The white Doctor

Fire Fly

Since the screening of Series 3 of the new series of Doctor Who in 2007, there has been considerable critical analysis and discussion among Doctor Who fans, particularly amongst fans of colour, of Martha Jones as a Black female character; especially of how her characterization reflects on the social position of Black women. However, there has been less discussion of the racial characteristics of the Doctor. Although the Doctor is, within the series, an alien, the character is informed by whiteness and the racial anxieties of the show's white British creators, such that the Doctor embodies a number of characteristics of whiteness.

Race is a recurrent theme in Series 3. It's used as a cipher to develop the Doctor's character and to reveal new information about the Time War and the genocide of the Time Lords. At the same time, however, race is treated in a supremely naïve manner in the season, with outright historical inaccuracy portrayed in order to reassert a normative white moral centre for the show.

The Doctor's whiteness, and the white perspective of the series, is manifest in a number of ways, but particularly in the characters for whom compassion is cultivated, the Doctor's lack of accountability in his transient adventures, and the context in which the series was created and has developed.

Race is set up as an implicit theme in Series 3 before the beginning of the season proper, in the denouement of the 2006 Christmas special episode The Runaway Bride. When the Doctor reveals to the Racnoss Empress that he is from Gallifrey, the Racnoss Empress protests that Gallifreyans wiped out the Racnoss, leading to their present predicament in having no home planet. When the Empress rejects the solution the Doctor proposes – to take all the remaining Racnoss to another planet – the Doctor chooses to commit genocide instead, completing the task his ancestors began.

This is a rather grim conclusion for a character who is typified by his willingness to give second chances, and his belief that all forms of life deserve the opportunity to survive. He has even given the Daleks such opportunities, and many others, specifically in contrast to his human companions.

However, in making the Doctor's unresolved grief, guilt and self-blame over the genocide of his people the central dramatic theme in the series, the series makes the grief, guilt and suffering of real human beings due to racial violence a vehicle for the personal angst of the Doctor. His acts of genocide are treated as important because of what they reveal about the Doctor's pain; the Racnoss' pain is not given such treatment, nor is any enemy species the Doctor chooses not to believe in, setting up clear categories of characters worthy of compassion versus those who are not. The Doctor's inconsolable grief over the death of the Master in Last of the Time Lords (2007) contrasts tellingly with his dismissiveness towards the Racnoss. It is clear that, for Russell T Davies, characters who do not resemble white men aren't important enough to grieve or feel guilt over.

In the past decade and a half in Australia this has been how issues around genocide have played out. White Australia has grappled with trying to displace guilt over committing and benefiting from the genocide of Aboriginal people, a programme that Britain shares culpability for. The national Apology to the Stolen Generations in February 2008 characterizes how white society would like to address its culpability for genocide against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia: words without efforts behind them, just as the Doctor moves on from committing genocide without remaining answerable to the societies he intervenes in.

In the second episode of the season, The Shakespeare Code (2007), the Doctor advises Martha to "just walk about like you own the place. It works for me" after she expresses concern that she might be abducted and sold as a slave because she's Black. The Doctor then retorts that he is an alien, implying that real racial inequality among humans is analogous to fictional differences between species.

This exchange betrays the ignorance of the writers about both historical racial violence and contemporary white privilege. The episode is set in 1599, while Portugal and Spain were transporting African slaves to the Americas, and Britain was establishing its colonies. Black slaves were present in London since early in the sixteenth century, making it entirely reasonable for Martha to feel anxious about her security. Furthermore, by implying that anyone could "walk about like [they] own the place" the role of whiteness is normalized – nobody else could "own the place."

It is telling that one of the greatest...