fans have been moved by the recent representation in the show, with the Doctor and Yaz’s – but it’s not the first time the sci-fi has featured LGBT representation, and it definitely won’t be the last.
Bestselling author Juno Dawson , a spin-off podcast that stars actress Charlie Craggs as one of the first trans characters in the Whoniverse.
The 10-part series follows Cleo (Charlie), Abby (Lois Chimimba) and Shawna (Holly Quin-Ankrah), three university drop-outs who start a podcast, The Blue Box Files, to find out more about why a mysterious blue box keeps cropping up across history.
Juno pointed out that, even before showrunnner Russell T Davies rebooted the sci-fi in 2005, the series was at the forefront of representation.
‘Doctor Who is incredibly queer and I think it has been even pre-Russell T Davies,’ she explained to Metro.co.uk.
‘I think when you look at some of the older [series], particularly in the 80s there was a gay guy in charge of Doctor Who called John Nathan-Turner and I think you can see it was all there.’
Nathan-Turner was the longest-serving Doctor Who producer, working on the show from 1980 until it was cancelled in 1989. He cast Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctors.
Elsewhere, it’s believed there was a lesbian subtext intended in the relationship between Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Karra (Lisa Bowerman), who both appeared in the classic series.
‘It was subtext, it wasn’t text, and then obviously Russell came in and introduced characters like Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and the rest is history – we have out LGBT characters in Doctor Who,’ Juno continued.
‘Bethany Black, a trans actress, played a role a few years back [474 in the series nine episode Sleep No More] but her character was an alien so it wasn’t necessarily representation of a trans human,’ she pointed out.
However, Juno added that Cleo, who is the leading character in Doctor Who: Redacted, is almost ‘the next step’ for the show.
Featuring a trans character ‘was never in doubt’ for Juno, with the author adding: ‘When [BBC Sounds] came to me, they said, part of our remit is to represent the licence fee-payer. The BBC has a remit – it has to speak for anyone and everyone who pays that licence fee and, right off the bat, I said, “We’re going to have this fake podcast, these three girls, they’re kind of losers.”
‘If I’m not going to have that representation then who will?’
Over the past few years, there’s been a huge discussion about authentic casting – whether cisgender actors should ever be cast as trans characters, or straight actors as gay characters. Eddie Redmayne, who played a trans woman in The Danish Girl, ’, adding that the criticism he faced was justified.
Pointing out that sometimes gay actors are afforded opportunities to play straight characters, like Jonathan Bailey (Anthony Bridgerton) in Bridgerton, Juno explained: ‘It can go both ways.
‘I’m certainly not going to tell casting directors and actors what they can and can’t do. But for me, when I see an LGBT person playing an LGBT character, it just has a ring of truth to it. It’s almost like a barrier is removed and especially with trans roles, I think it’s really important, to me, to see trans actors to play trans characters because otherwise it reinforces this idea that a trans woman is a man in a wig.
‘Or a trans man is a woman with a short haircut. That’s not what it means to be trans. As great as Eddie Redmayne was in The Danish Girl, as great as Jared Leto was in Dallas Buyers Club, they were kind of men in wigs. That’s the accusation that is hurled at trans woman. And there are so many amazing trans actors out there. Look at . I don’t see the need anymore [for cis actors to play trans characters] and I don’t think it would happen now – I think we’ve moved on.’
As for what she hopes fans will take away from Doctor Who: Redacted, Juno went on: ‘I hope to think that it’s about the people the Doctor has impacted without the Doctor even realising.
‘All the superhero films – I love a Marvel film but those characters, they never stop to think about what happens when they’re gone. All those skyscrapers that have come crashing down, all those Daleks that have been everywhere. What happens to the people like Cleo and Abby and Shawna, the people who don’t get to escape in the Tardis?
‘And I believe Russell is going to expand that Doctor Who universe to tell lots of stories and I think Redacted could be a taste of things to come.’
episode one is out now.
