There has been something incredibly uncomfortable about the way that Ncuti, the first openly gay, Black Doctor has been used. From basically everyone in the narratives commenting on his physical attractiveness, his trousers magically disappearing during bigeneration (David in a girl’s outfit, terrible [but we’ll put Ncuti in a “girl’s outfit” and make it a triumphant part of our narrative]), although interestingly the female Time Lord that bigenerates gets…two full outfits? Hmm how odd.
It took us like four episodes until Dot and Bubble until the Black Doctor gets a racism done at him, it’s lauded as one of the most successful episodes of the season (look, I love Dot and Bubble but I will happily accept The Story and The Engine much more readily as a story about celebrating the Doctor’s Blackness instead of using it to power a late-game horrid twist, no matter how god that episode was, there’s something weird about it.)
The less said about Rogue, the better. Actually I’ll say it anyway, Rogue is an excuse to jam two sexually attractive gay men together, written for the female gaze. It’s fine, there’s so much in Doctor Who explicitly for the male gaze, but the fact that it’s held up as anything beyond the audience grabbing spectacle it was clearly designed as is just a fundamental flaw in reading it.
He didn’t get Daleks. He didn’t get any good villains that weren’t RTD’s leftovers. He didn’t get good companions, or even a halfway decent incarnation of UNIT. He was an action figure Russell T. Davies wanted to play with, and unfortunately got screwed because none of us are having as much fun with it as Russell is.
YMMV obviously, but I do also agree that there’s something quite uncomfortable about how this production crew has treated Ncuti. Bear in mind, of course, that this is the same production team that had Christopher Eccleston, then suffering from an eating disorder, stripped to the waist for a Vengeance on Varos reference so that the ladies could ogle his chest. Perhaps no one has particularly learned lessons.
If I had a nickel for every time a Russell T Davies reboot of Doctor Who loses a Doctor after an almost insultingly short time, with heavy rumours of behind the scenes problems, well, you know how many I’d have.
