Some spoilers

It’s a quiet day in the Restricted Items Archive at Torchwood 3. Ianto is cataloging dangerous items from previous missions while the team are out socializing. But he’s not down there alone…

There’s a term used in stage magic: misdirection. Essentially it means the magician does something florid and interesting and weird with their left hand while their right does the trick, usually in plain view. It’s a lovely term and a key part of a lot of entertainment. If you want a particularly odd example, take a look at the Michael Keaton movie Birdman, and in particular how many times you have to see the extra that plays a vital role in the flight sequence before you actually see them. That’s misdirection. That’s magic. So is this.

Maddie Wilson’s script steers into two diametrically opposed forces and pirouettes around them. This is arguably the most specifically timed Torchwood story yet. A desperately poignant aside has Ianto cataloguing a thermometer that tells you when you’ll die. One that has told Owen and Tosh they have just over a year left to live. One that Jack won’t let him use. It’s a desperately sad beat, simultaneously embracing Torchwood‘s death fetish (live fast, die young, on the job, probably having snogged at least one alien) and railing against it. It also uses that specificity to guide and define Ianto, Gareth David-Lloyd, whose work is always brilliant, has a very specific version of the role he slips into here. A little fussy, a little annoyed, a little shy. This is very much the Ianto of season 2 even though it isn’t the Ianto of other audio stories. Desperate for his moment to come again. Completely unaware of what will happen when it does.

This is also a character study, precisely because of that. David-Lloyd’s delivery is textbook all the way, balancing Ianto’s trauma and isolation with increasingly bitter humour. The running gag about disappearing pens is especially good and no one on Earth can put emphasis on ‘Of…DOOM’ like David-Lloyd. He inhabits Torchwood’s best, showing us his pain, the joy and safety he finds in his work and also just how good he was at it.

Because that other diametrically opposed force? This is a story that could only be told in audio. Not only because Ianto is speaking into a memo recorder but because of how that’s played with. Toby Hrycek-Robinson’s sound design gives each of the objects a specific feel and heft but it’s that voice recorder and how it’s used, that the episode turns on. What Ianto’s hunting is assembling itself not just from the items in the Archive but from Ianto’s words and emotions. He’s presenting as isolated, alone, angry and he is. But he’s also aware of that and using it to not only do some good but maybe find some catharsis. The audio component of this is wickedly smart all by itself but fold in the careful way Wilson scatters useful items through the Archive and you have a story that’s as precise and delicately poised as Ianto’s artisanally cheesed mousetraps.

Ianto Jones is not OK, not close to OK. But he knows that and he’s brave enough, clever enough and determined enough to use his trauma to do some good. The hidden depths the character always had are core to this story and they absolutely shine.

Verdict: Wilson’s script, Steven Kavuma’s direction, Hrycek-Robinson’s sound direction and David-Lloyd’s acting all conspire to get you listening in one direction before surprising you from another. Brilliantly handled and executed and yet another great entry in this series. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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