Tintin

Tintin was a comics character known to Ianto Jones and Owen Harper. The character was an enthusiastic young explorer and adventurer with a shock of unruly hair and a dog for a companion.

Ianto compared his Torchwood colleague Owen Harper to Tintin and engaged in a talk about the character to the annoyance of the rest of the team. Owen said he never liked Tintin but Ianto was a bit of a fan. When Harper was sent on an infiltration mission, Jack Harkness gave Owen a t-shirt to insulate his hand from electrical burns when he disabled a security system; he later discovered that the t-shirt had Tintin on it. Owen remarked that since Tintin never had a girlfriend, he was actually 'shagging the dog'. (TW: A Day in the Death)

Behind the scenes

 * Andrew Cartmel, Doctor Who's script editor for 24, 25 and 26 described his aspiration for his period of Doctor Who as to make it a cross between Tintin, the Quatermass serials and the Marx Brothers.
 * Steven Moffat wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, first of a trilogy of films based on the adventures of Tintin, which was released in 2011 and directed by Steven Spielberg. Several media outlets reported that Moffat had turned down an opportunity for further work with Spielberg on the project to serve as Executive Producer and head writer of Doctor Who.
 * Thomas Sangster was to appear as Tintin in The Secret of the Unicorn, but left filming after a major delay.
 * The name of Tintin's dog was Snowy. This was not stated anywhere in A Day in the Death.