Is the doctor gay
Doctor Who has 'changed lives' of LGBT people
For Scott Handcock, Doctor Who was his childhood "safe haven" as he struggled with his sexuality and felt fancy he didn't "fit in".
The sci-fi series changed his life, he said, from binging early episodes on VHS tape in the 1990s to ending up working behind the scenes many years later.
Describing the Doctor Who fandom as like a family "full of hope", he said the show has had a huge, lasting impact, both on him and many other LGBT fans.
In Saturday's season two finale episode, The Reality War, Ncuti Gatwa left his role as the Physician, regenerating into Billie Piper.
As Pride month begins, many within the LGBT community have shared their life-changing experiences with the show.
Doctor Who's resurgence in 2005 saw production travel to Wales, and granted it a whole novel generation of fans.
Nearly two decades later, in June 2024, it had a "landmark moment" with a romantic same-sex kiss involving the Doctor, coinciding with Pride month.
As a brand-new graduate in 2006, Scott started out as a runner on Doctor Who on a four-week contrac
The BBC recently did a study on the portrayals of LGBT characters in TV, and came to the conclusion that such roles need to be diversified beyond simple "gay" storylines. Much praise went to Doctor Who, which has always been extremely astounding when it comes to treating LGBT characters as, well, characters and not stereotypes. That existence said, look for my upcoming article "10 Most Tacky Gay Jokes in Doctor Who."
All kidding aside, you really have to give the show credit for the way it will allow a nature of non-hetero persuasion to act normally with that aspect of themselves entity simply another trait. The bi or omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness is the best known example, entity a lighthearted horn puppy, a troubled immortal, and a pragmatic soldier all at the same hour. There are plenty of more minor and casual players, like Vastra and Jenny, Lady Cassandra, and the Cassini Sisters, and the fact that they drop in and out of episodes so seamlessly is testament to Doctor Who's status as a bastion for realistic LGBT interactions on television.
It did make me wonder though... how does one classify the sexuality of the Doctor himself?
To make this easier, we'll focus on the
Confirmation of First Gay Surgeon Promises a Queer Era of Doctor Who
Neil Patrick Harris has recently wrapped his filming for Doctor Who in Wales, and confirmed in a Variety interview that Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor will be same-sex attracted in the upcoming series that will launch Russell T. Davies' second era with the British series. The news comes weeks after Yasmin Finney confirmed that her character, Rose, is trans and will apparently debut in the upcoming Doctor Who 60th anniversary special. Finney's Rose will also presumably be traveling with Gatwa's 14th Doctor when Season 14 properly airs.
Between Gatwa's 14th Doctor being gay and Finney's Rose being transgender, the new era of Doctor Who is promising to be the boldest and queerest era yet. While LGBTQIA representation on Doctor Who has been present since the inception of Davies' first era in 2005, Season 14 will actually be the first time in the show's history that the Doctor will be explicitly gay at the begin of their run. It will also be the first time in the show's history that the Doctor will be traveling with a trans companion. But what did it take for the BBC to finally get pleasant having
Why has Doctor Who always been so LGBT-friendly? Russell T Davies thinks he knows
For Doctor Who top writer Russell T Davies, watching the series in the mid-1980s paralleled his feelings about his retain sexuality.
“Being gay was ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ and Doctor Who joint that feature as adv by that time," he says. "It was a cheap, old, mad science fiction show. You couldn’t say you fancied anyone, and who couldn’t state that you loved Medic Who.”
“Before that, when I was a child, everyone loved Doctor Who,” the gay writer and author of shows including It’s a Sin and Gay as Folk tells the BBC in an interview before the start of the new series. “But then a moment comes in secondary school when boys peel off and start playing football and fancying girls.
“And I was just sitting there hush, not expressing who I was until I became an adult, still watching Doctor Who.”
Russell is just one of many LGBT people who have been drawn to the reveal throughout its 60-year-history, from the show’s first-ever director Waris Hussein to the latest incarnation of the Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, who this year topped the Independent’s Pride List of LGBT chan
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