As soon as I heard average student, shoplifter, and drifter with no family...I thought of Jack. And TW1/Lisa then TW3/Jack gave him meaning the way the Doctor gave meaning to Jack.
Here's how I'm currently fanwanking Ianto's pre-TW1 story. He's a bright, nerdy only child who lives mostly in his head being raised by a single older parent (his dad). His mother probably died in childbirth or something. Ianto adores his dad. He's bright enough that he could have been a Tosh or an Owen but his working class background limiting his funds and his dad passing away before he enters his teens, he gets off track and starts getting into a bit of trouble. Perhaps he's living with an elderly grandparent or he's in foster care or an orphanage until he turns 18 or something. So basically because he's bereft of family his life ends up not fulfilling his youthful potential. Being in an orphanage or foster care would explain why he's able to construct a fake persona to deal with deceiving Jack and others. Shades of Tom Riddle. But because he has been loved by his dad and he remembers it, he's really a Harry Potter except Harry if he were bookish like Hermione.
Eventually he stumbles upon TW1 which loves to hire folks who have no families because it's easier for them to devote their lives to TW with no one around to ask questions. TW researches his background enough to know he's bright but not skilled, so they slot him as a researcher. Ianto meets Lisa, who rocks his entire world because now he finally has someone to love who he thinks won't leave him (poor boy).
Or he's a time lord in disguise. Or a sleeper (dear god, please no).
How long was Ianto at TW3 before Gwen arrived? I'm hopeless at figuring out the timeline.
My theory is DOA. According to Twilight Streets, Ianto's mom is alive when he is 14. So could we have dad dying when Ianto is a boy and mom passing away when Ianto is in his teens? Then his life goes off course...and he drifts.
I'm pretty sure they are trying to mirror Jack's life with his to some point. So I would guess he had, or thought he had, a normal childhood to some point. Then it all fell apart. It's what happened from then that will be interesting, probably. And Jack has those two missing years yet to be resolved on DW. I wonder if they will establish that Ianto has some sort of mystery to his life that even he can't explain. That might be where a time lord/ sleeper type thing comes in. Seems less sleeper than time lord (thank God).
Also, if his dad really was a "master tailor" then he wouldn't have been too working class. Really good tailors make a decent living. He'd have been solidly middle class. And given who wrote Twilight Streets and some of the stuff in it (Zombie!Owen and that locket Alex was holding were in the book), I think it's pretty safe to take that information as canon for now. So yeah, he had a mother at 14.
What really set off the bells for me was the use of the word "drifter." They didn't have to use it. It was thrown in by Jack. In TV-ease that's usually a word that signifies something about a person's background. The big question is what.
And none of this changes the fact that he never could have passed the security clearance/ background check that would have gotten him employed at Yvonne Hartman's Torchwood London. Either the producers just used that character description by accident (not likely since it was written by Chibnall) or Ianto conned his way into Torchwood from day one.
I agree re: treating Twilight Streets as canon for now. I generally tend to be agnostic about the novelizations in terms of canonicity but that one has too much tie in not to be counted. So Ianto had at least one parent until he was 14. But I still think both parents are gone by his teenage years. Hence, the drifting. See, this is where I get worried about the sleeper thing because didn't Beth say that she always felt a bit our of place in her own life perhaps other than when she fell in love? And Ianto says in TS to Gwen that no one has ever figured him out yet. Gah! If they go there, I will absolutely KILL the writers unless somehow they manage to somehow disconnect Ianto from the rest of the hive. Group. Whatever we call them. If I get all invested in this character just to have him turn out to be some horrible alien species that has to be exterminated, the writers will PAY!!
I know so little Doctor Who that I guess I can't really tell what characterizes a time lord and suggests that Ianto might be one. You and tencrush feel so strongly that he can't have gotten into TW1 that I have to defer to your judgment (not being a DW fan) but is it possible that someone pulled strings to get him in? Someone who knows more about who/what he is that he does? Rather than Ianto himself manwhorespying his way in? Could the Doctor have planted him there? Or what about Ianto's mentor that showed up in that comic? Could he have done it for ulterior motives? Could Ianto have conned his way into TW1 without help?
I guess 'drifter' to me was sort of suggesting purposeless, rootless, perhaps even morally compromised in some way -- which really contrasts him with Owen, Tosh, and Gwen and puts him more firmly in the 'Jack' camp in terms of having to find a purpose to his life. But certainly there could be more to it.
My mind is just whirling still with everything we learned in this episode. I mean, during that ep last year when they were eating Chinese and gossiping about Jack, Ianto put out somem crazy theory about Jack being CIA. At the time, he seemed to know nothing about Jack. But now, was that his attempt to throw the others off the scent? I mean, it seems as if he already knew quite a bit about Jack and we now know there were at some point in time FILES ABOUT JACK. Now Jack may well have destroyed those when he took over TW3 in 1999, but at that point they were already digital so that information could be anywhere.
Yeah, you should have seen TW1, I really don't think so when it comes to the hiring, no way. That place was hardcore.
Having said that, a connection with the Doctor might not be as crazy as it seems. I make stupid jokes about him being the Doctor's son, but I'm not basing that entirely on smoke, I do have my reasons for fanwanking that.
And I STILL have this vague feeling we might eventually end up seeing Ianto in Who.
Huh. But his manwhorespying didn't seem sophisticated enough to get him into TW1. He was barely able to con Jack (who sounds as if he's a much lower standard). So maybe someone helped get him into TW1. For purposes yet unknown.
I've been convinced Ianto is going to end up there at some point and that GDL knows it. He did that interview where he said that he couldn't say about being in DW then followed up with what he needed to become more popular was an appearance on DW. GDL never can keep a secret in interviews. I mean, he blew the whole manwhorespy thing with 'Ianto is bisexual for his own purposes'.
Well, that's what I mean; I don't think he's good enough at deception to have got into TW1 by deception. Which means he must have got into TW1 on his true merits, which automatically means the average student drifter thing must be untrue.
If someone got him the job, and that someone is relevant to the plot somehow and that someone wanted him at TW, you'd think that someone would still have been looking out for him after Canary Wharf, and would have helped him again. So I'm kind of discounting that.
I'm with you that he got into TW1 on his true merits. My fanwank says it had something to do with the Doctor. TW1 did seem to make huge leaps in Doctorology just before Army of Ghosts.
I'm very conflicted though. He could have gotten the job at TW1 because of someone who died at Canary Warf. And then the name...Ianto Jones (a Welsh John Smith).
Basically there are so many equally believable possibilities of who the hell he is and where he came from that it makes my head hurt. I think RTD is sitting somewhere eating pies and laughing at us all.
I do agree that the GDL quotes in that interview were a slip. The interviewer really seemed to be begged off very quickly. It made me a very happy fangirl at the time.
Oh, I also just wanted to add that I was conflating working class with middle class and imagining that while his family may have had enough to live on comfortably, his parents may not have been able to put much away for university especially if they were a one income family or his parents died before Ianto was of age. I was rather thinking about how things are in the US where schooling costs are so awfully high that even folks who are upper middle class have issues providing college educations for their kids. No offense meant to tailors. :-)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 04:09 pm (UTC)Here's how I'm currently fanwanking Ianto's pre-TW1 story. He's a bright, nerdy only child who lives mostly in his head being raised by a single older parent (his dad). His mother probably died in childbirth or something. Ianto adores his dad. He's bright enough that he could have been a Tosh or an Owen but his working class background limiting his funds and his dad passing away before he enters his teens, he gets off track and starts getting into a bit of trouble. Perhaps he's living with an elderly grandparent or he's in foster care or an orphanage until he turns 18 or something. So basically because he's bereft of family his life ends up not fulfilling his youthful potential. Being in an orphanage or foster care would explain why he's able to construct a fake persona to deal with deceiving Jack and others. Shades of Tom Riddle. But because he has been loved by his dad and he remembers it, he's really a Harry Potter except Harry if he were bookish like Hermione.
Eventually he stumbles upon TW1 which loves to hire folks who have no families because it's easier for them to devote their lives to TW with no one around to ask questions. TW researches his background enough to know he's bright but not skilled, so they slot him as a researcher. Ianto meets Lisa, who rocks his entire world because now he finally has someone to love who he thinks won't leave him (poor boy).
Or he's a time lord in disguise. Or a sleeper (dear god, please no).
How long was Ianto at TW3 before Gwen arrived? I'm hopeless at figuring out the timeline.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 06:45 pm (UTC)Also, if his dad really was a "master tailor" then he wouldn't have been too working class. Really good tailors make a decent living. He'd have been solidly middle class. And given who wrote Twilight Streets and some of the stuff in it (Zombie!Owen and that locket Alex was holding were in the book), I think it's pretty safe to take that information as canon for now. So yeah, he had a mother at 14.
What really set off the bells for me was the use of the word "drifter." They didn't have to use it. It was thrown in by Jack. In TV-ease that's usually a word that signifies something about a person's background. The big question is what.
And none of this changes the fact that he never could have passed the security clearance/ background check that would have gotten him employed at Yvonne Hartman's Torchwood London. Either the producers just used that character description by accident (not likely since it was written by Chibnall) or Ianto conned his way into Torchwood from day one.
MANWHORESPY!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 07:35 pm (UTC)I know so little Doctor Who that I guess I can't really tell what characterizes a time lord and suggests that Ianto might be one. You and
I guess 'drifter' to me was sort of suggesting purposeless, rootless, perhaps even morally compromised in some way -- which really contrasts him with Owen, Tosh, and Gwen and puts him more firmly in the 'Jack' camp in terms of having to find a purpose to his life. But certainly there could be more to it.
My mind is just whirling still with everything we learned in this episode. I mean, during that ep last year when they were eating Chinese and gossiping about Jack, Ianto put out somem crazy theory about Jack being CIA. At the time, he seemed to know nothing about Jack. But now, was that his attempt to throw the others off the scent? I mean, it seems as if he already knew quite a bit about Jack and we now know there were at some point in time FILES ABOUT JACK. Now Jack may well have destroyed those when he took over TW3 in 1999, but at that point they were already digital so that information could be anywhere.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 08:36 am (UTC)Having said that, a connection with the Doctor might not be as crazy as it seems. I make stupid jokes about him being the Doctor's son, but I'm not basing that entirely on smoke, I do have my reasons for fanwanking that.
And I STILL have this vague feeling we might eventually end up seeing Ianto in Who.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 02:11 pm (UTC)I've been convinced Ianto is going to end up there at some point and that GDL knows it. He did that interview where he said that he couldn't say about being in DW then followed up with what he needed to become more popular was an appearance on DW. GDL never can keep a secret in interviews. I mean, he blew the whole manwhorespy thing with 'Ianto is bisexual for his own purposes'.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 02:25 pm (UTC)If someone got him the job, and that someone is relevant to the plot somehow and that someone wanted him at TW, you'd think that someone would still have been looking out for him after Canary Wharf, and would have helped him again. So I'm kind of discounting that.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:05 am (UTC)I'm very conflicted though. He could have gotten the job at TW1 because of someone who died at Canary Warf. And then the name...Ianto Jones (a Welsh John Smith).
Basically there are so many equally believable possibilities of who the hell he is and where he came from that it makes my head hurt. I think RTD is sitting somewhere eating pies and laughing at us all.
I do agree that the GDL quotes in that interview were a slip. The interviewer really seemed to be begged off very quickly. It made me a very happy fangirl at the time.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 08:34 pm (UTC)