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I keep thinking of bringing Ianto back, as you do.
Canon already did the heavy lifting on 'back from the dead' with House of the Dead,
so we just need 'back from the Rift'
and that's easy.
That can happen literally any time.
I mean, if we want and we're doing even audios, it could be the next minute for Ianto, and he walks out of the pub wondering where Jack went.
The problem isnt How to do the story, it's Why.
What story are we telling, what story needs telling.
If we bring him straight from 2009 we have a time travel story where we import a different historical perspective without all that one decision at a time stuff from in the middle, so he's dropped straight in to 2024 attitudes with a 2009 perspective. That's only 15 years, usually story does at least 20s. And it's tricky because the writers have to get both sets of attitudes right.
If we're telling the story with Ianto, a lot of his story is about who he dates. Black woman, white man, drop him in a different era and there's story from either. His own attitudes to being queer and bi and potentially out are... frozen by where the story left off, and not comfortable if we take some of the books as canon. Oh, and book canon made him physically a woman for a while, so he has a rare perspective on being trans.
He's got the usual Torchwood thing about non human sentients, ie usually they're trying to kill him so he may have some Issues and it is their actual job to lock them up and erase all evidence they exist, but Jack hasnt been disappearing them as often at Torchwood has the reputation for, so that's... nicer? So Ianto could be written as non human racist, but he seems nicer than that, and also his boyfriend has definitely dated non humans. Ambiguity and tension makes drama, so having mixed feelings about alien life is a drama plus.
What I kind of want to do, on tv even so we need a reason for Gareth to be older, is to have sent Ianto somewhere he had to take the long way home. Just make it so he's been Out There for all the years in between. Because the Rift connects all these places, all these planets, so he could be Anywhere. But it connects them to Cardiff, so there could be humans wherever Ianto lands. Could be a human population goinf way back. Plus we know like Trion and Traken there's a lot of looks humans out there, and would Ianto know one way or another? So he could meet a population that looked like him, on a Rift in soace and time, presumably needing protection just as much as Cardiff does.
Torchwood Golarion (Pathfinder xover) is just one of many delightful options.
So the story I want to tell is what happens when he brings all these people back to Cardiff.
Torchwood being the 'adult' show has really put them in a corner for how things work out. If it works out happy and hopeful and optimistic, that's a Sarah Jane adventure. If a bunch of people die but it gets sorted out in the end, Doctor Who. So what's left for Torchwood? Everything awful always.
And some people think that's more realistic. Blergh.
What I want to do is write about a large but understandable population arriving on Earth as refugees. Torchwood has an Asylum policy as of that BBC audio, and Ianto knows it. If he figures out how to get home there can be many and more reasons to take friends with him.
Or to have to risk blind jumping through the Rift, possibly accumulating friends as he goes.
It could be a bit like a reverse Atlantis if we wanted, where they know how to open a connection but the team of a hundred that arrives on a one way trip arrives to Earth rather than from it.
Mostly though I want a big set of characters that can defamiliarise refugee stories. Not an alien invasion, so its led by a friend coming home, someone we trust already. Not something the Doctor can sort out by taking them back to their home planets, because for a wild assortment of reasons that wont work out for them. And not easy to look at and stereotype, because Ianto considers them all people and mostly basically human, but a lot of them look to weird to categorise to the average viewer, and the rest have never been near the continents they look like they're from to us.
DW does a lot of 'basically human but painted' characters, so that's a good start, tell stories about fantasy racism with fantasy races, maybe mix in some tiefling and aasimar type visuals that let people stereotype at a glance and then be wrong about it. Put the wildest differences on the characters that look most familiar. Maybe have half of them sound American for no obvious reason, like Jack.
Tell the story half in flashback, so we know where they're coming from and that they made it safe to here, but we find out why. Get to know them in the here now being 'weird' before we start seeing their pasts, so then they make sense and the viewer is led to understand they were too quick to judge.
Just stop telling stories of alien invasions and start telling how we're going to get along with people not exactly like us.
That's two separate reasons to use Ianto coming back, the time travely one and the one where we'll trust him cause we know him. The issues dont entirely fit together. But they both generate story.
Canon already did the heavy lifting on 'back from the dead' with House of the Dead,
so we just need 'back from the Rift'
and that's easy.
That can happen literally any time.
I mean, if we want and we're doing even audios, it could be the next minute for Ianto, and he walks out of the pub wondering where Jack went.
The problem isnt How to do the story, it's Why.
What story are we telling, what story needs telling.
If we bring him straight from 2009 we have a time travel story where we import a different historical perspective without all that one decision at a time stuff from in the middle, so he's dropped straight in to 2024 attitudes with a 2009 perspective. That's only 15 years, usually story does at least 20s. And it's tricky because the writers have to get both sets of attitudes right.
If we're telling the story with Ianto, a lot of his story is about who he dates. Black woman, white man, drop him in a different era and there's story from either. His own attitudes to being queer and bi and potentially out are... frozen by where the story left off, and not comfortable if we take some of the books as canon. Oh, and book canon made him physically a woman for a while, so he has a rare perspective on being trans.
He's got the usual Torchwood thing about non human sentients, ie usually they're trying to kill him so he may have some Issues and it is their actual job to lock them up and erase all evidence they exist, but Jack hasnt been disappearing them as often at Torchwood has the reputation for, so that's... nicer? So Ianto could be written as non human racist, but he seems nicer than that, and also his boyfriend has definitely dated non humans. Ambiguity and tension makes drama, so having mixed feelings about alien life is a drama plus.
What I kind of want to do, on tv even so we need a reason for Gareth to be older, is to have sent Ianto somewhere he had to take the long way home. Just make it so he's been Out There for all the years in between. Because the Rift connects all these places, all these planets, so he could be Anywhere. But it connects them to Cardiff, so there could be humans wherever Ianto lands. Could be a human population goinf way back. Plus we know like Trion and Traken there's a lot of looks humans out there, and would Ianto know one way or another? So he could meet a population that looked like him, on a Rift in soace and time, presumably needing protection just as much as Cardiff does.
Torchwood Golarion (Pathfinder xover) is just one of many delightful options.
So the story I want to tell is what happens when he brings all these people back to Cardiff.
Torchwood being the 'adult' show has really put them in a corner for how things work out. If it works out happy and hopeful and optimistic, that's a Sarah Jane adventure. If a bunch of people die but it gets sorted out in the end, Doctor Who. So what's left for Torchwood? Everything awful always.
And some people think that's more realistic. Blergh.
What I want to do is write about a large but understandable population arriving on Earth as refugees. Torchwood has an Asylum policy as of that BBC audio, and Ianto knows it. If he figures out how to get home there can be many and more reasons to take friends with him.
Or to have to risk blind jumping through the Rift, possibly accumulating friends as he goes.
It could be a bit like a reverse Atlantis if we wanted, where they know how to open a connection but the team of a hundred that arrives on a one way trip arrives to Earth rather than from it.
Mostly though I want a big set of characters that can defamiliarise refugee stories. Not an alien invasion, so its led by a friend coming home, someone we trust already. Not something the Doctor can sort out by taking them back to their home planets, because for a wild assortment of reasons that wont work out for them. And not easy to look at and stereotype, because Ianto considers them all people and mostly basically human, but a lot of them look to weird to categorise to the average viewer, and the rest have never been near the continents they look like they're from to us.
DW does a lot of 'basically human but painted' characters, so that's a good start, tell stories about fantasy racism with fantasy races, maybe mix in some tiefling and aasimar type visuals that let people stereotype at a glance and then be wrong about it. Put the wildest differences on the characters that look most familiar. Maybe have half of them sound American for no obvious reason, like Jack.
Tell the story half in flashback, so we know where they're coming from and that they made it safe to here, but we find out why. Get to know them in the here now being 'weird' before we start seeing their pasts, so then they make sense and the viewer is led to understand they were too quick to judge.
Just stop telling stories of alien invasions and start telling how we're going to get along with people not exactly like us.
That's two separate reasons to use Ianto coming back, the time travely one and the one where we'll trust him cause we know him. The issues dont entirely fit together. But they both generate story.