Before Matt Smith became the 11th incarnation of Doctor Who, there was the usual excited comment in the media. Would – or could – the new Doctor be black, a woman, or gay?
Seeing as Time Lords seemingly don’t have the habit or ability of changing sex or race, the talk is always irrelevant and frankly, redundant. But that doesn’t stop the lively debate every time there’s a change of face.
As it turned out, Smith’s Doctor is, like all the others, male, white and seemingly straight, but William Hartnell’s irascible first Doctor from 1963 aside, Doctor Who has always bordered on camp with more than a degree of innuendo.
With the advent of the Swinging Sixties later in the decade, more overt sexuality crept in with mini-skirted female companions – and mini-skirted males, if you care to count Frazer Hines’ kilted highlander, Jamie McCrimmon.
Wendy Padbury’s Zoe Herriot often crops up in Whovian conversations thanks pretty much to a spangly, tight purple zip-up jump suit she once wore while scrambling on to the Tardis console. But it was probably Katy Manning’s character of Jo Grant who is most fondly remembered as the girl who first put the sex into Doctor Who.
Jo, apart from being a good screamer as the role frequently required, had a tendency to flash her knickers courtesy of her early 1970’s outfit of short skirt and plastic boots. Not only did Manning thus cement her role as the first crush of small boys and the lust object of dads everywhere, ratings went through the roof.
After Manning left the series, she capitalised by posing nude with a Dalek, but it was really only as Doctor Who began its decline in the mid-1980s that Nicola Bryant’s Peri Brown briefly stirred the watching public again by appearing in a much-commented upon – and criticised – skimpy bikini.
Peter Davison has also frequently mentioned how his intense death scene as the fifth Doctor was completely upstaged by Bryant’s cleavage as she knelt beside him, but even the Doctors’ famed regenerations eventually proved no match for the BBC hierarchy. Where numerous enemies had tried and failed, poor stories and a poor time slot brought the Time Lord’s career to a close in December 1989.
Enter Russell T Davies. The TV Producer and Screenwriter had a number of hits on his CV before he tackled the resurrection of Doctor Who in 2005, including Queer as Folk, a controversial series about the Manchester gay scene, drawn loosely on Davies’ own experiences.
Despite initial scepticism, under Davies’ stewardship the ninth Doctor – portrayed by Christopher Eccleston along with Billie Piper’s superb Rose Tyler – was a huge hit. When Eccleston left, David Tennant’s Time Lord took the ratings even higher.
It would take an extremely brave move to make such an iconic figure as the Doctor into a gay man. And chances are that if anyone could have done it, Davies is the one, but that’s always likely to be a step too far for the BBC.
And yet, the reborn Doctor Who embraces numerous gay references, all the more remarkable in a top-rated, worldwide, prime time TV show aimed at the family. In fact, it is probably the gayest, non-gay programme anywhere in the TV schedules.
Davies is responsible for writing many of the episodes, but it was the Steven Moffat-penned ‘The Empty Child’, which introduces John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness, with Barrowman’s character the obvious crutch – pun intended – for what soon becomes a running theme throughout the entire series.
There are no holds barred when the viewing public is first introduced to Harkness. He caresses a fellow airman’s backside at a party before it’s revealed the two are having a relationship. Which, let’s face it, is pretty bold of them considering the law and public opinion of homosexuality in the 1940s.
And in the second of the two-parter, ‘The Doctor Dances’, the character of Nancy stops a black-marketeer from threatening her with the police by telling him she knows he’s ‘messing around’ with the male butcher. Although it takes a couple of more episodes before, following much innuendo, Captain Jack kisses the Doctor in what’s believed to be the series’ first same-sex kiss.
Davies himself took the opportunity to take a sly dig at gay stereotyping in werewolf episode ‘Tooth and Claw’.
When Tennant’s Doctor is asked why he failed to notice anything odd about the servants of a manor house, he replies: “Well, they were bald, athletic, your wife’s away. I just thought you were happy.”
Meanwhile, in ‘The Age of Steel’, a deleted scene from the DVD reveals Noel Clarke’s alternate Earth counterpart, Ricky, is the boyfriend of friend Jake.
Continuing the gay theme, Catherine Tate’s debut in ‘The Runaway Bride’ shows two men dancing together at her wedding reception, while in ‘The Shakespeare Code’ the Bard responds to Tennant’s comment about future flirting with: “Is that a promise Doctor?”
In ‘Gridlock’, the pensionable Cassini sisters are clearly married lesbians, while the Doctor’s sexuality is again called into question in ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ by New Yorker Tallulah who asks if Tennant prefers ‘musical theatre’.
Tennant’s Doctor is again involved in some mild male ‘bromance’, offering another New Yorker, Frank, the chance of a kiss, while John Simm’s Master asks Tennant if he is “asking me out on a date?” after the Doctor reveals they are the last of the Time Lords.
Tate’s character of Donna Noble returns in the fourth series, and after announcing a previous boyfriend ran off with another man, it’s all about the girls.
‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ reveals two of Donna’s friends are a lesbian couple who had a child with IVF, while in ‘Midnight’, the character of Sky Silvestry is on holiday to get over a relationship with another woman. Even the return of Piper’s Rose Tyler in ‘Turn Left’ is greeted by Noble with a heartfelt: “Blonde hair might work on men, but not on me!”
Meanwhile, in the series finale ‘Journey’s End’, Davies and Barrowman’s Captain Jack up the ante big time by hinting at a possible threesome with Tennant’s two identical Doctors.
Davies left Doctor Who at the same time as Tennant in 2009 after the two-parter, ‘End of Time’, but couldn’t resist a final scene involving Barrowman.
In a homage to the Star Wars cantina scene, Captain Jack sits alone at a bar next to Being Human’s Russell Tovey – Midshipman Alonso Frame from ‘Voyage of the Damned’. The Doctor passes Jack a note giving Frame’s name. A quick suggestive chat-up between Harkness and Frame follows before Frame asks Harkness if he can guess what he’s thinking.
Well, yes. I think we get the gist.
Since replacing Davies at the helm for 2010, Moffat has largely reined in the gay references. Indeed, Smith’s 11th Doctor remains asexual while Karen Gillan’s companion, Amy Pond, is the flirt.
However, Gillan has had some viewers and newspapers frothing and complaining over her short skirts. Which is odd, considering she has showed considerably less than Manning did, despite it being almost 40 years later in a time of a much more liberal media.
And there’s the irony.
Put against the usual right wing hysteria about traditional family values, Doctor Who has done much to open the doors to more liberal views about homosexuality at prime time and Davies should be applauded for having the guts to do so.
Too bad that the complaints about Ms Pond shows that tolerance of heterosexual sex appeal still has some way to go.
