Sunday 19 December 2021

J is for... Jones, Ianto


A member of Torchwood Three. However, before joining the Cardiff branch, he was a member of Torchwood One in London's Docklands. There he had a girlfriend named Lisa Hallett, who also worked for the organisation. When the Cybermen infiltrated the HQ then invaded in force through the Void from a parallel Earth, they immediately began converting Torchwood personnel. At first they transplanted the human brain directly into a Cyberman body, but as parts depleted they started converting people piece by piece. This was the fate which befell Lisa. 
Ianto managed to rescue her, and some of the conversion equipment, and kept them in hiding. He travelled to Cardiff, where the last surviving Torchwood team was based, and went out of his way to win a job from Captain Jack Harkness. He would flirt with him and bring him coffee every day. After assisting Jack with capturing a pterodactyl, which would become a pet named Myfanwy, he was finally offered a job. This would be a general assistant, charged with looking after the Hub and making the coffee. Ianto's sole reason for getting the job was so that he could smuggle Lisa and the conversion equipment into the Hub, then find a way of bringing her back.
Ianto was mainly based in the Hub, rarely going out on field work. One time he did go out on a mission, he was captured and almost killed by a group of cannibals.
When the rest of the team were away, he would try to help Lisa. This included sneaking a medical expert named Dr Tanizaki on site one evening. Lisa killed him then began draining the Hub's power. This is when Jack and the others discovered what he had been doing. Ianto was ordered to kill Lisa, or be killed himself. Lisa was killed by Ianto's colleagues after she had transplanted her brain into the body of a pizza delivery girl. 
Despite his subterfuge, which had put them all at risk, Jack allowed Ianto to keep his job.


When the Rift which ran through Cardiff began to open, Ianto fought with Owen Harper over opening it fully. Owen thought that his lost love would reappear. Ianto ended up shooting Owen to prevent him doing this. Eventually an image of Lisa caused Ianto to also want to open the Rift, and he turned against Jack.
Over time, Ianto and Jack became lovers.
As he was in charge of the Hub, Ianto was the first to notice something odd about team member Adam. Although everyone knew he had been with them for some time, he did not appear in recent CCTV images - suggesting he could only have arrived. To prevent him investigating further, Adam - really an alien who could manipulate memory - caused ianto have false memories of being a murderer, the stress of which gave him a nervous breakdown. Jack eventually worked out what Adam was, and gave Ianto and the others a heavy dose of their Retcon drug so that they would no longer remember him, or the false memories he had planted.
Ianto and Gwen Cooper were left to defend the Hub when it came under attack by a Dalek, after the Earth had been moved across space.
When the aliens known as the 456 returned, they demanded a number of Earth's children. Ianto helped his sister's children and many of their friends to evade being taken by the authorities. Later, however, he was trapped in Thames House, London, when a 456 ambassador released quantities of toxic gas, killing him.

Played by: Gareth David-Lloyd. Appearances: Torchwood Series 1 - 3 (2006 - 2009), The Stolen Earth, Journey's End (2008).
  • Despite the fact that Torchwood ended a decade ago, and the character was killed in 2009, there still remains in Cardiff Bay a shrine to Ianto Jones.


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