Doctor Who is a weapon of queer pride in 2024 - but it's never been afraid of social commentary
With his latest era, Russell T Davies is taking all the queer joy that’s that’s always rumbled throughout Doctor Who and actively weaponising it
In 2024, Doctor Who is a vibrantly inclusive and undeniably queer assault on the systems that are so aggressively stamping out our humanity - across war, genocide, commerce, and art.
It’s made its mission particularly clear with the recent episode ‘Rogue’, and its sublime portrayal of a whirlwind interracial queer romance for the Doctor. Crucially, such queerness was not treated as one-sided, winked-at, or in any way ambiguous. The Doctor’s brief and tender kiss with his love interest ensured the show’s queerness was indisputable and uncompromising - which in turn explains the furious backlash from conservatives.
It’s an electrifying symbol of what (and who) is driving Doctor Who’s Disney Plus era.
He’s back!
Russell T Davies is 61 years old. With his return to showrunning Doctor Who (following his initial revival and extension of the series from 2005-2010), he has taken on what peers like fellow Who writer and showrunner Moffat described as a job that leaves a person “permanently stressed, upset, faintly cross” and only ever “working and getting grumpy”.
For many critics, there seems to have been a belief Davies returned to simply deliver a joyful time with the expanded budget of Disney Plus. Given Doctor Who’s notoriously limited BBC budgets over the last sixty years and Davies’ own comments about the need for greater investment to keep Doctor Who alive, it’s not an unfair conclusion.
But, with every passing episode of Davies’ latest Doctor Who era, it becomes clearer and clearer that he returned with bigger ideas on his mind than just flashy budgets.
With last year’s ‘The Starbeast’, he signified his intentions early. While initial headlines surrounding the episode focused on the return of NuWho legends David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Davies also prioritised a climax with a mixed-race trans teen and a wheelchair-using UNIT genius helping kick a murderous space-fascist’s furry hide.
Upon airing, it felt like Davies taking a best of both worlds approach. It combined a nostalgic and compassionate look at Doctor Who’s past, with an acknowledgement of more inclusive values. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s become apparent that Davies’ wasn’t actually promising a remixed greatest hits - but to diverse crews absolutely ripping the shit out of fascism and friends.
Unsubtle metaphors
In the first episode proper of Disney Plus Doctor Who (‘The Church on Ruby Road’), the Doctor faced off against a pirate ship of baby-eating monsters powered by coincidences of birth. If that metaphor was too subtle, second episode ‘Space Babies’ described a world where babies are grown in factories to colonise new territories and left to die by legislative loopholes.
Initially, it was easy for critics to gloss over the themes. After all, ‘Space Babies’ had a monster made out of literal baby snot. Collider’s Samantha Coley said the episodes “kick off a new era of Doctor Who that is bright and full of possibility”.
It’s only with more recent episodes that critics have started to truly appreciate the returning showrunner’s actual priorities. ‘Boom’, for example, saw Davies enlist former Who colleague and showrunner Moffatt to tell a story of an algorithm-driven war of devout soldiers, endless deaths, and a non-existent enemy: private sector ambulances killing soldiers simply to save money.
In ‘Bubble’ and ‘Rogue’, Davies has carefully grappled with Ncuti Gatwa’s position as the first Black actor to portray The Doctor in a lead role. (Jo Martin having taken the first steps by portraying a previously unknown incarnation, known as the Fugitive Doctor, as part of the Thirteenth Doctor’s Timeless Child storyline.)
’Bubble’ will likely grow to be emblematic of the approach of Russell T Davies’ era. Initially, it seems almost too silly. A lacklustre satire of social media, influencers, and the empty-headed youth. It isn’t until the final moments that Davies makes the many subtextual hints throughout the episode truly explicit: It’s a futuristic world of ultra-rich white supremacist colonisers. He is making a statement about inequality and colonialism.
Rage and joy
Beneath the expanded budgets, Russell T Davies’ return to Doctor Who seems to be characterised mostly by an almost incapacitating rage. His targets are many - in eerie Doctor-lite episode ‘73 Yards’, he even seems to be taking aim at rural Welsh stereotypes - but are ultimately united in their shared opposition to the joy, eclecticism and panoply of life.
And, fittingly, it’s those exact qualities that Davies has been using to savage his adversaries. In ‘Rogue’ (co-written by Loki and Sex Education steward Kate Herron), Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor fights back against murderous fast-fashion-addicted and wannabe-colonist aliens by dramatically dancing and feuding scandalously with his newfound (gay) love interest.
When a monstrous demon has sucked all the joy of music from 1967 in ‘The Devil’s Chord’, the Doctor fights back with friends coming together to play all the notes of a (secret) chord at once. When it looks like all hope is lost in ‘The Starbeast’, Donna Noble’s (previously “unsaveable”) life is saved by the life that she grew, supported, and defended as a mother - her trans daughter.
Doctor Who is no stranger to social commentary. The creation of quintessential Who villains the Daleks was inspired by Nazi Germany and even the (much-maligned) era of recently-departed showrunner Chris Chibnall had Trump allegories (‘Arachnids in the UK’) and episode-length explorations of topics like the life of American civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks (‘Rosa’).
But, with his latest era, Russell T Davies is no longer using the show to simply reflect or depict the world’s villainy. Instead, he’s taking all the queer joy, inclusion, community, life, and love that’s always rumbled throughout Doctor Who and actively weaponising it against any villain or system that would dare try to stamp it out.
In the aforementioned ‘Rogue’, the Doctor and his mysterious love interest (the titular Rogue) dance to Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango; a piece of music originally composed and performed in the historical period when a military dictatorship, like Argentina’s colonial forebears, sought to police and ban tangos in the composer’s native Argentina.
It feels like a fierce whisper: Fight us all you want, we will never stop dancing together.
MJ O’Neill is a creative musician, writer, comedian, and strategist based in Meanjin/Magandjin. Active since 2008, she’s getting to the age where it’s hard to remember all the stuff she’s done - but interviewing Lady Gaga and appearing naked in The Courier Mail are somewhere in there.
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