Ianto Jones is a fictional character in the BBC television programme Torchwood, a spin-off from the long-running series Doctor Who, played by Welsh actor Gareth David-Lloyd.

Within the narrative of the series, Ianto begins as general support officer for Torchwood Three, a team of alien hunters stationed in Cardiff, and develops into an active field agent.

Subsequent to the departure, fans set up websites in the character's honour, petitioning the writers to resurrect him in future episodes of the series, raising money for charity.

[4] By the penultimate episode of the series, Ianto is willing to shoot colleague Owen Harper (Burn Gorman) to protect Jack, and refutes claims he is merely his "part time shag".

When aliens called the 456[broken anchor] return to Earth, John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi) puts a hit on Torchwood's lives to cover a conspiracy.

Published in March 2008, and tying in with the concurrently airing second series of Torchwood, Ianto appears in the novels Trace Memory by David Llewellyn,[21] The Twilight Streets by Gary Russell,[22] and Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale.

[24] The character next appears in Into the Silence, Bay of the Dead and The House that Jack Built in June 2009, and Risk Assessment, The Undertaker's Gift and the short story anthology Consequences in October of that year.

The comic posits a "what-if" scenario wherein Ianto, "who struggles with his feelings for Jack from the offset", sees a face from the future and embarks on a mission that could change the course of his life (from that of his eventual death in Children of Earth).

Updated weekly with the airing of the new episodes, the website features specially shot footage with Gareth David-Lloyd in character as Ianto debriefing and informing the 'player' with regards to their mission.

[28] Throughout both series one and two, the interactive websites co-written by James Goss featured electronic literature content (such as fictitious internet messaging conversations and letters) which depict aspects of Ianto and the other Torchwood characters' work and personal lives.

[36] Joseph Lidster also wrote a BBC Radio 4 Torchwood drama, "Lost Souls" which aired in Summer 2008 as an Afternoon Play featuring the voices of John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd and Freema Agyeman (Martha).

Set after the events of the 2008 series, Ianto and the team make their first international adventure to CERN in Geneva, as part of Radio 4's special celebration of the Large Hadron Collider being switched on.

[37][38] The special radio episode's plot focuses on the Large Hadron Collider's activation and the doomsday scenario some predicted it might incite, as well as the team's mourning of Toshiko and Owen's recent deaths.

This has led to speculation that he was the same Idris Hopper played by Aled Pedrick who appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "Boom Town" as Margaret Blaine's (Annette Badland) personal assistant.

Writer Stephen James Walker wonders if Russell T Davies intended Idris to become a major character on Torchwood in the same way as Toshiko Sato, who originated in Doctor Who's "Aliens of London".

Commenting on this, portrayer Gareth David-Lloyd notes that "This season it's much more relaxed and he's not all about keeping secrets, he's about Torchwood and Jack — he's found his meaning and his place so his dry humour comes out a lot more and he's happier.

He started off in white and grey shirts but we realised his skin tones can take the extra colour and now he's evolving into something much sharper, which looks really good filmed in high definition.

[51] Creator Russell T Davies felt that killing off Ianto was necessary for Children of Earth; it was his first decision to create a "horrible war casualty" for the story, because it would be unrealistic to have a great threat and have the main characters all come out unscathed.

Because Ianto's storyline grows out of the reality of the show, "it plays with such genuine sympathy and pathos that Jones's eventual fate is easily the miniseries' most powerful moment."

They compared the death scene to that of Tara (Amber Benson) in Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer which he felt was more satisfying, although "unbearably sad" because of its pivotal role in the character arc for Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and as being "possibly the single most significant event in the whole seven-season series."

[64] The website Den of Geek praised Davies's writing of Ianto's death, and likened the tough story-driven decision to those used in critically acclaimed shows The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica and The Wire.

Ianto's death was compared to that of Tara as in the above critiques, but also contrasted to other television series where lesbian and gay couples were able to have enduring relationships, such as Six Feet Under's David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) and Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick) and Bad Girls' Nikki Wade (Mandana Jones) and Helen Stewart (Simone Lahbib).

[67] GayNZ writer Craig Young places Ianto, like Buffy's Tara, in a larger literary tradition, commenting "just as Iphigenia's sacrifice at the hands of Agamemnon was necessary to set in train the events of Aeschylus's Oresteia... just as Ophelia's madness, suicide and accidental death led to the climatic duel between Hamlet and Laertes ... Ianto's death can be argued to be a dramatic necessity which adds to character and narrative development."

The website also took note of Ianto fans' displeasure when Jack was introduced to a new romantic partner in Alonso Frame (Russell Tovey) in Doctor Who episode "The End of Time" (2010), mirroring Willow's romance with Kennedy (Iyari Limon) in Season Seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The website End of Show comments that "writer James Moran was so inundated with messages to his Twitter account that he posted a number of impassioned pleas to tone down the vitriol."

"[69] Moran noted in his blog that of the thousands of messages from viewers, the "vast majority" were extremely positive, managing to express that they were "upset, angry and shocked" without making personal attacks.

The same reviewer notes that however, "especially when viewed on its own, Children of Earth looks a lot like the same heteronormative, homophobic, biphobic and gratuitous tropes that appear in so many bad representations of queer people in popular culture.

"[70] In response to the accusations of "de-gaying" Torchwood, Davies advised those people do some research into his career (creator of Queer as Folk) and "stop riding on a bandwagon that they actually don't know anything about".

He praised the fan donations, claiming "So far, they've raised about £3,000 for Children in Need, and £1,000 for Lluest Horse and Pony Trust in West Wales, which I'm a patron of, so that's got to be a good thing".

In response to a question, Fay also stated that he had not been affected by the "scary" fan reaction, maintaining that "a universe in which fictional characters aren't 'allowed' to die is ridiculous and limiting".