BBC Rejects Viewer Complaints That Doctor Who Kiss Was “Unsuitable for Children”
BBC
The BBC says it has dismissed complaints it received earlier this year about a Doctor Who episode that featured a passionate kiss between Ncuti Gatwa and guest star Jonathan Groff.
Groff guested on the long-running British science fiction show this summer to play the titular character in the episode “Rogue,” a man of mystery whose run-in with the Fifteenth Doctor (Gatwa) leads to intense romantic feelings between the two — and a steamy lip-lock that led to at least 169 complaints to the BBC’s Audience Services department, according to an official tally.
The broadcaster has since disregarded those complaints, as Deadline first reported this week. In a July statement, the BBC noted that complainants claimed the episode contained “sexualized content unsuitable for children,” and was replete with “inappropriate sexual innuendo,” as the complaints alleged. In response, the BBC’s Executive Claims Unit determined that any sexual innuendo in the episode was “towards the mildest end of the spectrum and in any case likely to go over the heads of children.”
Regarding further concern that Rogue and the Doctor’s relationship developed too quickly, the ECU wrote that their quick-burning romance was “unlikely to strike viewers of any age as a model for interpersonal relationships outside this particular fictional context.”
The episode was generally well-received otherwise, although trans *Doctor Who* fans did have their own critiques.
The most recent incarnation of Doctor Who saw former showrunner Russell T. Davies return to its helm, after ushering in its return to television in 2005 (with another same-gender kiss, though a less romantic one, shared between the Doctor and Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman). Davies’ second run has ruffled plenty of anti-LGBTQ+ feathers in the U.K., especially centered on the character of Rose Noble, a transgender character played by Yasmin Finney (Heartstopper). After Finney appeared in the 2023 special episode “The Star Beast,” anti-trans trolls took to their keyboards to review-bomb the episode into the ground on aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
While the outrage against “Rogue” didn’t reach the same level of regressive indignation as “The Star Beast,” it’s good to see that the BBC didn’t cave to pressure over such a milestone Doctor Who moment. Groff, for his part, seems eager to run it back. “I hope we’re seeing Rogue again. Rogue tells the Doctor at the end of the episode to find him, so it's totally up to the Doctor,” Groff told Out in June. “The ball is in his court, so to speak.”
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Originally Appeared on them.
