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". (TV: A Day in the Death)

Behind the scenes

 * Andrew Cartmel, Doctor Who's script editor for seasons 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.
 * 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 . 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.