Relationship Spotlight: Captain Jack Harkness & Ianto Jones (Torchwood)

I’ve talked before about my frustrations with Torchwood.  While I pretty much always come down on the side of enjoying it, it’s a show I sometimes seem to enjoy despite itself, and I only rarely feel it lives up to the potential of all it could be.  I feel much the same way about Jack and Ianto – I like them, and John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd consistently bring it, but I usually can’t shake the feeling that they could be a lot more (some Jack/Ianto-related spoilers.)

On the face of it, Jack and Ianto make for a solid quasi-odd-couple pairing.  Jack is a cheeky, swashbuckling former Time Agent with a mysterious past, while Ianto is a frequently-underestimated man of few words with hidden depths.  Looking at them, they’re both very different people, and we particularly see that playing out in season 2 on, once they’re romantic relationship is out in the open.  While Jack is never one to leave any innuendo unturned, Ianto is much more private, and he can grow noticeably shy when Jack is less-than-demure about their sex life.  Similarly, in the field, Ianto is more likely to strategize while Jack is more likely to throw himself into things – not that Ianto is never reckless and Jack is never thoughtful (and the fact that helps that Jack doesn’t stay dead when he dies gives him much more leeway to take chances,) but those are the general ways they tend.

They’re also a couple in which there are a few different power imbalances at play.  The biggest is Jack’s functional immortality, a condition Ianto doesn’t share.  Not only does Jack have more than a century’s worth of life experience on Ianto (including enough former boyfriends and girlfriends to probably make Ianto’s head spin,) Ianto additionally has to deal with knowing that, no matter how long he lives, Jack will far outlive him and pretty undoubtedly grow to forget him entirely in the end.  It’s something Jack seems to like to ignore in their relationship, but it definitely weighs on Ianto’s mind from time to time.  Then there’s Jack being Ianto’s boss (I’m sure Jack has always been an HR nightmare,) although once they get together, they both seem able to handle the overlap between their professional and personal relationships without any big issues.  There’s also the small matter of the fact that Ianto cajoled his way into Torchwood Cardiff in the first place so he could use their resources to keep his half-converted Cyber-girlfriend alive in the basement – oh, and when her programming took over and she laid siege to the Hub, Jack was the one who killed her.  Surprisingly, though, this development doesn’t seem to present any stumbling block to their starting a sexual relationship, at least not that we see.

This is my biggest struggle with Jack and Ianto, everything we don’t see with the two of them.  We only rarely see Ianto working up the courage to talk to Jack about his immortality concerns, their work/romantic relationship appears seamless, and we don’t even know how they got from Ianto raging at Jack over killing Lisa to arranging kinky rendezvous after hours.  Even apart from the extreme ends of that range, consider this:  Jack is the show’s male lead and Ianto is his main love interest, and we don’t even know how they got together.

While I pretty much always like what we get – Jack’s confident flirtations, Ianto’s subtle overtures, their private moments of emotional honesty – so much of this onscreen romance exists in tidbits, throwaway lines or reaction shots with few actual stories about their relationship.  This makes their rare scenes of more intense drama – tearful declarations and whatnot – feel kind of unearned, because so much of the building blocks for how they got there have been left unshown.  It’s an odd technique that I feel pretty much has to be rooted in homophobia/censorship (despite Torchwood being touted as a sexy sci-fi spin-off for the famously-omnisexual Captain Jack,) because otherwise why would you depict what ought to be your central romance in this way?

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Ianto Jones (Torchwood)

In terms of Damn Big Hero moments, Ianto was a little tough for me to pin down.  Though he’s very competent at what he does and is pretty much always an asset to the team, his role is such a clear supporting one that his contributions tends to be more nuts-and-bolts stuff and less flashy.  As such, there aren’t as many big wins to celebrate, but let’s see what we’ve got (spoilers.)

Giving Tosh Room to Escape (Series 1, Episode 6 – “Countrycide”)

This is a definite hero move.  Ianto and Tosh have been kidnapped by unknown predators who turn out to be rural Welsh cannibals (gotta hate it when that happens.)  When they’re brought out to be “tenderized,” Ianto smacks foreheads with their chief captor, letting Tosh get free while the others are subduing him.  You don’t often see one team member so thoroughly putting another’s life ahead of their own unless there’s a romance involved, so this is a neat scene.

Confronting Owen (Series 1, Episode 12 – “Captain Jack Harkness”)

It doesn’t turn out great, but it’s a big deal for Ianto to stand up to Owen in Jack’s absence, trying to stop him from using the Rift Manipulator unsafely.  Though he’s been getting more time in the field, Ianto is still thought of as the “office boy,” and Owen isn’t about to respect any authority he has.  Ianto holds his ground, though, and takes it to extremes when he sees no other option.

Realizing the Truth about Adam (Series 2, Episode 5 – “Adam”)

This one ultimately winds up helping to save the day, although it gets hairy in the short-term.  Everyone’s been mind-whammied by Adam, getting him inserted into their memories, and it’s Ianto who realizes Adam isn’t supposed to be there.  I love this moment, because the way he figures it out is so Ianto – Adam can alter memories and electronic records, but he doesn’t know that Ianto keeps a pen-and-paper journal, and Ianto finds that there aren’t any references to Adam in it.  Smart, and fitting that Ianto’s somewhat old-fashioned tastes are come in handy here.

Leading Gwen toward Flat Holm (Series 2, Episode 11 – “Adrift”)

Torchwood may be a super-secret organization, but Ianto is the only one who consistently acts like it.  Even within the team, he knows how to be covert.  When Gwen starts digging into negative Rift spikes and Ianto knows Jack is trying to block her from the truth, he disagrees.  Instead of outright telling her, though, he “delivers” a package to her desk, containing a GPS who coordinates lead to Flat Holm, and even after she realizes the information must have come from him, he coolly ignores her attempt to credit him with it.  That’s how you do it, people!

On the Run (Series 3, Episode 2 – “Children of Earth:  Day Two”)

Another bit of Ianto succeeding because he knows how to operate on the quiet.  While Gwen and Rhys are hiding in a potato truck, Ianto is able to send a secret message to his sister arranging a rendezvous point using references only the two of them would understand, and she gives him supplies he needs to keep working while in hiding.  Not too shabby!

Favorite Characters: Ianto Jones (Torchwood)

Ianto is a tricky character to sum up.  He’s not always well-served by the writing; his series 1 characterization is incredibly thin, and what little we get doesn’t always cohere (a bit like series 7 Clara, come to I think of it.)  While he’s given more dimension over time, he’s never as well-defined as the others, but despite it, he manages to entertain quite a bit.  (A few series 1 spoilers.)

Ianto’s background working for Torchwood One makes him the only one of Jack’s team with active past experience in aliens and/or alien tech.  (As a researcher, I’m guessing Ianto didn’t see too much action outside of the Battle of Canary Wharf, but his experiences were eyes-wide-open, not blindsided.)  Jack, however, doesn’t view this as an asset, because he doesn’t want his Cardiff operation repeating any of Torchwood One’s mistakes and wants to avoid any association with it.  As such, Ianto doesn’t get much field work in the early episodes.  The team butler/gofer/dogsbody, Ianto’s work assignments tend toward the less fantastical:  make the coffee, do the cleaning up, run the phony tourist desk that serves as Torchwood’s front, perform some light hacking, fake the odd death here and there (menial tasks or not, it is still Torchwood!)  When he does finally start getting out in the field, his initial deportment supports the idea that he didn’t often leave his desk at Torchwood One.  He has sharp observation skills, he’s trained with a gun, and he doesn’t crack under torture, but he doesn’t take the insanity in stride like the more experienced Jack, Owen, and Tosh do.  It freaks him out, and he needs time to get used to it.

Speaking of Torchwood One, I imagine that his attention to detail and diligent work ethic have at least some root there.  Torchwood Three is fairly ramshackle compared to the original’s well-oiled machine, and we see some of that difference between Ianto and the other team members.  The others play basketball around the Hub and lob tools to one another at meteor sites.  Owen dresses down for work and Gwen asks not-always-appropriate questions about everyone’s personal life.  Meanwhile, Ianto gets on with things quietly in the background, pristinely dressed in three-piece suits and trying to make the haphazard organization run like clockwork.  When there are boring but vital jobs to be done, Ianto does them without complaint.  He can keep running totals in his head, he anticipates the others’ needs, and he generally prefers his private life to be private.  Though he starts to loosen up when his relationship with Jack goes public, he sticks mainly to snark, making dry observations about their surreal work lives and some of his colleagues’ less-advisable activities.

Not that Ianto is unflappable – far from it.  The series 1 reveal that he’s been hiding his partially-converted Cyber-girlfriend, a victim of the Battle of Canary Wharf, in the Hub’s basement, more than proves that put-together on the outside may not equal the same inside.  His dedication to Lisa and refusal to accept that she’s past help puts the whole team in serious jeopardy, showing his loyalty to be his worst quality as well as his best.  He’ll do anything for those he loves, which can of course be great.  Taken to extremes, though, as it is with Lisa, that loyalty can endanger himself and others.  Much of the time, this trait is slightly under the surface; for example, he plays his feelings for Jack a bit close to chest.  Again, privacy, and he may have some anxiety that Jack’s not as invested as he is.  But even if he doesn’t usually make a show of saying it, there’s no question of what he’s thinking.  Jack’s well-being is often foremost on his mind, even though, as the resident unkillable man, Jack is the one least worth worrying about, and he’d follow Jack into Hell, his own safety be damned.  Not bad for a former coffee-boy.