The Sins of Captain John
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:
Doctor Who:
Audios:
The Sins of Captain John
The Restored
Synopsis: Headless corpses are walking and the skull of Oliver Cromwell is ranting at the newly-Restored Charles II. Yes, the republican Duchess of Winchester is spreading necromantic magic across the land but luckily her maid is happy to kick her off a tall building and hand her malfunctioning Resurrection Gauntlets to Captain John to get offworld. Once he's escaped from his cell by pleasuring his guard, obviously.
Thoughts: The unlikelihood of the kick-zombie-ass Indian astronomer lesbian maidservant is as nothing compared to the unlikelihood of her boss being a Duchess in her own right. (And that's not even including the mysteriously-unnoticed fact that Frances was born several years after 'Daddy' died.) That period's quite well DOCUMENTED, you know, but even Pepys somehow failed to mention the zombie-apocalypse.
Escape from Nebazz
Synopsis: John infiltrates wooden-spaceship-mining-prison Nebazz to kidnap the Gauntlets' creator. Only to find her experimenting with sentient mould that, naturally, possesses its hosts and crashes Nebazz into the mould-reef. John and Dr Magpie grab an escape pod, get 'rescued' by Captain Jack, she's jettisoned out the airlock for being mould-infected, whereupon the Captains crash on a desert planet...
Thoughts: So, Captain John's trying to make Dr Magpie mend the gloves, she's disinclined to do so but happy to spill her guts about her current illicit experiments to him...and is then SURPRISED when he blackmails her with threats to tell the prison governor? Never mind the (entirely-foreseeable!) zombification, did Magpie not think about the OVER-POPULATION effects of her curing death...?
Peach Blossom Heights
Synopsis: The Captains are gratified to find their devastated desert world has cold water and hot people. Albeit people who haven't heard of other planets, money or sex - and yes, the sexpocalypse is promptly forthcoming. Alas, computer Mother Janet sends her robot mascots to dissolve the Captains' friendly hosts into pate to create less self-aware humans. Before calling the dashing bits of totty a lift.
Thoughts: The Crooked World done RIGHT. (With a dash of The Long Game thrown in, and again, I rather prefer Mother Janet to the Editor.) A fresh and funny look at such human absurdities as babies and finding a second purpose for your toilet-parts. Captain John suffers from PTSD? Captain John actually ADMITS to waking up screaming to his frenemy-with-benefits?
Darker Purposes
Synopsis: John finally delivers the Gauntlets to Ilsa and Darius Vargosh - who need to revive their Supreme Chairman dad for long enough to make a will. Sadly Zombie-Dad starts ranting about something-in-the-dark, both siblings shag John and die, and the Vargosh space-mansion breaks up. Captain Jack to the rescue - alas, with Baroness Haha in tow, who's going to redeem John's debt to her one slice at a time...
Thoughts: A fun end to an enormously fun season, albeit one that seems to mistake CAPTAIN JOHN HART for a sweet innocent. He believes in condolence-offering, funeral-attendance niceties? He's shocked when Ilsa asks him to off her husband, tells him to take her on the table by said husband's corpse, won't confess to murder to save him, and abandons him in the escape-ship after he gives her its codes?
Courtesy of Emily
By Emily Carter (Emily) on Saturday, February 15, 2020 - 5:38 am:1.1: The Restored:
Pretty much exactly what you'd hope to get from a Captain John Hart audio, assuming you'd actually spent any time hoping for such a thing.
Anne Boleyn didn't have an extra THUMB.
'I may be a moral degenerate but I'm not a complete douche' is Captain John's response when accused of implied sexism. Is it WRONG to be OK with the whole murder-and-mayhem stuff as long as you're not a chauvinist?
They had the concept of 'side-kick' in the seventeenth century?
By Emily Carter (Emily) on Tuesday, February 18, 2020 - 10:48 am:1.2: Escape from Nebazz:
How did Magpie manage to jettison all that fuel whilst whizzing out the airlock? Without the Captains noticing? (Shouldn't they also have checked at this point that their indescribably-valuable Gauntlets were safe?)
Why isn't Magpie a bit BRIGHTER for the genius who (almost) conquered death?
What's this nonsense about them not being Captains Jack and John yet? When is this set in their timestreams, exactly? And why are they CALLING each other Captain Jack and Captain John if they haven't adopted these names yet? (Or...are they? Maybe I just assumed. Maybe THAT'S why names like Smiley McPerfect Teeth and Pretentious •••• are being bandied about? Ah well, Captain John promised us he'd give the Fourth Wall a good seeing-to, after all...)
Still keeping up the really fun momentum.
By Natalie Granada Television (Natalie_granada_tv) on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 2:07 am:
quote:Is anyone else mis-reading the title of this boxset as The Sins of Caroline John?
By Emily Carter (Emily) on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 5:48 am:No. We all* love and miss Captain John as the best thing (give or take Ianto**) about Torchwood, whereas this 'Caroline John' person probably doesn't exist in the Whoniverse and Big Finish's experiments with breaking the Fourth Wall are...mixed.***
*Well, me anyway.
**Jury's still out on whether the Severed Hand should make the list. On the one hand (no pun intended) it's a piece of David Tennant and displayed better acting with its over-excitable bubbles than most of the other regulars, on the other hand it's hideously bloated in a distinctly un-Ten-like manner.
***Great fun if utterly confusing in The Sins of Captain John, an utter abomination in Bernice Summerfield: Missing Persons: In Living Memory.
By Emily Carter (Emily) on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 2:53 pm:1.3: Peach Blossom Heights:
Actually, all those years they've spent in each other's beds (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:
JOHN: Excuse me. We more than go back. We were partners.
IANTO: In what way?
JOHN: In every way. And then some.
JACK: It was two weeks.
JOHN: Except that two weeks was trapped in a time loop, so we were together for five years. It was like having a wife.) you'd think Jack would have noticed John's tendency to wake up screaming.
Um, why is Torchwood emblazoned across the cover and why do these CDs use Torchwood's music? I've just REMOVED this and The Lives of Captain Jack from the Torchwood section on the grounds that they have NOTHING TO DO WITH TORCHWOOD.
By Emily Carter (Emily) on Saturday, February 29, 2020 - 3:48 pm:1.4: Darker Purposes:
If 'just a spoken statement' will do, why didn't the kids just record Daddy's promises of half-each during one of his attempts to get them off his back?
Why does Ilsa not think it might raise suspicions to murder her husband immediately after her father's death? Why does she leave such a blindingly obvious trail to Captain John, and hence to her suspicious 'failure' to mention NUT ALLERGY upon his sudden desire to cook?
Why does John not knock out/kill first Jillex then Ilsa when they're running to the escape ship and they insist on bringing the Gauntlets that are currently opening up a portal to hell?
John doesn't have all that cash-reward about his person to repay the Baroness with? Why the hell not? He's not the sort to be so fazed by the appearance of hell that he'll leave five million behind.