PLEASEEE talk to me abt twelveclara/ianto jones...

Like he abandons Clara, lets her think he's changed, lets her think he's left her for dead, all on the assumption that she'll figure their captors out and successfully out-boss a room full of murderous clockwork cyborgs into giving her answers.

And he's completely right.

Fuck, it's such a deliciously messed up thing for him to do.

Because like ten minutes earlier, they're finally starting to fall back into a rhythm together. They're investigating the restaurant, piecing clues together, working the mystery. He slips the sonic out of his pocket, she kicks it up to him, they're bouncing observations off each other, making deductions together. You can actively see Clara beginning to settle into this new version of the Doctor.

Not fully trusting him yet.

But getting there.

Getting comfortable.

And then the Doctor takes the exact thing she's struggling with, her uncertainty, her fear that he's different now, that maybe she doesn't know him anymore, and turns it into part of the plan.

He weaponizes her doubt against both her and the clockwork cyborgs.

He looks her in the eye, tells her that at least one of them has to live, and leaves.

And my god, Jenna Coleman absolutely destroys me in the scenes that follow. Clara trying so hard not to breathe, but having to try even harder not to cry, and failing at both. Walking away while desperately trying to hold herself together. The panic, the oxygen deprivation, the heartbreak of genuinely believing the Doctor abandoned her.

It's brutal.

Because from Clara's perspective this is confirmation of every fear she's been carrying since the regeneration. The Doctor is different now. Maybe this face doesn't care about her. Maybe she really has been left behind.

But from the Doctor's perspective, the reason he can do this at all is because he trusts her completely.

He knows she'll start asking questions.

He knows she'll push back.

He knows she'll get to the truth because that's who Clara is.

So he leaves her there and trusts that she'll do exactly what he would do in the same situation while he runs off to throw together a disguise.

It's one of those moments that feels incredibly Doctor-ish and incredibly unfair at the same time.

Because buried underneath it is a weirdly profound compliment.

He's effectively saying, "I trust you to handle this."

But the way he chooses to communicate that is by emotionally throwing her into a nest of killer robots and hoping she figures it out.

Which she does.

Because unfortunately for Clara, he knows her almost as well as she knows him.

just some stuff i've accumulated during this fixation :) hope it proves handy :D

ianto's-desktop (livejournal) - archived most of the things found on the torchwood website during season 1 and season 2; the only thing missing is the videos. / note: click the headers of the posts to see the full thing, or some stuff with appear incomplete. took me a sec to figure out, lol

speaking of the website...

season 1 website (archive.org)

season 2 website (archive.org) - unlike the s1 website, the bulk of the s2 site's content is pretty inaccessible through the wayback machine (at least for me; maybe i'm doing something wrong), so thank g-d for ianto's desktop

there's also a good amount of rebloggable site content in this person's tumblr tag.

season 1 declassified (youtube)

season 2 declassified (youtube)

season 1 commentaries (mega.nz)

torchwood books (google drive) - gonna be honest, i haven't tried to download any of these myself

border princes audiobook (read by eve) + all of the radio plays (archive.org)

torchwood magazines (beta.reddit) - download links for all of them! p fuckin kewl

torchwood official yearbook (archive.org)

herecomesthedrums (youtube) - account that started posting before the show came out and is chock full of promos, trailers, interviews... some real fun goodies in there

torchwood: up close (youtube) - handful of bts videos with the cast + crew

season 1 unreleased tracks (soundcloud) - the end of days ones hrhghgh

out of time unreleased tracks (soundcloud) - i absolutely adore the music in this ep so i was so happy when i found these

the torchwood fanpop - this has sooooooo much content like i scrolled for a loooooong time and never reached the bottom. lotta stuff i hadn't seen before, too. there's fun hd promo pics, pics of the cast, and a lot of extremely early 2010s edits, graphics, and fanvids. / note: i also had this page bookmarked + it's got different content than the main page so i'll link it

aaand under the cut i'm gonna dump some silly stuff i've collected of the cast. but yeah, there ya go :-)

but not enough that they also brand their weaponry

because let us review, in roughly chronological order, the absolutely staggering catalogue of behavior before this action that has apparently not resulted in termination

We are introduced to the entire cast having stolen alien artifacts from work to use in their personal lives, and even after those specific items get returned it’s revealed they ALSO just casually have other stuff. Everyone at Torchwood steals from work like they’re employees at a Spirit Halloween.

Gwen accidentally unleashed an alien organism that killed people through the power of really intense orgasms because she unsafely threw a chisel at another coworker.

Owen used alien technology to stalk and psychologically torment someone outside of work hours which, granted, the guy sucked, but from an HR perspective that sentence alone should have caused the building to implode into a legal singularity.

Ianto secretly smuggled an entire Cyberman into the base, concealed it for who knows how long, continued defending her after she tried converting both the scientist he hired AND Gwen, and somehow retained employment afterward like this was a slightly awkward misunderstanding at a team meeting.

Owen left the keys to Torchwood’s branded SUV sitting in an unlocked vehicle with all of their classified alien tech and sensitive information inside.

Tosh read everyone’s minds without consent and later attempted to sneak her alien girlfriend into the secret underground alien bunker.

and THIS is the environment where Jack suddenly decides “whoa now Gwen, this crosses a line”

my sibling in the cosmos what line.

This organization has the structural integrity of wet cardboard. There is no line. There are vague suggestions of professionalism floating somewhere in the distance like ghosts on the horizon while everyone continues committing increasingly unbelievable workplace violations on company time.

In the first GIF, he smiles with his hands clasped together as the caption reads, “Millions of you watched me as Eric in ‘Sex Education’...”

In the second GIF, he grins and clasped hands while the caption reads, “And maybe 12 of you watched me in ‘Doctor Who’...”

In the third GIF, he shrugs with both hands thrown outward as the caption reads, “Hey, maybe that’s why I kept crying.”

In the fourth GIF, the caption reads, “And even though I have since regenerated into Billie Piper...”

In the fifth GIF, the camera cuts closer to his face as he gives a baffled sideways look. The caption reads, “I don’t understand it either.”