An article in The New York Times about Russell T. Davies and sexuality as portrayed in Doctor Who and Torchwood. Of course it talks quite a bit about Captain Jack Harkness, everyone's favourite omnisexual. There's a clip of the "Reunion" scene from "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" and of the scene about theatre ending with Shakespeare flirting with the Doctor from "The Shakespeare Code".
Interesting bits in the article:
- "Doctor Who" ... has morphed into something else altogether, science fiction that is playful, sophisticated, emotionally resonant and peppered with lightning-quick allusions to literary works, to classic "Doctor Who" episodes from long ago, and to historical events and people. But Mr. Davies presses his grown-up themes with a whisper and a laugh, not a shout. No one actually has sex on screen in "Doctor Who." And when Captain Jack makes an appearance ... his sexuality is an issue only in that his constant, equal-opportunity flirting tends to annoy his colleagues, busy as they are fighting intergalactic evil.
[I'd say it's also significant to the story that Jack's in love with the Doctor, but that's a character detail, not a story detail.] - Jane Tranter: "How ridiculous would it be that you would travel through time and space and only ever find heterosexual men?" Well, yes, but they seem to do it just fine on other TV shows. The frustration of only het characters on such well-written shows as Battlestar Galactica and Heroes continues to frustrate me.
- Mr. Davies used the same philosophy when Captain Jack came on the scene in "Doctor Who" — make it entertaining, not didactic.
"I thought, 'It’s time you introduce bisexuals properly into mainstream television,'" he said, laughing.
[Past time, I'd say.] - "It’s a bisexual space pirate swaggering in with guns and attitude and cheek and humor into prime-time family viewing: that was enormously attractive to me."
[Yeah, me too.] - "Torchwood" appears on BBC America and this season was its highest-rated program ever.
[So why aren't they even showing series 2 in Canada? Grump.] - "It is the transformation of "Doctor Who" that has cemented Mr. Davies’s reputation. ... Serious money is being lavished on the new production. And under the care of Mr. Davies, who writes or supervises the writing of every episode, it has been imbued with newfound sensitivity, pathos and humor.
[So true.] - "Captain Jack makes no apologies; no one asks him to."
[Not quite true; he does apologize - to Ianto for leaving, to Grey for everything, for example. But... no apologies for being a bisexual buccaneer, except that he does seem ashamed of some aspects of his past.] - Davies is quoted: "Drama is easy when it’s tragedy. Anyone could write a scene of a man crying in the rain saying, 'I'm sorry.' But actually it’s much more fun to see a man in a bar trying to pick up another man. That’s tense. There’s a whole minefield of emotions there."
[Is that what he's going to write next? Guys in bars?]
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