Torchwood: Children of Earth – Review the Second

[eumelia]

Spoilers for Torchwood: Children of Earth! You have been warned!!!
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I re-watched the whole epic with [Southern!Girl]. She didn't like it as much as I thought she would.
Watching it the second time was even better than the first time.

Wow… the foreshadowing was un-fucking-believable.
As are all the tiny little details, which really show the amount of thought that went into the production. For instance, in Day Two Gwen is interrogating that MI5 agent masquerading as an EMT there is a PSA poster about how every month an ambulance worker is attacked on the job… I laughed.

And on Day Three when Gwen goes to collect Clem from the police station, there is a huge poster that says: "Do you have a drug problem. Ask for a drug consulter" – I paraphrase… but dude… I was really taken aback by that the second time around knowing what we know about the 456 and what they wanted the kids for.

Not the most horrific part of the arc, that would be the eugenics talk in the cabinet meeting. I seriously felt nauseous during those scenes.

Hannah Arendt, where are you?!

In my first review (spoilers therein) I began exploring several themes and details that appear in the show.
I feel the need to dwell on Ianto Jones (shock, I know).

I'm still devastated… but my own predictions prepared me for this reality so I was not really surprised. His death was beautiful though, and he left with the dignity he was always so worried about, wearing his armour and with his lover. Ianto is a morbid character and he was far more prepared for this possibility than Jack who pleaded and begged for Ianto not to leave him yet.
I'm inclined to believe that if Gwen had died Jack would have been devastated, but the loss that he felt when he was willing to sacrifice Steven wouldn't have been as acute.

Jack negotiated over Ianto.
He destroyed his daughter for the sake of the world.
I'm not sure how I feel about that other than pity. Generally I don't pity Jack, he deserves more than that. But the week he went through… the gods are cruel and there wasn't even one in the machine in the form of the Doctor, about whom I have theories as well.

Back to Ianto. Children of Earth put into the forefront a few details that were never stated, but are certainly woven throughout the series of Torchwood:

- Did you notice, that he is the only member of the team whose flat we never see. We've seen Gwen and Rhys' multiple times, Tosh's at least once, same with Owen. Jack lives at the Hub and so does Ianto.
It makes sense, in a way, him being the quiet unobtrusive man that he is, able to hide a fucking cyberman in the Hub and him being there early enough in the Feary episode when he should be in suspension. He is always there and never goes home.
Torchwood is the only thing that gives him meaning. That and Jack… he says so in the episode Adam. The key is when MI5 begin to track Gwen and Ianto they go the estate and Rhiannon's home and not to any flat that he should be living in… he hasn't lived anywhere other than Torchwood since he returned to Cardiff from London with Lisa.
He's a bit mad.

- Ianto is a big, big liar. His entire career in TW3 was based on a lie. The details he gives about his life, if he ever does, are lies… except that they're based on the truth. The best lies never stray far. His Father was a "Master Tailor"; Debenhams is a clothes store and very likely Ianto did learn to size people up while spending time with his Dad.
"I tell you everything" he says to Jack and we know this to be true because Jack knows about his family on the Estate.

- The mother is absent. This whole arc was filled with mothers who were awesome characters. Alice and Rhiannon were so good it hurt. But the Jones' mother was absent, they don't even mention if she died, or ran away, or is hidden in an attic somewhere. Due to Ianto's reaction in From out of the Rain and his knowledge of Providence Park, my theory is that Mother Jones was mentally ill, but that's just speculation and extrapolation.
Thought anyone?

Back to Ianto himself and not just the details around him.
Seriously, is there anything that boy can't do?

The foreshadowing of his death is given throughout the arc and the radio plays – specifically The Dead Line - the blip in time speech, I cried like a baby and when Jack says that Ianto will never be just a blip in time I accepted the fact that Ianto would die in Children of Earth… Ianto doesn't have a whole lot to live for other than Jack, he gives his family money and none of his time.
Sad but true.
The "dying like a dog" comment from Jack, the fact that Ianto is marked by the scar on his cheek and as I said, wearing his best armour made of that gorgeous grey pinstripe… his uniform and his funeral suit.

The cut on Ianto's cheek is interesting. Those in the know will notice that once he is clean in Day Three and up until his death in Day Four it is shaped like a Lambda.


Screencap from letsey_x

The Lambda has been an LGBT symbol since the early 70's and I don't think it's a coincidence that Ianto is marked in such a manner.
As rm wrote in hir own Meta on Children of Earth, Ianto is having a very Gay Day throughout Day One and Two.
Dear readers, he becomes a bloody Village person when he rescues Jack from the concrete person.


Screencap from letsey_x

More than Jack could ever be, Ianto is our Queer Warrior.
Coming from a background that more than likely tried to get rid of that side of him – LGBT rights and visibility have come a long way in the UK over the past ten years, not mention earlier decades, as he succinctly told Clem: "It's not 1964 any more".
Jack is special, but Ianto attempt at seducing Jack in order to get into TW3 that we see in Fragments inclines me to believe that while Jack may very well be the first man he ever loved, Jack is not the first man he ever slept with.

I've read a few reviews and thoughts by fans who feel betrayed by RTD's writing. That he disallowed his queer couple the happy ending that was given to Gwen and Rhys.
At first glance, it appears that the heterosexual agenda remains in tact and the queers are destined to die and/or remain alone.

I beg to differ.
While you can't separate the world in which that arc was written from the world which is written - and more than ever do we see how reality based Torchwood was in this series – it is the way he died and Jack's reaction that is key.
Ianto dies visibly Queer, marked and in the arms of his lover; to the government, a government that stands looking on while thousands of their citizens do not receive the care they need; to a military that excludes them (that would be the US one that are shown to be as Big Baddies along with the British Government); standing up to an enemy that had received Carte Blanche to eradicate the Powerless; the children, who are our future.

Society is only as strong as its weakest link. So when the weak decide they will not be broken and we see that our so-called leaders are willing to break them and watch them be broken.
It says something.

And while it may be cliché, it is still fitting that Dylan Thomas comes to mind regarding Ianto and Children of Earth:
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Changed the poem, though it's still Thomas, this one is much more apt I think.

Next time on my Torchwood reviews and Meta: the Ladies, why this whole thing was a Bechdel!Win and possibly more talking about the themes I've already mentioned.

Comments

[songspinner9.livejournal.com]

"More than Jack could ever be, Ianto is our Queer Warrior. "
Well said. It bugs me a great deal that so many people are only seeing him as a gay character who died! He went out as a hero, by his lover's side (after fighting to rescue him), knowing he'd probably die but going ahead with things. As sad as I was to watch it, I thought that those folks are really missing appreciating Ianto as a person...an intelligent person who is most definitely not perfect (as much of a con-man as Jack was/is), who struggles, and who ultimately chose love and loyalty.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Yes exactly. It's extremely reductive towards Ianto's arc, imo, to just see the smae-sex romance thing as the central part of the story, when in fact the whole point is that it isn't the central part... it's just a part of Torchwood life.
That's what makes is so bloody fantastic.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

i rather love your interpretating here and find myself wanting to agree (but it still hurts too much)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

*hugs* if you want.

And yay I'm glad you liked my rambles and that they struck a cord and made sense to you.

Also, just as a matter of interest, this post is over a month old, where did you find it that you read it now? Curious minds want to know :)

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

i *think* it was linked from solitary_summer's post, which was linked from various places

i didn't read a whole lot of meta directly after, but find i sort of want to now