Why does Doctor Who‘s Face of Boe finally meet his end, despite the immortality bestowed during his days as Captain Jack Harkness? In Doctor Who‘s first season under new management, the Ninth Doctor met John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness – a flamboyant rogue time agent with a million-credit smile and a compulsive habit to flirt with anything that moves (and plenty that doesn’t, probably). Although Jack died fighting off Daleks, he was resurrected by Rose Tyler after she absorbed the heart of the TARDIS, and Jack has been immortal ever since.
Another recurring presence in The Doctor’s life is The Face of Boe – an ancient, giant head in a tank that always has wisdom to impart, but in a shocking Doctor Who season 3 moment, The Doctor learned that the Face of Boe was Captain Jack’s future. Since this unlikely revelation, Doctor Who has left many Face of Boe mysteries unaddressed. For example, how does a good-looking chap like John Barrowman turn into a big ol’ face? Perhaps the biggest unanswered question, however, is how the Face of Boe finally dies. Doctor Who clearly shows that Jack is immortal thanks to Rose Tyler, but the Face of Boe ultimately perishes in “Gridlock,” set during the year 5,000,000,053.
Doctor Who hasn’t yet addressed why Captain Jack Harkness is eventually allowed to die after clinging to life for so long, but a few possibilities can be deduced. Firstly, there’s the source of Jack’s immortality. Rose Tyler as the Bad Wolf is a one-off phenomenon – a rare combination of Time Lord energy and human biology that allows Billie Piper to grant Jack his immortality. But the Bad Wolf’s power is still Gallifreyan in nature, and it’s well established that Time Lords can only cheat death for so long. True immortality still eludes them. Because of this, even Captain Jack’s ability to avoid the Grim Reaper must have a time limit. Perhaps it took 4,999,998,050 years (give or take) for Rose’s influence on Jack’s DNA to wear off. And, surely, if one could use the heart of the TARDIS to escape death permanently, The Master would’ve given it a crack already.
If the effects of the time vortex didn’t wear off naturally, it’s feasible that the Face of Boe undid them himself. During his millions of years roaming time and space, Jack might’ve lost his body from the neck down, but he picked up a few tricks too. The Face of Boe communicates via telepathy and possesses wisdom so great that even The Doctor looks like an amateur in comparison. Having attained knowledge and new powers over the course of millennia, who’s to say that the Face of Boe didn’t find a way to release the curse of eternal life and live out his remaining days as a mortal being.
A final (and arguably more likely) theory is that the Face of Boe doesn’t die at all, but simply transcends beyond physical form. After Jack first comes back to life, The Doctor believes Harkness will never age past his prime. Since you’d be hard-pressed to describe a head in a tank as “his prime,” The Doctor was obviously mistaken. But Jack’s evolution into an alien noggin isn’t necessarily the end of his life. The next step in the undying transformation of Captain Jack Harkness might involve becoming some kind of spirit or energy that floats around time and space sans body. This would at least explain why The Doctor calls Jack a “fixed point” that can never completely be removed – the Face of Boe’s death is just the start of Jack’s next Doctor Who chapter.
About The Author
