Jack’s Memory is a story that has been kicking around for a very long time. I established in the Unfinished Business stories that Jack was an orphan, long before Torchwood was made. I had already written a short scene between The Doctor and Jack in which he talked about being an orphan and wanting to know who his mother was:-

“I’m freezing,” Jack said through chattering teeth. “I can’t seem to get warm at all.”
“Hang on.” Jack heard movement in the tent. And then to his surprise he felt The Doctor sliding into the sleeping bag with him. He was wearing his jeans still but he had taken off his jumper.

“Shared body heat,” The Doctor said. “Oldest trick in the book. Just have to raise my own temperature. My natural body heat is nearly 30 degrees less than Human. But I can adjust it at will.”

And he did. Jack gasped with surprise as he felt The Doctor’s body become warm to the touch. The Doctor put his arms around his shoulders and snuggled close to him.

“My wildest dream,” Jack laughed ironically. “You in bed with me.”

“Not EXACTLY as you imagined it, I think,” The Doctor answered. “I’m still a one-woman-man. I just don’t want my best friend freezing to death.”

“Best friend.” Jack smiled. “That’s a nice thing to be. Never really been anyone’s best friend before. Never known anyone like you before.”

“Now you’re getting soppy,” The Doctor warned him. “You’re meant to be a tough guy.”

“Must be the thin air on this planet,” he replied. “Makes me daft.” He was silent for a while, then he spoke again. “Doctor… if I tell you something… you won’t laugh.”

“I’ll try not to,” he promised.

“I DO have a fantasy about you,” Jack said. “But it's not about being in bed. It’s… it’s that you turn out to be my father.”

The Doctor didn’t laugh.

“You don’t KNOW who your father is?”

“No. I broke into the records at the orphanage once. Found my birth certificate. But the father’s name is blank. I’m a genuine, bone-fide bastard, apparently.”

“Ah.” The Doctor said. “Always thought that phrase ought to apply to the fathers in those instances not the child. But why did you think I might be the blank.”

“Didn’t. Just sort of hoped. Always hoped my biological father might be somebody special. And you’re the most special person I ever met. And…”

“That’s a sweet idea,” The Doctor said. “But I’ve never even KISSED a woman in the 51st century. Let alone… Julia was the first woman I ever made love to and Rose was the second.”

“And you told me that Time Lords aren’t frigid.”

“We’re not. I’m just particular. But never mind me. I never knew… I knew you were an orphan, but I didn’t know you knew so little about yourself.”

“I know my mother’s name was Josephine Harkness. She came from Scotland but I was born on the hospital ship SS Grace Holloway in space.”

“Ah.” The Doctor gave a little chuckle. “I know I’ve got no room to talk here,” he said. “But how come you have an American accent then?”

“The orphanage was run by American nuns,” he replied. “On Jupiter. That’s the only home I remember. But the orphanage records say I was six months old when I arrived there. I don’t know why she left me there. I used to think about it when I was a kid. Maybe she loved me but it was just too hard for her. Maybe she was forced to give me up. Or maybe she was fed up of having a kid in tow and dumped me or…”

“You wanted to know if there was love there or not?” The Doctor said. “I can understand that. I don’t remember much of my mother, but I know she loved me.”

“I wish I could… I don’t even know what she looked like.”

The Doctor reached out in the dark and touched Jack’s face, brushing away the tears he had failed to hold back. Then he held his head gently in his hands and concentrated hard. He saw Jack’s DNA. Definitely Human. He almost felt a little disappointed. The idea that Jack might be his own blood was tempting. Jack was a fine man and he would be proud to be his father.

He focussed then on Jack’s deepest memories. The ones he, himself, didn’t even know he had. He saw a young woman with tired but happy eyes, holding her newborn baby in her arms. He saw a woman who loved and cared for her child. Who picked him up and cuddled him every opportunity she got, who kissed his baby cheeks and nourished him from her own body.

He saw the baby gently lifted by a paramedic from a wrecked automobile as the body of a woman was cut from it.

“She died?” Jack’s tears fell unchecked. “That’s why I went to the orphanage. My mother died?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I couldn’t see who your father was. I could only reach into your own nascent memories. And there seems no sign of him being with your mother.”

“That’s pretty damn good, anyway,” Jack said as he dried his tears. “Thank you. At least I know now that it wasn’t her fault. And… I know what she looked like. She was beautiful.”

“She was, indeed,” The Doctor said with a soft laugh. “And, sorry to say, that confirms it. I can’t possibly be your father. I know I would remember her face.”

A couple of weeks after I wrote this bit, the Torchwood episode ‘Captain Jack Harkness’ established that this wasn’t Jack’s real name, so I shelved the plot. Season Two then blew the rest of it out of the water by showing that he had a family up until the age of about twelve, and lived in a place called the Boeshane Peninsula.

But I really liked that scene and I didn’t want to lose it altogether, and I needed to establish that Jack had been in an orphanage for a while, if not from birth. So I manufactured the idea that Jack lost his memory because of the trauma and was separated from his mother who survived the attack.

The difficult bit was writing the reunion scene without actually mentioning Jack’s real name. I don’t know if they ever intend to give away who Jack used to be on the TV programme, but in case they do, I’m not going to make any guesses.

The scene with the Yeti was never going to make a whole story on its own, but it fitted perfectly with the original scenario where Jack and The Doctor are in a tent in the cold, so it slipped in there as a subplot about mothers and babies in the wild to go with Jack’s reunion with his mother.

There is a plot possibility, of course, in that last paragraph where the possibility that Grey is still alive is considered. Of course, in Torchwood we know where that goes. But New Lords of Time is in an alternative universe, so anything is possible.