Death and Torchwood
This interview with Russell T Davies which was linked from kateorman's journal has stirred up the hornet's nest again, I see. A lot of the fans are spitting mad about what he had to say and the way he said it, as well, of course, as about Ianto's death itself. I understand that. People get invested in the status quo of a series and when that gets shaken up, they get put right outside their comfort zone but where Torchwood is concerned, I just don't think that there can or even should be a comfort zone.
From the outset, the background to the Torchwood Institute and its personnel has made it abundantly clear that life for a Torchwood officer is likely to be exciting and adventurous but also short, very short in fact. Apart from Captain Jack, these are ordinary men and women putting their fragile bodies between the people and threats from beyond the world. Perhaps, under these circumstances, it's surprising that the original group survived intact as long as it did. Torchwood officers come and go, it's Torchwood itself that survives.
I've read a lot of comments to the effect that why should the viewers bother to invest any interest in a character or characters when they're just going to turn around and die in a relatively short time. The idea seems to be that you can't develop a viewer/character bond when there's a fair chance that the character's not going to be around for the long run. I have only one response to this idea - Nonsense!
Back in the 1980s there was a series of comic books from Marvel called Strikeforce: Morituri (*), which was set in a future where the Earth had been invaded by a race known as The Horde. The Horde were technologically superior, determined, ruthless, inhumane and humanity was taking a real beating before a technique was developed to give genetically compatible humans superpowers with which they could take the fight back to the Horde as members of the eponymous strikeforce.
The thing about this book which set it apart from anything else in the field was that the audience know, from the very beginning, that every single member of the main cast were going to die. it wasn't just defiance in the face of hideously long odds like much Terracentric science fiction is, it was an absolute foreknowledge that the underlying principle of the series was that the Morituri Process, which gave these people their enhanced abilities, would kill the recipients within one year from undergoing the process and most of them died well within the year. The story was about what they did with what they'd been given in the time that they had left and none of them (and none of us) knew how long that would be. The first of them died after only four issues and the viewpoint character, the one to whom the audience felt closest and most attached died shortly thereafter, not in battle but on the way to one, leaving his team (and the audience) in shock. In the safe world of comic books, where no death ever seemed to be permanent, Strikeforce: Morituri was like a bucket of water in your face, making you wake up and face the fact that people die and when they do they don't come back. Character after character died, either in battle against the enemy they had chosen to make this sacrifice to fight or simply because their powers killed them. In the course of 31 issues, more than 15 characters died in such ways.
Now, to the "I can't watch Torchwood anymore if characters are going to keep dying" crowd, I expect the idea of this comic book series would be quite horrifying. How could anyone be expected to care about any of these characters given that they were born to die? Well, we did care. We valued these characters as people and for the way that, in the time they had left to them, they truly lived their lives and when they died we mourned for them but we also celebrated what they had achieved and this is the true relevance to Torchwood. A character doesn't have to be around for a long time to be worthwhile. The idea of death being such an unfamiliar reality in a speculative fiction setting provides an extra spice to life since no one has any idea how long it will go on or how it will end (though for both Morituri and Torchwood officers, the chances are it would be violent). People are important to the story, it is true but the story will go on, even if individuals fall by the wayside.
It isn't comfortable but then neither, I guess, is life in Torchwood.
(*) Wikipedia article on Strikeforce: Morituri here