Groomed in the T.A.R.D.I.S

Lost Joy, deathworks, and sexualisation

The only time in my adult life I’ve ever walked out of a room and slammed a door in an argument was during one about Doctor Who.

This was ten years ago and, in all honesty, I forget the details. But a friend was deriding the program in some way. Having been an avid fan since DW relaunched in 2005, I let this get under my skin in a way I shouldn’t have. But for me, DW was, for a long time, one of those things which gave me C.S. Lewis’ capital-J “Joy”—that peculiar and deep sensation which is both a pleasure of possession and a pain of longing. Joy, for Lewis, more often than not sprang from literature, and often from specific lines, images, or turns of phrase. For some unknown reason, one of these can land in just such a way to evoke a sense of distant “Northernness”, calling one away to adventure and higher things, and, ultimately, to God.

I have visceral memories of what caused me Joy as a child: hearing “Hedwig's Theme” from Harry Potter in the cinema at the unexpected appearance of a trailer for the next installment; everything about the binary sunset scene in Star Wars; the title of Garth Nix’s book Mister Monday; this Kingdom Hearts video. Admittedly, these aren’t as classical as the things which generally gave Lewis Joy, but I think this rather proves the truth of Joy: it can be evoked in both a classically educated Ulster bookworm in the 1910s, and in a Millennial pre-teen in the UK suburbs with too much internet access. And I found my way to the classical stuff eventually, anyway.

Doctor Who sits prominently among those visceral memories—especially the “Bad Wolf” theme. I was 12 when the series was revived by showrunner Russell T. Davies in May 2005, just about still young enough to be un-self-consciously caught up into far off, mystical worlds. For over a decade, Doctor Who was a show I treasured.

That changed back in 2017, when Jodie Whittaker was announced as the first female Doctor. At that point, I was done. It was apparent to me that the show had become nakedly agenda driven, and I found all arguments to the contrary painfully naive (in which I feel entirely vindicated, as we will discuss below). Stephen Fry stated in an interview some years ago that “there’s something peculiarly English about the Doctor”, and we all know he’s right. So too was there always something “peculiarly male” about the Doctor. Denying this always struck me as rankly disingenuous; casting a female in the role had the same obvious yet indefinable (and now socially unacceptable) effect upon the show as is had when a woman enters any male space and (to speak colloquially) kills the vibe.

All the talk at the time was of the female Doctor providing a “role model” for young girls, giving them “representation” on screen. And yet this inescapably came at the loss of one of TV’s longest standing non-macho role models for boys. Looking back on it, part of the Doctor’s appeal for me as a skinny, non-sporty twelve year old was probably the fact that he was a hero who saved the day with cleverness, flair, and filibustering, rather than just opening fire or punching people in the face (which are venerable approaches in the right context, don’t get me wrong). 

This loss went unremarked at the time—but it was surely part of the point. The argument that those who wanted a “strong female character” should go and write one rather than hijacking an existing male character was usually met with silence, because that quite simply wouldn’t be enough. The aim was not to create a good female character, but to destroy a good male one. A female Doctor was, without doubt, what Philip Rieff called “a deathwork”—something which uses the sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert, and then destroy, their original significance and purpose. Ander Serrano’s “Immersion (Piss Christ)” is often given as an example.

It was hard not to feel smug, then, during Whittaker’s tenure: despite the presence of a Strong Female Character and an increasingly obvious “social justice” bent under showrunner Chris Chibnall, the critical reception gradually worsened, fans were critical, and viewer figures continually declined.

And that’s what brings us to this week: the return of Russell T. Davies and David Tennant.

Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, is back for three 60th anniversary specials this year as the new Fourteenth Doctor (who looks the same as the Tenth, for some reason). At the end of these specials, he will regenerate into Ncuti’ Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor. 

The return of Tennant and Davies is a pretty obvious attempt to reboot the series and draw back the crowds. It might seem a pretty cynical move, but fans of the show who’ve disliked the Woke decline under Chibnall/Whittaker have broadly welcomed it. Many were hopeful that it signalled a return to “business as usual”, a renewed focus on family viewing without an agenda. A friend of mine likes to joke that a certain class of British conservative likes to think “if only we could go back to 2005!”, a year seen as a sort of acceptable benchmark for progressivism, when Civil Partnerships came into effect—and, coincidentally, Doctor Who was revived. Russell T. Davies, who is gay, gives off 2005 vibes: a seemingly sensible, old school gay, from before all the Woke stuff got a bit out of hand.

Suffice to say, anyone expecting that has had a reality check this week.

The first anniversary special, “The Star Beast” aired last Saturday, reuniting Tennant’s Doctor with his former companion Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate). Since we last saw Donna in 2010, she’s acquired a son. Unfortunately, that son thinks he’s a daughter, and goes by the name of Rose (played by Yasmin Finney, a transwoman (that is, a man)). Viewers knew this was coming—Finney’s casting was announced some time ago. It cannot be unintentional that the Doctor’s first trans companion is called Rose—the name of his most famous companion since the 2005 reboot, the one most beloved of fans and with whom Tennant’s Tenth Doctor fell in love. This is surely another deathwork, announcing you a fool and a blasphemer for enjoying the Old Ways.

But this was just the beginning.

Readers will know that I am very willing to speak frankly about the evils of LGBTQ. But I sincerely believe that I generally avoid needless caricaturing of its advocates. And yet if you had asked me to come up with the most cynical, snarky checklist of cartoonish pro-trans shenanigans which could possibly have occurred in Doctor Who, I honestly could not have done better than “The Star Beast”.

In one scene, the Doctor is rebuked for assuming an alien’s pronouns:

In another scene, the Doctor is insulted by Donna for being a “male-presenting Time Lord” who will never understand women. This is another “deathwork” moment—it’s not about parity between men and women, but about the outright denigration of men, with Tennant’s Doctor belittled like a small boy, surrounded by smug female grins. This whole scene is the natural conclusion of everything that began with Whittaker’s casting (actually, it began with Stephen Moffat casting a female Master back in 2014, but let’s leave that). The irony of course is that Donna delivers this line to the Doctor on behalf of herself and Rose, who is in fact actually male and therefore cannot possibly know what it is like to be a woman, whereas the Doctor has actually been a woman in his previous incarnation).

In the end, Rose’s transgenderism is, somehow, essential for saving the day. Yes, these were things written by an actual human being somewhere at the BBC, not by a satirical conservative columnist in The Spectator. A good friend who is an experienced entertainment journalist told me that it was the Wokest hour of mainstream TV he has ever seen.

Responses to all this have been mixed. Plenty, predictably, have lauded it. If you’re someone who thinks that there’s such a thing as “the conservative British media”, note that The Telegraph and Mail gave it four and five stars respectively, the latter (!) not even mentioning the trans stuff. Others, meanwhile (such as in the above tweets), have derided it and written the franchise off. The general vibe among more conservative or old school viewers seems to be that the show has jumped the shark and is laughably ridiculous enough for them to finally tune out.

Unfortunately, I think that what we’ve seen in Doctor Who this week is rather more serious: it was nothing less than child grooming in the public eye.

As the LGBT agenda advances, more and more often its advocates are being labelled “groomers”. Gays Against Groomers, for instance, is a prominent US charity made up of gays and lesbians who oppose the trans agenda, and see many of its manifestations as forms of grooming.

In my experience, many conservative and sensible centrists who oppose the LGBT agenda find the “groomer” label a step too far. “Grooming” usually refers to gaining the trust of a minor in order to have a sexual relationship with them. Whilst those pushing trans ideology—whether in TV shows and movies, in schools, or elsewhere—are guilty of exposing children and teens to inappropriate content, and of leading them down a path of self-destruction, they are not generally making efforts to initiate sexual contact with specific children. And so, “grooming” seems an inaccurate charge.

I disagree. For my money, grooming is a very appropriate name for what we’re seeing in Doctor Who.