Of all
the Asexual Sightings and Possible Asexual Sightings I’ve done on the blog, the
Doctor is the most skeptical entry. His
sexuality, for me, seems to vary to an extent depending on which Doctor we’re
talking about, who’s writing him, and what contrivances the plot and/or joke
calls for. Not to mention, more than
anything, his apparent lack of interest in sex with the people he’s come across
is most likely due to them being humans instead of Time Lords – the series
starts with him and his granddaughter, after all, and aside from one
not-entirely-canon reference in a novel to Time Lord offspring being woven on
looms, there’s no indication that they procreate in anything other than the natural
way. So, there are a lot of
inconsistencies and caveats here, but there’s also a decent amount of wiggle
room. And anyway, I’m in love with the
idea of the Doctor as at least ace-ish (maybe gray-A or demisexual?), so that’s
what I’m going to go with.
We’re
looking mainly at new Who here. Apart from the fact that Susan exists, the
classic series doesn’t make much of any acknowledgment of the Doctor being at
all romantic or sexual, but that’s down to the era, not a conscious
storytelling choice. However, the social
mores that gave us the very chaste classic Who
Doctors certainly inform the more up-for-debate new-series Doctors. Very likely, if it hadn’t been for the old
“no hanky panky in the TARDIS” rule, there would’ve been no reason to be coy with
the Doctor’s levels of sexual attraction now.
But it was a rule for a good many years, and as a result, there are a
big number of classic Who fans who
are simply weirded out by the thought of the Doctor getting some, and even
though fans who came along with the new series don’t necessarily have that
issue, it means the writers of new Who
have had to try and find a balance between the two sensibilities.
More than
anything, this is probably what makes the Doctor’s sexuality hard to
ascertain. What is certain is that, from Eight on, the Doctor has been some level
of mostly-heteroromantic. There’s been
Eight with Grace, both Nine and Ten with Rose, a little of Eleven with Clara,
and Eleven and Twelve with River. This
is the Doctor we’re talking about, so the romances always look a little
different and are always at least a little bit understated, but they’re
there. These can be hit-of-miss for me –
I don’t like it when the Doctor/River gets into weird gender-dynamic things
where they act like an overbearing wife and a henpecked husband, and Ten/Rose
can get a little overly wrapped up in each other for my tastes, but Nine/Rose’s
deep soul connection is simply gorgeous.
Probably the reason the latter works so well for me is because it is the least “typical romance” of the
bunch – it’s different from what you usually see, and I love that.
If the
Doctor’s romantic orientation fluctuates a little from Doctor to Doctor, his
level of interest in/comfort with intimate physical contact varies a lot
more. Ten is probably the most open to
that sort of thing – while Eleven and Twelve have both been blindsided by being
kissed and tend to get awkward about it, Ten does his fair share of kissing and
has made winking nods to more (such as cheeky remarks about Queen Elizabeth I
in “The End of Time.”) The biggest
indicator for me with him is that, even if he seems surprised by a kiss, he
goes along with it pretty readily.
Meanwhile,
Nine doesn’t do much physically, kissing Rose once and being kissed by Jack
once, but although he doesn’t seem to spend much time dwelling on that stuff,
there are indications that he’s at least not opposed to it. In series 1, “The Doctor Dances” features him
and Rose having a conversation about “dancing,” which seems to be a euphemism
for sex, and he seems a bit hurt that she simply assumes he doesn’t
“dance.” It’s not 100% clear-cut, and
“dancing” could be used more inclusively to mean sex, intimacy, or romance; we can’t be really sure what
the Doctor and Rose mean here.
I’d say
Eleven is the most all-over-the-place.
He tends to get really squirmy/twitchy when someone kisses him, and as I’ve said before, he can hit the “sexually oblivious” button really hard at
times, completely missing when someone’s being suggestive. He can also seem kind of discomfited by or
impatient with other people’s physical contact with one another – not wanting
to talk about Melody’s conception in “A Good Man Goes to War” or wondering when
Kazran and Abigail find time to breathe in “A Christmas Carol.” But at the same time, when the writing calls
for it, he can be pretty open to that kind of thing. This happens most often with River,
suggesting more of a demisexuality – calling her a “bad girl” and other rather
annoying-to-me stuff – but it crops up here and there with other characters,
too. I’m thinking of the reference to
Clara’s skirt being “a bit too tight” (ugh) in “Nightmare in Silver” or the
little visual “jokes” that involve a phallic object slowly moving “up” when a
woman is doing something sexy, like when the Doctor sees Jenny fight a bunch of
goons in her catsuit in “The Crimson Horror.”
These moments really bug me, not because I’m opposed to the Doctor being
sexual in any way, but 1) there’s too much of a divide for me between Eleven’s
sexually-naïve side and his more amorous (for lack of a better word) side, and
2) the particular way he goes about it seems a little gross and bro-y to me,
neither of which I want to associate with the Doctor.
Twelve
seems the most consistently-close to asexual for me. He’s similar to Eleven in that he tends to be
either confused/alarmed by being kissed (not that he’s had as much of that as
Eleven, but he seems pretty thunderstruck after being kissed by Missy) and a
lot of sexual allusions go over his head altogether. (Side note:
it’s interesting that both of Moffat’s Doctors hit these ace notes
harder than RTD’s, especially since Moffat also created the seemingly-ace
Sherlock while simultaneously insisting that Sherlock obviously isn’t ace. “You keep using that word – I do not think it
means what you think it means.”) Now,
whether this is an intentional choice for Twelve’s characterization or a
byproduct of him looking older and less “cute” than Ten or Eleven, I can’t say. I do love it, though.
Even
though the Doctor isn’t portrayed as one thing or the other consistently enough
to even try for a definite claim of ace, gray-A, or demisexual, and the “last
of the Time Lords” thing is most likely a factor here, I still like thinking of
him as at least ace-ish. There’s my own
selfish reason, of course, that I like to see that part of myself reflected in
a character I love so much. There’s the
mere fact that it’s something different from the vast, vast, vast majority of shows out there. And then, there’s just my personal preference
for the Doctor/Adventure, the Doctor/TARDIS, and the Doctor/Friendship being
the real OTPs of this show. At the very
least, I’m appreciate the show has stayed ambiguous enough on this issue that I
can fanwank it in my favor.
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