The Lives of Captain Jack: Volume 2

Three stories with very different themes, all united by starring Jack Harkness. Whereas the previous volume concentrated on his life before he joined Torchwood, here only one is set during that period, although none of the other characters from the show are present.

Piece of Mind – The first story is a comedy that sees Jack pretending to be the Sixth Doctor in order to try and save a planet from invasion by killer robots. Much of the initial humour comes from Barrowman's imitation of Colin Baker but that would hardly sustain the whole story and, fortunately, it doesn't need to. Instead, we get Jack's very different approach to solving the sort of problem that's a better fit for Doctor Who than it would be for Torchwood, giving us a ‘Doctor' who uses guns and sexual seduction to achieve his ends. It's perhaps more lightly amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, but it is a nice twist on the format, with the comedy counterbalanced with the subplot about a fangirl whose adoration and trust of the Doctor ends up putting her in peril. And there are some fun bits of banter between Six and Jack. 4 stars.

What Have I Done? – In a total contrast to the opening episode, the second one is set during the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I, showing us a different battlefront than we usually see, at least in British stories. It's almost entirely a two-hander, with Jack rescuing an injured Ottoman deserter and becoming trapped in No Man's Land as they attempt to make it to safety. There is a science fiction twist beyond Jack's immortality, but most of the story concerns the relationship between two characters on the opposite sides of a war that neither of them wants to be a part of. If the dark secret that the soldier is hiding is a little easy to guess, it's otherwise a strong story with a solid emotional core. 4.5 stars.

Driving Miss Wells – The final story is essentially a regular Torchwood story, little different from those in the monthly audio series, which typically only feature one or two of the regular characters anyway. This is slightly unusual in that it's told from the point of view of a newsreader who has come to doubt the existence of aliens but now finds herself embroiled in what certainly looks like an alien conspiracy of some kind. This leaves less room for Jack, who is evidently trying to work out whether she has genuinely stumbled across something but spends at least as much time flirting with random men and seemingly not getting much done. Instead, it's the newsreader who drives the story and whose responses to the situation rapidly escalate and raise the question of whether she is an unreliable narrator. Compared with the first two stories, there's nothing much unusual about it, but it works as what it is. 4 stars.