Giant Freakin Robot

John Barrowman is best known for playing Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and Torchwood, as well as for occassional off-screen crime fighting.  He’s also a pretty successful recording artist and theater star, though, touring and starring in shows across the UK on a fairly regular basis.  His musical styles lean toward the Broadway or big band, so it must have come as a surprise to the audience at the Newcastle stop on his 2010 tour when they found themselves watching Spider-Man and Wonder Woman duke it out on-stage while Barrowman belted out their television theme songs. It’s his self-described “tribute to everything superhero – with a special JB twist!”

Watch it…

On television, John Barrowman plays Captain Jack Harkness – a never aging, never dying, time travelling 51st century man from BBC’s Doctor Who and Torchwood.  He protects the world from alien invasions, creatures that slip through the Cardiff Rift, and global conspiracies, although not without venturing into some pretty dark places.  In real life, though, Barrowman is an affable singer and veteran of television, film and musical theater who never seems to be above a music video parody or a Katy Perry singalong.  In an Glasgow hotel this weekend, real and fictional personas collided when John Barrowman busted a burglar late last week.

WalesOnline reports that Barrowman is currently in Glasgow starring as Robinson Crusoe at a local pantomime and staying at the Radisson Blu hotel.  After returning to the hotel after attending a concert with his parents, Barrowman heard a kerfuffle in the room across the hall:

“The concierge was trying to sort my air conditioning.

“We heard this woman scream and shout, ‘Stop him, stop him.’ We saw this young boy running down the hallway.

“I told the concierge to chase him and called the hotel operator and told them to block the staircase so we could get him.

“The lad had tried to get away through the staff elevator and punched the concierge.

“I grabbed the kid’s ankles, yanked him to the ground and then pulled him out into the hallway. I pinned him down.

“My tour manager then arrived and the three of us held him down until the police came.”

John Barrowman, the swarthy and hilarious actor who plays Captain Jack Harkness on Torchwood has indicated he’d be interested in doing a Doctor Who film. The caveat being that it would have to be with David Tennant. Clearly Barrowman meant no slight to Matt Smith, since he’s yet to play Captain Jack opposite the eleventh Doctor.

But the truth of the matter is that there’s no need for a Doctor Who movie, it just is unnecessary. Between the seasons, Christmas Special, and other intermittent specials I’d find a movie version to be a bit too much. Barrowman himself says that Torchwood’s format lends itself far better to a movie. I have to agree.

Barrowman also spoke briefly about his love for recent co-star Bill Pullman saying, “”For goodness sake, I fancied Bill Pullman when he did Spaceballs. I thought he was a hunk and I told him that.” My wife has met both men and can attest to their charm and inherent hunkiness, I know this because she’s mentioned it at least once before. I have no direct comments on that, although a Capt. Jack/Lonestar team up would be pretty epic. I’d be more interested in that than a Doctor Who or Torchwood movie.

Like a lot of you I’ve been tuning in to Torchwood: Miracle Day. I was a big fan of the original BBC series, which was itself a spin-off of Doctor Who, and now they’ve brought the concept to America in a plot wrapped around this rather simple premise: What if one day, everyone stopped dying?

At first Miracle Day seemed to have really thought this through, the show began delving into the massive societal problems created by a world in which no one can die but people still get hurt and sick. Captain Jack Harkness and the gang ran around trying to save the day… but then something started going wrong.

One of the great strengths of Torchwood has always been its ability to cut right to the emotional core of any situation, no matter how completely bizarre or otherworldly that might be. Suddenly turned into a sex-crazed succubus? Torchwood has always been more interested in how that transformation would feel that the scientific ramifications of such a happening. But Miracle Day has taken that a step too far, and as the series has developed it seems to have abandoned all semblance of reason and logic in favor of shrill, political drum-banging and a clumsy attempt to portray the governments of the world as little better than the Nazi Party.

Here’s how they’ve screwed it up. These are the three worst examples of fuzzy thinking, logical fallacies, and just downright stupidity currently in play thanks to the inexplicably bran-dead, political-agenda driven writers of Torchwood: Miracle Day. Russell T. Davies, Jane Espenson… we expect more from you. Captain Jack Harkness deserves better ideas than these…

Warning: Spoilers follow.