Characters / Doctor Who – Ninth Doctor's Companions

(aka: Doctor Who Rose Tyler)

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Rose Marion Tyler (Ninth and Tenth Doctors)

^{As the Bad Wolf entity} "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself."

Defender of the Earth

A shopgirl from 21st-century London, living a fairly boring life with her loving if overbearing mother, Jackie, as well as her boyfriend and childhood friend Mickey. One fateful day, when the store mannequins suddenly came to life and began killing everyone, she found herself face to face with a monster... and helped him become a man again.

The first companion of the revival and namesake of its pilot episode, Rose stays with the Doctor after he regenerates, becoming the first companion since Sarah Jane Smith to fall in love with him. Left after Series 2, came Back for the Finale of Series 4. "The Day of the Doctor", the 50th anniversary special, also references her — the Moment takes on her "Bad Wolf" form to convince the War Doctor not to activate it. And, years later down the line, the Doctor himself ends up regenerating into a form almost similar to her...

Billie Piper has since returned to voice the character on Big Finish Doctor Who, both in The Tenth Doctor Adventures, as well as a Spin-Off mini-series, Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon, which is set to be a prequel to "Turn Left".

Tropes from the TV series

• Action Girl: She showed a few signs of it in Series 1 and 2 (using her amateur gymnastics skills to save the Doctor in "Rose", shooting the Beast out of the ship in "The Satan Pit", becoming the Bad Wolf), but Series 4 solidified her as this, where she's casually lugging around a huge gun and shooting Daleks like it's nothing.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: In the final moments of "Doomsday", where, trapped on a parallel world and faced with the prospect of never seeing the Doctor again, she finally breaks down in tears and says she loves him. Even more tragically, the Doctor is cut off before he can reciprocate.
• Animal Motif:
  • A strange example, wolves. Her title as "Bad Wolf" came from the moment when she absorbed the time vortex to return to the Doctor and spread the words "Bad Wolf" so it will create the events of "The Parting of the Ways". In "Tooth and Claw", the host of the werewolf detects "something of the wolf" in her. When the Doctor hears the words "Bad Wolf" from Donna in "Turn Left", he immediately associates them with Rose and the time vortex.
  • On a symbolic level, wolves are known to be mates for life, something that reflects the relationship between Rose and the Doctor as she's among the few companions that the Time Lord had genuine feelings for and Rose finally had the closure she was looking for when the Doctor left her with the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor. Rose was the Doctor's most faithful companion, trying to alert him from the parallel universe and shared his duty of protecting the Earth from villains.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: With both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, their only proper kisses arising from aberrant out-of-body situations (the "vortex-transfer" kiss at the climax of "The Parting of the Ways", her possessed-by-Cassandra snog on New Earth and her kiss with the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor). There are countless moments of tenderness, though, with the Ninth Doctor kissing her on the forehead and Rose's kiss-of-good-luck delivered to the Tenth Doctor's space helmet in "The Impossible Planet" being two stand-out moments.
• Amicable Exes: With Mickey after an awkward break-up.
• Arch-Enemy: The Daleks, whom she faces four times alongside the Doctor. Though her terrifying first encounter with a Dalek eventually leads to show empathy towards it, she later goes on to kill their Emperor and boasts about it in front of them when they next meet. Come the Series 4 finale, she's blasting Daleks apart with a BFG.
• Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Subtly. In "New Earth", Cassandra makes sure Rose goes through the hospital's disinfection treatment first before she takes over her body. One shower, powder and blow-dry later, "the human child is clean".
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • In "Father's Day", Rose's request to go back in time and meet the dad she'd never known leads to her trying to avert his death and damaging the timeline after she saves him from the hit-and-run accident that originally killed him. This unleashes the time-scavenging Reapers upon the world, turns a wedding into a massacre and forces Rose's father to sacrifice himself and die again in order to put things right. She also learns her dad wasn't exactly the "wonderful man" she'd always grown up idealizing, and that his marriage with her mother Jackie was on the rocks. The Doctor even lampshades this trope at the start of the episode:
  The Doctor: My wish is your command. But be careful what you wish for.
  • Even after that, she continues to wish to have her father with her in some way, such as in Age Of Steel when she tries to convince an alternate version of him to leave with her, only to be rejected. She finally gets her wish in Doomsday, but she has to part ways with the Doctor when she’s trapped in an alternate dimension with a non-Time Lord version of him, leaving her heartbroken.
  • In "Tooth and Claw", Rose bets the Doctor ten quid she can get Queen Victoria to say "We are not amused" and spends the rest of the episode trying to egg her into saying it. When the Queen eventually does say it, she ends up banishing the Doctor and Rose from the British Empire, horrified by their cavalier attitude towards danger and darkness, and later goes on to found the Torchwood Institute, which comes back to haunt them down the line...
• Beware the Nice Ones: Rose is responsible for causing more deaths than any other companion — directly in the Series 1 finale when she obliterates the Daleks, and indirectly (via Jack) in Torchwood: Miracle Day. In fairness, in both cases she had become the Bad Wolf entity and was unaware of her actions, and in the first case, she was defeating the Daleks.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • The third person (after Grace Holloway and Jack Harkness) to share a snog with the Doctor in the TV series. Courtesy of absorbing the Time Vortex in the Series 1 finale, then Cassandra in the Series 2 premiere (although it's heavily implied that Cassandra did it because she was being influenced by Rose's feelings).
  • Later shares a pretty powerful one with the Metacrisis Doctor.
• Book Dumb: "Rose" suggests that her school grades were poor and she lacked professional ambition. However, that doesn't mean she isn't intelligent. She's observant and resourceful. She often notices and realizes things before even the Doctor does and has proven many times that she can think and act under pressure. She retains information and technobabble well enough to use it, and it's clear that she's learned a lot by the end of Series 2 and even more by Series 4.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • She and Nine are both restrained (and briefly tortured) by electrified manacles in "The Long Game".
  • Happens more frequently in the early episodes of Series 2, as Cassandra traps her in energy restraints in "New Earth", she winds up Chained to a Rock in "Tooth and Claw" and then is Strapped to an Operating Table alongside Mickey in "The Girl in the Fireplace".
• Brief Accent Imitation:
  • In "Tooth and Claw", Rose attempts to match the Doctor's fake Scottish accent with an imitation of her own, but it's so terrible she only gets out a pitiful "och, aye" and "hoots mon!" before the Doctor shushes her. She later bets the Doctor £10 she can get Queen Victoria to say "we are not amused", briefly putting on an upper-crust accent to approximate royalty.
  • The Doctor is impressed by her knowledge of 1950's lingo in "The Idiot's Lantern" when she responds to his Elvis impersonation of "You goin' my way, doll?" with "Is there any other way to go, daddio? Straight from the fridge, man!" Rose mentions it's because she and her mother used to watch Cliff Richard movies every bank holiday Monday.
• The Bus Came Back: She returned for the Series 4 finale after officially "leaving" her role of companion at the end of Series 2.
• Celebrity Paradox: Her actress Billie Piper exists in the Doctor Who universe, as her album "Honey to the Bee" was shown in Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams' flat in the Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed".
• Childhood Friends: She and Mickey were this long before they dated. They’ve known each other since Rose was a baby and Mickey was a toddler.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: One of her major flaws is her clinginess to the Doctor, which leads to envy whenever another woman starts to catch his attention, even in a platonic fashion.
  • During her brief encounter with the Doctor's new tag-along friend Lynda Moss in "The Parting of the Ways", Rose's jealousy is written all over her face. Likewise, she has similar reactions in "The Girl in the Fireplace" when the Doctor seems to get overly familiar with Madame de Pompadour, and a waitress named Lucy at Jackie's birthday party in "Rise of the Cybermen".
  The Doctor: According to Lucy, that man over there...
  Rose: Who's Lucy?
  The Doctor: She's carrying the salmon pinwheels.
  [He nods over to a pretty young waitress across the room]
  Rose: Oh, that's Lucy, is it?
  • Forms most of the tension with Sarah Jane Smith when they first meet in "School Reunion" because the Doctor never told her about other companions, and the fact that he left Sarah Jane makes Rose worry he'll do the same to her. By the end of the episode, however, the tension between Sarah Jane and Rose disappears, and the two are delighted to see each other again in "Journey's End".
  • In "The Stolen Earth", Rose says "I was here first" upon realizing Harriet Jones hasn't included her in her group of the Doctor's companions (because the laptop Rose is on, which the subwave network did link to the conversation, doesn't have a webcam).
• Character Development: Rose has one of the biggest character developments in the series. She becomes stronger and more independent as the series progresses. She becomes confident in her own smarts and her ability to save the Earth.
• The Confidant: Most prominent in the first series. She becomes the Doctor's best friend (and love interest). He begins to trust her with facts about Gallifrey and his past life before her, although not everything (Rose didn't know about regeneration and other companions).
• Cuddle Bug: She and the Doctor hug. A lot. They also frequently hold hands or link arms.
• Damsel out of Distress: She rescues herself most of the time. Not only that, she rescues others when she can, including the Doctor. She is shown to be very empathetic and selfless when it comes to the universe (a contrast to her more selfish side when it comes to her personal life).
• Determinator: Who cares if travel between parallel universes is impossible? She won't let that stand between her and the Doctor.
• Deuteragonist: In contrast to classic Who companions, whose purpose was often relegated to The Watson and Damsel in Distress, Rose (and the companions that followed her) has a much more active role in her various adventures, saving the day as often as the Doctor himself does.
• Disappeared Dad: Pete Tyler was hit by a car and died when Rose was just six months old. "Father's Day" explores Rose's conflicted feelings about meeting him, and later in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", even bringing him back (the alternate universe version of her father, at the very least).
• Do Not Call Me Sir: Like the Doctor, she doesn't like UNIT saluting her.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After being separated from the Doctor in a parallel universe seemingly forever, telling the Doctor she loves him and never getting a reply, crossing dimensions and battling her worst fears (the Daleks) to find him again only to have their reunion cruelly cut short when the Doctor is shot down by a Dalek, then being returned to the scene of their tragic separation after the Daleks' defeat...Rose finally gets to live happily ever after with a (Meta-Crisis) Doctor of her own, who'll age alongside her and return the love she always had for him. The one adventure the original Doctor can never have.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Rose has apparently done so to the Tenth Doctor, where she is not so subtly in love with him.
  Doctor!Cassandra: You've been looking! You like it!
• Endearingly Dorky: Gets just as excited as the Doctor does by new lifeforms, planets, and more, no matter how dangerous or weird. She celebrates pronouncing "Raxacoricofallapatorius" correctly by jumping into his arms.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Discussed by Martha and Jack in "Utopia":
  Martha: Is that what happens though, seriously? You just get bored of us one day and disappear?
  Jack: Not if you're blonde.
  Martha: Oh she was blonde! Oh, what a surprise.
• Fatal Flaw: Rose's selfish streak. She sometimes prioritizes her own interests and desires over anything and everything else at the time, whether it's wanting to see her dad or staying with the Doctor. This negative trait comes to a head in "Doomsday", when she has to choose between a normal life with her family and a life travelling the stars with the Doctor at the cost of losing her family forever, and she chooses the Doctor.
• First Girl Wins: Rose is one of the few companions that the Doctor has expressed obvious romantic affection for, and she eventually ends up with his half-Donna clone, in a very strange (but sweet) way. The writers have explicitly said that the Doctor-Clone told her "I love you" when they hooked up, and Russell T. Davies stated that they grow their own TARDIS (a cut scene originally filmed for the Series 4 finale, "Journey's End") and eventually go back to travelling through time and space in their own universe: "The Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler, just as it should be."
• Four-Girl Ensemble: If we consider the first four main companions, Rose provides the sweet, somewhat innocent Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold to Martha's Team Mom, Donna's Fiery Redhead, and Amy's Ms. Fanservice.
• Forgotten First Meeting:
  • She originally met the Doctor during the last moments of his Tenth incarnation on the New Year's Eve previous to her first meeting with the Ninth Doctor.
  • Also, the Doctor first saw her image when the Moment took her form in his War Doctor incarnation, before regenerating into the Ninth Doctor, but doesn't remember because of the crossed timestreams.
• A Friend in Need: To save the Doctor and Jack, she swallows the Time Vortex... talk about badass!
• Friend to All Children: Clearly shown in the few episodes that feature children in them, like "School Reunion" and "Fear Her".
• Friendship Moment: She and the Doctor share many of these. Their little smiles, hand holding, hugging... When things get tough, they always look at each other.
• Fun Personified: In contrast to the Ninth Doctor's more gloomy attitude. It also shapes how the Tenth Doctor comes out (more upbeat, more happy) to match her.
• Genre Refugee: She's clearly a character from a '00s Soap Opera who gets sucked into the Doctor's universe. This helped the revival serve as a invokedGateway Series to TV family science fiction at a time when the genre was said to be dead — and had something of a meta concept to it, seeing as the popular family viewing of that era was Soap Operas, Game Shows and Reality Shows (which later Ninth Doctor episodes also explore).
• Girl Next Door: One of the most ordinary companions in the entire series (save for her short-lived stint as a goddess).
• Girly Bruiser: She carries a huge gun during her Series 4 appearance and blasts a Dalek about to exterminate Wilfred Mott.
• A God Am I: Temporarily, when she was the Bad Wolf entity, the power of the time-vortex running through her head causing her to develop a god complex.
  The Doctor: You can't control life and death!
  Rose as Bad Wolf: But I can. The sun and the moon, the day and night...
• Guile Hero: She won't wait for the Doctor to rescue her. She will save herself, and often save others whilst doing it. Though not Book Smart, Rose has a lot of good instincts.
• Guy on Guy Is Hot: It's very brief, but her face when Jack kisses Nine is one of delighted surprise.
• The Heart: She is there for the Doctor just after he loses Gallifrey. She shows him how beautiful the universe can be; he sees the universe through her still innocent eyes and slowly he begins to see the beauty in things again. She is a great influence to him, she is there holding his hand and offering him her support no matter what.
• Held Gaze: She and the Doctor can be sickeningly cute together. (Not all viewers mind...)
• Heroic Willpower: She does this several times during her tenure on the show. Most noticeably when she becomes the Bad Wolf, and when she comes back to save the universes from collapsing.
• Heroic Sacrifice: "Doomsday" counts as she nearly dies trying to get the lever back in place to send the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void, and although she's technically not dead, she is listed as dead in her home world because she's stuck in another universe.
• Hidden Depths: Because her mom went out with a sailor, she's well aware of the differences between the Union Flag and Union Jack. When Eddie Connolly gets this wrong, she gleefully corrects him.
• Holding Hands: It's kind of their thing. The Doctor and Rose are always holding hands!
  The Doctor: There's a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive, wormhole refractors - but you know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.
• The Homeward Journey: During Empire of the Wolf, her main goal is just to get back home and her family to Pete's World.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Humanity is the core of who Rose is, and it’s her humanity that inspires the Doctor, even influencing who the Tenth Doctor is as an incarnation, as he is born with more humanity than the Ninth and a particular love of life and affection for humans.
• Humanoid Abomination: When she becomes/is possessed by the Bad Wolf (it's not exactly clear which) she is an unfathomably-powerful being beyond time that inhabits the body of an ordinary Earth human. At least she's a more benevolent version of this trope than most other examples.
• Hypocrite: Rose grows jealous of Trisha Delaney and tries to judge Mickey for seeing her, even though she ran off with the Doctor and has been bringing guys like Adam and Jack on the TARDIS. Mickey calls her out for this, and Rose goes quiet, knowing he's right.
• Iconic Outfit: Even though she's most often at home in jeans, hoodies and other casual wear befitting her working-class background, Rose tries out several different styles over the course of her travels. These include her PunkyFish tracksuit top◊ with the diagonal zipper from "The Long Game", her Union Flag T-shirt from "The Empty Child", the purple-blue "inside-out" patchwork top she wears in "New Earth", the cute tights-and-dungarees combo she dons in "Tooth and Claw", and the adorable pink 50s dress and blue bomber jacket◊ she has in "The Idiot's Lantern".
• If It's You, It's Okay: Billie Piper gave a Word of St. Paul statement in 2017 that Rose would still be in love with the Doctor in their new female thirteenth incarnation. Since Rose was only ever confirmed to be dating or interested in men on the show, it's unclear if this means Rose was bisexual but preferred men, or like with learning to accept Ten after Nine, Rose would come to accept the Doctor's change in sex and Thirteen would become a Closet Key for Rose as she falls in love with her again.
• It's All About Me: Has an unfortunate tendency towards this, as part of her Fatal Flaw. She asks Mickey "But what about me? What if I need you?!" when he decides to stay in an alternate universe to take care of his blind grandmother, and in "Love & Monsters", she decides telling off Elton (who's just watched his friends and Love Interest die) is more important than stopping the Monster of the Week, because he upset her mother.
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Despite being knighted as "Dame Rose of the Powell Estate" by Queen Victoria early in Series 2, Rose twice finds herself impersonating the hired help when she and the Doctor go undercover (needless to say, she is not amused):
  • At Deffrey Vale High School, she gets the short end of the stick as a dinner lady dishing out chips while the Doctor goes undercover as a teacher.
  • To infiltrate the Alternate Universe Jackie Tyler's fancy dinner party, Rose and the Doctor disguise themselves as catering staff, much to her chagrin. Rather than go with Rose's suggestion of Black-Tie Infiltration under their royal titles of "Sir Doctor" and "Dame Rose", the Doctor insists they'll find out more on the kitchen end of things.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Selfish streak aside, she is a compassionate individual.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: When she finds a cat in "Fear Her", she melts into affectionate gestures to it.
  Rose: Aren't you a beautiful boy? I used to have one like you!
• Leitmotif: The bittersweet piano piece, "Rose's Theme".
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Rose and Cassandra are very feminine characters but in opposite ways. She is the light to Cassandra's dark.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Her interaction with Nine had this vibe to it, leading others to suspect they were a couple.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Nine, and a little bit to Ten as well. She keeps them both stable.
• The Lost Lenore: Although she doesn't die, Rose becomes this to the Doctor when she gets trapped in the parallel universe, especially in Series 3 when her departure is a fresh wound for the Doctor and complicates his relationship with Martha.
• Love Confession: She tells the Tenth Doctor this. While he does not say it back, his clone whispers it back in her ear (according to the writers). She stays with the clone in the alternate universe. As of 2017 she stands as the first of only two companions to directly say "I love you" to the Doctor, which she does in "Doomsday" (the other being Clara Oswald in "Mummy on the Orient Express" (per Word of God), though the Doctor wasn't actually aware of this; River Song also more or less says this in "The Husbands of River Song", but isn't aware she's saying it with the Doctor standing right next to her).
• Love Redeems: To the Ninth Doctor. They meet soon after the Time War, and it's through her friendship and love that the Doctor begins to accept what he has done and move on.
• Male Gaze: Characters making comments about Rose having a nice butt while the camera focuses on it is practically a Running Gag. In his Establishing Character Moment, Captain Jack Harkness zooms in on Rose’s rear end with binoculars and says that she has an "excellent bottom". When Rose is possessed by Cassandra, she admires her "nice rear bumper" while a lingering wide-shot shows her fondling Rose's bum. And when she crawls through a tunnel in front of Toby Zed, he comments that his view "could be worse" as the camera switches to a close-up of Rose’s backside shuffling ahead of him.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Rose’s mortality becomes a point of tension and worry in the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. They’re forced to confront it in "School Reunion", when Sarah Jane makes Rose scared the Doctor will leave her, too, but he promises not to. They end up allowing both themselves and each other to buy into the fantasy of being together forever until "Doomsday" separates them for good.
  The Doctor: I don’t age, I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither, and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you...
  Rose: What, Doctor?
  The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.
  • The Meta-Crisis Doctor having the lifespan of a human ends up being what makes him suitable for Rose, as he will age with her and won’t be forced to live on without her.
• Meaningful Name: Susan, the first companion of the Classic Series, was named after the Hebrew word for "rose." The first companion of the Revival Series, meanwhile, is more directly named Rose.
• Meta Girl: As part of her characterization, Rose was made to represent viewers unfamiliar with Doctor Who, so she was given this role a lot. She questions the Doctor's Earthly accent, points out that the Dalek's (seeming) inability to climb stairs, and rolls her eyes at the Doctor's frequent Techno Babble. She experiences culture shock in the TARDIS, and when brought to Platform One to watch the end of the world, begins to second-guess herself.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: By Jabe the Tree in "The End of the World" when the Doctor clarifies she isn't his wife. Rose is obviously narked.
• Morality Chain: For the Ninth Doctor, helping a monster become a man again. For the Tenth, she was more like his partner in crime. Ultimately, Ten leaves her with the Meta-Crisis Doctor, who was born out of war and hatred and needed someone to stop him... much like his Ninth self when he and Rose first met.
• Mysterious Protector: She becomes this to Donna in "Turn Left", appearing and disappearing throughout the episode, remaining enigmatic while she gives Donna information to keep her and the Nobles safe and guide her in the right direction.
• Nerves of Steel: After being rightly terrified of the Daleks during her first few encounters with them, by the time Rose finds herself at the mercies of the Cult of Skaro, she is able to shout them down and take control of the situation by revealing her knowledge of the Time War, all without the Doctor or any back-up whatsoever. She pushes her luck when she starts to brag about killing the Dalek Emperor.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Indirectly responsible for all the fallout from making Jack immortal, including the return of the Master (and by extension, Professor Lazarus's rampage) and Miracle Day. Once again, though, this all happened under the influence of the Bad Wolf.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Over time, the Doctor's gleeful appetite for danger rubs off on Rose, and it's not long before their mutual sense of thrill-seeking fun develops into a rapport that sometimes appears disagreeably smug to onlookers. She shares the Doctor's relish of trouble afoot on Satellite Five, and Mickey has a point when he observes the TARDIS crew "think [they're] so clever" when they share a high-five in "Boom Town". Even the mortal danger endured on a daily basis by the crew on Sanctuary Base Six doesn't appear to hit home with a giggly Doctor and Rose until they find themselves separated from the TARDIS.
  • Never is this larky, adrenaline-junkie behavior more apparent than in "Tooth and Claw", where Rose and the Doctor gurgle delightedly at the prospect of encountering a werewolf mere moments after witnessing a man getting torn apart. Their juvenile antics during the episode horrify Queen Victoria, who chastises their ability to "consort with stars and magic, and think it fun".
• Non-Linear Character: When she was Bad Wolf, she existed across all of time, and also at one point manifested as The Moment many years before she'd meet The Doctor. Whether Rose Tyler and Bad Wolf are the same being or not is never made very clear, as Bad Wolf only technically appears twice, despite making its presence known across two different seasons. This is in addition to her pastime as a time-traveller, of course.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Rose joins the Pete's World equivalent of Torchwood and becomes a dimension-hopper off screen after "Doomsday", leading up to her enigmatic cameos and return in series 4.
  • Plans for a TV spin-off Rose Tyler: Earth Defence were tabled but did not come into fruition. However, her dimension-hopping would eventually be covered in the Big Finish series Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon.
• One Head Taller: Both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors are tall enough to pick her up. When they hug, usually either the Doctor picks Rose up or she jumps into his arms, or a mixture of both (often followed by a spin).
• One-Man Army: Singlehandedly defeated the Autons in her very first appearance, wiped out an entire fleet of Daleks at the end of that season (though admittedly, she was under the influence of Bad Wolf during that time), and personally confronted and gunned down multiple Daleks during her return in Series 4.
• Only Sane Man: In Empire of the Wolf, when Eight and Eleven start arguing, she firmly reminds them of the paradox they have been embroiled in and basically pushes them out of the discussion and into the action. An amused Eleven wryly comments he never expected her to ever be scarier than Jackie.
• Person of Mass Destruction: As the Bad Wolf entity, she destroys half a million Daleks in seconds.
• Physical God: Again, Bad Wolf is a basically a goddess of time because Rose consumed the Time Vortex.
• Plucky Girl: Rose definitely has courage and can think and act under pressure, using her gymnastics skills on a whim to save the Doctor and defeat the Nestene Consciousness in her very first episode. Her bravery only grows and by her last regular appearance, she's laughing in a Dalek's face.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Not usually, but she displays some mild homophobia in "Aliens of London", jokingly deriding the Doctor as "gay" for complaining about being slapped by Jackie.
• Prone to Tears: Rose is often brought to edge of tears by the emotive implications of her experiences, especially those revolving around her father's death and later her heartbreak over losing the Doctor to regeneration. After a particularly traumatic time in Series 1, Russell T Davies wrote the body-swap episode "New Earth" as a corrective to honour Billie Piper's request for a chance to play more comedy, and a lot of Series 2 is definitely meant to emphasize the fun and enjoyment she gets out of her adventures with the Doctor.
  • Nevertheless, Rose is seen to be tearful in several more episodes, as her anxiety over losing the Doctor becomes a major running theme for the rest of the season. Things are brought to an emotional head when this does actually come to pass during the tragic conclusion of "Doomsday", wherein Rose completely breaks down in sobs more than once, and her eventual reunion with the Doctor in Series 4's "The Stolen Earth" brings more tears when he's abruptly shot down by a Dalek.
• Proud Beauty: Downplayed. Unlike her mother, Rose tends to be more modest about her looks, her Victorian dress and her Union Jack T-shirt in Series 1 being the only instances where she chooses a more show-offy outfit. This becomes more pronounced in Series 2 as she starts wearing bolder colours along with more stylish outfits, signifying her growth and confidence as a person.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: In "Rise of the Cybermen", Rose gives the Doctor a sweet look, pressing her chin to his shoulder to convince him to let her seek Pete out after they realise Ear Pods are affiliated with his company through the manufacturer Cybus. The Doctor is taken in for a few moments before agreeing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She is appalled by Cassandra's snobbery and narcisstic claims to being "the last human" in "The End of the World" and gives her a piece of her mind:
  Rose: I was born on that planet. And so was my mum, and so was my dad, and that makes me officially the last human being in this room, 'cos you're not human. You've had it all nipped and tucked and flattened till there's nothing left. Anything human got chucked in the bin. You're just skin, Cassandra. Lipstick and skin.
  • When the two meet again in "New Earth", Rose gives her a similar lecture, pointing out that Cassandra's refusal to embrace change as something natural is precisely why she has continued to stagnate while the rest of humanity thrives around her:
  Rose: They evolved, Cassandra. They just evolved, like they should. You stayed still...got yourself all pickled and preserved and what good did it do ya?
• Running Gag: Characters commenting on Rose having a nice butt while Male Gaze is used.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: She and Cassandra engage in this when Rose finds her hiding place on New Earth.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In "The Unquiet Dead", when she changes out of her 21st century clothes for a more period-appropriate Victorian gown and a Prim and Proper Bun. The Doctor remarks she's beautiful, "...considering".
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: To the Ninth Doctor, mainly. The Tenth and her become closer and are less interested in hiding their mutual affection.
• Show Some Leg: References this trope in "The Doctor Dances" when she offers herself up to distract the guard, only for Jack Harkness to volunteer instead. "Trust me," he tells Rose, "You're not his type".
• Stable Time Loop: In series 1, the Doctor and Rose are followed by the words "Bad Wolf" — in the final episode, Rose saves the Doctor's life and uses the time-bending power of the TARDIS to deposit the words in the past, in order to inspire her to go forward into the future and save the Doctor's life, which ends in her putting the words into the past, etc., etc. The TARDIS-empowered Rose even declares she's "creating herself" by doing this.
  • The words also crop up a few times in the second and third series (since they were placed all over time and space, they're not going to stop showing up just because they're not needed anymore). The phrase also turns at the cliffhanger of "Turn Left" (with all written words, from the Doctor's point of view being replaced with "Bad Wolf" — even the TARDIS' signage), which heralds Rose crossing over back into the main universe.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: She just doesn't feel at home with her mum anymore after a while, especially in "The Parting of the Ways". This is revisited again in "Army of Ghosts", where Jackie is shown to be alienated by the changes in her daughter as she becomes more and more comfortable with the Doctor's world than her own.
• Supernatural Phone: Her 2005-era Nokia 3200 mobile phone, which the Doctor upgrades in "The End of the World" with "a little bit of jiggery pokery" so she can call her mother from five billion years in the future. She later dubs it the "Superphone", as it can pick up signals anywhere and work in all of time and space (it even has the TARDIS listed on the caller ID!). By the middle of Series 2, she's replaced it with a Samsung D500 with Internet options, which becomes instrumental in defeating the Cybermen in "The Age of Steel".
• Sympathy for the Devil: Rose is one the few New Who companions who takes pity on a Dalek in pain — twice — and helps it find peace in its final moments.
  Rose: Do it.
  Dalek: Are you frightened, Rose Tyler?
  Rose: Yeah.
  Dalek: So am I.
• Taking Up the Mantle: She is established early on as one to take charge of a situation and show leadership, particularly when the Doctor is absent or captured. This is taken up a notch in the alternate timeline created in "Turn Left" where he's dead, with Rose acting like the Doctor as she guides Donna towards correcting the timeline.
• Techno Babble: She picked up this habit from the Doctor.
  Rose: One word in the wrong place can change an entire causal nexus.
  Captain Magambo: She talks like that... a lot.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Early on during "Aliens of London" Rose laments aloud to the Doctor that no one else can relate to the thrill of having seen evidence of aliens with their own eyes. Of course, she says this right before an alien spaceship smashes through Big Ben and crash-lands into the Thames.
  Rose: Oh, that's just not fair.
  • While fleeing the Dalek in "Dalek" she's overjoyed at reaching a flight of stairs, assuming the Dalek won't be able to follow since "it hasn't got legs". Then the Dalek begins to fly...
  • Faced with a futuristic (and unbeknownst to her, lethal) version of The Weakest Link in "Bad Wolf", Rose declares "What the hell, I'm gonna play to win!" and spends much of the first round laughing at the absurdity of it. She ends up losing the final round and gets transmatted onboard a Dalek ship.
  • At the end of Series 2's "Fear Her", she just has to say it: "They keeping trying to split us up, but they never ever will. [...] We'll always be okay, you and me." Lamp-shaded by the Doctor, who responds "Never say 'never ever'" and senses that A Storm Is Coming. Cue the season finale...
• Thinking Tic: She sometimes plays with her hoop earrings, which she always wears.
• Took a Level in Badass: She appears to have taken one (off-screen) in Series 3 because she gets a lot of respect from UNIT in "Turn Left". Series 4 makes it explicit, with her carrying a BFG and blowing up Daleks.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Downplayed. It was at times suggested in Series 2 that the Tenth Doctor and Rose were not always the best influence on each other, having grown more cocky, co-dependent and self-involved. This only led to their hearts being shattered in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday".
• Trademark Favourite Food: Has a particular love of chips (fries).
• Twin Switch: She is forced to take her Empire of the Wolf's self place in order to allow her to see the consequences of her crusade.
• Unreliable Narrator: Everything she says about her death in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" is metaphorical or referring to the fact that she has been declared dead on Earth proper, (as Jack Lampshades in "Utopia", having believed the news was true until the Doctor informs otherwise).
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: To the Doctor, to the point where she became a Physical God to save him.
• The Watson: While far from the first Doctor Who companion to function as this, she was designed to have her viewpoint and knowledge be as close to the audience watching the show as possible.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Her Union Jack T-shirt in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances".
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rose is often willing to call the Doctor out when she feels he is in the wrong.
  • She was horrified that the Doctor would allow the Gelth to use human corpses as vessels for their consciousness in "The Unquiet Dead". And she was right to be worried, as the Gelth turned out to be malicious and the Doctor doing this led to at least two deaths.
  • In "World War Three", the Doctor doesn't seem to care that Jackie is in danger, and Rose responds by reminding him she's her mother.
  • In "Dalek", Rose calls the Doctor out on how willing he is to kill a Dalek that happens to have become sympathetic and non-violent, quite literally saying, "[The Dalek is] changing. What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"
• Working-Class Hero: Her family's stature is rather like this, being from a council estate, and the Ninth Doctor first meets her as a shop worker. She also finds kinship in fellow working-class people on her travels, such as Raffalo the plumber in "The End of the World" and servant girl Gwyneth in "The Unquiet Dead".

Bad Wolf

After being sent back home in the TARDIS by an all-but-defeated Doctor stuck in a battle he has no hope of winning, Rose, with the help of Mickey and her mum, desperately tries to break open the TARDIS console in order to find a way to get back to the Doctor. However, in doing so, she becomes possessed by the essence of the Time Vortex itself.

• Above Good and Evil: In its brief screentime, Rose as the Bad Wolf entity declares herself to be utterly beyond all mortal concepts in response to the Doctor's claim that she cannot control life and death.
  Bad Wolf: But I can. The Sun and the Moon. The day and night.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Bad Wolf is the bigger fish to the Daleks. She outright belittles the Dalek Emperor as "tiny" and a "false god" before demonstrating her complete superiority by disintegrating him and his entire fleet.
• Arc Words: Provides its own name, Bad Wolf, as the show's most famous example of this trope throughout Series 1. The phrase 'Bad Wolf' even continues to appear, albeit more scantily, throughout Russell T. Davies' tenure as lead writer.
• Deus ex Machina: Quite literally a god out of the machine. The Bad Wolf entity possesses Rose after Mickey's truck breaks open the TARDIS console, allowing Rose to become a Physical God and arrive at the Game Station just in time to save the Doctor from the Daleks.
• Humanoid Abomination: As a result of looking into and absorbing the Time Vortex, Rose is temporarily turned into a Physical God. She still looks her herself, but with golden energy frequently radiating in her eyes as the entirety of spacetime is open to her, power is positively pouring off of her every second she's the Bad Wolf, even her voice reverberates, and she has what looks like evaporated tear-stains to indicate the power is burning her up.
• Offhand Backhand: Nonchalantly deflects a Dalek's death ray, which had previously been shown to kill anything it hits.
• One-Hit Kill: Offers the Daleks a taste of their own medicine by annihilating them at a subatomic level one at a time.
• Outside-Context Problem: She is definitely one for the Daleks, who could not possibly have anticipated her arrival. The Dalek Emperor, for all his god complex, outright claims that she is not part of "his design" when the Doctor questions how the Bad Wolf meme could be connected to him.
• Power Incontinence: Rose's fragile human body can only contain the Time Vortex's enormous power for a few minutes before it starts tearing her apart. She makes sure to use it to the fullest extent while she has the time.
• Physical God: Bad Wolf is by far one of the most powerful, destructive entities in the Doctor Who universe, capable of effortlessly resurrecting the dead and atomising an entire Dalek fleet. It's a good stroke that she's on the Doctor's side.
• Stable Time Loop: A rather convoluted one. The Bad Wolf scatters its name throughout the universe to points in the Ninth Doctor and Rose's timestream specifically as a message to lead herself to the Game Station and come into existence. Although whether the entity always intended to call itself 'Bad Wolf', or was merely inspired by the Bad Wolf Corporation (which is where the Doctor starts to take serious notice of the words' omnipresence) is up to interpretation.
• Story-Breaker Power: Prior to Bad Wolf's arrival, Earth is in the process of being carpet-bombed into unrecognisability, the entire population of the Game Station is dead, and the Doctor is forced to make a Sadistic Choice that risks killing every living thing in the solar system. Then the TARDIS lands, and Bad Wolf uses her godlike powers to erase the threat of the Daleks within seconds of stepping foot on the satellite. Understandably, she does not stick around for long.
• Transhuman Abomination: A temporary one. She's the result of a human looking directly into the Time Vortex, turning Rose into a Physical God who has the raw power of spacetime running through her head, at the price of the full power threatening to burn her away until the Doctor removes it.

Tropes associated with Big Finish

• A Day in the Limelight: She gets her own boxset, The Dimension Cannon, focusing on her exploits during the events leading up to "Journey's End".
• Alternate Self: The Dimension Cannon introduces two new Alternate Universe counterparts for her: a cat owned by Jackie much like on Pete's World where her counterpart was a dog, and a male counterpart named Rob Tyler who was in a relationship with Mickey.
• The Bus Came Back: She returns seven years after her last appearance on the show, and nine years since she was a full time companion in The Tenth Doctor Adventures, which is set during her time with Doctor, and two years after that she comes back in a boxset of her own which is set after she's been separated from the Doctor.
• Dimensional Traveller: In her spinoff, set before she reunites with the Tenth Doctor, she starts to travel to parallel worlds using a dimension cannon, with Pete Tyler serving as her contact as she cannot stay on any of them for long because they have a time limit, and if they run out then she will be trapped on the parallel world she's on.
• Determinator: Rose feels that her life has been on hold ever since she got separated from the Doctor. As a result, when offered a chance to go to any parallel universe which will give her a chance to reunite with the Doctor, she takes it despite knowing the odds are slim.
• Hidden Depths: She was a Girl Guide as a kid, and apparently, people said it was a waste of time. She more than proves them wrong, using her knowledge of knots to tie up one of the Herazi.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Invoked in "Cloud Eight" when the Ninth Doctor and Rose arrive in the 47th century and Rose notes that most names of people in this time are based on pop culture from her era, such as "Oz" and "Marty", but she doesn't understand the significance of a girl being called "Elsa", prompting the Doctor to note that she'll enjoy Frozen when it comes out in a few years from her time.
• Protagonist Title: Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon.
• Tempting Fate/Foreshadowing: In The Sword of the Chevalier, she says that she doesn't believe in the Devil. Those familiar with Series 2 of NuWho know that she's due to encounter a very Satan-like being...
• Trapped in Another World: Rose ends up living in Pete's World with everyone thinking that she's dead in her original world, and while she ends up having her dad alive, her parents together, a little brother, and a job working for Torchwood, she feels her life isn't the same anymore after being separated from the Doctor. When Pete tells her there's a way to finally be reunited with the Doctor, she decides to take that offer from him even if the world she ends up on might not be her world.

Empress Rose Tyler (Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth Doctors)

• Alternate Self: She came from a negated Alternate Timeline, but due to having been in the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS, she somehow now exists as a separate entity from the original Rose.
• A Day in the Limelight: She and the original Rose starred in the Empire of the Wolf comic arc alongside Eleven and Eight.
• Have We Met Yet?: She has a moment of this with Eight during Empire of the Wolf, knowing full well their meeting has to be a paradox.
• Older and Wiser: By Empire of the Wolf, she's mature and understands time travel well enough that she's very reticent to explain the whole "Bad Wolf" thing to Eight, knowing in a paradox as big as the one she's been dragged to, no good can possibly come from making it larger with such a dangerous piece of information.
• Quest for Identity: Her problems stem from this. Despite her massive power, due to her ability to see other pasts, she has always lived in the shadow of other Roses.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: She has a crude one, allowing her to see the original Rose's life.
• Senseless Sacrifice: For all her power, she is only devoted to helping others... to the point the Doctor genuinely asks when it's supposed to end. Even worse, her "help" comes by becoming a Galactic Conqueror.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Having grown up on an oppressed Earth, she decided to dedicate her life to liberating planets and stamping out oppression. Unfortunately, her empire ended up enslaving the former oppressors and their people. Thankfully, after the Eleventh Doctor shows her this, she decides to mend this.

Mickey Smith (Ninth and Tenth Doctors)

Mickey starts the show as Rose's boyfriend, abandoned by her when she became the Doctor's companion. This doesn't stop him from running around for a few adventures during that series anyway, although he and Rose never quite manage to patch things up. He later joins the TARDIS crew as a companion for a few episodes early in the second series, only to stay behind off-planet (sort of). He returns at the end of the second series, as well as the end of the fourth and briefly in the 2009 specials. In the end, he found true love and married Martha Jones.

• All Love Is Unrequited: Played straight with Rose, later averted with Martha, whom he married.
• Alternate Self: His counterpart in the zeppelin world is a gay gangster named Ricky. (The gay part is suggested from a deleted scene, but it's debatable if the scene is canon or not.)
• Always Second Best: He can't measure up to the Doctor even after taking his level in badass. Eventually, he stops trying to and decides to become his own person. Leading him to look for his own purpose in life, away from the TARDIS and Rose.
• Amicable Exes: Initially Rose's boyfriend, after an awkward break-up, the two eventually manage to get along.
• Badass Normal: A powerless, nerdy human with hacking skills who also becomes a Cyberman killer and freelance alien hunter.
• Better as Friends: He and Rose become this, as their brief interactions are more positive in series 2 once Mickey accepts she's never going to be with him.
• Black and Nerdy: He's a more than capable hacker.
• Butt-Monkey: The Doctor considers him an idiot, his girlfriend gives him little to no respect, his girlfriend's mother accuses him of murder when her daughter goes missing, Captain Jack starts making fun of him within ten seconds of meeting him, and even K-9 gets to throw in a bit of snark while informing him, "We are in a car." Hell, his own parallel universe equivalent finds him embarrassing, and this is a guy who considers himself a badass because of the number of parking tickets he's accrued. Thankfully he gets some more respect after spending time in the parallel world.
• Childhood Friends: Rose and Mickey were this before they started dating at some point before the start of the series. This is why they’re still emotionally attached to each other after they break up and why Mickey is so close with Jackie.
• Humiliation Conga: His girlfriend runs off with an alien after basically snarking how useless he was. She goes missing for a year and the police haul him in five times, while her mother and the entire estate gives him hell about it. The Doctor keeps calling him Ricky and turning into better looking guys while hauling his girlfriend all over the cosmos. Then Mickey pisses on everyone and decides to show his worth.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of "The Age of Steel", he stays behind in the alternate universe to help his dead alternate self's invokedboyfriend (long story) fight the Cybermen and take care of his parallel-universe grandmother. Then he comes back for good at the end of "Journey's End" (after returning briefly in "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday").
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Once it becomes clear that Rose has chosen the Doctor and doesn't see a future with him, Mickey is still willing to help her get back to the Doctor if that's what she truly wants.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Carries a torch for Rose for years despite her affections for the Doctor, but as soon as the Metacrisis Doctor is sent to live with Rose and company in Pete's World, returns to the prime universe. Between this and his parallel-universe grandmother having passed away, Pete's World no longer has anything to offer him.
• Love Triangle: Rose leaves him as soon as she meets the Doctor, although she considers herself "sort of" Mickey's girlfriend for a while after that. When she also starts fancying Jack, Mickey pretty much gives up on the relationship. He becomes part of the family again when he and Rose are left without the Doctor for a few years, but eventually steps out of her life forever when Rose gets together with the Doctor's half-Donna clone.
• The Mole: He manages to infiltrate Torchwood One after learning that the Cybermen of Pete's World had managed to cross universes. They never caught on.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • He's felt guilty for not helping his grandmother fix the stair carpet, which caused her to fall and break her neck. He decides to not let that happen again when he sees her parallel counterpart and decided to take care of her until she passed away peacefully.
  • Also when his counterpart Ricky was deleted by the Cybermen, he decided to not let it happen again.
• Mirror Character: To Rory Williams, as both are the boyfriends of the Doctor's main companion who feel unapreciated and threatened by their girlfriend's close relationship with the Doctor. They were also childhood friends with their respective love interests and experience surprising character development into a more stronger and tougher character. The difference is that Mickey's character development is about moving on from Rose so he can become his own person and he later finds Martha, while Rory stays with Amy after his character development and their relationship turns out much better.
• Nice Guy: A pretty laid-back boyfriend, if a bit aimless... at first.
• Pair the Spares: With Martha Jones, offscreen.
• Parental Abandonment: His father Jackson Smith was a locksmith who just took off one day when Mickey was a kid. The series never states where Mickey's mother is, but the novelization of "Rose" mentions she committed suicide. He was largely raised by his grandmother, who while genuinely loving also tended to slap him a lot.
• Poke the Poodle: His parallel equivalent is London's Most Wanted... For parking violations.
• Punny Name: Perhaps not intentional, but to "take the mickey" out of someone is to take any fight/vigor/self importance out of them by mocking them, and Mickey does have to put up with a great deal of mockery and bullying from Rose and the Doctor (mostly Nine, but Ten has his moments), and Jackie at first.
• Rebel Leader: Alternate Mickey. (It's Ricky.)
• Refusal of the Call: Initially, after his help in "World War Three", the Doctor finally offers him a spot in the TARDIS only to be turned down (one of the few companions to do so). He later takes his offer up in "School Reunion".
• Replacement Goldfish: Becomes one for Jake, Ricky's invokedboyfriend. Jake copes pretty well with the idea, but since Mickey's not gay, it's a dysfunctional setup to say the least.
• Taking Up the Mantle: When his alternate self dies, Mickey simply assumes his identity and continues the fight.
• Techno Wizard: He describes himself as "technical support" because he's very good with computers.
• Token Minority Couple: With Martha, of the "Independently-Made" variety.
• Took a Level in Badass: Multiple. To wit, from lovable but aimless boyfriend to a capable hacker and fully-fledged companion. Ends up fighting Cybermen in an alternate reality and respected member of that reality's Torchwood, and finally earns his happy ending with a woman who saved the world with the power of story.
• Useless Boyfriend: He is this to Rose. Being unable to help even when he is not the one in distress. He eventually outgrow it.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He develops into this with Jack over time. When they reunite on the Dalek Crucible, Jack mockingly calls him "Mickey Mouse" and Mickey responds in turn with "Captain Cheesecake". Then they cheer and hug it out.

Adam Mitchell (Ninth Doctor)

Short-lived companion; a Teen Genius from 2012. Holds the dubious honour of being the only companion to be evicted from the TARDIS for bad behaviour, and at 2 episodes and 2 stories is the shortest tenured companion in the revival era.

• Agent Scully: For such an amazing genius, he shows a remarkable lack of imagination, being stubbornly sceptical of alien abduction stories even though he's employed by a professional collector of alien artefacts. His first trip through time in the TARDIS completely overwhelms him.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Has a job that revolves around the collection of alien artefacts, but sees alien abduction stories as nonsense. Ironically, this is what happens to him at the end of his debut episode.
• Big Bad: For another piece of Doctor Who media, Prisoners of Time.
• Bolivian Army Ending: A non-lethal example in "The Long Game", but the episode ended with his prospects of living a normal life with his mum on Earth being effectively trampled. His fate after that is left deliberately ambiguous in the TV series, though the comic book storyline Prisoners of Time offers a possible closure to his story.
• Butt-Monkey: The Ninth Doctor shows him even less respect than Mickey. Think about that for a moment.
• Deliberately Bad Example: He's a horrible companion in every aspect, to demonstrate The Doctor's standards for who he lets travel with him.
• Disproportionate Retribution: While angry at the Doctor, in Prisoners of Time, Adam is manipulated by the Master into attacking eleven Doctors, even those who hadn't met him yet, planning to kill most of the Doctor's companions just to make him suffer.
• Ditzy Genius: A teen genius who thinks that his plan to sell information back to his own time is a good idea.
• Evil Counterpart: To pretty much all of the Doctor's companions. He's an unworthy companion who abuses the trust the Doctor places in him for his own selfish benefit and nearly gets the Doctor and Rose killed, causing the Doctor to unceremoniously eject him from the TARDIS crew.
• Expy: He's an insufferable boy genius, bearing more than a few similarities to Adric from the classic series.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse:
  • In Prisoners of Time, Adam claims that he only tried to steal alien technology to heal his mother of her illness (a detail that was in early scripts for "The Long Game", but was specifically excised because it made Adam too sympathetic), but the Doctor doesn't consider this a justifiable excuse even if it's true.
  • He also uses his consequence of living an isolated life to justify getting revenge on all the Doctor's incarnations as well as their companions. The Doctor remains unsympathetic, calling him out on causing so much trouble over a life "he doesn't deserve."
• Insufferable Genius: Very smug about it.
• Jerkass: Intentionally written as a troublemaker to show what kind of person makes for a bad companion.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: On Satellite Five, he recklessly pays for surgery to have an Infospike implanted, causing his brain to be exposed whenever anyone clicks their fingers in his vicinity. Requesting such a common hand motion as the trigger proves to be an extremely stupid move when the Doctor drops him back on Earth and his intention to keep a low profile there is immediately foiled... by his own mother, no less.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Prisoners of Time concludes with Adam realizing that his attack on the Doctor has gone too far, as he sacrifices himself to destroy the Master's equipment before the Master can use it to destroy the universe by attacking the TARDISes.
• Never My Fault: In the aftermath of his disastrous adventure with the Ninth Doctor, he insists that since the Doctor was in charge he can't be held responsible for the bad decisions he made. Naturally, the Doctor doesn't buy it.
• Not Brainwashed: The Master states in Prisoners Of Time that Adam's scheme was pretty much his own. He didn't have to influence him at all.
• Romantic False Lead: For Rose, despite Adam's overall unpleasantness and the fact that she was already in a committed relationship to Mickey. She and Adam had some flirtatious chemistry, causing the Doctor to constantly tease her about her new boyfriend. Wisely, she didn't pursue anything with Adam after he showed his true colours.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • In "The Long Game", Adam is evicted from the TARDIS for abusing time travel for personal gain. In the very next episode, "Father's Day", Rose falls into the same trap by interfering with history to save her dad, causing the Doctor to seriously doubt her worthiness to travel with him as well. The Doctor thankfully forgives Rose for a momentary lapse, but Adam's earlier mistakes cast a looming shadow. Had Adam's original motivation for stealing the information-spiking technology from Satellite Five — to find a cure for his mother's illness — been kept in the final episode, the comparison to Rose would've been even clearer.
  • Possibly alluded to when they meet again in Prisoners Of Time, where Adam reveals this original motivation and rants about the meaningless life he had to live after he was put back on Earth. While the Doctor has No Sympathy, Rose apologizes for what he went through.
• Shoo Out the New Guy: Invoked. He's an example of what not to do if you're travelling with the Doctor.
• Smug Snake: He narrowly escapes a rampaging Dalek, yet has the nerve to mock its apparent inability to scale a flight of stairs. Big mistake. Later, he convinces himself that he can outsmart the Doctor. Big mistake.
• Teen Genius: And quick to mention it.
• Temporary Scrappy: Purposely written in his first and only adventure as companion as an Insufferable Genius who endangers the Doctor and Rose's lives trying to use time travel for personal gain, and then lies to the Doctor's face and blames him when confronted about it, getting himself booted from the TARDIS as a result and demonstrating that not everyone is suited to be a companion.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Despite the lack of respect he earned in life, sacrificing himself to stop The Master in Prisoners Of Time got him acknowledged post-mortem as "A Companion True."
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Attempts to change his own future by sending information back from the year 200,000. It doesn't end well.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: By Prisoners of Time. After being kicked off the TARDIS, Adam had to live a quiet life away from people to avoid them discovering the the hole in his head and cutting him up as a result. Seeing how the Doctor and Rose continued their adventures while he was resigned to "a life not worth living", he eventually swore revenge.

Captain "Jack Harkness" (Ninth, Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors)

Captain Jack is a 51st century native, an Extreme Omnisexual former Time Agent, turned time-travelling con-man, turned galactic hero when he met the Doctor — and, eventually, turned immortal. Madly fancies the Doctor, although he Really Gets Around nonetheless.

After being revived from death into an immortal fixed point in time, circumstances lead to him becoming the leader of Torchwood 3, and keeping a lid on the alien activity around Cardiff Bay.

Spoilers through Revolution of the Daleks are unmarked.

Tropes associated with Doctor Who

• Age Without Youth: Expresses some worry about having an extremely slow version of this, since despite little actual signs of aging he's begun to find white hairs. To top it off, he is implied to eventually mutate into the Face of Boe after several millennia.
• Ambiguous Situation: At the end of "Fugitive of the Judoon", he gets attacked by nanogenes (again), but it's unclear what, if anything, they'll do to him.
• Badass Longcoat: Of the World War II greatcoat variety.
• Big Damn Kiss: The first person after the show came back, and the first male person (in the TV show at least), to snog the Doctor. Nine doesn't mind at all.
  Jack: Doctor... I was much better as a coward.
• Boldly Coming: Men, women... giant insects... robots...
• Breakout Character: He was so popular he got his own show in the form of Torchwood.
• The Bus Came Back: Reappears in "Fugitive of the Judoon" a decade after his last appearance, giving the companions a message for the Doctor to "Beware the Lone Cyberman".
• Camp: It's John Barrowman. His camp switch doesn't have an "off" setting.
• The Casanova: How do you know he's flirting with you? He introduces himself.
• The Charmer: Manages to charm Rose within minutes.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In "The End of the World", assuming he's the Face of Boe. (Russell T Davies refuses to elaborate on whether or not they're actually the same person, as it would apparently ruin the joke.) Barrowman said in an interview that when he and Tennant found out the implication, they spent several minutes laughing and cheering.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Never tries anything with someone who's already in a monogamous relationship except Gwen, and is very willing to be strictly monogamous if the right person comes along. Is kind and considerate towards his fuckbuddy Ianto and eventually enters a committed relationship with him in Torchwood. Has been married at least once, although his immortality has made him a bit wary of commitment.
• Contagious Heroism: He starts off as an amoral con-man, but time spent with the Doctor changes him into a lovable anti-hero.
• Continuity Nod: In Jack's first appearance, his 51st century backstory and knowledge of "Time Agents" is a continuity nod to Classic Who story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". In that story, the war criminal Magnus Greel also hails from the 51st century and is worried that the Doctor might be a Time Agent sent to arrest him.
• Con Men Hate Guns: Averted. Jack may have been introduced as a time-travelling con-man, but he's also a Gun Nut. He even kept a tiny blaster hidden up his ass.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Keeps a tiny blaster hidden up his ass, just in case he's caught with his pants down. Or subjected to de-fabrication.
  • It took him nineteen years, but in "Revolution of the Daleks", Jack manages to get himself arrested and sent to the same prison as the Doctor, arranging to be in the cell right next to hers, having already ensured that all the tools he needs to get them both out are available. Including a vortex manipulator he once again shoved up his ass.
• Demoted to Extra: After he left the TARDIS and subsequently joined Torchwood, he made return appearances in the Series 3 and 4 finales. Jack also reappears in Series 12 to give a warning to the Doctor, and later plays a key role in saving her from prison in time to stop the latest Dalek threat.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • In Doctor Who, he's fun-loving and campy, while on Torchwood, he's serious, brooding and more like the Doctor.
  • His Healing Factor. When the Doctor explains the source of his immortality he describes him as a "fact" and a fixed point in time to the point of being a Brown Note for him and the TARDIS. All other sources treat it as a more traditional Healing Factor, as it's stated that he will still age extremely slowly, and if he is indeed the Face of Boe, they will eventually die. Torchwood: Miracle Day even suggests that he was stripped of his Healing Factor.
  • How long Jack can be dead for is also strangely inconsistent. Sometimes killing him lasts several minutes (as is usually depicted), sometimes up to an hour (Exit Wounds implies his death by John Hart lasted around 45 minutes), and Jack oftentimes doesn't gasp for air (His revival in Journey's End and Day Four being good examples).
• Determinator:
  • Jack clung onto a TARDIS that was desperately trying to shake him off, all the way through the Time Vortex, to the very end of time itself! The TARDIS ran out of universe to go through before Jack was willing to give up his chance to reunite with the Doctor.
  • Spending 100+ years prior to this waiting around Cardiff for their respective timelines to coincide.
  • Deliberately getting arrested and spending 19 years in prison until his cell was moved close enough to the Doctor's to allow him to break her out.
• Ethical Slut: Made much more obvious in Torchwood, where he's shown to care deeply about his partners' personal boundaries, emotional health and safe sex. He abhors cheating on both fronts.
• Even the Guys Want Him: As demonstrated multiple times on both Torchwood and Doctor Who that it becomes a running joke that anyone he says "Hi" to has the hots for him.
• Extreme Omnisexual: In his home era, everyone is having sex with everything else. Writer Steven Moffat calls him "bi", but that doesn't even begin to cover it; his teammates at Torchwood once observed that Jack will "shag anything if it's gorgeous enough". The actor at one point hilariously sums this up with the following statement: "He's a modern kind of guy. Anything with a post code."
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Before he was rendered immortal, his response to the Daleks' "Exterminate" was to defiantly throw down his gun, stand up straight, and mutter "I kinda figured that."
• Fantastic Racism: After his transformation into an immortal human that is a fixed point in time, the TARDIS initially really does not like him. She considers him a Humanoid Abomination. She might be over it by "Journey's End" (though circumstances conspired to have Jack be on board, so she may be willing to put up with him).
• Foil:
  • A friendly one to the Doctor. Even on a certain meta level: It's been noted that while Jack has an American accent and is more in line with typical sensibilities of American science fiction action heroes, the Doctor is supposed to reflect a more traditionally British and more pacifistic approach to SF heroes, even in action scenes.
  • Perhaps unintentionally, but serves as one to the Doctor's other militaristic minded friend The Brigadier. The Brigadier is an English man loyal to the British Government and even more loyal to Geneva, born in the 20th century and lived with knowledge relative to the 20th century and a bit of the 21st century. Captain Jack Harkness is a human from the 51st century with a preference for an American English accent, operating in the 21st century on the behalf of Torchwood - an institution loyal to the British Empire. The Brigadier's knowledge and expertise comes from more traditional and conventional battlefield experience, while Captain Jack Harkness' knowledge and expertise comes from his experience as a Time Agent. Furthermore, The Brigadier has an openly known name but everyone calls him The Brigadier out of preference and respect. Captain Jack Harkness stole his name from a dead American volunteer captain from World War 2, with not many people knowing his real name.
• Free-Love Future: Comes from a century where cultural taboos on sex don't exist anymore. Due to humanity's evolution adapting to Interspecies Romance, human sexual preference also has little meaning anymore in the 51st century, and Everyone Is Bi. Jack's very much a Fish out of Temporal Water in this regard.
• Gasp of Life: Jack has Resurrective Immortality, due to being a fixed point in time. Whenever he dies and comes back to life, he does so with a painful gasp.
• Genre Refugee: A downplayed and rather odd example, but when first introduced Jack is basically the standard American sci-fi hero, similar to characters like Han Solo and Mal Reynolds, with all the traits and flaws expected from this archetype: he's a charming Casanova and Lovable Rogue with a Heart of Gold who is willing to kill. But somehow he's ended up in a British sci-fi series where the main character is a centuries old, body changing and pacifistic alien who travels through time and space in a wooden box. This contrast is greatly shown in their different approaches: while Rose is disappointed by the Doctor's more casual and ordinary approach to simply talk to people to find the spacecraft, Jack goes for what Rose calls a more "Spock" approach where he actually scans for alien tech and calls him "a professional".
• The Good Captain: Although technically, he doesn't become an army captain until Torchwood. His stint as "Captain Jack Harkness" when he first met the Doctor was a case of stolen identity.
• Healing Factor: His immortality functions as quickly healing from whatever killed him, although certain wounds take longer than others; a bullet to the head put him down for just a few seconds, but he needed at least a few minutes after being thrown off a five-storey building to land on a bench in a manner that clearly broke his back.
• Heel–Face Turn: Originally, he was merely a charming con artist. He became a better person thanks to the Doctor's influence, to the point he'd happily be a Love Martyr for him.
• Hero of Another Story: It's heavily implied in "Fugitive of the Judoon" that he's been having plenty of adventures (and relationships) ever since we last saw him.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Doctor certainly thinks so, and the TARDIS agrees with him: According to the Doctor, Rose (as Bad Wolf) didn't just revive him and make him immortal, she turned him into a living fixed point. The TARDIS went as far as to travel to the end of the universe to get rid of him when he grabbed it, and the Doctor's Time Lord instincts make it difficult to even look at him without mentioning how "wrong" he is.
• Ignored Enamoured Underling: Towards the Doctor. Jack and Martha share a moment over this when they realize the Doctor's ignoring both their crushes on him.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: He'll gladly take a few deaths if it helps save the day.
• Immortality Promiscuity: Granted 51st century folk are pretty promiscuous, but his immortality has made it even more prominent. Torchwood reveals he even fathered a love child.
• Internal Homage: He's the TV series' answer to spinoff character Jason Kane.
• The Lancer: Turns into this around the Doctor, taking orders from him (when usually, he doesn't take orders from anyone). He is also the opposite of the Doctor's usual Celibate Hero status.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The reason he quit the Time Agency. There's a two-year gap missing from his memory, and he has no idea why.
• MacGyvering: In "Bad Wolf", he jury-rigs a BFG out of the Compact Laser Deluxe he was hiding up his rear and the Defabricator. The gun returns in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"
• Made of Iron: On top of being immortal, he also is far more resistant to things that should instantly kill a human being, thanks to his bonus Healing Factor. He once entered a radiation chamber that should have disintegrated him from the intense concentration of stet radiation.
• Manly Gay: Not so much manly gay as manly omnisexual, but he is definitely a dashing man of action either way.
• Mr. Fanservice: Gets completely naked in his third episode, with much glee.
• Mr. Vice Guy: The vice in question being lust. However, he's a proper Ethical Slut, and always respects people's boundaries.
• Noodle Incident: How in the Dalek-loving hell do you explain the incident described in The Pornomancer entry, much less the whole Face of Boe thing?
• Only Known By His Nickname: He admits that "Jack Harkness" is an alias. It wasn't until 2017 his birth name was revealed.
• Phrase Catcher: Some variation of the following exchange will be said when he's around:
  Jack: [to his latest object of attraction] Captain Jack Harkness, and who are you?
  The Doctor: Stop it.
  Jack: I was just saying hello!
  Object of Attraction: I don't mind.
• The Pornomancer:
  Jack: The last time I was sentenced to death, I ordered four hyper-vodkas for my breakfast. All a bit of a blur after that. Woke up in bed with both my executioners. Lovely couple. They stayed in touch! Can't say that about most executioners.
  • He can also make "Hello" into a pickup line, which quickly becomes a Running Gag; as the Doctor observes, Jack saying "Hello" qualifies as flirting.
• Pride: He knows just how sexy he is, and is proud of it.
  "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."
• Put on a Bus:
  • With Torchwood on indefinite hiatus (there are audiobooks that make up a fifth, sixth and seventh series, however), he has been subject to a dearth of appearances, although he makes another appearance in "Fugitive of the Judoon." According to Moffat, they wanted to have him in "A Good Man Goes to War", but John Barrowman was still filming Torchwood: Miracle Day in America and the schedules couldn't work.
  • His stag parties are mentioned in "The Wedding of River Song", as one of the things the Doctor could do, before meeting his death at Lake Silencio. The Doctor could visit all of them in one night, but he doesn't.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: He looks like a full-grown human man but he's over 170 in Series 3 and over 2,040 in series 4 (although he spent most of those two thousand years suffocating to death in his own grave, raising the question of whether he was conscious for most of that or just stayed 'dead' until he could return for good).
• Running Gag: Jack can make introducing himself into an incredibly flirtatious statement, which is always shot down by the Doctor. Inverted in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", when Donna is more than willing to try and get into his pants, and Jack's completely uninterested.
• Shameless Fanservice Guy: Stripping him naked in front of millions of viewers doesn't inhibit him in the slightest. Quite the opposite, really.
• The Slow Path: He stuck around Cardiff for 100+ years waiting for the Doctor to turn up.
• There Is No Cure: One of the reasons he wants to find his way back to the Doctor after the Game Station battle is to find out if his new immortality — granted by a Humanoid Abomination with temporal power accidentally "bringing him back forever" and turning him into a living anomaly — can be removed. The Doctor simply tells him there's nothing even he can do about it. That being said, a couple Expanded Universe materials have introduced one or two things that are stated to be capable of removing Jack's immortality, and Torchwood: Miracle Day sees the same force which rendered all humans on Earth immortal due to receiving Jack's blood in turn apparently render Jack mortal (although Word of God speculates that it probably only removed Jack's Healing Factor and not his immortality). And then there's the hint in Doctor Who that Jack will slowly transform into the eons-old Face of Boe (who apparently dies for real in the year 5,000,000,000) if his immortality makes him live for long enough.
• Time Police: His original job was as a Time Agent, whose role was policing the time stream.
• Undying Loyalty: Spends nineteen years in a Judoon prison solely for the purpose of waiting for the opportunity to break the Doctor out.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Seems to settle into this kind of relationship with Mickey, after the latter's Taking Several Levels in Badass, judging by their interaction in "Journey's End".
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Back and forth between this and Living Forever Is Awesome. You could say both are deconstructed, because both are true at points. On one hand, every death is painful (both yours and your friends') and waiting for centuries is hard on one mentally, but on the other hand, it's undeniably useful in his line of work, there's always new friends to meet, and there's more time to flirt with them too.

Tropes associated with Torchwood

• Action Hero: His solution to any alien problem is to shoot it.
• Age Without Youth: Albeit at a much slower rate. This is partially an Author's Saving Throw for if/when Barrowman starts to show his age, unlike the actors who work in Highlander shows.
• Always Save the Girl: He is normally determined to save the world regardless of the cost required. However, he will make an exception if Ianto is put in enough danger. Case in point - in Children of Earth, he gives a speech to the 456 on how he intends to declare war against them, yet the moment the 456 release a lethal virus that infects Ianto, Jack gives up and lets the 456 take away 10% of the Earth's children if it means being able to save Ianto. Unfortunately for him, the 456 ignores him, and he is left to watch Ianto die in his arms. In the radio play "The House of the Dead", the moment Ianto's ghost points out that he and Jack could leave the titular pub, potentially dooming the world to be consumed by Syriath, Jack takes it if it means that Ianto would be brought Back from the Dead - unfortunately for him, Ianto was tricking him into leaving so that he could save the world instead at the cost of his life.
• And I Must Scream: On many different occasions, most famously being buried for a few hundred years.
• Anti-Hero: He's a good guy, but willing to do some pretty nasty things to the Monster of the Week.
• Artifact Alias: The name of Captain Jack Harkness is an alias that he took from a deceased American volunteer pilot to mix in with WW2 era London. He still goes by that title for most of his appearances, well after it serves any purpose. In fact, his true name is never revealed. Finally averted in 2017 Big Finish Doctor Who production The Lives of Captain Jack. After twelve years we finally learned his true name: Javic Piotr Thane.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: He always dresses in 1940s military style, and when forced to wear anything else, he is not happy about it.
• Back from the Dead: It happens again and again and again... and again...
• Badass Bookworm: He's usually the one who knows the most about the alien beings and objects that Torchwood encounters, as well as general history (because, being immortal, he lived through a lot of it).
• Badass Longcoat: Of the World War II greatcoat variety.
• Being Good Sucks: His efforts to do good by reforming Torchwood, whilst effective to some extent, still end with many of their members dead, with him feeling massive guilt over the belief that he enabled their deaths. He also finds himself constantly having to answer dilemmas that have no good answers and even the occasional sacrifice. Torchwood: Children of Earth shows this in action, as his efforts to stand up to the 456 end with the deaths of everyone in Thames House (including his boyfriend Ianto), and he chooses to kill his own grandson so that the world is saved from the 456. No wonder he's suffering from Heroic Fatigue by the end.
• Beneath the Mask: He tries to present himself as an emotionally distant and tough leader, but it is a façade to hide a massive degree of self-loathing over the things he has done and a Guilt Complex. Ianto gets the closest to seeing the true Jack, but even then, he laments that he's only just "scraped the surface". Jack subsequently attributes Ianto's death to him getting too close and decides to mask himself even further.
• Berserk Button: Do NOT touch his Hand-In-A-Jar.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He can go from dashing and witty to deeply scary and holding a gun in your face in a matter of seconds.
• Body Horror: His body regenerates layer by layer, and pops him back into consciousness as soon as he's able to live again... even if his skin isn't done regenerating yet. He does a lot of screaming at times.
• Break Them by Talking: For a hero, he's frighteningly good at demoralizing or breaking his opponents by saying just the right thing.
• Broken Ace: As the series progresses, you definitely see that Jack is having trouble dealing with the shitload of angst he's gotten handed with him. He takes Ianto's death especially hard.
• Brought Down to Badass: In Miracle Day, although he's become mortal, he still has about 200 years of adventuring and alien fighting under his belt.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the first episode of Miracle Day, he discovers that while the rest of the world has become The Ageless, he's now mortal again. He regains his immortality by the end of Miracle Day.
• Byronic Hero: He's an attractive man with a very Dark and Troubled Past and who tends to brood on buildings. His immortality and status as a man from the future have made him an outcast reluctant to get into any deep romantic relationships, and the difficult decisions he has to make as leader of Torchwood have made him hardened. Despite it all, though, he persists in protecting Cardiff from aliens.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Gray's Cain, given that Gray turned out to be a Card-Carrying Villain.
• The Captain: He's been leading Torchwood Three since the first day of 2000, when he was handed the role by his boss Alex after Alex had just killed off every other Torchwood Three member at the time. After the Battle of Canary Wharf destroyed Torchwood One, he becomes the leader of Torchwood as a whole.
• Camp Gay: Often puts on this persona when he wants people to underestimate him. And to piss off Rex.
• The Casanova: He will hit on any girl. Or any guy. Or anything for that matter. If it has a semblance of a personality, Jack will flirt with it. If it can consent, Jack hopes it will.
• Cartright Curse: Granted, his immortality means he can't find a lifelong partner anyway, but as it turns out they have a habit of dying in messy ways (such as Estelle and Ianto). Alice's mother Lucretia was a rare lucky one, and even she grew to resent Jack for his eternal youth prior to her death of old age.
• The Charmer: Jack will go for just about anything sentient... and just about anything sentient would go for him.
• Chekhov's Gun: His aforementioned Hand-In-A-Jar has both saved the universe and almost doomed it. It allowed the Master to reconfigure the TARDIS into his paradox machine and effectively rule the world for an entire year. But it was also responsible for the birth of Doctor-Donna and the Ten Clone who effectively help defeat Davros.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Has the occasional flirt with Gwen (and jokingly invites her for a threesome) and has a snog with his ex-boyfriend shortly before he asks his sometime "dance partner" Ianto on a date. Has been happily married at least once, and is still good friends with his ex-girlfriend from the 1940s, pretending to be his own son. Makes sure to spend quality time with his daughter and grandson and takes responsibility for them. The world is ending (again), he goes on a complete bender, gets smashed drunk, hooks up with a random bartender... and because he happens to be mortal that day (long story), he still insists on using condoms.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Was the Time Agency's top interrogator for 10 years. Considering other members included John Hart, and he is shown to do this on occasion, this is somewhat chilling.
• Cursed with Awesome: After episode one of Miracle Day, it's clear how lucky he's been with his type of immortality.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Quite a lot of his dark history has come back to bite him in the ass.
• Deadpan Snarker: His snark flows just as freely as in his parent series.
• Death by Origin Story: He was killed by Daleks on Doctor Who, and was revived and made immortal by a temporarily god-like Rose Tyler. Every time he died subsequently, he then returned to life. When we meet him at the start of the series, his death and resurrection happened 138 years ago. His death, abandonment by the Doctor, and immortality, more or less created the Jack we see here.
• Death Is Cheap: Explicitly immortal so it's okay.
• Disappeared Dad: During his childhood, his father was killed by the same alien forces who took away his brother to be tortured.
• Eternal Grief at the End: He is horribly broken by the trauma of seeing his boyfriend Ianto die in his arms after the 456 releases a lethal virus into Thames House and being forced to kill his grandson to save 10% of the children from being taken by the 456. Six months afterwards, he is still haunted by their deaths, and eventually leaves Earth altogether in an attempt to escape the guilt and grief. Whilst he eventually returns, he never gets over Ianto’s death and is last seen still in mourning and single, years after it had happened.
• Ethical Slut: For the most part, extremely ethical about it, to the point where if someone in a monogamous relationship kisses him, he probably won't kiss back. Jack probably could have seduced Gwen away from Rhys if he had really tried to, but instead he was the one telling her to keep some small measure of normality in her life. Despite his desire for Gwen to have a normal relationship with Rhys, he has cast her longing looks in the series.
• Expy:
  • Comes across as a hybrid of the Doctor and Stuart from Queer as Folk.
  • A Badass Longcoat who is Really Seven Hundred Years Old, investigates the paranormal with a Five-Man Band, has a foil played by James Marsters, gratuitously stands on rooftops, and is the lead on a more adult Spin-Off of the show he originated on? Wait, what show are we talking about? Just check the main images for Angel. Russell T Davies was pretty heavily inspired by Joss Whedon.
• Extreme Omnisexual: "You people and your quaint little categories..."
• A Father to His Men: Although an extremely flawed and harsh leader, he does genuinely care for his team members. He's rather forgiving and lenient of them for their mistakes considering the scale of destruction they've sometimes caused (such as almost letting a Cyberman loose and opening up the Rift, causing a demon to come out of it), will come to their aid when in great trouble (as the cannibals in the Brecon Beacons learn), went to great lengths to resurrect Owen after his death, and blamed himself for letting them die.
• The Gadfly: Sometimes plays up his Camp Gay persona just to mess with people. Exaggerated with Rex.
• Good Is Not Soft: One of the biggest differences between himself and the Doctor is that the latter is an All-Loving Hero who has mercy. Jack... tries.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: A very good thing, considering the sheer amount of Body Horror he gets subjected to.
• Guilt Complex: Whilst Jack Harkness is usually seen as a man who doesn't like dwelling much on bad stuff, he does blame himself for a lot of stuff. Most of these things were not his fault at all, but being in a privileged position (not only is he the leader of Torchwood Three, but he also can't die) makes him feel responsible for the lives of those around him. He blames himself for the 12 children that were sacrificed in 1965, even though that was a government decision and he was only chosen for it. He blames himself when the other members of Torchwood are targeted by the government, because they're only wanted due to their involvement with him. He blames himself for Ianto's death (and everybody else at Thames House), even though the 456 would have likely killed everybody they could even if Jack hadn't stood up to them. He had to sacrifice his own grandson and he blames himself for it, even if it was the only way to save the world. He also blames himself for Suzie's death (which he couldn't have stopped, as she killed herself the first time, and the second time she was killing Gwen to keep herself alive), his brother's torture (even though he couldn't have done anything to save him, they were just kids) and every action Gray took because of it, such as Tosh's and Owen's death at his hands.
• Healing Factor: As part of his immortality, any injuries that he sustains soon heal right up. He was once blown to pieces, and within a few hours had been restored to his regular self, although the process was very painful for him.
• Heartbroken Badass: Jack is a Badass who can take down the bad guys rather easily physically. However, he is also immortal, which means that he'll outlive all of his loved ones. The death he takes the most personally, however, is that of his boyfriend Ianto in Torchwood: Children of Earth. Afterwards, he's so broken that he personally lets his grandson die for the sake of Earth before eventually leaving the planet altogether, and as shown in Torchwood: Miracle Day, he still misses Ianto several years on.
• Iconic Item: He's rarely seen without his Badass Longcoat. It's so iconic that when it was destroyed after Jack was blown up along the Hub, Ianto buys a copy of the long coat for Jack despite being on the run from the government at the time.
• Immortality Hurts: Especially if it's well within reason that he has died over a billion times. He was once buried alive. He suffocated to death and came back every few minutes for two thousand years. That's not the worst that's happened to him.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: He's unable to die permanently, and as a result, he's gotten into some very nasty situations over the years, such as suffocating over and over again for almost 2000 years.
• Immortals Fear Death: Whilst his usual attitude towards his immortality is Who Wants to Live Forever?, he has admitted to fearing that whatever death he suffers from will be his last, and during the few times he has lost his immortality, he doesn't enjoy the idea of permanently dying.
• Insecure Love Interest: According to John Barrowman, the reason he pushes away Ianto in Co E was partially because he doesn't feel like he's good enough for Ianto. During "In the Shadows", it's shown that one of Jack's worst nightmares is the idea that Ianto doesn't actually love him and was only using him to get back at him for Lisa.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Jack is well aware of the sexual tension between himself and Gwen. He also goes to many lengths to make sure her relationship with Rhys succeeds.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: He has quite a strong jaw, and is one of the more overtly heroic members of Torchwood (comparatively speaking).
• Large Ham: Occasionally. He's often more boisterous and louder than the other members of Torchwood, who tend to speak in a more subdued, realistic way.
• The Leader: He is the boss of the reformed Torchwood.
• Leitmotif: "Captain Jack's Theme", a barnstorming (literally) action theme that also captures Jack's subtle mystique. According to Murray Gold, he wrote the theme around the phrase "here he comes in a ruddy great tractor", as the theme first plays when Jack, well, drives through a barn in a tractor shooting the villagers keeping the team captive. This would also be referenced in the Children of Earth soundtrack, where one of the tracks is bluntly called "Tractor Attack".
• Limited Wardrobe: Always wears some variation of a blue shirt, dark trousers held up by suspenders, brown boots and an RAF greatcoat. (When it's destroyed, Ianto finds a new one for him within a day while the world is ending.) While there was some variation in earlier series, his outfit goes completely unchanged for the duration of Miracle Day.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: While dying a lot isn't fun, living a lot provides a lot of opportunities for tail. It also comes in handy in his line of work.
• Loveable Sex Maniac: According to Ianto, Jack's style in bed is "innovative... bordering on the avant-garde." When he's joined up with three Doctors (Ten, Doctor-Donna and the Hand Clone), he makes it clear they don't want to know what he's thinking.
• Mean Boss: His management style involves a lot of snapping and shouting at people who question him and he seems to consider explaining his more unpopular decisions to be a completely foreign concept (which is unfortunate, because he's almost always right).
• Mr. Fanservice: He's the character most likely to get naked (which was also Lampshaded in Doctor Who). Finally gets a proper (and quite magnificent) sex scene in series 4.
• Mr. Vice Guy: You'd think it would be his lust that gets him into trouble, but it's actually his brashness.
• My Greatest Failure: Seeing as he has a massive Guilt Complex, this is a given.
  • He feels enormous guilt over letting go of his brother Gray's hand during the alien invasion, which took him, as well as his inability to find him. Not helping matters is that when Jack finally sees him again, Gray has become so broken from his torture that he blames Jack for everything and is consumed with seething hatred for his brother - because of this, Jack chooses not to fight back when Gray buries him for thousands of years, thinking of it as the appropriate penance for him.
  • Ianto's death at the hands of the 456 due to his brash decision to confront them without much of a plan, as well as his subsequent decision to kill his grandson to stop the 456, are incidents that he feels incredibly guilty for. He leaves Earth because he found that he couldn't get away from the guilt otherwise, and he becomes less willing to get into a long-term relationship afterwards under the belief that him starting to open up was what led to Ianto's death.
• Mysterious Past: Other than his immediate family, birthplace, and former occupation, almost nothing is known about him. What is known normally isn't pretty.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Since he's immortal, this means that he's lost many friends and lovers over the years. As a result, he acts distant with the others and struggles to commit himself to any relationship out of a pre-emptive desire not to be hurt by their future deaths. Even then, this isn't effective, as despite his attempts to shrug off Ianto's attempts at defining their relationship, he is still shattered by his death.
• No Name Given: "Jack Harkness" is not his real name, but one he stole from a World War II pilot and has used ever since. Tosh does ask him what his actual name is, but he doesn't answer the question, and it takes until the Big Finish audios for it to be revealed.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He seems to be a Camp Gay silly fop, but Beware the Silly Ones because he can and will shoot to kill.
• Offing the Offspring: At the climax of Children of Earth, he's forced to use his grandson as an "antenna" for the signal that will destroy the 456, killing him in the process, because Stephen is the only child available as Jack doesn't have time to find another. The trauma causes Jack to leave Earth for a while, as seen in "The End of Time".
• Out of Time, Out of Mind: 1874 years of unending torture didn't seem to bother him too much. It is possible that he simply stayed dead for the duration of it, but it can't be known.
• Papa Wolf: He is older than his team by a wide margin so he's basically the Team Dad, and you are in for a world of pain if you cause trouble for them. The Doctor has mercy. He doesn't. This is best shown on three separate occasions: first when he tricks a Starfish Alien in human form that manipulated Tosh via sex and emotions into teleporting into the heart of the sun, when his team was captured by cannibals and he performed a Big Damn Heroes with a tractor and a pump action shotgun, and when he shoots a Mad Scientist dead for shooting Owen.
• Pragmatic Hero: He has done some very dark things over the years to help save the Earth, whether that be killing the girlfriends of two of his employees because they were evil, handing over a child to the Faeries because they were going to destroy the world, or mistreating a Weevil to get the scoop on an alien fight club. In the audios, his misdeeds include joining a terrorist group to stop the Sorvix from laying waste to Cardiff and committing genocide against an alien race because they were going to take over otherwise. These decisions do weigh on him, leading to him gaining a massive Guilt Complex.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Now past the 2000 mark but he hasn't aged at all save for some gray hairs.
• Really Gets Around: If someone has any kind of sexuality, they will be attracted to Jack, and Jack will be attracted to them.
• Redeeming Replacement: As the leader of Torchwood Three, this is what he attempts to be for the old regime (outright pointing out to an unamused Doctor that he's doing his best to change the organization in his honor). And while the organization is still the grayest Big Good in the verse by a considerable margin considering how many Pragmatic Heroes it seems to draw in (or how the members become more pragmatic as time passes), under Jack's leadership for the most part they avoid the destructive My Country, Right or Wrong Well-Intentioned Extremist trappings the original organization was filled with. UNIT still comes off as notably less ruthless and The Bannerman Road Gang are firmly The Cape, but the changes are notable while Jack is leading the organization.
• Resurrective Immortality: He can technically die, but only for a short while (in at least one case, for several days) due to a mixture of respawning and From a Single Cell.
• Running Away Is Not a Solution: Unable to deal with his guilt over killing his own grandson - and believing himself responsible for the deaths of his boyfriend Ianto and his team members at Torchwood - Jack decides to run from Earth and the responsibilities and remaining friends he still had there. It is shown that doing so strains his relationship with Gwen, who learns that she isn't enough for him to stay around and is left wondering if she will ever see him again. When she later asks him if it worked, Jack doesn't respond, indicating that his efforts didn't make him feel any better. Tragically, Jack doesn't really learn his lesson, alternating between staying on Earth and disappearing to parts unknown.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Has seen more pain and destruction than any other good-aligned character in the Whoniverse, except the Doctor and possibly Rory Williams. He becomes even more traumatized after the events of Children of Earth. He manages to weaponize that fact from the get-go in Miracle Day, when he's able to suggest experimenting on the horrifyingly gruesome victims of Miracle Day's consequences, without being halted by his own emotions.
• They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Whilst he is somewhat open regarding his previous sexual escapades, he is extremely closed off regarding his past, either deflecting, being obtuse, or outright not responding whenever someone asks him a personal question. As a result, his team, especially Owen, are slow to trust him and become a cohesive unit, and his boyfriend Ianto laments how little he knows about Jack in his final hours of life.
• The Slow Path: Has had to wait from 1869 to 2008 for the Doctor to fix his vortex manipulator, and again from 27 AD to 2009 (with many, many deaths).
• Time Police: Formerly, as a Time Agent, though he left after losing two years' worth of memories.
• Token Immortal: He is the only immortal in Torchwood. Owen comes the closest to matching him, being The Undead with a potentially unlimited lifespan, but even he ends up killed for good by radiation.
• Touched by Vorlons: Thanks to the Bad Wolf, he'll never die permanently. At least, not until he becomes the Face of Boe (if he really is the Face of Boe).
• Twin Threesome Fantasy:
  • On Torchwood, Jack mentions having once had a boyfriend who opened doors dramatically like Gwen, but he put up with it because he was one of twins. "Twin acrobats. I should write that book. Or maybe illustrate it."
  • On Doctor Who, the Doctor references this by telling a Sontaran-created clone of Martha, "You might as well have worn a T-shirt saying 'Clone'. Well, perhaps not around Captain Jack." Jack also says, "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now" when there are three Doctors.
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: His weapon of choice whilst running Torchwood is an antiquated Webley revolver, a fitting weapon for a rugged immortal who has been on Earth since the late 19th century.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets it and dishes it out.
  • On the receiving end, gets this in his first appearance when his "harmless" Chula ambulance is in fact threatening to destroy humanity due to its malfunctioning nanogenes.
  • On the giving end, to the Tenth Doctor when he finally catches up with him, for abandoning him on Satellite 5, and for the Doctor's Fantastic Racism about his immortality.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Dying a lot and centuries of waiting isn't fun.

Tropes associated with Big Finish

Captain Jack Harkness is the man in charge at Torchwood: knowledgeable, immortal, absolutely gorgeous. At his core, oscillates between Team Dad and Action Hero. We've definitely seen him be the Science Hero as well, though usually other members of the team (read: Tosh) have that down.

• The Bus Came Back: He's the second major character from the new series to get an audio spin-off, after Kate Stewart and UNIT.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Whilst he briefly has relationships with both Tyler Steele and Colin in The Story Continues, he is far less open emotionally to them, revealing, and willing to commit to a relationship than he was prior, outright telling Tyler that he refuses to open up because the last time he did it with someone, his previous boyfriend Ianto, it ended poorly.
• Heroic Fatigue: Whilst he once again returns to lead Torchwood in the 2010s, it is clear that the emotional stress of losing his teammates, making tough decisions to protect Cardiff and the world, and the death of his boyfriend have taken a toll on Jack, as he is far more absent and flighty of a leader than he was in the 2000s. In "Future Pain", he is outright reluctant to return to Torchwood after being kicked out because of how exhausted he is, and only re-joins when Orr tells him of their suspicions over Yvonne.
• Mugged for Disguise: He's briefly forced to wear the Sixth Doctor's infamous coat and pose as him. This being Jack, he somehow manages to pull the look off if promotional artwork is anything to go by.
• Put on a Bus: He loses contact with Torchwood whilst on the run and disappears to parts unknown in Among Us.
• The Reveal: "Month 25" reveals much about Jack's falling out with the Time Agency, why he had two years of his memory wiped, and that his real name is Javic Piotr Thane.
• Screw Yourself: Well of course Jack would hit on Jack. Extreme Omnisexual, remember?
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He's a lot more flighty and secretive in "Aliens Among Us" than in earlier stories, and his decision to lead the terrorist movement Red Doors after being kicked out of Torchwood is extreme even for him. It may be justified by his more weary attitude towards Torchwood and his trauma over the death of his teammates and his boyfriend thanks to the organisation.