I thought: ‘It’s time you introduce bisexuals properly into mainstream television,’” he said. “The most boring drama would be – ‘Oh, I’m bisexual, oh my bleeding heart’ nighttime drama. Tedious, dull. But if you say it’s a bisexual space pirate swaggering in with guns and attitude and cheek and humour into primetime family viewing – that was enormously attractive to me.
I often get asked to write dramas or films about a man coming out of the closet to his wife, or a man coming out of the closet to his children, or a man who’s beaten up because he’s secretly gay. I always refuse if it’s a negative take on homosexuality – if the only aspect being portrayed is the trouble, the tears and the angst.
Russell T Davies on bisexuality and the creation of Jack Harkness (x)
What I hate the most about Superwholock fandom bloggers: they flip out when ½ of their creepy fetishised gay ship has a relationship with a woman. “No! John/Castiel/The Doctor can’t be with Mary/Meg/Rose! He loves Sherlock/Dean/Captain Jack!!” Well, mewling infants, I have some news for you. A. bisexuality exists. It’s bi erasure and plain ol’ misogyny to say that your character could never ever be bi even though he’s had relationships with women and then to shit talk any woman he’s been with. B. ship whatever you want but your ship is not canon and never will be. Ever. Yeah there was that time captain jack kissed the doctor and we were all overjoyed but tbh that was the punchline of a bad joke. And all that shitty queerbaiting in Sherlock is going to remain just that: queerbaiting. So get over it.
((C. All three of these shows are misogynistic, have absolutely no representation, and are just poorly written. Moffat can eat a bag of dicks.))
Except…Captain Jack’s kissing the Doctor wasn’t the punchline of a bad joke?! Not remotely? I mean – this was a scene written by a gay man of a bi/pansexual man played by a gay man kissing another man. It was the first gay kiss in Doctor Who’s history (and remains still only one of two, sadly). It was one of very few gay kisses on British TV to be broadcast before the watershed and on a then explicitly ‘family’ show, and was written and acted specifically to undermine the concept of bisexuality being a joke:
“I thought that’s it, however I kiss Rose, I have to kiss him [the Doctor] in exactly the same way…I kiss them basically with the same tenderness. So it wasn’t like a kiss of ‘I finally get to kiss them’, it was a kiss of ‘I really care for you, I love you deeply and I have to say goodbye.” [John Barrowman, Doctor Who Confidential 1×13]
I won’t think too hard about your motivations for labelling that ‘the punchline to a bad joke’ – it’ll break my brain – but on the subject of whether Doctor/Jack was canon (as opposed to ‘a creepy fetishised gay ship’), it was, albeit one-sidedly: Jack flirts with the Doctor [Boomtown], speaks to him tenderly, cups his face and kisses him on the lips [The Parting Of The Ways; see above], and sympathetizes with Martha’s unrequited love for the Doctor with a ‘you too, huh?’ [The Sound Of Drums]. No, they weren’t in a official romantic relationship, but it certainly wasn’t a platonic relationship either. All those episodes were written by Russell T Davies, who is gay, as I mentioned before. His motivation for creating Jack was:
‘It’s time you introduce bisexuals properly into mainstream television” [source]
And Jack’s reactions to the Doctor – the flirting, the kiss – were a big part of that. So –
-I have no idea why everyone’s so up for erasing his importance these days. There are negative aspects to his portrayal, negative aspects to his creators and negative aspects to his fans – but, er…
…even if you accept the premise that a disproportionate amount of Doctor Who fandom is pushing Rose aside in favour of Doctor/Jack, otherwise erasing his bi/pansexuality, or treating Rose as a threat or an irritant (ten pages into the Doctor x Jack tag and I’ve still got nothing) – this post still doesn’t make any sense with regards to actual representation and fandom’s reactions to it! Bloody hell, the Doctor/Jack kiss wasn’t that long ago! How the hell are people finding it ‘a joke’ already?!
Little RTD things: the way every companion introductory episode includes a person of color who is explicitly rejected as not good enough.
As much as I blame RTD for this, I also sort of blame the entire team of producers/editors/assistants etc for not noticing.
(I’m also kinda annoyed that they thought a brilliant way of presenting Ten to a new audience was to have him ignore and insult a distressed, crying woman. And that a year later, they thought it would be a brilliant joke to have Penny, who did more work than Donna when it came to the plot, written off for being a journalist – “You’re a journalist? Make it up!” – when Sarah Jane exists.)
Russel T Davies’s quote about Rose from the Radio Times in 2005 -“when she meets the Doctor, she gets the chance to show she’s better than the life she’s been leading” really does strike me as being incredibly classist. I haven’t seen it in context so that may not be what he intended, but – think of how many people actually live on council estates and eat chips and work in department stores. They’re not suddenly gonna get a TARDIS whisking them off to adventure and opportunity: TARDISes don’t exist. I’d like to think that RTD really doesn’t think as little of working-class life/working-class people who aren’t Rose as much he’s always implied, but I can never tell.
Let’s play a game, Doctor Who fandom! It’s called, “who said the obnoxious/insulting thing, Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat?” Do reblog with your guesses before hovering over the quotes for the answers, but there are no prizes other than props for the winners, sorry!
All giveaway data such as episode names has been taken out to make the game more…”fun”. Hit my askbox if you want more detailed sources. The management is not responsible for any ill effects suffered from reading this tripe. (but trigger warnings are in place.)
Go go go:
1. “I think kids will not have a problem with [a female Doctor], I think fathers will have a problem with it because they will then imagine they will have to describe sex changes to their children.”
2. [on designing humanoid aliens] “I suggested that everyone wears bindis. It’s all I could think of. We can’t afford alien prosthetics on every single extra.”
3. [being asked what historical figure would make a good Doctor] “Hitler. He was stern and strong. He would be great.”
4. [on the fans who were criticising him for killing a popular character] “Nine hysterical women.”
5. “I like that Helen Mirren has been saying the next Doctor should be a woman. I would like to go on record and say that the Queen should be played by a man.”
6. [on trying to insert book titles into dialogue] “DONNA: It’s like Ten Little Ni- DOCTOR: Niggles aside, let’s look in the library. But I thought it was too risky, so I cut it.”
7. [on fans who don’t like his episodes] “Ming-mongs.”
8. “There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male.”
9. A young married couple without a kid? You’re just dating. You tell yourself you’re married, but you’re just dating.”
I think the thing (to me) about RTD’s vs Moffat’s sexism is that Moffat’s is more along the lines of immensely annoying jokes about women and their attractiveness, but RTD’s always seemed more unfair? Like Donna: everyone loves Donna because she’s brilliant and she grew and changed and she saved the universe…but she doesn’t get to keep any of that, all her character development is promptly undone for no good reason. And Harriet Jones: she’s this good and capable politican who’s demonised for doing exactly the same sort of thing the Doctor does. (True, she dies heroically, but the Doctor doesn’t seem that bothered about that.) And Jackie, who’s brave and wonderful but is reduced to a punchline half the time…
Like Moffat’s is more like “hurr hurr women and their short skirts and their inability to drive, hurr hurr” but RTD’s is more like “LADIES, PLEASE STEP TO ONE SIDE FOR THE UNSTOPPABLE DOCTOR-ANGST JUGGERNAUT. DID I MENTION HOW LUCKY YOU ARE THAT THE DOCTOR LIKES YOU. ALSO NO FEMALE DOCTOR EVER.” And it’s a matter of…taste?…I know, but that one just annoys me more.
Guys can we please remember that during RTD’s run on Doctor Who/Torchwood, he:
-suggested that the Voyage Of The Damned aliens be made to look ‘less human’ by ‘having them wear bindis’ (see: The Writer’s Tale)
-Tried to work a reference to the n-word into The Unicon and the Wasp (see: The Writer’s Tale again)
-Knocked down Penny Carter, a woman of colour, to build up Donna in Partners In Crime. He even tells her “You’re a journalist? Make it up!” – there’s no way he’d speak like that to Sarah Jane. (More on Penny here.)
-Never really had Ten apologise for what Martha went through as a companion (after being trapped in 1910 in Human Nature, she was then trapped in the 1960s in Blink, which must have been crappy for her, but it’s never acknowledged.)
-Made a date-rape ‘joke’ in the very first episode of Torchwood
-Of all the love interests the Doctor had during RTD’s run- Rose, Martha, Reinette, Joan and River – Martha’s was the only one love left completely unrequited, and she was the only woman of colour
-In fact there have been manyessays about how Martha and her family’s treatment was not just problematic but offensive
-He doesn’t think the Doctor could ever be a woman because then parents would have to ‘describe sex changes to their children’ (see here.)
-Has called fans ‘ming-mongs’ – this is an awkward one because when and where I was growing up ‘mong’ was an very nasty insult towards people who had Down’s Syndrome. That’s probably not what he meant but it really annoys me.
-Referred to fans angry about Ianto’s death on Torchwood as ‘nine hysterical women’ (the original interview seems to have vanished, but it’s pretty well documented)
-Had Donna grow as a person, turn into a hero in her own right, and then take it all away from her in a scene which deprived her of any real agency
-Anything problematic in Moffat’s episodes written during the RTD run would have been done with his full approval
His version of Who may very well have been good for you, may have been everything you ever dreamed of, but it certainly wasn’t for everyone. RTD’s worked in the same industry and with much the same attitude as Moffat- even perhaps through no fault of his own it wasn’t even written for everyone.
I wonder if everyone thought the name “Russel T. Davies” at the same time, he’d appear in a cloud of good writing, forgive Moffat for his transgressions and save season 7.
Nah. He’d be too busy undermining characters of colour, making jokes about the n-word, thinking a female Doctor would be a problem for parents to explain to their children, not being able to think of any better way to write Donna out of the show and giving Moffat the showrunner job in the first place.
I got Russell T Davies’ The Writer’s Tale for Christmas. It’s a darn good read. I thought I’d share some tidbits, in (mostly) bullet-point form.
– Elton Pope was originally going to be in Journey’s End. RTD never explains why he wasn’t. That would have been awesome, though.
-RTD fancies Russell Tovey (Midshipman Frame) like mad. He was originally going to be in Journey’s End as well, at the Shadow Proclamation I think, before being exterminated by a Dalek. It didn’t happen because Russell Tovey was doing a play instead.
-The original idea for the Shadow Proclamation was to have loads and loads of monsters, all the ones from the series so far, running around. Obviously it didn’t happen, but I think that would have been awesome. Margaret Siltheen would have shown up and had a line.
-It took RTD a very long time to be happy with the last Doctor/Rose scene in Journey’s End.
The walls of the universe are open enough for her to pop to and fro. She’s always wanted to get him back, so why does she stay on Bad Wolf Bay? The hardest thing of all in that scene- and Billie might yet have problems with it- is getting Rose to walk away from the TARDIS in the first place, disguised by that funny Jackie dialogue. That, indeed, is the problems with the whole scene, that Rose has to act out of character to stay on Bad Wolf Bay. She’s utterly, marvellously selfish, and would push past anyone to get to her Doctor.
I got the feeling that he still wasn’t happy with it when it was finished. He didn’t say so, but I dunno, I have a feeling.
-Cut dialogue from The Unicorn and the Wasp (RTD is attempting to fit as many Agata Christie book titles into the dialogue as possible):
DONNA:
It’s like Ten Little-
DOCTOR:
Niggles aside, let’s look in the library.
I’m not the only one who would’ve been exceedingly uncomfortable with that, am I?
-George Lucas approached RTD to write an episode of the Star Wars TV show. He didn’t approach him enough though, cos he’s not doing it. Even though that would’ve been cool.
-RTD really hates the criticism ‘lazy writing’. Which is fair enough.
-On a similar note, Helen Raynor was really upset at the harsh reaction to her as a writer after Daleks In Manhattan.
-Regarding the interview that went round a while ago, where Martha was described as ‘second-best’, RTD was annoyed that what he said was taken out of context.
That’s all I’ve got. The book’s worth buying though, it’s really quite interesting.
