Oh the anti-wokies will be pleased. There’ll be a spring in their plum corduroy step, their naturally pink cheeks will be turning positively salmon, and the old Grammar boys on the Whatsapp will be guffawing with all their might: ‘Gatwa’s gone, old sport… who’s next? A disabled trans cat? Fnar, fnar, fnar.’ Such people don’t go on public transport and think they aren’t bigots because Miles Davis is on their dinner party playlist.
Anyway, it was a surprise to see Gatwa spouting his regeneration juice at the end of tonight’s episode, The Reality War. Not as much of a surprise as Jodie Whittaker turning into David Tennant’s 14th Doctor, for those bridging specials into Ncuti Gatwa’s tenure, but a surprise nonetheless.
Firstly because we didn’t really know Gatwa was leaving. News of a Doctor’s departure is usually announced beforehand, but Gatwa’s exit was only rumour - if weighty rumour - until this evening.
And then Billie Piper popping up in his place! Another throwback to a familiar face from early Russell T Davies reboot days was almost to be expected after the Tennant return, but still, the second female Doctor! And it’s Rose Tyler!
Er… but is it? Is Piper playing the Doctor, or playing Rose who is somehow now the Doctor? Or is something else entirely new going on for the series?
This is the intriguing part. "It’s an honour and a hoot to welcome her back to the TARDIS,” commented showrunner Davies, “but quite how and why and who is a story yet to be told. After 62 years, the Doctor’s adventures are only just beginning."
Does this suggest a new reinvention for Doctor Who, a change in how its lead character will operate? Or is this indeed Rose, who has somehow worked her way back into the Doctor’s lifeforce without actually being the Doctor?
Or is this just a bit of a smokescreen while Davies goes away to write himself out of another corner?
Well, some are saying that this is the end of Doctor Who. The rumour is that Disney+, who became involved in the series with the BBC a year and a half ago to have it run on their channel - and pumped lots of money into it – are going to end the deal. If that does transpire, that hardly means the end of the show. There is no chance on earth that the BBC will ditch the show, even though it might mean a delay on the next series.
Sure the anti-wokies like to point to its relatively low viewing figures around the 4 million mark for some of Gatwa’s episodes, but this ignores the huge amount of people who catch up with it on iPlayer, the way it’s a top five show for Disney+ and how the Christmas specials, including Gatwa’s, still bring in big numbers every year.
Plus it’s a brand, one of the most recognisable sci-fi shows ever, and one which continues to stir up debate. So sorry Mr Tunbridge Wells, your anti-woke bile only fuels its continued relevance.
But what of Gatwa’s Doctor? Aside from the usual morons moaning that he’s black and gay, and not enough like Patrick Troughton, how was he as a Doctor?
Mixed, would be the verdict. It always felt that Gatwa’s performance was a little held back by the writing. That while he could brim with charisma and charm and proper sex appeal – as in last season’s Rogue – he was just a tad too reserved, as contradictory as that sounds. It was a brave move to have Gatwa’s Doctor such a study in trauma. This was a character who would shed tears over minor characters dying, who would swallow down on his own feelings rather than tell them to even his assistants, who was on the run from the past but was so haunted by it, he was often reduced to walking. In some of those early episodes last year, it was Millie Gibson’s Ruby who was the active one, seen dragging a scared Doctor behind her in The Devil’s Chord.
It meant that for all his likeability, he was hard to warm too, he seemed inhibited, an introvert cast in the role of an extrovert. Tennant’s Doctor was similarly traumatised but it was all put out there in his motormouth over-sharing and moments of rage. Gatwa’s Doctor was more sad resignation and solitary tears shed in the TARDIS.
Other than in certain scenes or sequences – trapped in the hotel with Anita in Joy To The World or bringing the one-liners to Dot and Bubble – he never truly felt unleashed. We didn’t get to know him. Which means it’s a shame he’s leaving, there was a sense that he would grow into the role, or rather, his Doctor’s character would be pulled apart as he went on.
As it is, this is it. You can hardly blame Gatwa for leaving. The attention, the furore, the annoying anti-wokies moaning if a progressive sci-fi show, yknow, dares to be progressive. Big things lay ahead for him.
But he will leave with a sense of a missed opportunity to really shove his Doctor down the throats of the critics. In the end, he just didn’t bank enough killer episodes.
So Russell T Davies, what’s next? Will Billie Piper turn it around? Well, one thing’s for sure it won’t be getting any less woke now, will it?
