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He’s gay and she’s an alien: How Doctor Who became as queer as folk

Though some of his classic companions may have question marks on their collars regarding their orientation (mentioning no names Harry Sullivan, Adric and Ace), The Doctor is the undisputed renegade sci-fi non-binary hero for everyone on Earth and beyond. To mark the start of Gay Pride month, our newest scribe Alan Riley, a fellow Brit turned Gallic expat, has taken a trip in the TARDIS to look back at some of the important LGBTIQ+ milestones in the 60+ year history of Doctor Who.

It’s June, it’s Pride Month – and the rainbows are out and proud for another defiantly celebratory season of marching, dancing and drinking.  It’s also coming to the end of the first new-new series of Doctor Who. Two things seemingly inexplicably linked. 

As we count down to the finale of Ncuti Gatwa’s first season as the Time Lord, I for one feel that it is heartening to see a member of the LGBTIQ+ community finally, properly, playing the lead role in a TV show much beloved by said subculture (yes, there were others before, but Gatwa is the first queer actor playing the role as canon). So, as these two seemingly different things collide in the same month, the question remains – why are so many Doctor Who fans gay? 

Well, first of all, there is the fact that this is sheer escapism from an often depressing and oppressive world. Growing up gay in a working-class Midlands town, it was a wonderful escape for me from a world where I didn’t truly fit in, having this ‘thing’ shining out of me that I hid so badly, that everyone noticed. 

So, to switch on the telly and feel like you could fly off in the TARDIS was wonderful. Doctor Who has been an escape from the occasionally lonely planet where so many non-binary types experience harassment, bullying and worse just for being who they are and who they love. But when you watch Doctor Who, you can be whisked away to alien planets and strange times, a much more appealing prospect than a world where you don’t really feel like you fit in. 

Yet it’s easy to forget that for the first first four years of Doctor Who’s existence it was illegal for two men to even be in a relationship in the UK (the law, incongruously, didn’t apply to women). Even though there were lots of people of varying sexualities working on the programme over the years, social attitudes were still in the dark ages — almost as cavemen-like as the 100,000 BC Paleolithic tribe featured in its very first serial, 1963’s An Unearthly Child, which just happened to be directed by a British-Indian BBC staffer, Waris Hussein, who happens to be gay. Here he is in conversation with The Fan Show on how it felt to be gay and working at ‘Aunty Beeb’ at the time.

This TARDIS timewarp continued in much the same way for over two decades, and the show seemed to be stuck in this veritable sixties-style vortex. Even so, the series had one amazing attribute – the Doctor! The gallant Gaillfreyan was the sort of character who made everyone feel included, no matter who they were or where they came from. The eccentric way in which he/she behaves and dresses, caring for others but not really giving a flying Fenric what others thought of them was infinitely appealing. 

The Doc stands up for the persecuted and the oppressed, so, naturally, is an alluring figure for a young person growing up and feeling a little different from everyone else. They’ve always been a little bit anti-establishment too; unlike Star Trek, the eccentric alien would be much more likely to topple an all too powerful Federation than endorse it.

In the programme’s first decade viewers witnessed the grumpy grandfatherly gravitas of the original Doctor, William Hartnell giving way to Patrick Troughton’s affable cosmic hobo, followed by Jon Pertwee’s dandy capes and Venusian Aikido. And then the pure joy clearly presented by the wild eyes and enormous smile of the legendary Tom Baker, the Doctor by which all Doctors are measured. 

For me, though, the eighties Doctors were the ones I grew up with – from the affable charm of Peter Davison to Colin Baker’s development from angry and brash to warm and charismatic to finally Sylvester McCoy’s rolling “R”s and distinctly dark portrayal of the character, which saw for me the greatest change from comedian to someone that the baddies should most definitely fear.  

When Tom’s fourth Doctor procrastinated over destroying the Daleks, the seventh Doctor let them burn. Whichever Doctor you travelled with, however, you always felt safe – a misfit we can all relate to, and each actor always brought their own idiosyncrasies to a role that is fundamentally enigmatic in nature.

By this time, flamboyant new producer John Nathan-Turner — one of us, as the eternally partisan Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would describe her own kind — was injecting Doctor Who with an often less than subtle production design, and an even camper, over-lit flash of showbiz glitz. An end of the pier sensibility that only increased its appeal to the queer community. 

There were progressive developments in the stories as well, and more gay overtones had started to appear by the end of the decade. Some seasoned Whovians have identified LGBT themes in 1988’s pink-wigged The Happiness Patrol, which they identify as a slyly barbed response to the hated Section 28 (the Conservative government’s Victoriana policy banning the “promotion” of gay and lesbian literature in schools), and the police’s persecution of gay men in public places.

Another way in which Doctor Who appeals to the community is in its presentation of relationships. The doctor has always had platonic friendships with his companions until very recently – and even then it has been little more than fleeting flirtations. 

With the return of the series proper under the stewardship of Queer As Folk’s Russell T Davies in 2005 we saw a significant queering of the Whoniverse. As a lifelong fan, Davies had a pathological need to update Doctor Who for the 21st century, something that would appeal to all sections of society, but most of all remained true to the show’s ethos of liberality, equality and open-mindedness.

Suddenly, storylines that wouldn’t have been deemed unacceptable in the olden days were not only possible but celebrated. Our gay link would go beyond multi-coloured jackets, kinky leather uniforms and make-up applied by the shovel load. Moreover, several of the Doctor’s companions were not only easy on the eye, but, in a way, tangible gay icons in their own right. Ready to rise to the occasion, dressed in clobber that will date in about five seconds, and always with a sharp tongue to throw this week’s bug-eyed monster off their stride.

With the higher production values that has afforded, it was out with the camp costumes and shaky sets of old, and in with a glossier look and actual gay characters and themes. Eagle eyed viewers of Rose, the series premiere, saw Christopher Eccleston’s Doc 9 leafing through a copy of Heat magazine and declaring to Rose Tyler (the brilliant Billie Piper) that the depicted celebrity romance would never work, because “he’s gay and she’s an alien” – the very first appearance of the “G” word in the show’s storied history. 

The very next week we met the glamorous sheet of skin that is Lady Cassandra, who had also been a possibly less than moisturised male at some point in her life. Then, before you could say “Run!”, we’d witness the immortal moment when John Barrowman’s charmingly gregarious Captain Jack Harkness kisses the Doctor in The Doctor Dances. 

Serving as the main tritagonist in that first Series plus the third with David Tennant‘s Doc 10, Jack’s enigmatically exhibitionist Time Agent was DW’s first openly “omnisexual”, and brought the first really outré LGBTQ+ storylines to the show. Crucially, such was the Captain’s popularity that he was eventually given his own spin-off show Torchwood in 2006.

“What I love about Jack is that he’s not a stereotype,” Barrowman told The Telegraph in 2011. “Jack is omnisexual, but people who watch this series will think he’s completely gay because he only has sex with men.”

Breaking boundaries and more open representation of LGBT lifestyles is certainly something I applaud in the new Disney-aided seasons, especially making these characters often just very ordinary people, living ordinary lives, when boom!, the Doctor arrives. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhL5ihOUUcs

From Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint in Matt Smith’s Doc 11 era to the better backstoried Bill Potts (Peter Capaldi, 12), and then most recently witnessing Jodie Whittaker inhabit a gender-swapped Doc 13, and in 2024, the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday fighting over boyband hunk Ricky September in Dot And Bubble, finally, we have numerous reasons to feel we fit in and be ourselves.

To conclude, there are some who are proud to gate-keep the old episodes and stories and see anything showing diversity from the showrunners as ‘woke’ or something bad – everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and not all of Doctor Who will be universally loved by every fan. 

That’s fine – followers of Star Trek and Star Wars have lived with very diverse universes for years and are usually fans of a part of that universe. But Doctor Who has always had this amazing allure to the LGBTIQ+ community in particular, one which I feel will endure another sixty years, if not more. 

Well, that‘s alright then.

Alan Riley, France

Dedicated to William Russell Enoch (19 November 1924 – 3 June 2024)

Steve Pafford would like to extend his warmest thanks to Steve Nallon, whose Doctor Who-dominated book with Dick Fiddy, Destination Time Travel (Luath Press, 2023), was ostensibly the inspiration for this feature.

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Alan Riley
Alan Riley
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