Liquid lesbians: Doctor Who's dislike of the unlike

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

According to Piers Britton Doctor Who has ethical value by dint of the way in which it can stimulate engagement with vast and deep forms of otherness (TARDISbound, IB Tauris 2011, p.7.)    Sometimes, though, Doctor Who can provoke thinking about the Other precisely because the Doctor sides against it.   On occasion he very clearly favours “the like” over “the unlike”.  When he does so, the degree to which the show encourages viewers to form their own judgment as to the rights and wrongs of his actions is important in making Doctor Who a worthwhile programme.

Eye-candy of the planet Skaro:
companion Ian Chesterton pontificates
to the Thals

The tendency of the Doctor sometimes to favour the familiar over the unfamiliar has been apparent ever since the show’s transformatory serial “The Daleks” in 1963-4 where he sided with the beautiful humanoid Thals against the Daleks.   The show perhaps made an effort to atone for this in 1965 where the Doctor made common cause with the allegedly-grotesque Rills against the glamorous yet ruthless Drahvins in “Galaxy Four”.

Not as nice as they look: the Drahvins

In “The Daleks” there is scant reflection on whether the Doctor is doing the right thing, questions of political morality being clouded by his efforts to regain the fluid link, an essential component of the TARDIS which the Daleks have confiscated.  As John Fiske has observed, in classic-era Doctor Who (1963-89) the BBC intended the Doctor to be clearly good and his opponents clearly bad.  (“Dr Who: Ideology and the Reading of a Popular Narrative Text” (1983) 14 Australian Journal of Screen Theory 69).   By contrast, as Gabriel McKee points out, in new Doctor Who (2005-present) the Doctor’s actions are no longer held up as singularly heroic, so viewers make up their own minds (“Pushing the Protest Button: Doctor Who’s Anti-Authoritarian Ethic" in Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith, eds A Crome and J McGrath, Darton, Longman and Todd 2013, p.22).   This trend perhaps reaches a high point in series 8’s pervasive theme of whether the Doctor was “a good man”.

Bill and alien-Heather make contact

The limits of the Doctor’s tolerance of “the unlike” is apparent in the recent episode “The Pilot” (2017).   This story introduces us to the Doctor’s new companion, Bill Potts.  We had earlier seen the Doctor’s previous companion Clara Oswald depart merrily in a TARDIS of her own with Ashildr, a woman about whom Clara had previously expressed a physical attraction.  In “The Pilot” Bill’s lesbianism is treated with similar matter-of-fact tolerance.  But when Bill’s love-interest, Heather, is without her consent transformed into a liquid alien, and invites Bill to undergo a similar transformation and join her on intergalactic adventures, the Doctor implores Bill to resist:

Bill gets a taster of life with Heather

BILL [OC]: I see what you see.  It’s beautiful.

DOCTOR:  Bill, let go!  You have to let go!  She is not human any more.

The Doctor does not explain what is wrong with not being human any more.  But it appears that lesbians are fine, alien liquid lesbians are going too far.  Later on Bill almost expresses regret at taking his advice:

BILL:  I saw it all for a moment.  Everything out there.  She was going to let me fly with her.  She was inviting me.  I was too scared.

Instead Bill flies with the humanoid, solid-form Time Lord, which substantially softens her rejection of Heather.  Whilst one could criticise “The Pilot” for downplaying Bill’s eschewing of “the unlike” and the seminal part which the supposedly-tolerant Doctor plays in her decision, it is nonetheless good that a question-mark is placed – however tersely - over her choice, given how fear of “the Other” lies at the heart of discrimination.