This article contains spoilers for the Doctor Who Holiday Special 2022.

Doctor Who's latest companion romance is flawed on every level. For
decades, the BBC had a basic rule that there should be no "hanky-panky"
in the TARDIS. It wasn't that the Doctor was asexual; after all,
William Hartnell's First Doctor was introduced alongside his
granddaughter Susan, and he unwittingly accepted a marriage proposal
when he accepted a cup of cocoa from an elderly Aztec woman named
Cameca. But the BBC's view was that an actual romance in the TARDIS
should be strictly off-limits, and that view ran through the entire
classic series, right up until Doctor Who's cancelation in 1989. The
aftermath of the Holiday Special, however, shift the status quo
considerably, and not necessarily in a good way.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

The cancelation changed everything, with the story of Doctor Who
continuing in a range of books that were rather more adult in tone. The
Doctor himself was still treated as off-limits until the 1996 Doctor
Who movie, when Paul McGann took over as the Doctor and actually shared
a kiss with his companion; Lance Parkin's novel The Dying Days went one
further, ending with the beginning of what was clearly a sex scene
between the Eighth Doctor and former companion Bernice Summerfield. And
when Russell T. Davies relaunched Doctor Who in 2005, he wasted no time
setting up romances and near-romances - with David Tennant's attractive
Tenth Doctor treated as an object of longing by Billie Piper's Rose
Tyler and Freema Agyeman's Martha Jones both besotted with him. The
Doctor even got a wife, in the form of Alex Kingston's River Song.

Now, it seems Doctor Who is committing to its first queer romance. The
Doctor Who Holiday Special 2022 confirmed that Mandip Gill's Yaz has
fallen hard for Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor, with her fellow
companion Dan Lewis (John Bishop) giving her a nudge to admit her
feelings - and then trying to push the Doctor into acknowledging she
shared those emotions. This actually makes Yaz the Doctor's third queer
companion in a row (assuming Clara's comments about Jane Austen being a
great kisser are any indication), and it's clearly a great step forward
for diversity and representation in Doctor Who. Unfortunately, it's
also flawed. Here's why the development doesn't quite hold up.

The Yaz Plotline Is Too Little, Too Late
The first problem is that this really is too little, too late. Current
Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall has arguably been setting up the
Yaz-Doctor romance (known as "Thasmin" by shippers) since Doctor Who
season 11's "Arachnids in the U.K." One of the rare Thirteenth Doctor
stories to explore the companions' lives, this featured a scene in
which Yaz's mother attempted to interrogate the Doctor, trying to
figure out just who this stranger her daughter was hanging around with
really was. Her mother suggested they could be seeing each other,
leaving Yaz visibly horrified at the comment, while the socially
awkward Thirteenth Doctor seemed puzzled. "I don't think so," she
responded. "Are we?" Since then, though, there's been nothing more than
subtext - until now. All this is deeply frustrating, because Jodie
Whittaker's tenure as the Thirteenth Doctor is coming to an end - and
Mandip Gill is leaving as Yaz as well. That means Yaz's sexuality has
been treated ambiguously for no less than 28 episodes, and will have
only been explicitly addressed in her final three.

In truth, the issue comes from Chibnall's general approach to writing
Doctor Who. He's forgotten the greatest lesson of Russell T. Davies;
that the companion is the audience surrogate, offering a lens through
which the Doctor can be interpreted by viewers. The more fleshed-out
the companion may be, and the stronger their relationship with the
Doctor, the better the lens. But Chibnall's interest has been centered
on the Doctor herself, with the companions under-developed and often
sidelined; many of the greatest revelations of the Chibnall era -
including his controversial Timeless Child retcon - have taken place
with no companions present, leaving their emotional impact muddied and
unclear. To work, to really drive the emotional core of the story,
Thasmin should never have been subtext in the first place. But viewers
simply didn't know Yaz well enough to be confident of her true feelings
for the Doctor.

The Doctor-Yaz Romance Is An Obvious Narrative Arc
It doesn't help that, in narrative terms, the story Chibnall intends to
tell is a pretty obvious one. Previous Doctor-companion romances have
revolved around the will-they/won't-they question, with some fans
excited at the prospect of a romance while others insisted there should
still be no hanky-panky in the TARDIS (although, to be fair, that ship
certainly sailed when Amy and Rory spent their wedding night on the
TARDIS during the Matt Smith era). But there's no such mystery with
Thasmin - simply because Whittaker and Gill only have two episodes
left. Chibnall is clearly intending to tell a tragic love story of some
sort, perhaps with the Doctor sacrificing herself for Yaz. It feels
like a pretty forced way to create a deeper emotional investment in the
coming regeneration.

To be fair to Chibnall, he may well have originally intended to spend
more time exploring the Doctor-Yaz relationship. Production on Doctor
Who season 13 was affected by the coronavirus pandemic, forcing him to
shorten it to just six episodes. Season 13 bore all the hallmarks of
rushed writing - Doctor Who: Flux left most of the universe destroyed,
with Chibnall apparently forgetting the scale of the apocalyptic story
he'd just told. So it is possible Thasmin is an unfortunate victim of
circumstance. Still, the sad truth is that viewers can only judge a
plot that actually happens, so while this may explain the flaws in the
Doctor-Yaz romance, it doesn't make them any less pronounced.

The Doctor Has Been Abusive Towards Yaz
In narrative terms, then, Thasmin is deeply flawed. But it's also
important to note that the relationship between Yaz and the Thirteenth
Doctor has been a strained one; this Doctor is naturally closed off and
secretive, deliberately hiding her emotions from Yaz, and often acting
as though she resented her companion's questions. Indeed, many viewers
have felt she's been outright abusive on occasion, snapping and
snarling at moments of emotional vulnerability. In light of the Doctor
Who Holiday Special 2022, this was clearly an attempt to show the
Doctor as uncomfortable with her own emotions, but suffice to say it
doesn't indicate any potential romance between the Doctor and Yaz will
be stable.

Even worse, though, Doctor Who: Flux shone a disturbing light on the
Doctor's general relationship with companions. When the Doctor finally
confronted her mother figure Tecteun, the conversation deliberately
drew a comparison between Tecteun's past with the Doctor and the
Doctor's own treatment of companions; in one of the darkest criticisms
of Doctor Who, it suggested the Doctor was unwittingly continuing a
cycle of abuse. There's a striking parallel between Tecteun's erasing
the Timeless Child memories and the way the Doctor has herself treated
friends and allies, sometimes even wiping their memories before she
moved on. And the criticism was even reinforced by Karvanista, who the
Doctor realized was a former companion she had simply dumped and then
forgotten - paralleling other fan-favorites such as Sarah Jane Smith.
The most disturbing aspect of all this, though, was that this dark
assessment of the Doctor was never resolved; the Doctor shook them off
and moved on, with no moment of reflection or self-awareness. This
context, more than anything else, suggests a Doctor Who companion
romance is a particularly bad idea for the Thirteenth Doctor.

--
Let's go Brandon!

On 06/01/2022 21:19, Ubiquitous wrote:
> This article contains spoilers for the Doctor Who Holiday Special 2022.
>
> Doctor Who's latest companion romance is flawed on every level.

I see it being set up solely to have the 13th Doctor sacrifice herself
for Yaz and bring some emotional drama to the forthcoming regeneration.

Either way, there's only two episodes of the 13th Doctor's tenure left
so it's not going to be a very long romance.

In article <sr81l4$7ik$1@dont-email.me>,
Blueshirt <blueshirt@indigo.news> wrote:
>On 06/01/2022 21:19, Ubiquitous wrote:
>> This article contains spoilers for the Doctor Who Holiday Special 2022.
>>
>> Doctor Who's latest companion romance is flawed on every level.
>
>I see it being set up solely to have the 13th Doctor sacrifice herself
>for Yaz and bring some emotional drama to the forthcoming regeneration.
>
>Either way, there's only two episodes of the 13th Doctor's tenure left
>so it's not going to be a very long romance.
>
The Whole Chibnall Era is flawed!
--
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