tencrush | I'M WORKING ON IT...

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I'M WORKING ON IT...

Just rewatching some episodes to get some inspiration re. Ianto and what I am now calling his alpha-in-training-ness. Wow. He is the weirdest character, dudes. He's never on screen, he's always physically reserved and he doesn't say much, but when he does he COMMANDS attention, it's way more blatant than I thought it would be.

But anyway, I'm getting a bit distracted, so I'll just post random things in the meantime.

Watch this scene from Day One again.
"None of you have partners?" says Gwen. And LOOK! Jack was totally going to say something and then he shuts his mouth and changes his mind.

He's so doing the teaboy already at this point in time.

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I'm still not getting, as I asked in my post above, what it is you think Ianto is addicted to? Or is that not part of your addiction metaphor?

And in my view, bringing in how those around the addict must act in order to save the addict stretches the metaphor way beyond the boundary of useful for analyzing this episdoe. For one thing, none of the actions of the others in helping pick up Ianto after he hits rock-bottom is shown in this or any other episode. At best, it is implied that they do. Plus, it's not like they had to struggle with Ianto's "addiction" over a period of time and come to the eventual painful realization that they just had to step back and let Ianto fall. By the time they realized what was going on Ianto was already smuck in the middle of his fall.

For another thing, what you are describing applies to circumstances other than addiction -- I know from personal experience that it applies to depression as well, ie, there's nothing the people around a depressed person can do until the person suffering from depression decides to get help themselves. I do think that Jack, at least, realized that Ianto had to come to face the painful truth that Lisa could not be saved on his own, and that is why he sent Ianto in by himself with the order to execute Lisa. And that may have similarities to the process of a person stepping back from someone with an addiction to let that person realize that he needs help. I guess what I'm having problem with is that you seem to be saying that just because the process is similar, Ianto therefore must be addicted. Or is that not what you're saying? Am I misunderstanding you somehow?

Let me try again. I'm not explaining myself well.

I think the any actual addiction is irrelevant, and I see this as a metaphor (not a direct likeness) for the way addiction can shatter a family. Do I think that Ianto the character is an addict? No. Do I think that Ianto the character is an addictive personality? No. Do I think the story arc as written uses significant elements of an addict in free fall to catch the audience's attention and frame the story in a way that we recognize and understand? Yes.

Does that make more sense?

You're correct in that it could be any kind of mental illness or massive family problem, not just drug or alcohol abuse. Given that Jack and Ianto are probably already in some kind of sexual relationship at this point, it could be incest or rape. Like I said, I don't think the actual issue is relevant, but that the overall profound effect on the family is exactly the same, and to a large degree Ianto's behaviour is exactly the same.

Manipulation, deceit, hiding the addiction (or incest or mental illness), unable or unwilling to accept consequences of one's own actions, cognitive distortion (in this case, looking at a cyberwoman and being convinced she's still his Lisa), magnification, denial...we see all of this in Cyberwoman, and we see the profound effects it has on the team. Their trust in Ianto is shattered. It pits one member of the family against the others. It pushes Gwen into a tailspin that ends with her in Owen's bed in Countrycide. In terms of the greater story arc for S1, the team acts reasonably functional until Cyberwoman, and then it blows them apart. They don't come back together again as a fully functioning unit until End of Days. There are bits where you see them starting to come back together--the scene where Mary has Tosh with a knife against her neck in GBG comes to mind--but then something else happens that pushes them apart again.

Gotcha. Thanks so much for the clarification! And I hadn't thought about the effects of Cyberwoman on team members other than Ianto and Jack -- now I have to take a look back over S1 with that in mind! Although, I'm not sure if I credit the production team with enough foresight and coordination to really write the episodes with such repercussions in mind. That's the maddening thing about Torchwood -- how much of all the subtle complexities we are seeing is intentional, and how much is just fortuitious coincidence?

'That's the maddening thing about Torchwood -- how much of all the subtle complexities we are seeing is intentional, and how much is just fortuitious coincidence?'
Yeah, sometime I wonder about that too. Sometimes I think I give the production team *too* much credit (they don't have a show bible), and then other times I think we don't give them enough.

Exactly. I recently read an article or interview (which I can't find now, grrrrr) where Chris Chibnall mentioned how GDL added depth to Ianto's flashback in Fragments by his crying at the end as Ianto is leaving the warehouse. Now I wasn't quite sure whether Chibnall was praising GDL's performance as he cried, or he was saying it had been GDL's idea to cry. If the latter, that's a really scary thought -- the crying made that flashback!

It's all over the doctorwhoforum at the moment, it was the latter, is what he seemed to say (I believe it's the current Torchwood magazine). Again, I'll happily PRAISE GDL for this, and it doesn't surprise me that it was his idea, but the simple fact that that sort of thing has to come from the actors is fucking scary. They're VERY LUCKY to have someone like GDL, and to have had someone like Burn who obviously put a bit of thought into what the hell is going on in their character's heads, because the writers certainly don't seem to, and that's shocking.

Gareth really deserves great praise, not just for saving Jack/Ianto from becoming a big confusing mess, Jack looking wistfully at Gwen *Ianto style eye-roll*, but for also for saving Ianto as a character in general.

I have nothing but praise for Burn as well.

I can only imagine how horrible this show would be if Gareth and Burn had not gotten their roles.

And that's exactly why I'll miss Owen -- not just for the character himself, but for losing such a wonderful actor. The scenes between Ianto and Owen had just started to gell together and add a wonderful counterpoint to the Jack-Ianto and Jack-Owen scenes. They could have had a character triangle going in a very good way, like they had with Kirk, Spock and McCoy in Star Trek TOS. :(

'They could have had a character triangle going in a very good way, like they had with Kirk, Spock and McCoy in Star Trek TOS. :('
That would have been great. Who knows maybe Owen could come back someday; people hardly ever stay dead in sci-fi shows.

'Now I wasn't quite sure whether Chibnall was praising GDL's performance as he cried, or he was saying it had been GDL's idea to cry. If the latter, that's a really scary thought -- the crying made that flashback!'
Oh yes, take out that crying scene and the whole flashback is completely different.

Here's what was said in the article '...Gareth [David-Lloyd] added a wonderful depth to it, when, unseen by Jack, he starts to cry at the end.' Magazine Article

I always took that to mean that Gareth improvised the crying. It wouldn't surprise me, he seems to really 'get' Ianto as a character even when the writers don't.

Oh great! Thanks for the link!

And no, it doesn't surprise me that GDL is so on top of things. I sometimes think he's single-handedly holding Torchwood together, LOL.

'And no, it doesn't surprise me that GDL is so on top of things. I sometimes think he's single-handedly holding Torchwood together, LOL.'

Yeah, if he ever leaves the show they are in sooo much trouble.

how much of all the subtle complexities we are seeing is intentional, and how much is just fortuitious coincidence?

I think it's a bit of both. The writers are people, and so any stories they tell will be stories of people. The stories that draw us in the most will be the stories of things that we the audience can connect to. We don't love To The Last Man because we understand a rift break between 2008 and 1918, we love it because we identify and empathize with Tosh and Tommy and them both giving up something they want for something they both know they need. We've all had to make a choice like that sooner or later, and so we get drawn into the story. I think S2 had a bit more coherent season-wide story arc (meta forthcoming after I finish the fic I'm working on), and so we would get more intentional nuance and shading there.

At the same time, once the script leaves the writers and gets into acting/direction, the actors and directors add all sorts of things that the writers may or may not have intended. Some of them are good, some not, some just unexpected. Case in point: Ianto. Aside from Cyberwoman, he was at best a bit role in the written script for S1. Once the shooting started, an unknown young actor with massive screen presence that *nobody* expected turned him into a powerhouse role. There is no way the writers could have known that would happen, but it worked out well in the end.

So true about actors/directors adding things writers didn't intend or expect, and I don't think anyone could have expected Gareth -- he seems like one of the seven wonders of the world or something. :D

And to bring this back to tencrush's suggestion that Jack in Day One had been about to mention himself and Ianto when Gwen asked if any of them had partners, do we know when Jack/Ianto was conceived as a possibility in the mind of the production team? Could John Barrowman have had that possibility in mind when he acted that scene, or was he maybe thinking of Jack as about to tell a joke (probably a crude one) and changing his mind? Not that the presence or absence of "authorial" intent should prevent us from interpreting that scene as Jack already doing Ianto, of course, but I'm just wondering...

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