“Buffy” Vs. “Torchwood”: Which Did a Better Job Killing Its Gay Character?

They both did it: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Torchwood both killed off major characters in same-sex relationships – the former doing in the character of Tara Maclay, Willow’s girlfriend, toward the end of the sixth season, and the latter killing Ianto Jones in the recent Children of Earth miniseries.

But when it comes to ending the lives of major gay characters on television, Buffy did it well. Torchwood? Not so much.

First things first.

I’m not usually a fan of a show killing off any major character. Television is an intimate medium, one that is piped directly into your home. The negativity and trauma of a beloved TV character’s death can linger an unexpectedly long time.

That said, I understand that, dramatically, death is sometimes necessary, especially on shows like Buffy and Torchwood, where “danger” is a major element in every episode.

If no one ever dies, it’s hard to take any of these plots seriously. Soon you’re left with the “red shirt” Star Trek phenomenon, where the only characters who die are superfluous ensigns who no one’s ever seen before, and no one cares about.

In short, you eventually end up with a show that inspires more eye rolling than tension.

But for me, the rules are different for major gay characters on television, which are, even now, extremely rare (especially on fantasy or science fiction shows). Rarer still are gay characters in actual, loving relationships.

When you throw in the longstanding, extremely nasty tradition of fictional gay characters coming to untimely deaths, ending up murdered or having committed suicide, I find myself thinking that the bar to killing a major gay character should still be set pretty high.

It’s hard to make the argument that Torchwood creator Russell T. Davies didn’t clear that bar. After all, he also created the gay-inclusive U.K. shows Queer as Folk and Bob & Rose. If anyone has earned the right to kill a gay character, it’s he.

Russell T. Davies (left) and Joss Whedon

As for Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, he’s repeatedly tried to make the case in interviews that he didn’t kill Tara because she was a lesbian – that he wasn’t treating Willow and Tara any differently than how he treated any of his other characters, who all went through hell on the show (sometimes literally).

There’s certainly truth to what he says – and the show’s sixth season was definitely the darkest, dealing with issues such as depression, abusive relationships, kleptomania, and addiction.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Whedon’s decision to kill Tara destroyed one of television’s best GLBT relationships ever. And when it happened, it hit me like a punch in the gut.