The Woeful Wokery of New Doctor Who
by Connor Tomlinson, Lotus Eaters:
Fans were ecstatic when the showrunner who spearheaded the BBC’s 2005 revival of Doctor Who, Russel T. Davies, announced his return. Davies had the unenviable task of retrieving the show from the depths that current director Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whitaker had sent it to. But recently, news has rolled in that the new season may be as bad as what came before. New Doctor, a Rwandan migrant named Ncuti Gatwa, will use ‘They/Them’ pronouns for the role, while black transgender actor Yasmin Finney will play his new companion ‘Rose’ (a play on Billie Piper’s beloved character). But nostalgia will not be enough to return new-Who to its former glory. Sequential showrunners have made the Tardis a battleground of the culture war, and these latest politicisations are unlikely to win alienated fans over. Why do progressives continue this suicidal skin-suiting of fans’ beloved franchises?
Given the shared name, fans have speculated as to whether Finney will be playing a race-and-gender-swapped version of Rose Tyler. It’s much more likely that Finney will be the offspring of Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble, who will reportedly return to the Tardis alongside David Tennant for the sixtieth-anniversary episode next year. Donna married fiancé Shaun Temple (played by Karl Collins) in the 2010 New Years’ special The End of Time: Part Two, and likely named their daughter as a tribute to Piper’s character. Another possibility, that Rose is the child of Freema Agyeman’s Martha Jones and Noel Clarke’s Mickey Smith, is unlikely, as Clarke’s career was capsized by #MeToo allegations last year.
If the character is indeed a different version of Piper’s Rose Tyler, however, fans will not take kindly to their childhood being used as a Trojan Horse for Davies’ gender politics. In an award speech for his recent work It’s A Sin, Davies accused the LGB Alliance of transphobic genocide, stating “To cut out the T is to kill.” Coinciding with this, Doctor Who’s long-standing audio drama series recently launched a “Very Gay, Very Trans” podcast.
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