Unrecognized auth method causes IOError
If the PROTOCOLINFO response has an unrecognized method of authentication (such as 'SAFECOOKIE') we raise an IOError which, in turn, breaks connect(). Here's the offending bit of code...
https://gitweb.torproject.org/pytorctl.git/blob/HEAD:/TorCtl.py#l564
This should be a trivial fix and until then the new tor version will make torctl clients very sad.