Given an unexplained second chance, Jack Harkness just wants to be left alone in the aftermath of the Dalek invasion – but some people persist in calling him a hero…

There are some lovely Easter eggs in Guy Adams’ script for this first story filling in some of the gaps in Jack Harkness’ life (the town where he chooses to live for a start), and Adams makes some clever extrapolations from the little we do know about this period – Jack tells the Doctor that he used his Vortex Manipulator to bounce back to the 21st century and got things a bit wrong, but we have no idea how long it was after the end of The Parting of the Ways that that happened. In this story, Jack is trying to come to terms with what happened on the Gamestation, and hiding away – but when he’s approached by a young reporter, he can’t help his own nature coming to the fore.

John Barrowman steps back with seeming ease into this younger version of Jack, making a good team with Shorvne Marks’ Silo Crook and Scott Haran’s Malfi Pryn; in fact, I’d enjoy hearing this group together again for another adventure down the line. Aaron Neil and Sarah Douglas are the other key pair in the story, with a shifting power dynamic that both sell very well.

Blair Mowat riffs off Ben Foster and Murray Gold’s “Captain Jack’s theme” with some very interesting instrumentation, tying the story more firmly to the Torchwood universe – and to be honest, although this is branded as a Doctor Who adventure, in terms of some of the thematic darkness, this episode does feel more like a prequel to the spin-off series.

Verdict: A cracking start to the Missing Adventures. 9/10

Paul Simpson