also
Right before revealing he is the Face of Boe, Jack asks the Doctor how aging will work for him but the Doctor does not know. Since the Doctor doesn't know how this all works, how did you figure it out?
I get that there's doubt over this because it feels like a "stretch" for him to change so much in every single way, but... Tbh, if he did live for billions of years, that is an absolutely insane amount of time. Like, an unthinkable amount of time. We have no idea what happened to him or how much that amount of time affected his body.
I would say what RTD did has a lot more Wait then what JK did. He actually put allusions and hints to his meaning in the text. Foreshadowing is a thing and just because a text doesn't explicitly say something doesn't mean that thing isn't the case.
This is how much damage bad lazy storytelling really does. When characters constantly get resurrected, we start saying "Its IMPLIED they died, but not confirmed." When audience become reliant on Tell Don't Show to have everything spoonfed, audiences start saying "its implied that it works like ____, but not confirmed." When relationships are teased but ultimately come to queerbait, audiences NEED it to be confirmed otherwise they hear "oh you're just reading into it" (whether its there or not). At some point, subtly died and now if something isn't stated outright it can just get retconned. It can get retconned either way (timeless child...) but a confirmation makes it harder to unwrite without going "no that was set in stone. This doesnt make sense". I feel like bad stories have reached a point where good stories can't do subtlety. Even if Davies had said "oh it could go either way", you don't reveal something like that if theres the option for it to mean nothing. Jack said he is known as the face of bo. If this is at all intended to have NO relation to the face of bo (10 and martha both instantly interpreting it as them being the same person) then thats a really bad reveal to have at the end of a story that is a) IN the text and b) alludes to a link with a character directly impacting the narrative. Forcing Davies to SHOW the entire transformation, when saying "I'm immortal and I'm known as that guy" should suffice as a "put two and two together yourself" moment (which 10 and Martha instantly do) He summed it up "I prefer to think otherwise". Its basically confirmed by its place in the narrative and the elements it presents. But he's trying to treat it on the level of Ruth's Tardis and go "it cant be possible. So I'd rather ignore it." Which I get but not liking a reveal and saying its just a theory are two seperate things.
@@B-MC exactly. It's why I'm impressed by writers like George RR Martin, the books not the show. I feel like that kind of more nuanced writing is slowly dying.
Aside from this not being a theory and being confirmed in the show, it is probable that the face of Boe wasn't originally Jack and they plot-holed it in. But consider, maybe since he can age he can also mutate or evolve given the vast amount of time he's lived. This could explain his powers and his appearance, but it could also mean that his children would also have similar mutations: meaning he could have been the first and last of Boe kind.
I think Harbo is under the impression that writers of the show make SO much of an effort to make every little thing perfectly line up with existing canon, for something that's been around for 70 years. When writers have someone say "The Face of Bo, they called me," it isn't a joke or anything complicated. It is exactly as it seems right on its face: writers who love the show, love its audience, and wanted to confirm their own favorite fan theory! If it doesn't make sense to one rando obsessive fan on UA-cam, who cares? They are the writers and they can fix things as they go! :D
lmaoo yeah heaven forbid someone have a take different to yours! Clearly the fact that they aren't a perfect analogue to your mind means that they're wrong! Never mind that totally valid points they're making, I disagree with them so therefore they're some rando obsessive fan on youtube and I can ignore all the points they made happily without actually pointing out anything incorrect with what they said!
Even non existing sometimes. Like RTD knew how Moffat who wasn't even choosen to be the next show runner gonna bend the worldbuilding of DW 5 years later. Like all of the showrunners were conected to the matrix and downloaded the Universal DW Lore into their mind. And it isnt just writters making up stories from their head that may or may not consisntent to everything ever established. And spoiler, most of the time in DW the world building is wibbly wobbly😅
Haven't seen torchwood but Jack being the face of Boe isn't a fan theory, it was stated in the show. We see the Doctor's true age in the S3 finale and see how it drastically changes someone's appearance. I think we can assume the same will happen to someone who lives for billions of years.
@@kadegetslaid634 Yes, that's correct. And in this case it's not literally true, just implied. The only 'definitive' confirmation is that RTD said it in an interview and... death of the author.
8:10 ... For the telepathy thing, look no further than Greeks Bearing Gifts. But I think the most damning piece of evidence to suggest Jack is the Face of Boe is that Jack is the only male character who can, and has gotten pregnant.
Thank you. I've been waiting to see someone reference Greeks Bearing Gifts. I also find it funny that Harbo utterly forgets about Torchwood Series 1 when he made this vid
At the end of Torchwood someone else gained Jacks ability of immortality. Maybe Jack repeated this in the future and start a race of immortals like him so he wouldn't be alone
Moffat apparently even intended Jack to return in "A Good Man Goes to War" but was replaced with Dorium Maldovar who got beheaded instead. Makes sense as it's the episode where the doctor calls in favors from a wide assortment of characters across time. This also helps explain the appearance of the vortex manipulator in "The Padorica Opens" (aka the one River gets from Dorium who got it from a "handsome time agent"). It's clear Moffat intended Jack to return during that era - Barrowman being too busy with Torchwood to film. I never thought we'd see Jack return post-controversy but was thrilled to have him join 14 even briefly. It's clear Chibnall had no interest in revisiting that storyline but I could honestly see some sort of nod or confirmation during the 60th. It's a shame we never saw the original storyline with the headless monks, but I still think there could be potential for something more exciting to confirm the transformation of Jack to Boe. I just hope they wrap that storyline up before RTD, Tennet, and Barrowman all lose interest in the show again.
I mean, kinda pointless to add that detail 10 years after the fact, kinda seems like he just did a "wizards shit on the floor" bit of revisionism because he liked it. If it was actually part of the story, it would have actually been included at... literally ANY point?
I agree that the tweet doesn't matter, but it still doesn't change the fact that Jack is literally the FoB, and he literally tells us that the time agency calls him the face of boe
Here's a point that was missed: In the episode The Long Game the year is approximately 200,000. While Cathica is explaining that Satellite 5 is the news station, she lists several current events including "And over on the Bad Wolf channel, the Face of Boe has just announced he's pregnant." So the Face of Boe is already a giant head by the year 200,000. (There is a shot of the FoB on the news screen.) Chronologically, the next time we see the FoB is on Platform One in the year 5 billion, then on New Earth, then in Gridlock where he finally dies. The point is, whatever and wherever the FoB is and came from, he has achieved his final form by the year 200,000. The question of pregnancy brings up another point: has Jack ever been pregnant? Or if Jack is the Face of Boe, when did he develop the ability to get pregnant? Which would be some time before becoming head of Torchwood III. In Everything Changes the opening lines for the TW team are from Jack. He talks about humans' birth control entering the water system, evaporating, then raining back down on the planet and demonizing the fish. Then he remarks "At least I won't get pregnant. I'm not doing that again." So he already had that ability. Unless he was joking. The team remarks a few times that they never know when to take Jack seriously with the crazy stuff he says. So who knows? Re psychic abilities, we know Jack has some. For instance, when Tosh acquires the pendant that lets her read thoughts, she reads each of her teammates (though her reading of Ianto ended up a deleted scene), and Jack is the only one who was aware of her attempt with him. She could not read Jack. But Jack felt Tosh's attempt to invade his thoughts and used the connection to communicate with her near the end of the episode. And as mentioned elsewhere, the Doctor has spoken of humans' latent psychic ability, most notable in Tim the schoolboy in Human Nature/The Family of Blood. So does all this prove Jack is the Face of Boe? No. Does it add to the theory? Maybe. I think RTD wrote it as a big joke, then when a lot of fans got a bit obsessed RTD just ran with it. It certainly entertained John Barrowman, David Tennant, and the fandom. Cheers.
The first episode of Torchwood suggests that Jack has been pregnant before: _"JACK: There you go. I can taste it. Oestrogen. Definitely oestrogen. You take the Pill, flush it away. It enters the water cycle, feminises the fish. Goes all the way up into the sky, then falls all the way back down on to me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again. How's it going?"_ Big Finish did an (apparently not very good) audio expanding on that, but the canonicity of Big Finish relative to the TV show has a big question mark over it (and is a matter of some fan contention).
Technically not a fan theory, it was hinted at in the Series 3 (or Season 3 for those of us who aren’t British) episode “Last of the Time Lords”, during a conversation about his immortality, Jack told The Doctor and Martha, and I quote, “Used to be a poster boy, when I was a kid, living in the Boeshane Peninsula. Tiny little place. I was the first one ever to be signed up for the Time Agency. They were so proud of me. The Face of Boe, they called me.” Martha and The Doctor are obviously shellshocked and in disbelief at his words, having watched The Face of Boe die relatively recently. Unfortunately, it never really went anywhere afterwards, making me believe that that plot line, as well as The Face of Boe, were forgotten by the writers. And another thing, in the Series 3 episode “Gridlock”, as he was dying, The Face of Boe told The Doctor there was another Time Lord left. How the hell would he have known without having met a Time Lord? Especially when you take into account the name this particular Time Lord chose when going into hiding: Yana. If Jack is The Face of Boe, and didn’t want to say much, saying “You Are Not Alone,” is a brilliant why of telling The Doctor the identity of the only other living Time Lord in existence, without completely divulging the identity of said Time Lord. The only people who would’ve known Yana was a Time Lord after the events of the Series 3 episode “Utopia” would’ve been The Doctor, Martha, and Jack. Of those three, Jack is the only one who is practically immortal and would’ve gone by the alias “The Face of Boe”.
Russell recently wrote a short story confirming that Harriet Jones survived the events of The Stolen Earth by dropping through a trap-door onto a mattress-trampoline and riding away on a motorbike. I'm not joking. Best to take his after-the-fact musings with a pinch of salt
It's science fiction - best to believe what happens next in the writer's head. She could easily be written off by some mad scientist experimenting on dead bodies.
Using the "Boe Kind" lines doesn't make sense to me as a piece of evidence against the Face of Bo not being Jack. Rule #1: The Doctor Lies. Why not Jack? Personally, I'd find it pretty frustrating if I aged into a giant head and had to explain "Yeah, there's this blue box called the TARDIS, this girl from the 21st century was imbued by its powers and brought me back to life permanently. And basically, only me and that Doctor fellow you keep hearing about in legends are the only two people who seem to have an endless life span in this universe as a result." I might shorten that down by just saying "I'm from an extremely long-lived species; I survived a great extinction event and I'm the last of my kind" at some point. That lie I started telling thousands of years ago might spread across the galaxy and a cat lady in the far distant future tells the Doctor about some species I made up. And I might decide to keep it going as a joke, because I know the Doctor does eventually figure it out. (As for the pregnant bit: I took that as a joke towards gag tabloids declaring stuff like "Elvis Presley Pregnant with Alien") One of the other big aesthetic choices RTD made with NuWho is to create an almost wild-west style universe, where the Doctor travels, visiting different peoples throughout time and space, who don't have the complete picture of how everyone and everything interacts. It's hard to say how effectively people can communicate across distant galaxies. It's often implied to be very inefficient, with only the TARDIS being able to disobey the physical limits of communications technology. This was how legends spread on Earth: a long, arduous journey of telephone, and with occasional liars along the way, exaggerating sailors' encounters with manatees to be mermaid encounters. Or giant squid being a kraken that could eat a ship. Or strange, mangey looking creatures drinking the blood of goats in Mexico. I see this being the way the Face of Boe was spread around as a member of a legendary dead species. Even the Doctor talks of legends when he discusses the Face of Boe. Assuming that "Boe Kind" are a canonical species seems like a very big assumption when considering Jack's own "Face of Boe" line and it being a nickname. In my opinion, it takes more effort to justify "Boe Kind" being a unique species on both the canonical level and the artist intent's level. Especially since we really only have two solid pieces of evidence that they're a unique species: the existence of Boe and their pregnancy. Everything else is hearsay, even the Doctor's own expositions (as far as I can tell; I may have missed a scene when looking for clips on UA-cam and it's been a while since I have seen Boe episodes). Another point I'll make: Jack developing psychic powers in the span of millions, perhaps billions, of years is not far-fetched. Consider the powers of Badwolf, and consider that those powers were the very origin of Jack. Rose became Badwolf, a human girl. Let alone the endless possibilities of other mechanisms Jack could have harnessed (Doctor Donna was another instance of a human attaining great mental capacities; even Madame de Pompadour was able to employ some psychic skills with the Doctor's help; the entirety of humanity working together in a psychic network restored the Doctor, as well, which Jack witnessed and may have taken interest in looking for more instances of). I think it's weirder to say Jack ISN'T the Face of Boe, when accounting for all the mechanisms, that are already cannon, that could allow Jack to become the Face of Boe. And one other point, on a metatextual level: it would be extremely dissatisfying if the Face of Boe were actually a nonhuman species we never see and have no reason to care about, leaving Jack's permanent fixed-point style existence unresolved. It's a loose thread that, I think, needed to be resolved because of how often it was called upon in RTD's (now first) era.
Honestly I subscribe to the idea that the Face of Boe is a "Byproduct" of Jack's immortality... But isn't Jack himself. Pretty much the idea goes that as Jack Ages, he encounters a situation where he gets his head cut off and the other head is separated for an extreme amount of time and distance. Someone needs Jack Harness to help, and revives him using his body, which generates a new head due to his immortality, however the scrapped head lives on and tries to compensate, creating the Face of Boe. Is it wacky? Yeah, does it solve the problems of Jack being the face of Boe and someone else being the face of Boe? I think so at least, it writes around Jack's immortality while also explaining how Boe can know about Yana. Heck, maybe this whole thing happened as part of a time travel incident with Jack and The Face of Boe is the first Boekind with that discarded head evolving due to the shunted Immortality+him still aging. We do see that Jack has been doing funky stuff with himself in the Fugitive of the Jadoon, maybe that nanotech is what Jack's main body used to keep his self together after the Face of Boe split off?
If I recall, originally it was planned for Jack to show up in a good man goes to war and get his head lopped off by the headless monks... Which could happen even if he wasn't there at demons run, dude fucks pretty much everything and no doubt has seen a monk without it's hood. Also, the idea that Jack can regenerate from being blasted into tiny little pieces isn't a theory breaker for that either. The headless monk's arent kind enough to kill you by beheading, your head and body remain alive while separated. So it's not likely jack would regenerate as it has no need to heal damage that doesn't get registered.
@@HarboWholmes Jack getting his head chopped off has never been *confirmed* as the plan for Good Man Goes to War. That doesn't tell us much one way or another, given how coy they often like to play things. People are mistaken about this being official. It's also a theory that neatly explains Dorium coming out of nowhere to fill a role that Jack is a perfect fit for. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was the intent at some stage of development.
just never in the actual text lmao do you usually wait a decade for a tweet to confirm something in a text is canon? Or do you just use the text itself? Because if its the former, then gee whiz what is the cutoff? Can someone come in and edit romeo and juliet and say "actually romeo was gay for mercutio this is now canon"? or would that be really stupid that you can just add in whatever information you want to a story over a decade after it was written and released?
death of the author is ignoring authorial intent and comments OUTSIDE of the piece of work itself, you can’t just disregard elements of the actual text for convenience. If I’m writing an essay on hamlet I can’t just say “hamlet doesn’t die” and then quote death of the author when people say that’s not true (source: I’m an English major and have studied death of the author extensively) If RTD had just said that jack was the face of Boe out of nowhere on twitter years later (like JK Rowling as you referenced) then you would be well within your rights to ignore it, but as it’s said pretty explicitly in the show as well you can’t really just say “nuh uh” and dismiss it as a “fan theory”
I think a lot of people like to cling to the idea of Jack being the FoB because it gives Captain Jack a happy ending, when you think about it. He gets to basically die in The Doctor's arms after seeing the universe, his last words completing a cycle before he finally gets to rest. It's a damn romantic final scene for the character
@@NottJoeyOfficial It's really not. Jack only mentions it in the show as an implication, not as a fact. And no one from the people who made the show ever confirmed it, it was left vague intentionally. So it's still a theory, highly implied, sure, but still a theory, never ever officially confirmed.
@@HyattHyatt3179 but not as part of the show, thats the whole point. Just like JK rowlings "wizards shit on the floor" if you believe that Authors get to add in new information whenever they want after they have already released their work, even if the information wasn't in the original work, then yes, you could argue that RTD's confirmation makes it canonical, however, if you disagree that authors can't just say "oh yeah dumbledore is gay btw" without actually including that detail WITHIN THE STORY, then you would obviously claim that it was a theory. Just like how often actors/actresses for a pre-existing character have their own opinions on how a character should behave/think that does not mean that their portrayal is the only "correct" way to play that character.
I do believe in "death of the author" when it comes to Brain of Morbius, because I think a reasonable person such as myself, not knowing the writers intended the extra faces to be pre-Hartnel Doctors, I for years and years thought of them as Morbius incarnations. My view was unbiased by any inside intel, living here in America before the internet. Most people who jumped on it being Doctors were already privy to info I didn't have. That said, I do think Jack is Beau, because the only strong evidence Against Jack being Beau is the Beau-kind. Which perhaps, Jack, once he transformed into the head shaped being, began procreating and fathered a whole species that he of course outlived...? OR maybe Jack was transformed into another species by a villain who thought moving Jack's mind out of his original body, into that of another species, would be the one way to kill him, and again, he outlives all the members of the species he became a part of... As for psychic powers and whatnot, maybe that bit came along with the transformation, OR maybe Jack/Beau had an adventure with some plot device that gave him the powers along his billions of years. And it was never Reset at the end of said hypothetical adventure. You know, like life, instead of in stories, where things happen and don't get reset after 45 min.
Honestly, Jack is already nonhuman, who knows how his species would develop and mutate over time? Also, the "Boekind" could easily be his true species from the Boeshane Peninsula.
Watching the scene, they're clearly the Doctor's faces. They appear in response to Morbius blatantly dominating the Doctor in the mindbending contest. (The Doctor's strategy seems to have been to hold out as long as he could and hope that Morbius's braincase couldn't take the stress - which worked, but it was a near thing). Watch the scene here: ua-cam.com/video/IDzSNvSjDi8/v-deo.html Did you go into the episode knowing that Tom Baker was the 4th of the Doctor's 13 incarnations? That may have influenced the way you watched it. That fact hadn't yet been established when the episode went to air, and the episode's intent was that the faces represented earlier incarnations of the Doctor. The show quietly ignored that idea once they locked in the regeneration limit and decided that Hartnell had been the First.
@@irrevenant3 I think what may have influenced my idea that the 4th was the 4th was having seen The Three Doctors beforehand, but apart from that, I had no preconceptions. My immediate thought at the time was they were Morbius faces, and I remember thinking: "it would have played better had they done one Doctor face then one Morbius face back and forth, but oh well." Then when the internet became a thing I found out other people had a very different interpretation that had never even occurred to me as a possibility before, that they could have been other Doctors. (sorry for late reply, I've been on vaca/holiday a few weeks.
People saying its a fan theory just because the director only confirmed it after they were done with the show, think about it this way. If someone today asked JK rowling if snape killed dumbledore and she confirmed it to be true, it doesnt mean he didnt kill dumbledore. Its just clarifying for people who somehow missed the point of the scene. It doesnt matter if the logic doesnt make sense yet if we havent finished jacks storyline. Not to mention that the face of boe's message to the doctor has not been explained on the show unless we accept that he us jack.
no, because that's actually in the story, unlike your claim that jack is bo... Because that isn't ever CONFIRMED in the text itself. It is hinted at, it is alluded to, but it is literally never confirmed.
I don't consider this a fan theory because it is a theory that didn't originate with the fans, but was directly posited as a possibility within the show itself. I feel a better question would be, "is it canon?" Even without going into the ever changing and evolving nature of canon within a show which is ongoing and has multiple writers, I think it is obviously not canon that Captain Jack is the Face of Boe. Characters within the show ponder if it is true, but we are never shown it is definitively true. So until we get an episode definitively showing the Face of Boe's origins, it remains a possibility but not a fact within the fiction of the show.
an actually fair and balanced take in these comments, what a breath of fresh air. You're right, it was explicitly HINTED at, and ALLUDED to within the story, but it was never confirmed within the story. It is just a mystery that doesn't (currently) have an in text answer.
FFS. "in season 3 it's set up that the face of boe dies and tells the doctor, his old friend despite the doctor not being fully aware of who he is, telling the doctor YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Both an forewarning of the events of utopia and also abbreviates to 'YANA' the name the master took when exiled to the end of time as a human. Jack, Martha, and the Doctor, are the only ones who know that the Master and Yana were the same people. And I doubt the Saxon Master told his cult about that. Only a few dozen people even remember the Saxon timeline too. Then, at the end of the episode Jack tells the doctor "I think I'm still aging, what happens if I live to be millions of years old", the doctor "I have no idea." Then Jack says goodbye and mentions about how he hopes to keep his dashing looks as he's proud of them and how he was known as 'the face of boe' in his past. It's not like IDK THE FUCKING SCENE SAYS >JACK IS STILL AGING >ONE OF JACKS NAMES IS THE FACE OF BOE >HES LITERALLY SAYING HES THE FACE OF BOE Jesus you're jumping through hoops
Harbo acknowledged the YANA thing in the video as the one thing that he didn't have a good counterargument for. Although we're making assumptions that no-one else knew about Professor Yana. For starters Martha worked for UNIT and she presumably told them about at least some of her adventures with the Doctor.
I also dont like the whole Jack is the face of boe thing but I disagree with a lot of these points. Why would we take the existence of other boe-kind as fact? That could easily be a back story that the fob made up for himself, we dont see any other boe-kind and no one is the show has either. Jack is constantly lying about his past. There are so many ways that a human might become physic after millennium of existence. I personally head canon that Jack isn't the fob but that doesn't change the fact that the show confirmed he was textually.
no, the show never confirmed it textually. It hinted, but never confirmed. RTD "confirmed" it in a tweet over a decade after the release of the episode.
Not so much to do with the theory, but I swore I recognised Bo from his first appearance, naturally I assumed, he was from classic. My immediate reaction was "Oh, it's him! Oh, what's his name..? He was a big part of,, I can't remember who's, era" Years later I discovered I was full of it, but I'm telling you, I greeted him like an old friend. Design was perfect in that regatd
I have something to pose to anyone who thinks Jack isn't the face of Bo and is instead out there somewhere traipsing about in his regular form: You cannot tell me that Jack would miss the destruction of earth. Even if he wasn't an earthling it's still the core of humanity and that man would definitely watch that event.
Do I want him to be the Face of Boe? No Do I think he is? Yes I don’t like the idea because just making Jack the same individual as Boe removes the potential for an interesting standalone character and removes the potential for future stories or just hints at what Boekind was like when they were an entire species. Or preferably just a mysterious figure all together with no real history. Sadly though, I think at this point he is. Regardless of original intention. Did I want the Borg to have a queen even though they’re a hive? No. Did I want Fred Weasley to die? No Do I want the Face of Boe to be Jack? No. Sadly, I’m afraid I can’t always get what I want.
Honestly the most rational take in these comments. It doesn't really make complete sense, and diminishes a number of possibilities, and wasn't even really confirmed within the series, but I agree, at this point it has become canon, and likely will remain so. Unless the people who disagree with Jack=Bo become future showrunners of Dr Who and retcon/clarify this detail, it will most likely remain in this version of the 'canon' even if the addition to the canon came through flimsy mechanisms (like a tweet a decade after the fact)
@@kezia8027 thank you and I agree. Also, in my head it wouldn’t be that hard for show runners to change it without breaking what has become cannon. Something like “No, Jack’s headline was a play on words. Boekind were an advanced species that, being telepathic, had no need for names but the galaxy needed to refer to their ambassador as something. So the Face of Boe became the Face of Boe. Then something happened that destroyed his planet and he’s the only one left because he was off world. Then Jack became big and the people of the Boeshane Peninsula thought it’d be catchy to call him the Face of Boe. It’s just a play on words.”
except never confirmed IN TEXT lmao... I am not reading tweets or watching interviews for in universe lore. If you want it to be canon, include it in your story.
Bro you are so wrong on this. 1.) You say that he can't have become a giant head because he's immortal, but 5 billion years in the future he is not immortal, you can tell this because he dies (only eagle eyed viewers will spot this). Given that he can die after 5 billion years, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that he loses his ability to grow his entire body back at some point before then as well. 2.) You say "how can there be other Boe Kind if he's actually a human?". Any number of reasons, he altered his DNA at some point in 5 billion years and now he doesn't produce human offspring. They're weird clones of him, not children. They're some alien species he saved and adopted. C'mon man it's Doctor Who, weird stuff happens; if two humans can give birth to a time lord, a 5 billion year old time agent can give birth to an alien species of giant heads. 3.) "How can he speak telepathically?". We know humans have low level telepathic ability, so given that much time, who knows what could happen. But even if you don't like that point, how about he had some brain chip installed to allow him to speak telepathically? Again, it's Doctor Who, use your imagination. 4.) "There's only a vague illusion to the fact that he's the FoB in the show" - I just massively disagree with you that this is a "vague illusion". Almost anyone who watches that scene will come away thinking "oh, so Jack is the FoB", it's really not vague in my opinion. In conclusion, this is a bad Doctor Who take.
I think it's pretty easy to explain the face of boes race. We even get mention that he has a daughter. He could be the progenitor of his species, which came about after Jack mutated
@@Lucy-qj8ui why wouldn't they? Mutations in the real world do get passed on. If enough of him had mutated I think it's entirely possible that his offspring had the same mutations. Let's also consider how? How would the face of boe procreate? He doesn't have reproductive organs. He may have evolved to reproduce Asexually which would have his kids looking like him
@@Lucy-qj8uiJack wasn't a Human. How many times do people have to hear that he's an alien to realise that he's an alien? Next you'll be telling us that since regeneration is a time vortex mutation, Jenny shouldn't have been able to regenerate and should've died as a regular Human.
@@dominickeijzer5844 Jenny could have held on for a lot longer than a human. It's remember that even without regeneration a time lord can live nearly 1000 years. The tike is not to die as you age.
My big problem is that Jack isn't immortal, he's literally locked in time, he's more akin to what Clara becomes than anything else. THAT'S why blowing him up doesn't work, he doesn't Deadpool back, he literally just resets. The Doctor literally identified him as a fixed point in time, so he shouldn't be able to change at all. Sure, that implies *other* logical issues that I've always taken issue with and just had to ignore, but he literally *can't* change into Bo.
When they say the Face of Bo is the last of his kind they are referring to the immortals. Ishilda wasn't around yet in universe she was but she never met Jack. Also let's not forget rhe Headless Monks had strange powers that could keep a head alive even after decapitation. It makes sense that if he helps the Doctor at Demons Run and is decapitated his limbs don't grow back. We don't know what happened to his immortality after the end of Miracle Day. It can be argued that his immortality was effected. The bo kind can also have just been a lie something to keep people guessing about what he really was
At the End of Torchwood, There is literally another character like Jack because he inserted Jack's blood in order to stop the immortality curse in Torchwood:Miracle day.
Even though I think the Face of Boe thing is confirmed to be Jack, I will say I prefer the idea of tFoB being either his own entity or the Doctor at the end of his life that you suggested Plus despite Jack being immortal, I genuinely don't think it would be impossible to kill him, it would just come with great risk/unforeseen consequences (if he was able to be made, he could be unmade). And just because the Doctor doesn't know the answer, doesn't mean one doesn't exist
Jack was "unmade" once, in the 4th series of Torchwood, everyone was made immortal, but Jack lost his immortality in the process, the only person on Earth able to die. So if he lost immortality once, it's not a stretch, that it could somehow happen again. Rose brought him back and the Doctor said, she brought him back forever, but what does the Doctor know? Especially about forevers? It's what the Doctor thinks, but even the Doctor doesn't know everything. Maybe one day Jack's immortality just expired. XD Or someone messed with his life again. Maybe severing his head from the body and leaving it alive (the way the Headless Monks work, not the way he was blown into pieces in Torchwood) might modify him, make him a new species, basically "rewriting the deal with Bad Wolf".
I dont get your point here,this is not fanmade theory is a thing that they say in the actual show,no one ever points out that this is not the case we only see a point were they say that it is,just ignoring a fact because is not stated in capital letters in an episode but is hinted at subtly is stupid and it looks like you're making this video because you dont like that part of the story. It would be really funny to see someone do this to more obvious things about other things they dont like about the series like "i dont like the missy is the master fantheory" or "the Timeless child fantheory"
Nobody seems to notice that the Doctor and Martha talk about the Face of Boe’s cryptic words IN FRONT OF JACK in Utopia, long before he throws out his mention of that being his nickname. Realizing this and the fact that Jack had probably heard of him, it’s plausible he was messing with the Doctor and Martha.
I've never had any problem with Jack being the Face of Bo. I'm not sure where you got this idea that someone can't gain psychic abilities because to my knowledge that's never been stated in the show. The Doctor didn't seem to know about the Bo kind so that could have just been a made up story that Jack/Bo told the Cat person. Plus Jack is the only living thing like him in the universe so in a way he's been the last of his kind since he came back to life. All that being said I'm fully supportive to the Death of the Author approach and have many of my own unconfirmed Doctor Who head-cannons.
I love the idea that Jack is the Face of Boe, but to add to your point, I'd say that if Face of Boe was some sort of big celebrity in the galaxy... Maybe Jack's friends gave him that nickname in reference to THE Face of Boe. Like, a conscious, voluntary reference to a famous person, because Boeshane sounds like Boe, idk...
All the problems with this theory can so easily be counted by the fact that it spans literally billions of years and this is a science fiction show. How does Jack turn into the Face of Boe? Something science fiction. This is the same show where the Doctor has been turned into a Weeping Angel, a gooey clone, a part-cyberman, and more. In just one short adventure, anything can happen to a character. Now imagine living for billions of years in this type of storyworld, yeah, it's so plausible that Jack could turn into the Face of Boe. He could be sauntering around in the year one billion, get thrown into some anti-fixed-point boe-making machine, and come out as the Face of Boe. Since he is slowly aging over the centuries and millennia, it's very possible that in five billion years (or more, given that he keeps travelling back and forth in time) that this is just how humans age if they survived that long. Our bodies shrink, eventually our heads grow, tentacles and shit. Also, radiation, alien influences, wounds that bypass his healing system, over billions of years that could have an impact. All it takes is one Big Finish story to show Jack becoming the Face of Boe and boom, that's how it happens. It's a very easy concept to imagine, to be honest. I like to imagine that at some point the Headless Monks do get to Jack, and their weapons are stronger than his healing system and so it overrides his natural DNA so he's a living head, and over centuries his body tries to adapt to that with its healing factor and he becomes the Face of Boe. Also, telepathy is probably the easiest to explain, there are so many ways humans or any creature could develop telepathy in this universe, and you could also just argue that he trained his mind for thousands of years and unlocked that ability. It's a very simple science fiction concept. Hell, who even says it's biological, he could just have some space technology implant that allows him to send telepathic messages. Lastly, the Boekind, it's also got a very easily explanation. Jack fucks. Famously, Captain Jack Harkness likes to fuck. When he becomes the Face of Boe, do you really think Jack would stop fucking? If there is a way for him to fuck, he will fuck. We see he's had children before, and they come out looking like a little him but without his immortality. So, imagine it's the year 200,000 and his biology has changed so much that he can get pregnant, and now he's done a fuck and gotten pregnant and out comes little Boemina. His daughter would look just like him, and thus he has created the race of Boekind. This birth could have happened in the Silver Devastation in the Isop Galaxy, hence that new speicies is considered to have been from there. Jack continues to have more kids, as one does, and these kids go on to have kids of their own (not necessarily with each other, but still continuing the species). The offspring, however, do not have their progenitor's immortality, and so they age and die, and eventually the entire species dies out (or evolves into another species). I mean, from the year 200,000 to 5 billion, that's 4.8 billion years. Anatomically modern humans only emerged 300,000 yeas ago. The first humans emerged two million years ago. Primates only diverged from other mammals less than 100 million years ago. The Cambrian explosion was only 500 million years ago. Earliest multicellular life was over 1.5 billion years ago. Earth itself is less than 4.8 billion years old right now. So, it's very plausible that in that time the Face of Boe could give birth to a whole new species, have that species rise and fall, become well-known and become ancient and then die out, all in the span of 4.8 billion years. It's a hell of a long time. And given Jack still cannot die until his fixed point, the Face of Boe survives it all, sees his own Boekind be born, rise and fall, and die out. This is quite literally the easiest part of this theory to explain. In billions of years, the Face of Boe could have children, create a new race, have that race die out, and then be the last of his kind.
Рік тому+1
I liked your comment just for the sake of "Jack fucks" bit, it's hilarious; I still don't subscribe to the "Jack is Boe" theory, though...
Wasn't the Silver Devastation the same place that Yana mentioned being found in Utopia? Assuming those were real memories of course, it is interesting that the only other mention of it seems to be in relation to the Face of Boe
My issue with this has always been a rather simple one: Jack can't die. A literal time god granted him immortality, I don't see how he could have lost that to become the Face of Boe and die after telling Ten that he isn't alone.
This ISN'T a fan theory. This IS confirmed by the showrunners. Here's the thing, from an objective FACTUAL basis, it's the only theory in the show's history that should be treated as FACT. Here's why: the 'You are Not Alone' fortune thing that the Face of Boe speaks in Gridlock is a direct reference to the Master's War form which the Doctor meets. The Face of Boe CHOSE to die to make this message resonate with the Doctor further because he KNEW what had happened from when he was younger. Also, the use of time agent devices causes them to significantly wear down their health - think about it, why haven't we seen more time agents in New Who? The fact is, Jack is literally the ONLY character it would make sense to be someone else in the Dr Who continuity who is Boe and it makes sense he would appear as the face of Boe on the front covers of magazines as this male-type model figure. Not only does RTD confirm the theory, but also Moffat. Moffat was going to have the Headless Monks BEHEAD Jack in place of the other character we got to see on screen. In that case, it would also make sense - literally the only character who had THAT specific storyline set up for him! In my own mind, THIS is Jack's backstory for how he lost his body. And it makes sense when you think about the prophecy-type questions he asked at the end of that story about "Doctor Who? The question at the end of time" given Boe's role as a wise character in the original few series. Plus, Moffat brought back River Song and explored her backstory as being linked to other companions, so Jack can easily have this being one of the most popular companions of New Who. It nicely wraps up the mysteries and stories of season 3 and hence why season 3 is one of the best ones! There's literally almost ZERO % chance, near impossible that Boe ISN'T Jack given what Boe was trying to warn the Doctor about. Noone else would know that information about him unless they met him and went in THAT specific adventure!
For me the BIGGEST argument against Jack being the Face of Boe is that when The Doctor explains to Jack why he hasn't been in touch it's because Jack is a living fixed point in time and shouldn't exist and that just looking at him basically makes his skin crawl. When Jack does the cute "The Face of Boe they called me" line, the Doctor and Rose are BOTH surprised and unsure if it meant they were the same person. However, if they WERE the same person, The Doctor would have gotten exactly the same sensation from FoB as he did with Jack every time he saw him and there's no indication he did - and if he did and didn't mention it then he wouldn't be surprised to find out they were the same entity.
He describes it as an instinct, in his guts. He never says it's a feeling, just that the existence of something outside of time disgusts him. He never knew they for the Face of Boe, so it does make sense he doesn't have the same feeling. Additionally, Jack calls it prejudice, and The Doctor says he never thought of it like that. Which means that it's social, based on how he perceives Jack.
I always saw the whole “old friend” thing as them being in a handful of individuals in the entire universe who understand living for so long whilst being the last of their kind, and so because of all of that they’re kindred souls, similar to the minotaur in The God Complex.
Agreed. It doesn't actually support Jack = Boe anyway since at the point the Doctor called Boe "old friend" he didn't even suspect that Boe might be Jack.
Jack's children aren't immortal so maybe bow kind are his children or something? Also, Jack wasn't there at the end of the universe (Hell Bent) so it stands to reason he dies at some point
Jack literally tells the Doctor and sidekick that his nickname when he was a young man was "The face of Boe", after the place where he grew up, the Boeshane Peninsula. Terry Nation (or whomever) wanted to hint strongly at this but then went back to sitting on the fence, to the point where he was told off by others associated with the production for his vacillating.
I am for theory Jack is face of Bo, thought I can accept, if it's different way. Personally like Doctor is Bo theory. I would even argue, that because Doctor doesn't know identity of Bo and his message is so mysterious, there isn't any effect from their meeting on his personal timestream so he can remember him. Not sure about touch. Did they physically touch each other? Because that could create some problems, but not sure. There is another fact, that could be used both for or against Jack/Bo theory. It's some time from watching Torchwood and it wasn't my focus. I honestly don't know, if I seen all of it, but there was one big story (last one I watched) where some people use Jack blood to some mystical Earth crack, that stop people from dying (not heals them) and make Jack mortal. To reverse it, they need to feed both ends with Jack mortal blood to reverse it, so they go in two teams. One guy is smart and decide to trick enemies by doing blood transfusion without care with Jack blood, because they can't die. So when bad guys thinks they destroyed Jack blood, he plays Trojan horse and manage feed his side from his own body and they reverse whole thing. At the end, few days later, he is shot, but doesn't die, but heals himself like Jack. He even ask him, what he did to him! I honestly don't know what happened next with these characters (or if something happen, it could be end of Torchwood for all I know). It served as proof that Jack immortality isn't perfect and that he can create more like him, in right conditions. Or at least similar to him. Face of Bo could be some of Jack's creations that Jack simply told stories about Doctor and his adventures. Or it could be origin of whole Bo race. Maybe they were simply attempts to create immortality or race of immortals. Not necessarily Jack personal work, but definitely connected with him. Or it could be hundred different things. I just thought it is something interesting, that should be part of this debate.
Like jack never dies peacefully, he sometimes combusts so every time he comes back and stuff his atoms and stuff may be more and more altered bc he still ages, he’s not like a time lord where EVERYTHING gets a factory reset. It’s just kind of repaired, sort of like how 11 talked to the droid thing in “the nightmare in silver” and also with new technology etc and look at Cassandra, perhaps humans needing to “edit” themselves to this degree is commonplace and like Cassandras handlers and her rack thing and brain like how the FOB was in a tank, life supports to sustain yourself in this state and also probably commonplace.
@@ftumschk That isn't a coincidence, it isn't real life so it couldn't have been a mistake. RTD especially doesn't write throwaway lines like that, it has to be canon because it can't be an accident as the Doctor's reaction clearly shows as he laughs after finding out.
@@GlassesOfficial122 if he "doesn't write throwaway lines like that" then why did he literally never explicitly confirm it WITHIN the text, and then didn't bother saying anything for over a decade after it was released? Not to mention your assertion that because "the Doctor's reaction clearly shows as he laughs after finding out." is literal grade school level debating, this is absolute nonsense that has zero evidence behind it, based purely on your own speculation, conjecture and assumptions.
We have never seen any other member of Boekind other than The Face. So, we don't know what they look like, considering that it's a race of living creatures we assume that they would look similar to Boe but that doesn't have to be the case, all it means is that they have to be related to Boe in some manner. We also don't really know how they reproduce, only that in one episode they say that the face is pregrent and gives birth to a daughter. we Know that Jack has traveled the galaxy and all over time, we know that he shags every chance he gets, it's possible that Boekind origentated as decendents of Jack that over time became known as their own species. Boekind could be something similar too what the timeless child was to Time lords in that an outside species changes the physiology of another. Or maybe Boekind was just a title given to any descended of The Face of Boe and is just regarded as a speices because of their origins coming from Boe. We know that boe has a daughter but not what she looked like only that we assume it looks similar to him but for all we know she could have been completely human looking or humanoid, she might have even been born from the same device that created the Doctor's daughter.
Invoking Death of the Author doesn't matter here. It's confirmed within the show, by the narrative. It's placed prominently at the end of a big event as a lorebomb treat. The reveal gets a big react shot from the main characters. Everything about the language of cinema and basic narrative is saying "ha ha ha! Betcha didn't see THAT one coming! What a fun twist that doesn't actually matter! You're welcome!" After all, if Jack isn't the big head, there's no reason for this scene to exist, and it has no weight. If it's not a reveal, then it's pointless exposition during the falling action, where you'd usually expect a twist or punchline or stinger of some sort. If it weren't a part of the story, it wouldn't be in the story, especially in such a prominent position in the narrative.
It's kind of weird to see this talked about as a fan *theory*, because, like... the scene where Jack says he was called the Face of Bo is completely pointless if it's not true. I can understand disagreeing with theories about *how* this happened - but that's mainly because the answer is "Somehow". Like, however it happened, it definitely did. (Over Roland Barthes... I don't think Barthes ever intended that you can just throw out authorial intent when it's explicit. Death of the Author doesn't mean "make stuff up". It says that other interpretations of the text are valid.)
According to Steven Moffat, Captain Jack Harkness was going to be part of The Doctor's Army in “A good man goes to war”. However, John Barrowman was filming Season Four of Torchwood (2006) ("Miracle Day") in America. In the episode he was going to be beheaded and his head would survive separate to his body due to how to headless monks’ process works as shown with the blue guy that is beheaded in AGMGTW.
Im faily certain this isnt a theory and was just outright confirmed at one point or another. I could be misremembering, but im pretty confident i remember reading somewhere that the showrunners confirmed this theory as fact.
RTD "confirmed" this fact in 2020 a decade after the release of the episode in one singular tweet. I would consider that as accurate, relevant, and applicable to readings of the text, as wizards shitting on the floor, or dumbledore being gay.
Wasn't Jack there when Martha reminded the Doctor that the Face of Boe had told him "You are not alone" after seeing the Master's dob watch? If he REALLY had been called that, wouldn't he have reacted to that? I need to rewatch that scene, but it seems more likely that Jack thought of making a spoofy story about him having that nickname, since he was from the Boesham (sp?) peninsula.
Yep, just rewatched the scene. Martha, with Jack standing right next to her, says to the Doctor, "Think what the Face of Boe said...his dying words." Jack doesn't so much as bat an eye, but he clearly hears her just fine, because he's RIGHT THERE and he heard her talking before from across the control room when she first started talking about the fob watch,
@@travelservices1200 Thanks for checking. I just reinforces my belief that "the Face of Boe they called me" was a spur-of-the-moment pun (Boe/Boshane) that RTD threw in at the last minute as Jack's nickname, without really believing that Jack and Boe were one and the same. RTD may or may not have changed his view later, but at the time he wrote Jack's departing scene in _Last of the Time Lords,_ I'm convinced he didn't intend it to be anything but a throwaway bit of fun.
If in high school they used to call you "Slim" then, 20 years later some people are talking in front of you about how Slim had died, would *you* have reacted to it?
@travelservices1200 as stated in the show numerous times, time travel travellers dont experience time in a linear fashion. So maybe he wasn't aware that he said that yet???
@@abigailxmary I hear what you're saying, and that could be possible, but he SHOULD remember that he was called "The Face of Boe" as a child. However, he may just have been distracted and not even caught the reference, except maybe subconsciously...and THAT might have been what led him to make his revelation at the end of part III. Alternatively, he might have just been playing things close to the vest. So, I am by no means convinced that he's NOT the Face of Boe.
The revived version actually introduces two persons who become immortal. Jack and Ashildr. Now Ashildr is from Earth whereas Jack is from a colony of Earth. So it is safe to assume that the only reasons the biochemistry of both individuals will only change if 1. It is different on the colony planet where Jack is from when compared to Earth. 2. The device that Ashildr has in her is keeping her static instead of evolving and the future evolution of humans may look something like Boe-kind. The second reason sounds illogical though considering why would Jack evolve that way even if rest of humanity does. Besides we clearly see Jack aging (external reason is John himself is aging, like a fine wine if I may say so), so it is quite likely that he may die a natural death, he is just immune to other kinds of violent deaths. In such a situation, it is quite likely that he may transfer his consciousness into a Boe-kind being, with the name "Face of Boe" being some kind of a prophecy or something. He has to leave Earth for some reason (probably on Torchwood business) some time in the distant future, so when he left Earth, enemies of Earth who tried to invade but got thwarted by Jack, now decided that it was a perfect time to attack him, as he is getting old. Fed up of getting constantly attacked, but realising he holds vast amounts of valuable information that will help preserve humanity, he sacrifices his own human body by transferring his consciousness in that body, known only to Torchwood, and he leads Torchwood as the same old Jack in a new body while he maintains his cover as an "ancient venerable being" whose best defence is that he is incapable of defending himself physically, so he has to defend himself telepathically, and that he is worthless if destroyed. Its all speculation, considering none of the above is grounded in any Whoniverse media. Alternatively, a very simple explanation does exist and it is very very VERY silly. The "Face of Boe" is not a name but a position, like the Dalai Lama. Jack has inherited the position, and after Jack resigns, someone else will inherit it. Again, all speculation, so grain of salt. Two explanations: one complex, one simple. Occam's Razor. Until further info comes from the creative team, its all speculation.
it could be possibile that there are more people who are just like captain jack that from strange occurances can no longer die but still age, which at some point probably turns them into a new form of evovled humanity. but the point is there are many explanations as to why jack is the face of boe and many reasons to why he might not be. never forget that nothing is ever linear in doctor who, which is likely also why this bit was left up to interpretation instead of being confirmed fact might be a joke or not who kows
I mean it does make sense for captain jack to gain psychic powers, it's a sci fi show, and he's imortal traveling to so many different planets. also, again, sci fi, we don't know what happens when someone ages for millions of years, also the fact he seems to age slowly implies that the enviroment does have an effect on his body since aging is just the result of cells mutating and getting less good as they multiply which is affected greatly by stress, the sun, movemtn etc, this means that if jack were to spend a lot of time in harsh enviroments, then it wouldn't kill him, but it would definately take a toll on him physically, and space radiation is definitatley a thing, also hi. being immortal means he can take risks, he may not even realise that the enviroment does affect him but very slowly, so he'd be going into radiation, massive amounts of heat, cold, intense gravity etc without a worry and as others have mentioned, the boshane peninsula could have all had people referring to themselves as bo kind and they likely aren't fully human as cassandra mentions they all mingle with aliens and call themselves different things (hence bo kind) and they were all wiped out, so he would be the last of his kind also, it is confirmed in the show, that's what the line in series 3 does, he outright says "hey called me he face of boe" edi: just also realised, jack is constantly exposed to the time vortex, and with the immortality would be exposed more than any other time agent, and we know that does weird stuff
The rules about the doctors memory in day of the doctor makes no sense even within the episode because right at the end we meet the curator and it doesn't seem like Matt forgot about him and you would only get your memory once the older version of you has lived that moment
You left out how in “bang the drums” the doctor aging had his body shrink yet his head increase! Plus if you tuned into a giant brain im sure mental powers would evolve to replace the body.
Jack's death is locked between being left behind by 9 and 10 watching Boe die in gridlock before Jack finds 10 again in Utopia. Bad wolf also causes the doctor to become a fixed event by allowing 11 to save Gallifrey creating the cracks in time leading 11 to Trenzalore, regenerating into 12. 12 convinced the first doctor to regenerate. Meaning 11 must save gallifrey to allow 1 to meet 12 to regenerate into 2, making the doctor a fixed point. This caused the Tardis to react by dropping 13 to earth as an immortal Time-lord with the ability to regenerate. Fugitive doctor is saved by the tardis after dropping 13 to earth, as the 13th doctor onwards goes on to create Fugitive's future On a journey to becoming the timeless child- the long way round in a tardis left at ghost moment in Fugitive's personal future after meeting 13. Creating the division timeline/ universe/ universal rewrite/ multiverse etc.
re: Boekind, we know that The Face of Boe had a child, Boemina in the year 200,000 (as noted in the video). Presumably Boekind are all the descendants of the Face of Boe (presumably to different mothers and fathers if it's Jack). 5 billion years is long enough for him to have enough of them to form effectively an entire race of people, and enough time for him to outlive them all.
With regards to death of the author, my take has always been; if you felt something while experiencing a piece of media, you still felt that regardless of whether the author meant for it or not
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The problem with trying to refute the theory is that we even know how Jack's transformation was INTENDED to happen. He was meant to be one of the many return characters for A Good Man Goes To War, but John was too busy at the time (likely doing Putting It Together, Zero Dark Thirty or All Stars), with HIM being the one beheaded instead of Dorium and the Headless Monks' sabres preventing his body from regenerating. (will delete this if this is addressed in the video).
Edit:
Yea, it was just skated past. The Headless Monks' bodies are also able to function autonomously of their head and fire energy beams from their hands. Their abilities are shown to function far more akin to traditional magic - ie, science we don't understand yet. Just as the Bad Wolf did, which is how Jack was resurrected in the first place.
Edit 2:
Isn't the Curator meant to be the very last incarnation of the Doctor? This even has actual evidence with him telling the Doctor that he'll revisit a couple of faces in the future - just the old favourites. Now Tennant is back
Edit 3:
I think that while Death of the Author is a fair way to refute fan theories that extrapolate unknown spaces, it doesn't really apply here. This is because instead of going OUTSIDE of a timeline we know, we've seen the beginning of Jack's immortality, we know the intention and we've seen its endpoint. As such, we're *inter*polating instead.
@@SaintoftheHonest Jack was never intended to be beheaded, this was never claimed by Moffat and it's just misinformation perpetuated by fans
@@HarboWholmesYou're seriously telling me Jack WOULDN'T want to become an impregnated giant head? fake fan smh
Here is a episode or clip of doctor who which it wasn't a fan theory ua-cam.com/video/MogTR2RpcSU/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
there is multiple articles saying that it was intended, and even back in s3 its very very heavily implied that he was the fob. they said they cant know how he would age and that he wouldnt always look the same.@@HarboWholmes
I never really considered this a fan theory, I always assumed it was canon and the contradictions in the FoB backstory were things he made up or agreed to out of convenience, in torchwood its shown he doesn't like telling people he's immortal, he prefers to keep it a secret, he pretended to be the son of himself in one episode to hide his immortality while wanting to stay in touch with someone
It was confirmed by the writer of the episode. This guy just hates this revelation so he’s trying to convince himself and others it’s just a fan theory. I rolled my eyes so hard at this guy being SO BUTT HURT 17 YEARS LATER. Like dude, get over it. Plus, it never occurred to this moron THAT JACK was the progenitor of Boe kind? When you are BILLIONS of years old, it’s possible to be the origin of a whole species.
@@colleens1107Way to not get heated over canon/fan theories, the guy was just sharing his thoughts and opinions and then backed it up, no need to get so agro
Technically speaking, we only assume the "Boe kind" are real because the cat lady said so, but who's to say she ever saw them? It could've been a rumour started by FoB/Jack himself to make the universe THINK there used to be more than one of him to hide the fact that he's actually an ageless humanoid and/or create a new identity for himself.
Yeah, so he told The Doctor so he'd spread the rumor throughout space and time. CUZ THE DOCTOR IS SOOO EASILY FOOLED!
@@Christobanistanfirst of all, Jack's intention might have been to fool OTHER PEOPLE, not strictly the doctor! Second, the doctor is smart but he doesn't know EVERYTHING, and he CAN be deceived, as we've clearly seen in multiple episodes! Third, 5 billion years is a long ass time with potentially hundreds of world shattering events, so a relatively minor deception like that would not be hard to pull off in that time span.
Arcturus from the Curse of Peladon looks like a mini version of Boe
Or, you know, Jack later had babies when he became the Face of Boe which subsequently bred and had more babies who bred and had more babies and subsequently descended from him to create the rest of the species.
@@Jamestopboy Well, we know that the Face of Boe has canonically had at least 6 children....
I didnt realize this was only a fan theory. I thought this was like… the case?
same like i thought it was confirmed
Same. I was shocked at that reveal. And I thought that Jake was the Face Of Boe.
It's not, it's literally confirmed at the end of S3 and RTD said he WAS when asked...
Cool I thought that was click bait and the vid would be about something else. I'm out.
RTD confirmed it during the 2020 twitter watch along but given he'd been off the show for 10 years by then I don't think that counts. Sounds more like throwing the fans a bone to me
We never see what the rest of the Bo-kind look like, but we do know Jack is from Boshane Peninsula. It’s entirely possible the humans that settled there could have named themselves the Bo-kind, because like Cassandra says, when the humans left Earth they mingled and devised new names for their species. So when it is said he is the last of the Bo-kind it could be referring to the massacre that happened on Jacks home world that we see in Torchwood series 2.
Bo-Kind are the rest of the people that were resurrected on Satellite 5 and would have been given the same immortality as Jack. So if he became a big face in a billion years so would they.
@@parodysamI don't think it's ever been confirmed that the people on the Game Station were resurrected. Just Jack.
@@thee2724 still the best bet on who the rest of bo-kind _would_ be
tbh, I could see the rest of Bo-kind just being Jack's kids. Because that guy definitely fucks.
@@parodysam We've only seen Jack resurrected, because Rose/Bad Wolf didn't care for anyone else at that moment. We hear her say "I bring life" and then Jack is shown, no one else. The Doctor in Utopia also mentioned only Jack being an anomaly, if there was more of them, he would probably mention that. Jack was a one of a kind event.
Idk if this matters, but there's an official Doctor Who poster I have that says "Things I learned from Doctor Who" and the last bullet point is "being immortal can give you a big head."
This is the REAL smoking gun
Imagine if the 16th doctor was just a big floating head lol
But it's not a theory, it is confirmed, just cause you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true
idk technically it never went further than that one scene in last of the time lords. And, like Harbo said, in torchwood jack is blown up and reduced to literally just bits of bone and gore, but reforms back to normal over time
@@kindachaos9775that's fair, but as established by the 10th doctor's horrible goblin form in the S3 finale and as alluded by RTD's tweet, someone's true age being somehow shown in their physical form can drastically change their appearance.
I always assumed that as Jack got super old, his age drastically changed how he looked and diminished his regenerative abilities a bit.
Or maybe the face of boe does secretly have a body and it's just super tiny and dangles at the bottom of the tank lol.
For me, the only hole in the theory is the aforementioned boekind, but as others said maybe that's what the boeshane peninsula humans just called themselves
@@kindachaos9775 In Torchwood it also establishes that he's still aging and his regenerations aren't perfect. That's how he's supposed to become the Face of Boe.
@@kindachaos9775yeah but he still ages. Who even knows what someone would look like after all that time??
Like all of chibnalls episodes...
I don't think its that much of a stretch for Jack to have developed psychic powers as he aged. There are already humans on earth with "low-level psychic energy," so who's to say he didn't have that potential but could only tap into it by living long past his natural lifespan? Or, maybe he got them some other way. Remember, the timelords didn't always have regeneration...
it's also literally a plot point IN that episode that humans are low level psychics
According to canon for over 50 years timelords did always have regeneration. The concept of the timeless child will suffer the same fate as the Doctor being half-human from the TV movie. Old status quo always returns.
Already humans on earth with low level psychic energy...lmao..ok
@@HOTD108_ no, timelords were regular people who invented time traveling and over time they evolved differently.
@@fiddlesticks443 There are. Plenty of examples. For example in "The dead planet" the black woman could hear the voices of the dead. Its part of the universe lore and you see it popping up in plenty of episodes. It tends to be very intelligent people who are blessed with it, so maybe jack acquired that intelligence. Or maybe he had some kind of surgery in the future once his vocal chords wouldn't work.
I don't think the death of the author/authorial intent thing really applies here, that's moreso for themes and allegories and stuff like your example with tolkien, with something like this it's very obvious what the point of that final scene with jack martha and 10 was
I think it's totally fine to dislike this narrative decision (I'm not a fan of it either it clashes with the previously established backstory of the face of boe and forces you to hc it as "maybe he made up that history" or something) but to pretend it's a "theory" and not just like an implicit fact in the show's universe is a bit silly imo
It doesn't clash with anything....jack could just easily have lied about his backstop or people made legends about him.
RTD has literally said countless times that Jack being the Face of Boe is NOT confirmed canon, and is merely a possible answer that you can choose to accept only if you want to. RTD, the literal author, says it's open to interpretation. If you don't like Jack being Boe and want to believe something else, then literally nobody is stopping you from thinking otherwise except for yourself.
Wasn’t it confirmed by Moffat that he wanted Captain Jack in the doctor’s “army” during A good man goes to war. And he wanted Captain’s head to be cut by the monks and separated from his body. Do to conflicting schedules he had to be replaced with Dorium Maldovar.
My understanding is that that has never officially been confirmed, but it's a popular fan theory. With good reason, IMO, it makes a lot of sense.
For a long time I wasn't even aware that it was a theory, because I'd thought the dialogue in Last of the Time Lords was explicit and undeniable confirmation. Even now it feels weird to call it a vague allusion.
it isn't a fan theory, this youtuber is just twisting the scene in certain ways to say it is
Moffat confirmed it so no idea why he calls it a fan theory
I feel like captain Jack's immortality wouldn't kick in with the headless monks since the monks decapitation keeps you alive
that is a fair point. do we know for sure that jack can regenerate limbs?
@@erubin100 Yes he has been blown up many times
Exactly. This is what I’ve always thought. Whatever power the monk’s swords have, it keeps you alive as a head, so Jack would have stayed that way, and eventually I guess his head mutated and grew.
@@challengetime1174when Jack was blown up they had to put his body parts close to each other to reform his body. He only started to reform after the parts were put together.
@@prof.evilpictures8696I feel like he’d just regenerate an entirely new body from his head in that scenario. Also Jack being decapitated by the headless monks is a completely unconfirmed fan theory. There’s a rumour that he was planned to come back in that story, but no evidence that he was to become a headless monk, and even if that was the plan it never happened anyway.
He literally said in the show he would be called The Face of Boe to the doctor, it’s not a theory, it’s confirmed and it has been for a decade. However, it doesn’t really matter that much to the story, it’s just a bit of a fun surprise at the end of the episodes to keep people interested.
the face of boe, they called me= meaning when he was a teenager, who happened to grow up 3 thousand years in martha`s future. he never said they`ll call me the face of boe in the future.
IMO Jack is Boe. When Martha mentioned Boe in Utopia, Jack figured out that he'd eventually become something unrecognisable known as "The Face of Boe", but didn't mention it because they had to stop The Master, and only mentioned it after The Master was defeated. Maybe Rose only made him immortal until he said "You are not alone"? Also I don't think anything happened to make Jack the Face of Boe, I think that's just what a human becomes after millions of years of aging.
And The Face of Boe was literally dying that whole time, so the regeneration was clearly puttered out an extremely long time ago. He was on the verge of death and died in The Doctor's arms, after all.
He isn't even Human. Just a lookalike species like the Timelords.
@@dominickeijzer5844 is he not? I'm pretty sure he is, he was of the Time Agency in the 51st Century, and looking him up the TARDIS wiki definitely states that he's human like, a lot
@@tzarg I think I might've gotten the years muddled up for when he was from, and the seemingly more primitive clothes and buildings seen doesn't help that.
To be fair, Rose gave him life, she didn't specifically give him immortality. Nothing's to say the life that Rose gave him couldn't run out
So... hold on. The writer of the episode and co-creator of the character, the actor who plays the character, and the actors who play the characters closest to him all agree that Jack is the Face of Boe and you get to disbelieve it because you don't like it? That's kind of like saying you don't believe in mavity because you don't like what it says about it in books.
i can imagine jack being so flirty and had all the time to evolve through dying genetically just made his own race and civilization, that even could of died out making him the last
This is how I view it
Why does HOW Jack turned into the FoB need to be explained? Something weird could have happened to him just once every thousand years, and that would literally mean millions of times during his ridiculously long lifespan.
I don't think regular Humans turn into gremlin creatures, that therefore means that the thing from Last of the Time Lords with The Doctor's voice that appears where the Doctor was and transforms into the Doctor can't be The Doctor!
They're not Human, they can age and grow differently. It doesn't need to be explained because, and I'm sure most people forget this, CAPTAIN JACK ISN'T HUMAN.
It is literally confirmed in series 3 that jack is the face of boe, not a theory but cannon lore confirmed in the tv show and explained by Russel t davies and john barrowman.
Is this an out of season April fools joke?
watch the video
I REFUSE to believe the fan theory that William Hartnell's Doctor is the same character as Patrick Troughton's Doctor!
It's literally not? It's is literally ALLUDED to, but it is not "literally confirmed" at all, except through RTD's tweet, over a decade later.
@@kezia8027alluded to is as good as confirmed imo, Jack saying he was called Face of Boe and the Doctor and Martha reacting is good enough of evidence
@@haveidonethisbefore okay? Why would I care if someone is delusional?
i always thought the reason why Jack went from basic humanoid "a few limbs and a face" to just a face was that, if you're gonna live to the year 5 billion your body is probably gonna go through all the millennia of human evolution THAT would be happening over thousands of generations. Especially if Jack continues to travel the universe after humans fully vacate earth, the evolution jack goes through would change depending on the environs he lives in, leading him to becoming something entirely unique... like a giant head in a jar
I always just assumed that each reboot wasn't perfect (kind of like normal cell regeneration that leads to aging or cancer), so his body just deteriorated or mutated over time.
If humanity's evolutionary future leads to everyone becoming Futurama style heads in jars, we should definitely destroy this planet now.
the think is evolution doesn't work like that, you cant evolve in one lifetime, even if its a really long lifetime
@@Lucy-qj8ui Well, that's true. Evolution doesn't happen during your life, it happens only during the process of reproduction (though mutations accumulate over your lifetime). If jack's regeneration acts like reproduction, he could evolve.
However, a different kind of evolution could happen to a being that old. Each cell could accumulate changes, then during regeneration those changed cells might be reproduced as is. Over time, his body would accumulate changes that way, with each cell evolving entirely separately, and only dying if they could not survive in the larger system.
Given millions of years, an organism would literally become like a colony of countless different species. I don't see that organism remaining a coherent single organism, but slowly splitting into many. Freaky!!
@@Christobanistan this^^ it could also explain his gained psychic powers too. I think Jack changes just a little every time he dies. But again, this is a sci fi show so anything can kinda be explained away with wibbly wobbly also
Right before revealing he is the Face of Boe, Jack asks the Doctor how aging will work for him but the Doctor does not know. Since the Doctor doesn't know how this all works, how did you figure it out?
I get that there's doubt over this because it feels like a "stretch" for him to change so much in every single way, but... Tbh, if he did live for billions of years, that is an absolutely insane amount of time. Like, an unthinkable amount of time. We have no idea what happened to him or how much that amount of time affected his body.
I would say what RTD did has a lot more Wait then what JK did. He actually put allusions and hints to his meaning in the text. Foreshadowing is a thing and just because a text doesn't explicitly say something doesn't mean that thing isn't the case.
This is how much damage bad lazy storytelling really does. When characters constantly get resurrected, we start saying "Its IMPLIED they died, but not confirmed." When audience become reliant on Tell Don't Show to have everything spoonfed, audiences start saying "its implied that it works like ____, but not confirmed." When relationships are teased but ultimately come to queerbait, audiences NEED it to be confirmed otherwise they hear "oh you're just reading into it" (whether its there or not).
At some point, subtly died and now if something isn't stated outright it can just get retconned. It can get retconned either way (timeless child...) but a confirmation makes it harder to unwrite without going "no that was set in stone. This doesnt make sense". I feel like bad stories have reached a point where good stories can't do subtlety.
Even if Davies had said "oh it could go either way", you don't reveal something like that if theres the option for it to mean nothing. Jack said he is known as the face of bo. If this is at all intended to have NO relation to the face of bo (10 and martha both instantly interpreting it as them being the same person) then thats a really bad reveal to have at the end of a story that is a) IN the text and b) alludes to a link with a character directly impacting the narrative.
Forcing Davies to SHOW the entire transformation, when saying "I'm immortal and I'm known as that guy" should suffice as a "put two and two together yourself" moment (which 10 and Martha instantly do)
He summed it up "I prefer to think otherwise". Its basically confirmed by its place in the narrative and the elements it presents. But he's trying to treat it on the level of Ruth's Tardis and go "it cant be possible. So I'd rather ignore it." Which I get but not liking a reveal and saying its just a theory are two seperate things.
@@B-MC exactly. It's why I'm impressed by writers like George RR Martin, the books not the show. I feel like that kind of more nuanced writing is slowly dying.
The nickname could have been a comment that Jack was rather big-headed 😂
Aside from this not being a theory and being confirmed in the show, it is probable that the face of Boe wasn't originally Jack and they plot-holed it in.
But consider, maybe since he can age he can also mutate or evolve given the vast amount of time he's lived. This could explain his powers and his appearance, but it could also mean that his children would also have similar mutations: meaning he could have been the first and last of Boe kind.
I think Harbo is under the impression that writers of the show make SO much of an effort to make every little thing perfectly line up with existing canon, for something that's been around for 70 years.
When writers have someone say "The Face of Bo, they called me," it isn't a joke or anything complicated. It is exactly as it seems right on its face: writers who love the show, love its audience, and wanted to confirm their own favorite fan theory!
If it doesn't make sense to one rando obsessive fan on UA-cam, who cares? They are the writers and they can fix things as they go! :D
lmaoo yeah heaven forbid someone have a take different to yours! Clearly the fact that they aren't a perfect analogue to your mind means that they're wrong! Never mind that totally valid points they're making, I disagree with them so therefore they're some rando obsessive fan on youtube and I can ignore all the points they made happily without actually pointing out anything incorrect with what they said!
Even non existing sometimes. Like RTD knew how Moffat who wasn't even choosen to be the next show runner gonna bend the worldbuilding of DW 5 years later.
Like all of the showrunners were conected to the matrix and downloaded the Universal DW Lore into their mind.
And it isnt just writters making up stories from their head that may or may not consisntent to everything ever established.
And spoiler, most of the time in DW the world building is wibbly wobbly😅
Haven't seen torchwood but Jack being the face of Boe isn't a fan theory, it was stated in the show. We see the Doctor's true age in the S3 finale and see how it drastically changes someone's appearance. I think we can assume the same will happen to someone who lives for billions of years.
It’s NOT fan theory, RTD himself said that captain Jack IS the face of boe
just not till a decade after he was actually writing it and not in the actual show itself...
Have you watched the video? It prominently discusses death of the author.
@irrevenant3 death of the auther doesnt apply to somthing that literally just IS true
@@kadegetslaid634 I guess it doesn't apply to you being dumb then
@@kadegetslaid634 Yes, that's correct. And in this case it's not literally true, just implied. The only 'definitive' confirmation is that RTD said it in an interview and... death of the author.
8:10 ... For the telepathy thing, look no further than Greeks Bearing Gifts. But I think the most damning piece of evidence to suggest Jack is the Face of Boe is that Jack is the only male character who can, and has gotten pregnant.
Thank you. I've been waiting to see someone reference Greeks Bearing Gifts.
I also find it funny that Harbo utterly forgets about Torchwood Series 1 when he made this vid
@@mikevangerpen5197Honestly, most people forget all about Torchwood when they call Jack an ordinary Human.
At the end of Torchwood someone else gained Jacks ability of immortality. Maybe Jack repeated this in the future and start a race of immortals like him so he wouldn't be alone
I prefer to say torchwood season 4 isn’t canon
@@CalamityMorphine plus that situation would be pretty darn hard to replicate lol
And why would the race of immortals die out?
@@markpostgate2551 idk maybe they were created weaker than him. Jack also had a lifespan and died so maybe the same happened to them
Moffat apparently even intended Jack to return in "A Good Man Goes to War" but was replaced with Dorium Maldovar who got beheaded instead. Makes sense as it's the episode where the doctor calls in favors from a wide assortment of characters across time. This also helps explain the appearance of the vortex manipulator in "The Padorica Opens" (aka the one River gets from Dorium who got it from a "handsome time agent"). It's clear Moffat intended Jack to return during that era - Barrowman being too busy with Torchwood to film.
I never thought we'd see Jack return post-controversy but was thrilled to have him join 14 even briefly. It's clear Chibnall had no interest in revisiting that storyline but I could honestly see some sort of nod or confirmation during the 60th. It's a shame we never saw the original storyline with the headless monks, but I still think there could be potential for something more exciting to confirm the transformation of Jack to Boe. I just hope they wrap that storyline up before RTD, Tennet, and Barrowman all lose interest in the show again.
I like the Captain Jack Harkness is The Face Of Boe. For it makes a lot of sense.
I think if Davies has said it's Jack, it's Jack
I mean, kinda pointless to add that detail 10 years after the fact, kinda seems like he just did a "wizards shit on the floor" bit of revisionism because he liked it. If it was actually part of the story, it would have actually been included at... literally ANY point?
I disagree. It's not definitive in the text itself so, if the next showrunner after RTD wants to say otherwise, they're free to.
I agree that the tweet doesn't matter, but it still doesn't change the fact that Jack is literally the FoB, and he literally tells us that the time agency calls him the face of boe
Here's a point that was missed: In the episode The Long Game the year is approximately 200,000. While Cathica is explaining that Satellite 5 is the news station, she lists several current events including "And over on the Bad Wolf channel, the Face of Boe has just announced he's pregnant." So the Face of Boe is already a giant head by the year 200,000. (There is a shot of the FoB on the news screen.) Chronologically, the next time we see the FoB is on Platform One in the year 5 billion, then on New Earth, then in Gridlock where he finally dies.
The point is, whatever and wherever the FoB is and came from, he has achieved his final form by the year 200,000.
The question of pregnancy brings up another point: has Jack ever been pregnant? Or if Jack is the Face of Boe, when did he develop the ability to get pregnant? Which would be some time before becoming head of Torchwood III. In Everything Changes the opening lines for the TW team are from Jack. He talks about humans' birth control entering the water system, evaporating, then raining back down on the planet and demonizing the fish. Then he remarks "At least I won't get pregnant. I'm not doing that again." So he already had that ability. Unless he was joking. The team remarks a few times that they never know when to take Jack seriously with the crazy stuff he says. So who knows?
Re psychic abilities, we know Jack has some. For instance, when Tosh acquires the pendant that lets her read thoughts, she reads each of her teammates (though her reading of Ianto ended up a deleted scene), and Jack is the only one who was aware of her attempt with him. She could not read Jack. But Jack felt Tosh's attempt to invade his thoughts and used the connection to communicate with her near the end of the episode.
And as mentioned elsewhere, the Doctor has spoken of humans' latent psychic ability, most notable in Tim the schoolboy in Human Nature/The Family of Blood.
So does all this prove Jack is the Face of Boe? No. Does it add to the theory? Maybe. I think RTD wrote it as a big joke, then when a lot of fans got a bit obsessed RTD just ran with it. It certainly entertained John Barrowman, David Tennant, and the fandom. Cheers.
The first episode of Torchwood suggests that Jack has been pregnant before: _"JACK: There you go. I can taste it. Oestrogen. Definitely oestrogen. You take the Pill, flush it away. It enters the water cycle, feminises the fish. Goes all the way up into the sky, then falls all the way back down on to me. Contraceptives in the rain. Love this planet. Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again. How's it going?"_
Big Finish did an (apparently not very good) audio expanding on that, but the canonicity of Big Finish relative to the TV show has a big question mark over it (and is a matter of some fan contention).
Should we tell him...?
Technically not a fan theory, it was hinted at in the Series 3 (or Season 3 for those of us who aren’t British) episode “Last of the Time Lords”, during a conversation about his immortality, Jack told The Doctor and Martha, and I quote, “Used to be a poster boy, when I was a kid, living in the Boeshane Peninsula. Tiny little place. I was the first one ever to be signed up for the Time Agency. They were so proud of me. The Face of Boe, they called me.”
Martha and The Doctor are obviously shellshocked and in disbelief at his words, having watched The Face of Boe die relatively recently. Unfortunately, it never really went anywhere afterwards, making me believe that that plot line, as well as The Face of Boe, were forgotten by the writers.
And another thing, in the Series 3 episode “Gridlock”, as he was dying, The Face of Boe told The Doctor there was another Time Lord left. How the hell would he have known without having met a Time Lord? Especially when you take into account the name this particular Time Lord chose when going into hiding: Yana. If Jack is The Face of Boe, and didn’t want to say much, saying “You Are Not Alone,” is a brilliant why of telling The Doctor the identity of the only other living Time Lord in existence, without completely divulging the identity of said Time Lord.
The only people who would’ve known Yana was a Time Lord after the events of the Series 3 episode “Utopia” would’ve been The Doctor, Martha, and Jack. Of those three, Jack is the only one who is practically immortal and would’ve gone by the alias “The Face of Boe”.
Russell recently wrote a short story confirming that Harriet Jones survived the events of The Stolen Earth by dropping through a trap-door onto a mattress-trampoline and riding away on a motorbike.
I'm not joking.
Best to take his after-the-fact musings with a pinch of salt
Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister, Now Dalek Escapist.
It's science fiction - best to believe what happens next in the writer's head. She could easily be written off by some mad scientist experimenting on dead bodies.
As a politician she’ll have been on plenty of mattress’s 😂😳
@@ParakoEPC yes, we know who she is.
The story (actually illustrated poem) was by James Goss rather than Russell, but Russell did indeed confirm it to have happened.
this isn't a theory this is just what happened
Using the "Boe Kind" lines doesn't make sense to me as a piece of evidence against the Face of Bo not being Jack.
Rule #1: The Doctor Lies.
Why not Jack? Personally, I'd find it pretty frustrating if I aged into a giant head and had to explain "Yeah, there's this blue box called the TARDIS, this girl from the 21st century was imbued by its powers and brought me back to life permanently. And basically, only me and that Doctor fellow you keep hearing about in legends are the only two people who seem to have an endless life span in this universe as a result." I might shorten that down by just saying "I'm from an extremely long-lived species; I survived a great extinction event and I'm the last of my kind" at some point. That lie I started telling thousands of years ago might spread across the galaxy and a cat lady in the far distant future tells the Doctor about some species I made up. And I might decide to keep it going as a joke, because I know the Doctor does eventually figure it out. (As for the pregnant bit: I took that as a joke towards gag tabloids declaring stuff like "Elvis Presley Pregnant with Alien")
One of the other big aesthetic choices RTD made with NuWho is to create an almost wild-west style universe, where the Doctor travels, visiting different peoples throughout time and space, who don't have the complete picture of how everyone and everything interacts. It's hard to say how effectively people can communicate across distant galaxies. It's often implied to be very inefficient, with only the TARDIS being able to disobey the physical limits of communications technology. This was how legends spread on Earth: a long, arduous journey of telephone, and with occasional liars along the way, exaggerating sailors' encounters with manatees to be mermaid encounters. Or giant squid being a kraken that could eat a ship. Or strange, mangey looking creatures drinking the blood of goats in Mexico. I see this being the way the Face of Boe was spread around as a member of a legendary dead species.
Even the Doctor talks of legends when he discusses the Face of Boe. Assuming that "Boe Kind" are a canonical species seems like a very big assumption when considering Jack's own "Face of Boe" line and it being a nickname.
In my opinion, it takes more effort to justify "Boe Kind" being a unique species on both the canonical level and the artist intent's level. Especially since we really only have two solid pieces of evidence that they're a unique species: the existence of Boe and their pregnancy. Everything else is hearsay, even the Doctor's own expositions (as far as I can tell; I may have missed a scene when looking for clips on UA-cam and it's been a while since I have seen Boe episodes).
Another point I'll make: Jack developing psychic powers in the span of millions, perhaps billions, of years is not far-fetched. Consider the powers of Badwolf, and consider that those powers were the very origin of Jack. Rose became Badwolf, a human girl. Let alone the endless possibilities of other mechanisms Jack could have harnessed (Doctor Donna was another instance of a human attaining great mental capacities; even Madame de Pompadour was able to employ some psychic skills with the Doctor's help; the entirety of humanity working together in a psychic network restored the Doctor, as well, which Jack witnessed and may have taken interest in looking for more instances of). I think it's weirder to say Jack ISN'T the Face of Boe, when accounting for all the mechanisms, that are already cannon, that could allow Jack to become the Face of Boe.
And one other point, on a metatextual level: it would be extremely dissatisfying if the Face of Boe were actually a nonhuman species we never see and have no reason to care about, leaving Jack's permanent fixed-point style existence unresolved. It's a loose thread that, I think, needed to be resolved because of how often it was called upon in RTD's (now first) era.
Well said!
Honestly I subscribe to the idea that the Face of Boe is a "Byproduct" of Jack's immortality... But isn't Jack himself.
Pretty much the idea goes that as Jack Ages, he encounters a situation where he gets his head cut off and the other head is separated for an extreme amount of time and distance.
Someone needs Jack Harness to help, and revives him using his body, which generates a new head due to his immortality, however the scrapped head lives on and tries to compensate, creating the Face of Boe.
Is it wacky? Yeah, does it solve the problems of Jack being the face of Boe and someone else being the face of Boe? I think so at least, it writes around Jack's immortality while also explaining how Boe can know about Yana.
Heck, maybe this whole thing happened as part of a time travel incident with Jack and The Face of Boe is the first Boekind with that discarded head evolving due to the shunted Immortality+him still aging.
We do see that Jack has been doing funky stuff with himself in the Fugitive of the Jadoon, maybe that nanotech is what Jack's main body used to keep his self together after the Face of Boe split off?
Or mutation in his own body over 5 billion years could change him. Maybe we simply overthink it and should enjoy the mystery of it.
If I recall, originally it was planned for Jack to show up in a good man goes to war and get his head lopped off by the headless monks...
Which could happen even if he wasn't there at demons run, dude fucks pretty much everything and no doubt has seen a monk without it's hood.
Also, the idea that Jack can regenerate from being blasted into tiny little pieces isn't a theory breaker for that either. The headless monk's arent kind enough to kill you by beheading, your head and body remain alive while separated. So it's not likely jack would regenerate as it has no need to heal damage that doesn't get registered.
Jack getting his head chopped off was never the plan for Good Man Goes to War, it's misinformation that's been spread so often people take it as fact
@@HarboWholmes Jack getting his head chopped off has never been *confirmed* as the plan for Good Man Goes to War. That doesn't tell us much one way or another, given how coy they often like to play things. People are mistaken about this being official. It's also a theory that neatly explains Dorium coming out of nowhere to fill a role that Jack is a perfect fit for. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was the intent at some stage of development.
wdym fan theorys it was literally confirmed lmao
just never in the actual text lmao do you usually wait a decade for a tweet to confirm something in a text is canon? Or do you just use the text itself? Because if its the former, then gee whiz what is the cutoff? Can someone come in and edit romeo and juliet and say "actually romeo was gay for mercutio this is now canon"? or would that be really stupid that you can just add in whatever information you want to a story over a decade after it was written and released?
@@kezia8027 I'm pretty sure they mean when it was confirmed in the space jesus episode
Mate, if the writers write it in and then never contradict it publicly ever again it’s not really worth wondering about 😂
death of the author is ignoring authorial intent and comments OUTSIDE of the piece of work itself, you can’t just disregard elements of the actual text for convenience. If I’m writing an essay on hamlet I can’t just say “hamlet doesn’t die” and then quote death of the author when people say that’s not true (source: I’m an English major and have studied death of the author extensively)
If RTD had just said that jack was the face of Boe out of nowhere on twitter years later (like JK Rowling as you referenced) then you would be well within your rights to ignore it, but as it’s said pretty explicitly in the show as well you can’t really just say “nuh uh” and dismiss it as a “fan theory”
I think a lot of people like to cling to the idea of Jack being the FoB because it gives Captain Jack a happy ending, when you think about it. He gets to basically die in The Doctor's arms after seeing the universe, his last words completing a cycle before he finally gets to rest. It's a damn romantic final scene for the character
I think people like to cling to it because it was literally written in the show.
I find it funny that people call it a theory when it's confirmed
@@NottJoeyOfficial It's really not. Jack only mentions it in the show as an implication, not as a fact. And no one from the people who made the show ever confirmed it, it was left vague intentionally. So it's still a theory, highly implied, sure, but still a theory, never ever officially confirmed.
@@Croftice1 Actually RTD does confirm it
@@HyattHyatt3179 but not as part of the show, thats the whole point. Just like JK rowlings "wizards shit on the floor" if you believe that Authors get to add in new information whenever they want after they have already released their work, even if the information wasn't in the original work, then yes, you could argue that RTD's confirmation makes it canonical, however, if you disagree that authors can't just say "oh yeah dumbledore is gay btw" without actually including that detail WITHIN THE STORY, then you would obviously claim that it was a theory.
Just like how often actors/actresses for a pre-existing character have their own opinions on how a character should behave/think that does not mean that their portrayal is the only "correct" way to play that character.
I do believe in "death of the author" when it comes to Brain of Morbius, because I think a reasonable person such as myself, not knowing the writers intended the extra faces to be pre-Hartnel Doctors, I for years and years thought of them as Morbius incarnations. My view was unbiased by any inside intel, living here in America before the internet. Most people who jumped on it being Doctors were already privy to info I didn't have.
That said, I do think Jack is Beau, because the only strong evidence Against Jack being Beau is the Beau-kind. Which perhaps, Jack, once he transformed into the head shaped being, began procreating and fathered a whole species that he of course outlived...? OR maybe Jack was transformed into another species by a villain who thought moving Jack's mind out of his original body, into that of another species, would be the one way to kill him, and again, he outlives all the members of the species he became a part of...
As for psychic powers and whatnot, maybe that bit came along with the transformation, OR maybe Jack/Beau had an adventure with some plot device that gave him the powers along his billions of years. And it was never Reset at the end of said hypothetical adventure. You know, like life, instead of in stories, where things happen and don't get reset after 45 min.
Honestly, Jack is already nonhuman, who knows how his species would develop and mutate over time? Also, the "Boekind" could easily be his true species from the Boeshane Peninsula.
Watching the scene, they're clearly the Doctor's faces. They appear in response to Morbius blatantly dominating the Doctor in the mindbending contest. (The Doctor's strategy seems to have been to hold out as long as he could and hope that Morbius's braincase couldn't take the stress - which worked, but it was a near thing). Watch the scene here: ua-cam.com/video/IDzSNvSjDi8/v-deo.html
Did you go into the episode knowing that Tom Baker was the 4th of the Doctor's 13 incarnations? That may have influenced the way you watched it. That fact hadn't yet been established when the episode went to air, and the episode's intent was that the faces represented earlier incarnations of the Doctor. The show quietly ignored that idea once they locked in the regeneration limit and decided that Hartnell had been the First.
@@irrevenant3 I think what may have influenced my idea that the 4th was the 4th was having seen The Three Doctors beforehand, but apart from that, I had no preconceptions. My immediate thought at the time was they were Morbius faces, and I remember thinking: "it would have played better had they done one Doctor face then one Morbius face back and forth, but oh well." Then when the internet became a thing I found out other people had a very different interpretation that had never even occurred to me as a possibility before, that they could have been other Doctors. (sorry for late reply, I've been on vaca/holiday a few weeks.
People saying its a fan theory just because the director only confirmed it after they were done with the show, think about it this way.
If someone today asked JK rowling if snape killed dumbledore and she confirmed it to be true, it doesnt mean he didnt kill dumbledore. Its just clarifying for people who somehow missed the point of the scene.
It doesnt matter if the logic doesnt make sense yet if we havent finished jacks storyline. Not to mention that the face of boe's message to the doctor has not been explained on the show unless we accept that he us jack.
Fan theory? You mean confirmed fact? Is it a fan theory that Luke and Leia are siblings too?
no, because that's actually in the story, unlike your claim that jack is bo... Because that isn't ever CONFIRMED in the text itself. It is hinted at, it is alluded to, but it is literally never confirmed.
@@kezia8027hinted at, alluded to, confirmed in a tweet made by the guy who wrote it?
@@kezia8027Jack straight up says that in the future he's called the face of boe. How much more confirmed and in fact do you want?
I don't consider this a fan theory because it is a theory that didn't originate with the fans, but was directly posited as a possibility within the show itself. I feel a better question would be, "is it canon?" Even without going into the ever changing and evolving nature of canon within a show which is ongoing and has multiple writers, I think it is obviously not canon that Captain Jack is the Face of Boe. Characters within the show ponder if it is true, but we are never shown it is definitively true. So until we get an episode definitively showing the Face of Boe's origins, it remains a possibility but not a fact within the fiction of the show.
an actually fair and balanced take in these comments, what a breath of fresh air. You're right, it was explicitly HINTED at, and ALLUDED to within the story, but it was never confirmed within the story. It is just a mystery that doesn't (currently) have an in text answer.
FFS. "in season 3 it's set up that the face of boe dies and tells the doctor, his old friend despite the doctor not being fully aware of who he is, telling the doctor YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Both an forewarning of the events of utopia and also abbreviates to 'YANA' the name the master took when exiled to the end of time as a human. Jack, Martha, and the Doctor, are the only ones who know that the Master and Yana were the same people. And I doubt the Saxon Master told his cult about that. Only a few dozen people even remember the Saxon timeline too. Then, at the end of the episode Jack tells the doctor "I think I'm still aging, what happens if I live to be millions of years old", the doctor "I have no idea."
Then Jack says goodbye and mentions about how he hopes to keep his dashing looks as he's proud of them and how he was known as 'the face of boe' in his past.
It's not like IDK THE FUCKING SCENE SAYS
>JACK IS STILL AGING
>ONE OF JACKS NAMES IS THE FACE OF BOE
>HES LITERALLY SAYING HES THE FACE OF BOE
Jesus you're jumping through hoops
Harbo acknowledged the YANA thing in the video as the one thing that he didn't have a good counterargument for. Although we're making assumptions that no-one else knew about Professor Yana. For starters Martha worked for UNIT and she presumably told them about at least some of her adventures with the Doctor.
I also dont like the whole Jack is the face of boe thing but I disagree with a lot of these points.
Why would we take the existence of other boe-kind as fact? That could easily be a back story that the fob made up for himself, we dont see any other boe-kind and no one is the show has either. Jack is constantly lying about his past.
There are so many ways that a human might become physic after millennium of existence.
I personally head canon that Jack isn't the fob but that doesn't change the fact that the show confirmed he was textually.
no, the show never confirmed it textually. It hinted, but never confirmed. RTD "confirmed" it in a tweet over a decade after the release of the episode.
Not so much to do with the theory, but I swore I recognised Bo from his first appearance, naturally I assumed, he was from classic.
My immediate reaction was "Oh, it's him! Oh, what's his name..? He was a big part of,, I can't remember who's, era"
Years later I discovered I was full of it, but I'm telling you, I greeted him like an old friend. Design was perfect in that regatd
I have something to pose to anyone who thinks Jack isn't the face of Bo and is instead out there somewhere traipsing about in his regular form:
You cannot tell me that Jack would miss the destruction of earth. Even if he wasn't an earthling it's still the core of humanity and that man would definitely watch that event.
Do I want him to be the Face of Boe? No
Do I think he is? Yes
I don’t like the idea because just making Jack the same individual as Boe removes the potential for an interesting standalone character and removes the potential for future stories or just hints at what Boekind was like when they were an entire species. Or preferably just a mysterious figure all together with no real history.
Sadly though, I think at this point he is. Regardless of original intention.
Did I want the Borg to have a queen even though they’re a hive? No.
Did I want Fred Weasley to die? No
Do I want the Face of Boe to be Jack? No.
Sadly, I’m afraid I can’t always get what I want.
Honestly the most rational take in these comments. It doesn't really make complete sense, and diminishes a number of possibilities, and wasn't even really confirmed within the series, but I agree, at this point it has become canon, and likely will remain so. Unless the people who disagree with Jack=Bo become future showrunners of Dr Who and retcon/clarify this detail, it will most likely remain in this version of the 'canon' even if the addition to the canon came through flimsy mechanisms (like a tweet a decade after the fact)
@@kezia8027 thank you and I agree. Also, in my head it wouldn’t be that hard for show runners to change it without breaking what has become cannon. Something like “No, Jack’s headline was a play on words. Boekind were an advanced species that, being telepathic, had no need for names but the galaxy needed to refer to their ambassador as something. So the Face of Boe became the Face of Boe. Then something happened that destroyed his planet and he’s the only one left because he was off world. Then Jack became big and the people of the Boeshane Peninsula thought it’d be catchy to call him the Face of Boe. It’s just a play on words.”
This....isn't a theory....
It's confirmed, I don't see why you're fighting it.
except never confirmed IN TEXT lmao... I am not reading tweets or watching interviews for in universe lore. If you want it to be canon, include it in your story.
@@kezia8027 ...Tweets are text but ok lol
Bro you are so wrong on this.
1.) You say that he can't have become a giant head because he's immortal, but 5 billion years in the future he is not immortal, you can tell this because he dies (only eagle eyed viewers will spot this). Given that he can die after 5 billion years, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that he loses his ability to grow his entire body back at some point before then as well.
2.) You say "how can there be other Boe Kind if he's actually a human?". Any number of reasons, he altered his DNA at some point in 5 billion years and now he doesn't produce human offspring. They're weird clones of him, not children. They're some alien species he saved and adopted. C'mon man it's Doctor Who, weird stuff happens; if two humans can give birth to a time lord, a 5 billion year old time agent can give birth to an alien species of giant heads.
3.) "How can he speak telepathically?". We know humans have low level telepathic ability, so given that much time, who knows what could happen. But even if you don't like that point, how about he had some brain chip installed to allow him to speak telepathically? Again, it's Doctor Who, use your imagination.
4.) "There's only a vague illusion to the fact that he's the FoB in the show" - I just massively disagree with you that this is a "vague illusion". Almost anyone who watches that scene will come away thinking "oh, so Jack is the FoB", it's really not vague in my opinion.
In conclusion, this is a bad Doctor Who take.
I think it's pretty easy to explain the face of boes race.
We even get mention that he has a daughter. He could be the progenitor of his species, which came about after Jack mutated
but his daughter was just a normal human who aged like normal. any mutation he got would not be passed on to his children
@@Lucy-qj8ui why wouldn't they? Mutations in the real world do get passed on. If enough of him had mutated I think it's entirely possible that his offspring had the same mutations.
Let's also consider how? How would the face of boe procreate? He doesn't have reproductive organs.
He may have evolved to reproduce Asexually which would have his kids looking like him
@@Lucy-qj8uiJack wasn't a Human. How many times do people have to hear that he's an alien to realise that he's an alien?
Next you'll be telling us that since regeneration is a time vortex mutation, Jenny shouldn't have been able to regenerate and should've died as a regular Human.
Could we call it a genetic mutation? It is quite a bit more and specific to him. @@MrMythul
@@dominickeijzer5844 Jenny could have held on for a lot longer than a human. It's remember that even without regeneration a time lord can live nearly 1000 years. The tike is not to die as you age.
My big problem is that Jack isn't immortal, he's literally locked in time, he's more akin to what Clara becomes than anything else. THAT'S why blowing him up doesn't work, he doesn't Deadpool back, he literally just resets. The Doctor literally identified him as a fixed point in time, so he shouldn't be able to change at all. Sure, that implies *other* logical issues that I've always taken issue with and just had to ignore, but he literally *can't* change into Bo.
I REFUSE to believe the fan theory that the 1st doctor is the same character as the 2nd doctor!
When they say the Face of Bo is the last of his kind they are referring to the immortals. Ishilda wasn't around yet in universe she was but she never met Jack. Also let's not forget rhe Headless Monks had strange powers that could keep a head alive even after decapitation. It makes sense that if he helps the Doctor at Demons Run and is decapitated his limbs don't grow back. We don't know what happened to his immortality after the end of Miracle Day. It can be argued that his immortality was effected. The bo kind can also have just been a lie something to keep people guessing about what he really was
At the End of Torchwood, There is literally another character like Jack because he inserted Jack's blood in order to stop the immortality curse in Torchwood:Miracle day.
It's not a fan Theory. They say it in the fucking show.
Even though I think the Face of Boe thing is confirmed to be Jack, I will say I prefer the idea of tFoB being either his own entity or the Doctor at the end of his life that you suggested
Plus despite Jack being immortal, I genuinely don't think it would be impossible to kill him, it would just come with great risk/unforeseen consequences (if he was able to be made, he could be unmade). And just because the Doctor doesn't know the answer, doesn't mean one doesn't exist
Jack was "unmade" once, in the 4th series of Torchwood, everyone was made immortal, but Jack lost his immortality in the process, the only person on Earth able to die. So if he lost immortality once, it's not a stretch, that it could somehow happen again. Rose brought him back and the Doctor said, she brought him back forever, but what does the Doctor know? Especially about forevers? It's what the Doctor thinks, but even the Doctor doesn't know everything. Maybe one day Jack's immortality just expired. XD Or someone messed with his life again. Maybe severing his head from the body and leaving it alive (the way the Headless Monks work, not the way he was blown into pieces in Torchwood) might modify him, make him a new species, basically "rewriting the deal with Bad Wolf".
I dont get your point here,this is not fanmade theory is a thing that they say in the actual show,no one ever points out that this is not the case we only see a point were they say that it is,just ignoring a fact because is not stated in capital letters in an episode but is hinted at subtly is stupid and it looks like you're making this video because you dont like that part of the story.
It would be really funny to see someone do this to more obvious things about other things they dont like about the series like "i dont like the missy is the master fantheory" or "the Timeless child fantheory"
Nobody seems to notice that the Doctor and Martha talk about the Face of Boe’s cryptic words IN FRONT OF JACK in Utopia, long before he throws out his mention of that being his nickname. Realizing this and the fact that Jack had probably heard of him, it’s plausible he was messing with the Doctor and Martha.
true. and maybe he did get that nickname, but if the face of bo is so old, jack could have gotten the nickname from the actual face of bo
I've never had any problem with Jack being the Face of Bo. I'm not sure where you got this idea that someone can't gain psychic abilities because to my knowledge that's never been stated in the show. The Doctor didn't seem to know about the Bo kind so that could have just been a made up story that Jack/Bo told the Cat person. Plus Jack is the only living thing like him in the universe so in a way he's been the last of his kind since he came back to life.
All that being said I'm fully supportive to the Death of the Author approach and have many of my own unconfirmed Doctor Who
head-cannons.
I love the idea that Jack is the Face of Boe, but to add to your point, I'd say that if Face of Boe was some sort of big celebrity in the galaxy... Maybe Jack's friends gave him that nickname in reference to THE Face of Boe. Like, a conscious, voluntary reference to a famous person, because Boeshane sounds like Boe, idk...
I've thought the same thing.
All the problems with this theory can so easily be counted by the fact that it spans literally billions of years and this is a science fiction show.
How does Jack turn into the Face of Boe? Something science fiction. This is the same show where the Doctor has been turned into a Weeping Angel, a gooey clone, a part-cyberman, and more. In just one short adventure, anything can happen to a character. Now imagine living for billions of years in this type of storyworld, yeah, it's so plausible that Jack could turn into the Face of Boe. He could be sauntering around in the year one billion, get thrown into some anti-fixed-point boe-making machine, and come out as the Face of Boe. Since he is slowly aging over the centuries and millennia, it's very possible that in five billion years (or more, given that he keeps travelling back and forth in time) that this is just how humans age if they survived that long. Our bodies shrink, eventually our heads grow, tentacles and shit. Also, radiation, alien influences, wounds that bypass his healing system, over billions of years that could have an impact. All it takes is one Big Finish story to show Jack becoming the Face of Boe and boom, that's how it happens. It's a very easy concept to imagine, to be honest.
I like to imagine that at some point the Headless Monks do get to Jack, and their weapons are stronger than his healing system and so it overrides his natural DNA so he's a living head, and over centuries his body tries to adapt to that with its healing factor and he becomes the Face of Boe.
Also, telepathy is probably the easiest to explain, there are so many ways humans or any creature could develop telepathy in this universe, and you could also just argue that he trained his mind for thousands of years and unlocked that ability. It's a very simple science fiction concept. Hell, who even says it's biological, he could just have some space technology implant that allows him to send telepathic messages.
Lastly, the Boekind, it's also got a very easily explanation. Jack fucks. Famously, Captain Jack Harkness likes to fuck. When he becomes the Face of Boe, do you really think Jack would stop fucking? If there is a way for him to fuck, he will fuck. We see he's had children before, and they come out looking like a little him but without his immortality. So, imagine it's the year 200,000 and his biology has changed so much that he can get pregnant, and now he's done a fuck and gotten pregnant and out comes little Boemina. His daughter would look just like him, and thus he has created the race of Boekind. This birth could have happened in the Silver Devastation in the Isop Galaxy, hence that new speicies is considered to have been from there. Jack continues to have more kids, as one does, and these kids go on to have kids of their own (not necessarily with each other, but still continuing the species). The offspring, however, do not have their progenitor's immortality, and so they age and die, and eventually the entire species dies out (or evolves into another species). I mean, from the year 200,000 to 5 billion, that's 4.8 billion years. Anatomically modern humans only emerged 300,000 yeas ago. The first humans emerged two million years ago. Primates only diverged from other mammals less than 100 million years ago. The Cambrian explosion was only 500 million years ago. Earliest multicellular life was over 1.5 billion years ago. Earth itself is less than 4.8 billion years old right now. So, it's very plausible that in that time the Face of Boe could give birth to a whole new species, have that species rise and fall, become well-known and become ancient and then die out, all in the span of 4.8 billion years. It's a hell of a long time. And given Jack still cannot die until his fixed point, the Face of Boe survives it all, sees his own Boekind be born, rise and fall, and die out. This is quite literally the easiest part of this theory to explain. In billions of years, the Face of Boe could have children, create a new race, have that race die out, and then be the last of his kind.
I liked your comment just for the sake of "Jack fucks" bit, it's hilarious; I still don't subscribe to the "Jack is Boe" theory, though...
Wasn't the Silver Devastation the same place that Yana mentioned being found in Utopia? Assuming those were real memories of course, it is interesting that the only other mention of it seems to be in relation to the Face of Boe
You ruled out the headless monks theory without mentioning the most important part: their process keeps you alive
How is this a theory? It literally comes out of his mouth.
My issue with this has always been a rather simple one: Jack can't die. A literal time god granted him immortality, I don't see how he could have lost that to become the Face of Boe and die after telling Ten that he isn't alone.
This ISN'T a fan theory. This IS confirmed by the showrunners. Here's the thing, from an objective FACTUAL basis, it's the only theory in the show's history that should be treated as FACT. Here's why: the 'You are Not Alone' fortune thing that the Face of Boe speaks in Gridlock is a direct reference to the Master's War form which the Doctor meets. The Face of Boe CHOSE to die to make this message resonate with the Doctor further because he KNEW what had happened from when he was younger. Also, the use of time agent devices causes them to significantly wear down their health - think about it, why haven't we seen more time agents in New Who? The fact is, Jack is literally the ONLY character it would make sense to be someone else in the Dr Who continuity who is Boe and it makes sense he would appear as the face of Boe on the front covers of magazines as this male-type model figure. Not only does RTD confirm the theory, but also Moffat. Moffat was going to have the Headless Monks BEHEAD Jack in place of the other character we got to see on screen. In that case, it would also make sense - literally the only character who had THAT specific storyline set up for him! In my own mind, THIS is Jack's backstory for how he lost his body. And it makes sense when you think about the prophecy-type questions he asked at the end of that story about "Doctor Who? The question at the end of time" given Boe's role as a wise character in the original few series. Plus, Moffat brought back River Song and explored her backstory as being linked to other companions, so Jack can easily have this being one of the most popular companions of New Who. It nicely wraps up the mysteries and stories of season 3 and hence why season 3 is one of the best ones! There's literally almost ZERO % chance, near impossible that Boe ISN'T Jack given what Boe was trying to warn the Doctor about. Noone else would know that information about him unless they met him and went in THAT specific adventure!
None of these words are in the Bible
For me the BIGGEST argument against Jack being the Face of Boe is that when The Doctor explains to Jack why he hasn't been in touch it's because Jack is a living fixed point in time and shouldn't exist and that just looking at him basically makes his skin crawl.
When Jack does the cute "The Face of Boe they called me" line, the Doctor and Rose are BOTH surprised and unsure if it meant they were the same person. However, if they WERE the same person, The Doctor would have gotten exactly the same sensation from FoB as he did with Jack every time he saw him and there's no indication he did - and if he did and didn't mention it then he wouldn't be surprised to find out they were the same entity.
He describes it as an instinct, in his guts. He never says it's a feeling, just that the existence of something outside of time disgusts him. He never knew they for the Face of Boe, so it does make sense he doesn't have the same feeling.
Additionally, Jack calls it prejudice, and The Doctor says he never thought of it like that. Which means that it's social, based on how he perceives Jack.
do you mean the doctor and martha???
I always saw the whole “old friend” thing as them being in a handful of individuals in the entire universe who understand living for so long whilst being the last of their kind, and so because of all of that they’re kindred souls, similar to the minotaur in The God Complex.
Agreed. It doesn't actually support Jack = Boe anyway since at the point the Doctor called Boe "old friend" he didn't even suspect that Boe might be Jack.
This tgeory always bugged me. I liked to assume that Jack passed the name and message onto the being we know as the Face of Boe.
Blud made a 14 minute video of saying “oh yeah it’s confirmed but I CHOOSE not to believe it!”
This is some monumental levels of denial 😂
Jack's children aren't immortal so maybe bow kind are his children or something? Also, Jack wasn't there at the end of the universe (Hell Bent) so it stands to reason he dies at some point
Jack literally tells the Doctor and sidekick that his nickname when he was a young man was "The face of Boe", after the place where he grew up, the Boeshane Peninsula. Terry Nation (or whomever) wanted to hint strongly at this but then went back to sitting on the fence, to the point where he was told off by others associated with the production for his vacillating.
I am for theory Jack is face of Bo, thought I can accept, if it's different way. Personally like Doctor is Bo theory. I would even argue, that because Doctor doesn't know identity of Bo and his message is so mysterious, there isn't any effect from their meeting on his personal timestream so he can remember him. Not sure about touch. Did they physically touch each other? Because that could create some problems, but not sure. There is another fact, that could be used both for or against Jack/Bo theory. It's some time from watching Torchwood and it wasn't my focus. I honestly don't know, if I seen all of it, but there was one big story (last one I watched) where some people use Jack blood to some mystical Earth crack, that stop people from dying (not heals them) and make Jack mortal. To reverse it, they need to feed both ends with Jack mortal blood to reverse it, so they go in two teams. One guy is smart and decide to trick enemies by doing blood transfusion without care with Jack blood, because they can't die. So when bad guys thinks they destroyed Jack blood, he plays Trojan horse and manage feed his side from his own body and they reverse whole thing. At the end, few days later, he is shot, but doesn't die, but heals himself like Jack. He even ask him, what he did to him! I honestly don't know what happened next with these characters (or if something happen, it could be end of Torchwood for all I know). It served as proof that Jack immortality isn't perfect and that he can create more like him, in right conditions. Or at least similar to him. Face of Bo could be some of Jack's creations that Jack simply told stories about Doctor and his adventures. Or it could be origin of whole Bo race. Maybe they were simply attempts to create immortality or race of immortals. Not necessarily Jack personal work, but definitely connected with him. Or it could be hundred different things. I just thought it is something interesting, that should be part of this debate.
"I can hear him signing."
Credit to you, I was expecting a Rick Roll.
Like jack never dies peacefully, he sometimes combusts so every time he comes back and stuff his atoms and stuff may be more and more altered bc he still ages, he’s not like a time lord where EVERYTHING gets a factory reset. It’s just kind of repaired, sort of like how 11 talked to the droid thing in “the nightmare in silver” and also with new technology etc and look at Cassandra, perhaps humans needing to “edit” themselves to this degree is commonplace and like Cassandras handlers and her rack thing and brain like how the FOB was in a tank, life supports to sustain yourself in this state and also probably commonplace.
It's possible that far in the future Jack Harkness underwent a genetic mutation which he became The Face of Boe.
It's canon, he literally calls himself the FoB in The Last of the Time Lords
He doesn't. He literally says that people called him the Face of Boe. It could easily just have been a nickname.
@@ftumschk That isn't a coincidence, it isn't real life so it couldn't have been a mistake. RTD especially doesn't write throwaway lines like that, it has to be canon because it can't be an accident as the Doctor's reaction clearly shows as he laughs after finding out.
@@GlassesOfficial122 It's could easily be a throw-away pun, and for a very good reason, but I haven't got the time or the desire to spell it out.
@@GlassesOfficial122 if he "doesn't write throwaway lines like that" then why did he literally never explicitly confirm it WITHIN the text, and then didn't bother saying anything for over a decade after it was released?
Not to mention your assertion that because "the Doctor's reaction clearly shows as he laughs after finding out." is literal grade school level debating, this is absolute nonsense that has zero evidence behind it, based purely on your own speculation, conjecture and assumptions.
We have never seen any other member of Boekind other than The Face. So, we don't know what they look like, considering that it's a race of living creatures we assume that they would look similar to Boe but that doesn't have to be the case, all it means is that they have to be related to Boe in some manner. We also don't really know how they reproduce, only that in one episode they say that the face is pregrent and gives birth to a daughter. we Know that Jack has traveled the galaxy and all over time, we know that he shags every chance he gets, it's possible that Boekind origentated as decendents of Jack that over time became known as their own species. Boekind could be something similar too what the timeless child was to Time lords in that an outside species changes the physiology of another. Or maybe Boekind was just a title given to any descended of The Face of Boe and is just regarded as a speices because of their origins coming from Boe. We know that boe has a daughter but not what she looked like only that we assume it looks similar to him but for all we know she could have been completely human looking or humanoid, she might have even been born from the same device that created the Doctor's daughter.
Invoking Death of the Author doesn't matter here. It's confirmed within the show, by the narrative. It's placed prominently at the end of a big event as a lorebomb treat. The reveal gets a big react shot from the main characters. Everything about the language of cinema and basic narrative is saying "ha ha ha! Betcha didn't see THAT one coming! What a fun twist that doesn't actually matter! You're welcome!"
After all, if Jack isn't the big head, there's no reason for this scene to exist, and it has no weight. If it's not a reveal, then it's pointless exposition during the falling action, where you'd usually expect a twist or punchline or stinger of some sort.
If it weren't a part of the story, it wouldn't be in the story, especially in such a prominent position in the narrative.
It's kind of weird to see this talked about as a fan *theory*, because, like... the scene where Jack says he was called the Face of Bo is completely pointless if it's not true.
I can understand disagreeing with theories about *how* this happened - but that's mainly because the answer is "Somehow". Like, however it happened, it definitely did.
(Over Roland Barthes... I don't think Barthes ever intended that you can just throw out authorial intent when it's explicit. Death of the Author doesn't mean "make stuff up". It says that other interpretations of the text are valid.)
According to Steven Moffat, Captain Jack Harkness was going to be part of The Doctor's Army in “A good man goes to war”. However, John Barrowman was filming Season Four of Torchwood (2006) ("Miracle Day") in America. In the episode he was going to be beheaded and his head would survive separate to his body due to how to headless monks’ process works as shown with the blue guy that is beheaded in AGMGTW.
Im faily certain this isnt a theory and was just outright confirmed at one point or another. I could be misremembering, but im pretty confident i remember reading somewhere that the showrunners confirmed this theory as fact.
RTD "confirmed" this fact in 2020 a decade after the release of the episode in one singular tweet.
I would consider that as accurate, relevant, and applicable to readings of the text, as wizards shitting on the floor, or dumbledore being gay.
Wasn't Jack there when Martha reminded the Doctor that the Face of Boe had told him "You are not alone" after seeing the Master's dob watch? If he REALLY had been called that, wouldn't he have reacted to that? I need to rewatch that scene, but it seems more likely that Jack thought of making a spoofy story about him having that nickname, since he was from the Boesham (sp?) peninsula.
Yep, just rewatched the scene. Martha, with Jack standing right next to her, says to the Doctor, "Think what the Face of Boe said...his dying words." Jack doesn't so much as bat an eye, but he clearly hears her just fine, because he's RIGHT THERE and he heard her talking before from across the control room when she first started talking about the fob watch,
@@travelservices1200 Thanks for checking. I just reinforces my belief that "the Face of Boe they called me" was a spur-of-the-moment pun (Boe/Boshane) that RTD threw in at the last minute as Jack's nickname, without really believing that Jack and Boe were one and the same. RTD may or may not have changed his view later, but at the time he wrote Jack's departing scene in _Last of the Time Lords,_ I'm convinced he didn't intend it to be anything but a throwaway bit of fun.
If in high school they used to call you "Slim" then, 20 years later some people are talking in front of you about how Slim had died, would *you* have reacted to it?
@travelservices1200 as stated in the show numerous times, time travel travellers dont experience time in a linear fashion. So maybe he wasn't aware that he said that yet???
@@abigailxmary I hear what you're saying, and that could be possible, but he SHOULD remember that he was called "The Face of Boe" as a child. However, he may just have been distracted and not even caught the reference, except maybe subconsciously...and THAT might have been what led him to make his revelation at the end of part III. Alternatively, he might have just been playing things close to the vest. So, I am by no means convinced that he's NOT the Face of Boe.
The revived version actually introduces two persons who become immortal. Jack and Ashildr. Now Ashildr is from Earth whereas Jack is from a colony of Earth. So it is safe to assume that the only reasons the biochemistry of both individuals will only change if
1. It is different on the colony planet where Jack is from when compared to Earth.
2. The device that Ashildr has in her is keeping her static instead of evolving and the future evolution of humans may look something like Boe-kind.
The second reason sounds illogical though considering why would Jack evolve that way even if rest of humanity does. Besides we clearly see Jack aging (external reason is John himself is aging, like a fine wine if I may say so), so it is quite likely that he may die a natural death, he is just immune to other kinds of violent deaths. In such a situation, it is quite likely that he may transfer his consciousness into a Boe-kind being, with the name "Face of Boe" being some kind of a prophecy or something.
He has to leave Earth for some reason (probably on Torchwood business) some time in the distant future, so when he left Earth, enemies of Earth who tried to invade but got thwarted by Jack, now decided that it was a perfect time to attack him, as he is getting old. Fed up of getting constantly attacked, but realising he holds vast amounts of valuable information that will help preserve humanity, he sacrifices his own human body by transferring his consciousness in that body, known only to Torchwood, and he leads Torchwood as the same old Jack in a new body while he maintains his cover as an "ancient venerable being" whose best defence is that he is incapable of defending himself physically, so he has to defend himself telepathically, and that he is worthless if destroyed.
Its all speculation, considering none of the above is grounded in any Whoniverse media.
Alternatively, a very simple explanation does exist and it is very very VERY silly. The "Face of Boe" is not a name but a position, like the Dalai Lama. Jack has inherited the position, and after Jack resigns, someone else will inherit it. Again, all speculation, so grain of salt.
Two explanations: one complex, one simple. Occam's Razor. Until further info comes from the creative team, its all speculation.
it could be possibile that there are more people who are just like captain jack that from strange occurances can no longer die but still age, which at some point probably turns them into a new form of evovled humanity.
but the point is there are many explanations as to why jack is the face of boe and many reasons to why he might not be. never forget that nothing is ever linear in doctor who, which is likely also why this bit was left up to interpretation instead of being confirmed fact might be a joke or not who kows
I mean it does make sense for captain jack to gain psychic powers, it's a sci fi show, and he's imortal traveling to so many different planets. also, again, sci fi, we don't know what happens when someone ages for millions of years, also the fact he seems to age slowly implies that the enviroment does have an effect on his body since aging is just the result of cells mutating and getting less good as they multiply which is affected greatly by stress, the sun, movemtn etc, this means that if jack were to spend a lot of time in harsh enviroments, then it wouldn't kill him, but it would definately take a toll on him physically, and space radiation is definitatley a thing, also hi. being immortal means he can take risks, he may not even realise that the enviroment does affect him but very slowly, so he'd be going into radiation, massive amounts of heat, cold, intense gravity etc without a worry
and as others have mentioned, the boshane peninsula could have all had people referring to themselves as bo kind and they likely aren't fully human as cassandra mentions they all mingle with aliens and call themselves different things (hence bo kind) and they were all wiped out, so he would be the last of his kind
also, it is confirmed in the show, that's what the line in series 3 does, he outright says "hey called me he face of boe"
edi: just also realised, jack is constantly exposed to the time vortex, and with the immortality would be exposed more than any other time agent, and we know that does weird stuff
The rules about the doctors memory in day of the doctor makes no sense even within the episode because right at the end we meet the curator and it doesn't seem like Matt forgot about him and you would only get your memory once the older version of you has lived that moment
Idk. Nearly 5 billion years sounds like more than enough time for a whole civilization of Boe to rise and fall, as well as Jack learning a little ESP.
You left out how in “bang the drums” the doctor aging had his body shrink yet his head increase! Plus if you tuned into a giant brain im sure mental powers would evolve to replace the body.
Jack's death is locked between being left behind by 9 and 10 watching Boe die in gridlock before Jack finds 10 again in Utopia.
Bad wolf also causes the doctor to become a fixed event by allowing 11 to save Gallifrey creating the cracks in time leading 11 to Trenzalore, regenerating into 12.
12 convinced the first doctor to regenerate.
Meaning 11 must save gallifrey to allow 1 to meet 12 to regenerate into 2, making the doctor a fixed point.
This caused the Tardis to react by dropping 13 to earth as an immortal Time-lord with the ability to regenerate.
Fugitive doctor is saved by the tardis after dropping 13 to earth, as the 13th doctor onwards goes on to create Fugitive's future On a journey to becoming the timeless child- the long way round in a tardis left at ghost moment in Fugitive's personal future after meeting 13.
Creating the division timeline/ universe/ universal rewrite/ multiverse etc.
re: Boekind, we know that The Face of Boe had a child, Boemina in the year 200,000 (as noted in the video). Presumably Boekind are all the descendants of the Face of Boe (presumably to different mothers and fathers if it's Jack). 5 billion years is long enough for him to have enough of them to form effectively an entire race of people, and enough time for him to outlive them all.
With regards to death of the author, my take has always been; if you felt something while experiencing a piece of media, you still felt that regardless of whether the author meant for it or not