30 Day Torchwood Meme: Least favourite member of Torchwood...

[fajrdrako]

The 30 Days of Torchwood meme:

Day #2: Least Favourite Torchwood Member.

Difficult. I may have to make this a tie.

I love Gwen very much indeed, and Toshiko as well. Suzie - I thought she was magnificent at first, but she tried to kill Gwen, then she turned into a creepy zombie maniac with a love/hate thing for her, so she's pretty much a write-off. Nobody from Torchwood of the past, insofar as we've seen them, does much for me, though I don't dislike the scary ladies, Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd, from "Fragments".

So that leaves Owen and Ianto.



In first season I found Owen utterly annoying. Entertaining, often. A person I would hate to have to deal with on a one-to-one face-to-face meeting. He disrespected Jack, he was a sexist pig, he was irredeemable.... But he had his moments. Sometimes I almost loved him.

In second season, I liked him even less. He lost his edge. Instead of being irritating, he was ordinary. And when we got his back story in "Fragments", I couldn't reconciled that with the Owen we'd known and loved in the past. But what really made me dislike Owen was the relationship, or non-relationship, they set up between him and Toshiko. It wasn't his fault that they turned her into an utter dope when in his presence. It just happened, and I resented him for it.

Owen's three greatest moments:



1. Fighting the Weevil in "Combat"
   
2. Seducing Gwen in "Countrycide"
   
3. Being hugged by Jack at the end of "End of Days"
   


As for Ianto... at first, I didn't know what to make of him. I wanted to love him, as Jack's boyfriend. I wanted him to be good enough for Jack. Sometimes I did quite love him - in "Cyberwoman" and "Meat" and "Captain Jack Harkness".



But I could never pin down his personality to my own satisfaction. I could never figure out his motivation, even when he told us his motivation. His relationship with Jack seemed stubbornly unromantic, not sexy enough, not compelling enough. I wanted them to hold hands and smile at each other over shared secrets. Ianto had great moments, but whenever I thought I had him slotted, he'd slip away from me again. Discovering that David Gareth-Lloyd was wonderful in person didn't change my opinion of Ianto; it just made Ianto more preplexing to me. All that charm and humour and energy - where did it go, when he bacame Ianto?

Which should I pick - the character who baffled and eluded me without leaving a mark on my psyche, or the one who made me fume and fuss? I think I'll have to say Ianto is my least favourite, partly because of a certain disappointment factor (which includes his death) and partly because of the contrariness of not quite being able to love the character who was the big fan favourite.

So, Ianto is my answer.

Ianto's best moments:



1. Shooting Owen in "Captain Jack Harkness"
   
2. Defying and threatening Jack in "Cyberwoman"
   
3. Taming a pterodactyl with chocolate in "Fragments"