‘Doctor Who’ Has A Long History of Nudity, And It Works Better Than You’d Think

The announcement that the highly talented Jodie Whittaker would be the 13th doctor should have been a joyous occasion for sci-fi fans everywhere. The fact that Doctor Who has cast its first female doctor is a source of excitement in and of itself, but having the role go to Whittaker, one of the strongest and most underrated actors working right now, is even more exciting. However, because the internet is perpetually a garbage place filled with overly protective fanboys, the announcement that children everywhere would have a new, cool fictional role model was met with sexism-fueled outrage as well as several sites publishing pictures from Whittaker’s nude scenes. It was an exhausting and eye-rolling response that only the internet is capable of.

However, I have a secret for you. Whittaker isn’t the first Doctor who has ever shed clothes for art. Doctor Who has a long history of actors and actresses who embracing both tasteful nudity and full-on steamy orgies.

Because I’m writing an article and not a novel, I’m only going to focus on the Doctors and companions from the series’ 2005 continuation and on, starting with Christopher Eccleston‘s Ninth Doctor. In the sixth episode of the show’s first season, Eccleston sheds his shirt during an experimentation scene. It’s not the sexiest thing, but it’s certainly steamier than what you would expect from a family-friendly show. However, the actor really let his freak flag fly during his recent appearance on The Leftovers. In “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt World,” Eccleston’s Matt Jamisen finds himself the prisoner of a lion-themed sex cult. The actor never took off his clothes for the scene, but it was undoubtedly sexual, and there was a questionable looking funnel involved.

That brings me to the Ninth Doctor’s favorite human and arguably one of the best Doctor Who companions of all time, Billie Piper’s Rose. For four seasons, Piper starred as a high end call girl named Belle on ITV2 and Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Equally funny, smart, and genuinely emotional, Piper may have had several nude scenes as Belle, but she embodied a character and a project that treated sex as something beautiful and complicated. The actress helped put a positive fictional face on the highly criticized and often abused sex worker industry.

Also, while she was doing that, she had an on-screen hook up with another Doctor Who star, Matt Smith. He was an absolute jerk in the episode, but the sixth episode of the series secretly gave fans the Doctor and Rose Tyler pairing they had been craving for years. Speaking of Smith, he was one of the few actors to get completely nude in an episode of Doctor Who. “The Lodger,” which focuses on the Doctor trying to be a normal person, includes a scene that shows the naked Smith falling out of the shower. While filming, Smith wore a pair of flesh-colored shorts, but still. That flirts more with explicit than this series almost ever does. Smith also had a cheeky nude scene in “The Time of the Doctor.”

I could go on. There’s a scene where you can see Matt Smith’s buns in The Crown. David Tennant has talked at length about the many sex scenes and nude scenes he’s filmed for the British show Single Father. Heck, Torchwood, a show that was an official Doctor Who spin-off series, includes a gay sex scene between John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness and a random hookup that was reportedly too steamy to run in its entirety in the U.K. The point is, Doctor Who has historically been filled with some of the greatest actors and actresses on television. Sometimes these great and compelling actors take on roles that require embracing more risque situations. They absolutely shouldn’t be penalized for this since emotionally portraying every aspect of the human experience is literally their job.

All of this brings me back to the two nude scenes that keep being thrown around in connection to Whittaker. The actress starred in the 2006 Peter O’Toole indie film Venus, which focused on a central, complicated romance. Of course that featured a sex scene. Sex scenes are essentially a rule for indie dramedies, but that doesn’t mean that Whittaker’s nude scenes weren’t impressively acted. Likewise, Whittaker also starred in Black Mirror’s “The Entire History of You,” which is often thought to be one of the anthology series’ best episodes. It’s also an episode about intimacy, trust, and isolation. Only pointing to the episode’s sex scene is a gross misunderstanding of a powerful performance and deeply intimate and human story.

So yes. Whittaker has a couple of sex scenes in her long and impressive filmography, but so do most Doctor Who actors. Not acknowledging that is idiotic, and only defining Whittaker by two short but emotionally charged and delicately performed nude scenes is sexist and insulting. Whittaker, just like every other Doctor Who actor, is a powerful acting force, and we’re lucky to have her.

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