The Seeds of Gay Doom (II. The Queen of the World)
RTD's triumphant first tenure
(Note: this essay is part of a series.)
Russell T Davies would be the “showrunner” of the 2000s Doctor Who. This was a new unofficial title, borrowed from America with the likes of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly) and J Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5). It meant being both the executive producer and the chief writer. Thus, Davies was the predominant creative brain on the show and other people, the producers, would focus on the business side of things. His producers were Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson. Together with them and BBC executive Jane Tranter, Davies got to work.
The iconic theme tune would be back, and the broadcast slot restored to the traditional Saturday evening. But the new season wouldn’t be numbered “27”, but “1”. The previous 26 seasons would not be denied - they would even be referenced occasionally - but this was emphatically a fresh start.
The show was entirely re-designed for a modern mass audience. Inspiration was taken from then-recent hit US show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The dialogue would be sharp, the characters “cool” and contemporary, and the stories fast-paced (each told in a single 50-minute episode). As the Guardian gushed:
Wobbly sets, quirky costumes and shrieking female sidekicks are out in the new series, to be replaced by Hollywood-style special effects, a multimillion-pound budget and the Doctor’s newly empowered partner, Rose Tyler.
It would not be a modest little thing for nerds as the original series had been in its final years, but an effects-laden blockbuster for the general public. This necessitated all sorts of changes.
For one thing, the Doctor’s companions would be more developed characters, and their lives, relatives and friends would be shown. This was a good idea, but due to Davies’ inclinations it brought a heavy “soap opera” element.
The “lore” would be kept to an absolute minimum so as not to baffle new viewers. Introducing them to the show would be done in a slick manner. There would be no clumsy infodumping. (The debut episode, Rose, is a masterclass in introducing new viewers to an established franchise.)
One way that Davies reduced the lore was by introducing “the Time War”, a cataclysmic event which occurred between the classic series and the revival. This functioned as a curtain dividing the old era and the new. In particular, it consigned the Doctor’s home planet and race (the Timelords) to a void. This had an interesting (and I think significant) side-effect: it made the Doctor even more rootless. He had always been a nomad and an explorer, but now there was no home for him to ever return to. Like the gay teenager moving to the city, he need never explain himself to “the bigots back home” ever again. Late in his tenure, Davies actually doubled down on this: he had the Timelords escape from the void only for the Doctor himself to send them back into it - condemning his own race to oblivion.
Another big change was to introduce romantic tension between the Doctor (who had always been completely asexual) and his companion. I think this was a ploy to engage female viewers. It worked wonders. Women who otherwise would have no interest in a science-fiction show were glued to it, because they fancied David Tennant.
The original series was renowned for its “bubblewrap aliens” and “wobbly sets”. This was because of neglect by a management that didn’t care for science-fiction, but also simply the limited effects know-how of the time. However, it forced the show to rely on charm and good storytelling. By contrast, Davies and his colleagues had a budget of roughly £800,000 per episode - multiples of the old budget. They wanted their revival to look “like Hollywood” - every shot cinematic, every action sequence thrilling. Davies personally found the rickety classic series charming, but believed that such a production would repel the normie masses of 2005. I suspect there would have been ways around this problem that didn’t involve “going Hollywood”, but that is the path Davies chose. This key decision at the inception of the revived show has had implications ever since. It detached the show from its heritage of British television drama - the “electronic theatre” - and forced it to compete with American fare, which in turn forced ever bigger budgets, which in turn forced ever more competing... This locked-in course would lead, eventually, to catastrophe. But we will get to that.
Knowing also that the normie masses are generally not into sci-fi, Davies had most stories set on Earth so that Mondeo Man could relate to the things on-screen. Oddly, when he explained this decision, he sounded like someone who himself isn’t a fan of sci-fi:
If the Zogs on planet Zog are having trouble with the Zog-monster... who gives a toss?
This betrays that Davies is not interested in allegories, because allegories tend to allegorise things he is not interested in - eg. political conflicts, philosophical dilemmas, cultural clashes. He favours stories that are about exactly what they appear to be about: human emotions and psychology. That is his wheelhouse - not politics, not philosophy, not even science.
Even the personality of the Doctor was made more “normal” - not upper-class, professorial or eccentric. In all his incarnations, he’d had some combination of those traits. But 2005 was the peak of the New Labour era and the egalitarianism of reality TV, so instead the Doctor would be “an ordinary bloke”. What’s more, played by Christopher Eccleston using his native Salford accent, he would have a resolutely working-class persona that “anyone” could relate to.
There was really nothing strange or eccentric about this new Doctor. He seemed more like a gym teacher at a comprehensive school than an ancient, alien, genius time traveller. Davies explained:
Before we started, we talked a lot about “eccentricity”. Well, the Doctor’s got two hearts. He’s 900 years old. And he travels in time and space. He doesn’t need funny clothes.
This is shallow. The things Davies mentions are gimmicks, not personality traits, and they will not make a character interesting any more than “funny clothes” alone will make him eccentric. But Davies felt these gimmicks “sold” the Doctor enough that he didn’t need an unusual personality. This is unadventurous and actually nonsensical given the afore-mentioned gimmicks (how could a 900 year-old be normal or “relatable”?!) but Davies was certainly correct that making the 9th Doctor an everyman was the surest path to general appeal.
When Eccleston left I wondered whether, with the show now successfully revived, Davies would be more traditional and make the 10th Doctor more upper-class or eccentric. Not at all.
The man chosen was David Tennant - a gifted actor, but again entirely unlike the Doctors of old. Using a lower-middle-class Mockney accent, his persona was “the wacky guy at the office”. He was not working-class like the 9th Doctor, but still very much an everyman, a “cheeky chappy” type that the average viewer of Big Brother might have met at a staff party, or perhaps her line manager when she worked at IKEA.
These choices are revealing, not just of Davies’ politics (egalitarian, democratic) but of his personality. On the one hand, as evidenced by Queer as Folk, he clearly despised the heterosexual mainstream. On the other hand, he craved its acceptance. At some level he was still the boy in the playground in Wales, wishing the other boys wouldn’t call him names and the girls wouldn’t laugh at him. Now aged 41, he wanted to be reconciled with the mainstream. He wanted to offer them the thing he loved, but reconfigured such that they would like it and accept him.
But at the same time, he wanted to subvert them. He was prepared to “meet the public where they are” but his long game was to get them to accept him as he was, because he was not going to surrender the gay identity he had cultivated. After all, that outsider identity might have caused him a lot of strife, but it was the only identity he had, and it had hardened in the battle, as all identities must. Now middle-aged, he couldn’t change it and he wouldn’t hide it; so, the mainstream would have to change to suit him - and Doctor Who was his platform.
And he knew how to use it. He was a talented writer, especially in the handling of character and dialogue. In one episode he had the companion, Rose, remark humorously that the Doctor is “so gay”, meaning precious and fragile. A progressive viewer wrote to him complaining about this line. Davies replied [bolding mine]:
you’re right - there’s a vital political issue burning away here, and you do nothing about those issues if you ignore them. I’ve put it right at the heart of BBC1 primetime. Put it this way: let’s imagine a viewer who has, roughly, yours and my sensibilities. Let’s call him A. Now, before that comment, there were millions of kids using the word “gay” as an insult, and what was A doing about it? Probably nothing. Yes, there are activists out there, but most people don’t, so A was left passive. Nothing changes. On the other hand, Rose says “You’re so gay”, A objects, and - here’s the crux - A DOES SOMETHING. He gets up off his seat. He tells his nearest and dearest that he objects. He might even go so far as to contact the author, to complain.
Fantastic…. If [television] makes you stand up and object - especially where you weren’t expecting it - then that’s a brilliant and powerful thing. That’s why it’s important that the word comes from Rose; lovely, kind Rose (who’s exactly the right age to be using that word in that context). If a villain had said it, then he’s a villain, and therefore an idiot, so there’s no problem. When the good guys say it, as they do, then that causes a problem. And that problem is good.
It’s agitation. And it works.…
You can’t always make your point in life by saying the right thing and being nice... You have to provoke.
And there’s a long game at work here. Let’s imagine, say, viewer B, who is an idiot. And B chuckles along in Beavis-and-Butthead style at Rose’s comment, agreeing; he thinks, I like this show, I hate the gays, Doctor Who is good. Fine. So he keeps watching. And in a few weeks time, the Doctor gets a strapping, heroic male companion... who is clearly and resolutely bisexual. Viewer B’s head implodes. My work is done.
…
Activism isn’t easy, but it’s needed
Very few of the viewers in 2005 would have realised that Davies was operating at this subtle level.
However, many were perturbed by his more obvious manoeuvres. The main Doctor Who forum, Outpost Gallifrey, would light up after every episode with threads about his “gay agenda”. Each of these would begin with a post like:
I’m not homophobic, I have gay friends and approve of the progress made with gay lib over the last few decades. However, some gay people want to ram it down your throat and that’s what Davies is doing by ham-fistedly including gay characters and alluding to gay stuff so often. The show is being ruined by his damned gay agenda!
It was 2005, and the job of liberals at that time was to assure everyone there were no such agendas. This, they did - every single week. They would acknowledge the individual signs of it, but deny that they added up to “some agenda”; it was simply good drama, presenting people as they are today, without any preaching.
These liberals were paraphrasing Davies himself. He had said that drama shouldn’t be issue-led, that he found such material tedious, and that his stories were about people, not issues. Yet, as is clear, he was very motivated on one particular issue. He didn’t make it the main subject of the drama, because he was smart enough to know that would push people away, so instead he threaded it through the fabric. It was present, frequently, but never bogged the stories down. This would still irritate some viewers, but could be defended by others as “just good storytelling”.
An exception to this restraint, which actually had nothing to do with political correctness, was when he included ham-fisted “commentary” on the Iraq War in his double-episode Aliens of London / World War Three. Characters used phrases crudely lifted from real life. “Weapons of mass destruction” became “massive weapons of destruction”. Saddam Hussein waging war “within 45 minutes” became aliens doing it “within 45 seconds”. It was like something a child would write.
Perhaps aware that he was not good at writing politics, or indeed any weighty matters, Davies focused on his strengths: characters and dialogue. These also predominated over the standard elements of science-fiction; indeed, some viewers likened the show to Hollyoaks and Eastenders. One often had the feeling that Davies’ interest in science-fiction was rather shallow. His handling of “techy” things was second-rate, with situations frequently being resolved by deus ex machina. (This attitude will become relevant to the 2023 revamp.) But none of this bothered the average viewer, and that was the target audience.
To briefly speak about two features of Davies’ writing which have become crippling today but were only dimly present in 2005…
There was a tendency towards silliness. In the debut story, a garbage bin was seen (and heard) to burp upon being filled. Another story centred around an alien race who made farting sounds. This would have been far too unseemly for the classic series, and the burping bin far too cartoonish. Thankfully, Davies either realised or was told that such material didn’t work well, and none of these mistakes were repeated.
But in season 2 there was another strange mis-step: his episode Love & Monsters was indulgent and inappropriate in a whole slew of ways. There was a silly villain concept impossible to take seriously, played sarcastically by comedian Peter Kay. One of the good characters suffered an appalling fate, and there was a rather shocking reference to fellatio (both are shown in the image above). Moreover, the entire episode was a commentary on being a Doctor Who fan; to do this within the show itself was uncomfortably “meta”.
Another marked tendency of his tenure was a frivolous attitude towards historical settings. Far from the educational remit the 1960s show had to teach about different eras, or even the respectful approach it had later taken to history, Davies’ revival treated history as merely an exotic backdrop for modern attitudes. Whether the setting was Victorian Scotland or Elizabethan England, I always felt that I was watching modern Guardian readers in fancy dress. This was, no doubt, justified by the need to keep the show “accessible”, but I think recent experience shows that it springs from Davies’ personality: he’s not very interested in science, and he’s not very interested in history.
Returning to the crucial matter of political correctness… It was present, but, as described earlier, in a slick way. Here is how a gay viewer discussed it retrospectively, in 2012:
Let’s address the “gay agenda”. There were an awful lot of references to homosexuality in this story [The Doctor Dances]… Umm… the fat man and the butcher! Jack and the soldier… And the Doctor asking Rose who Jack would like to dance with at the end… I think it’s fine because it’s done in a way that it’s not an issue. It’s not an important part of the story. It feels very natural so it’s almost invisible. It’s only a problem if you want it to be a problem because it doesn’t hinder anything. If people think that this story promotes a “gay agenda” I think it says more about them than the episode. It’s not an agenda, it’s just natural and that’s great for the kids watching. It’s teaching tolerance which can only be a good thing but in a very entertaining way. It makes Doctor Who a safe place for young gay people and it expresses tolerance for young straight people. How can that be a bad thing?
Davies was showcasing a method of advancing political correctness that did not trigger rejection: make it slick, witty, and sexy. Mainly, he was relaxed about it. This created the impression that he wasn’t seeking to change society but was merely presenting society as it already was. Therefore the material wasn’t “political” or threatening for the normie viewer, but rather gave him a chance to “catch up” with the status quo. By not being uptight or preachy, Davies made political correctness seem cool.
Also, he was aware of limits, of how far you could push before the public would resist. He had a “common sense” approach. For example, here he is in 2008 explaining why a woman shouldn’t be cast as the Doctor:
while I think kids will not have a problem with [it], I think fathers will have a problem with it because they will then imagine they will have to describe sex changes to their children.
I think fathers can describe sex changes to their children and I think they should and it’s part of the world, but I think it would simply introduce genitalia into family viewing. You’re not talking about actresses or style, you’re talking about genitalia, and a lot of parents would get embarrassed.
He would say very different things nine years later when the first female Doctor was announced. I don’t think this was deviousness on his part. I think that by 2017 people like him were drunk on their own kool-aid and genuinely believed that such things wouldn’t grate. Really, his attitude was the same as he’d had in 2005: push as much as you can, but meet the public where they are.
With that in mind, it’s worth listing some of the politically-correct elements that were present during that original Davies tenure, 2005-2010:
Captain Jack is bisexual (and, on their final goodbye, lightly kisses the Doctor)
(White) Rose’s boyfriend is Black
(White) Donna’s husband is Black
mixed-race relationships are the norm
sympathetic references to immigration, refugees, the welfare state
companion Martha is Black (and middle-class)
Shakespeare depicted as bisexual, flirting with the Doctor
Rosita Farisi, a Black woman in 1851 London
White fathers either absent or abusive, coloured fathers good
male leaders usually incompetent or evil, female leaders usually competent and good
With such a list, it must seem strange that I say this tenure was restrained. I say that because the political correctness was mostly implicit and “cool” as opposed to explicit and preachy, and it was accompanied by good storytelling. Of course, it set the stage for the much more aggressive wokery that was on the way.
But that would happen under his successors, who lacked Davies’ emotional intelligence. I suspect he would have delivered 2010s woke messaging in a much smarter way than they did. We will never know; by the time he got back in, it was the 2020s, and those clumsier showrunners had paved the way for him to forget all restraint.