Appearances:
Miracle
Day
Exodus
Code
The
Men Who Sold the World
Played
by: Mekhi Phifer
Rex
Matheson is a field agent for the CIA. He’s hard working and the sort of guy who
gives the impression that it’s everything by the book. He’s pretty much a Yes
Man, and it’s his constant belief that everything within the CIA organisation is
good and everyone outside of it is not to be trusted. Although we’ve seen that
if there’s a world to save, then he is the man to do it, and nobody will sway
him from that objective. But it’s him, Rex Matheson, who will save the day. Not
Jack Harkness, not Torchwood, but CIA agent Matheson.
In the
same respect as we’ve seen in previous episodes of Torchwood – if the world
needs saving, it’s down to Torchwood, with Captain Jack at the helm. Not UNIT,
not the US, no government body of any kind. After all, Torchwood is ‘outside
the government, beyond the police.’ And Captain Jack, riding his Torchwood
credentials above everyone else, feels that means it’s his responsibility,
personally, no matter what the cost. If you want evidence of that, take a look
at ‘Small Worlds’ and ‘Children of Earth.’ The risk of sacrificing one to save
millions is his to take, he believes, because of the gift that Rose gave him,
and in lieu of the Doctor’s return.
Rex saw
the loss of his girlfriend Vera Juarez, when her involvement in finding the truth
behind the camps cost her her life. Esther Drummond, who followed Rex till the
very end, lost her life at the hands of the Family. Could he sacrifice the
entire human race in order to save hers? Looking at the bigger picture, what
should he have chosen?
Both Rex
and Captain Jack have been utter bastards in their lifetime, and Jack’s
lifetime has certainly been much longer than Rex’s, but this time we face a
Jack who is no longer immortal because of the Miracle, and who does things very
differently because of it. Whereas Rex is like Jack before he met with the
Doctor, but with an even bigger stick up his butt.
At the
end of the series, when Rex is shot by Charlotte Wells, it was as if all the
bad things that had happened to Rex would finally bring him back to the dead
man he should have been in the first episode, only…. he comes back to life. A
shock for both Gwen and Jack, who had professed that his blood wasn’t what made
him immortal.
For me
personally, I wasn’t happy that Rex was now immortal, but this was an
argument/rant for the writer of the series, the creator of Rex Matheson, and
not the character himself.
Rex
couldn’t help the fatal blow that was delivered. I’m sure it’s not something
even Jack could come to terms with in the beginning. But given this purpose in
life, and given his role within the CIA, he still had a job to do, and the
Family would not simply disappear to never reappear again later. Rex would need
to work with Torchwood to find them, and if both Rex and Jack are immortal, at
least they’d stand a better chance of surviving through whatever strife the
Family were to put them through.
Although
Rex is a straight-laced field agent, he’s still only human, and there’s little
in the imagination of what you could or would expect from him, character wise.
How he
will fare in stories beyond Miracle Day and Exodus Code depends upon the
writers. Will he remain as the a*hole we’ve come to regard him as, or will he
mellow?
While
thinking of the way Rex the character behaves, I was reminded of Series 1 &
2, with Toshiko and Owen, both in their own way, mirror Rex’s attitude to getting
things done. Dr Owen Harper would often go against Torchwood Jack’s wishes to
do a job, preferring to bulldoze his way through a case in his own formidable
style, possibly more so when he was brought back to life after the fatal
shooting at the hands of Professor Aaron Copley.
Quiet,
timid Toshiko, who preferred to work out her equations from the comfort and
safety of the Hub computers, and who would baffle the team with science, was an
‘everything by the book’ girl, in terms of her work at Torchwood. Perhaps her
biggest fear was that if she didn’t play it that way, Jack would send her back
to UNIT to serve out the rest of her sentence. Owen once commented about her
strict regime that her ‘stick up the butt, had its own stick up the butt.’ Which
we’ve come to discover is the same as Rex.
So, our
groundings for disliking Rex can only be from his CIA credentials. We’ve learnt
through Torchwood that the government, regardless of which side of the pond
it’s on, cannot be trusted. Torchwood is above the law, beyond the government,
so therefore, any military involvement against the Institute is going to be met
with hostility, and I think from that, we’ve developed our own personal hatred
of the character, purely because of who he works for.
So, from
reading the comments from the fans on our Page recently, and researching the
character, and broadening my own mind, it’s not Rex I’m annoyed with. I mean
his exterior as a character, the gruff approach isn’t warming to the heart, but
like Jack, Toshiko, Owen, Gwen and Ianto, he will approach the task head on,
and deal with it the way he knows best. So therefore, my initial dislike of the
character, is invalid.
