David Tennant’s Doctor Who Regeneration Changed Because of Bigots

There’s loads unprecedented about Doctor Who’s newest regeneration, the place outgoing Time Lord Jodie Whittaker, the collection’ first feminine Doctor, remodeled into returning star David Tennant’s 14th Doctor. But one specific tweak was completed as a result of… nicely, frankly some folks suck.

Every regeneration we’ve seen on Doctor Who up so far has concluded with the brand new face of the Doctor nonetheless wandering round within the costume of their predecessor for a bit—it’s a conventional side of the handover, a reminder of the period that got here earlier than as a brand new one begins. “The Power of the Doctor,” nevertheless, did one thing very totally different for its unprecedented regeneration marking the return of David Tennant as a wholly new incarnation of the Doctor, fairly than a return of his identification because the tenth Doctor. As Jodie Whittaker’s Time Lord burned with transformative power, so did her outfit, changing it with the costume to be worn by Tennant in subsequent yr’s trio of sixtieth anniversary specials.

On the one hand, this probably comes throughout as dismissive of Whittaker’s tenure, so rapidly erased that even this visible custom couldn’t be given to her time because the Doctor for the sake of the shock and awe of probably the most common actors to carry the function returning. But, talking within the newest problem of Doctor Who Magazine, returning showrunner Russell T Davies defended the choice as not simply protecting of Whittaker herself, however the truth that Doctor Who is made on an island of depressing folks who haven’t precisely been pleasant to the concept of gender identification and drag efficiency recently.

“I was very certain that I didn’t want David to appear in Jodie’s costume. I think the notion of men dressing in ‘women’s clothes’, the notion of drag, is very delicate. I’m a huge fan of that culture and the dignity of that, it’s truly a valuable thing, but it has to be done with immense thought and respect,” Davies—an brazenly and unabashedly queer man—instructed DWM. “With respect to Jodie and her Doctor, I think it can look like mockery when a straight man wears her clothes. To put a great big six-foot Scotsman into them looks like we’re taking the mickey.”

Davies was in notably conscious of the response from the British press, which is notedly dominated by bigoted, transphobic rhetoric—nevertheless it’s additionally truthful to say the choice was possible additionally made partly with Doctor Who’s rising worldwide viewers because it expands to Disney+ subsequent yr, particularly in markets just like the U.S., the place right-wing bigots have made drag performers a goal in anti-LGBTQ tradition battle actions this yr. “If [the press] can play with gender in a sarcastic or critical way, they will,” Davies continued. “We could have the Doctor dressed as a knight, or dressed as God, or dressed as William Hartnell, and the only photo they’d print would be of David in what they considered to be women’s clothes.”

It’s a disgrace that such narrow-minded cruelty has robbed Doctor Who of this conventional handover, however not less than Davies is keen to defend followers who may’ve been focused or triggered by seeing the present mired in bigoted “controversy” in the event that they’d gone by means of with it.

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