For the last few weeks rumours have been floating around that a trailer for Doctor Who’s upcoming 11th modern series is imminent, with the new footage supposedly introducing Jodie Whittaker’s first adventures while also bringing back a fan-favourite character from the drama’s past – John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness


An immortal 51st-century Time Agent and Torchwood operative, Harkness waved goodbye to David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor back in 2010 and to TV appearances in general a year later, but Barrowman has done his best to keep the character alive in the intervening years by making Torchwood spin-off comics and audio adventures.

But could he actually be coming back to the main series? Well, it’s certainly possible – new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall worked extensively on Torchwood so has a lot of familiarity with the character, and Jack was always a popular addition to the series – even if it does seem like an unusual move given the “clean slate” approach taken to the rest of series 11.

Still, now Barrowman himself has responded to the rumours in an intriguingly oblique way, neither ruling them out entirely or confirming them.

Yes, alright, he just posted a link to the story with two question marks – but if that’s not “intriguingly oblique” we don’t know what is. Is it a tease, mock-confusion, real confusion, or an attempt to mock the very idea? Truly, a double punctuation mark can raise twice as many questions as it answers – especially if, as in this case, both points of punctuation are question marks.

Anyway, for now we’ll just have to file the Captain Jack Harkness return under “interesting rumours” until we hear more. Surely JB has at least a few more punctuation marks in him to tease us again?


Doctor Who returns to BBC1 this Autumn