‘Doctor Who’ Star Varada Sethu Welcomes “Doctor Woke” Insults: “I Think We’re Doing The Right Thing If We’re Getting Comments Like That”
Upcoming Doctor Who star Varada Sethu says that, in her opinion, the fact that the BBC sci-fi series continues to receive accusations of being too “woke” is proof positive that she and her fellow members of the show’s production team are “doing the right thing”.
The actor, who appeared in the last season episode Boom as Mundy Flynn before being cast as the Doctor’s next companion, Belinda Chandra, shared her thoughts on the aforementioned line of criticism while speaking to UK news outlet Radio Times in promotion of the series’ return, as planned for later this year.
Noting how her co-star and 15th Doctor actor Ncuti Gatwa responded to the fact that her casting would result in the Tardis seeing its first fully non-white Doctor-Companion pair by joking, “Look at us. We get to be in the Tardis. We’re going to piss off so many people”, Sethu was pressed by interviewer Jimi Famurewa as to what experiences, if any, she had thus far with the more ‘toxic’ elements of Doctor Who‘s fanbase.
In turn, the actor recalled, “There’s been a couple of ‘Doctor Woke’ [references] or whatever, but I just think we’re doing the right thing if we’re getting comments like that.”
“Woke just means inclusive, progressive, and that you care about people,” added the Andor star. “And, as far as I know, the core of Doctor Who is kindness, love and doing the right thing.”
Sethu is far from the first of Doctor Who‘s Disney-era team members to put forth such a read of fans’ ‘anti-woke’ criticisms.
Speaking to his decision to have the series ‘lean into’ more queer themes during a May 2024 interview with Collider’s Samantha Casey, current showrunner Russel T Davies explained, “It’s funny, because to be absolutely honest, it’s almost not that deliberate [because] that’s the life that I lead.”
“I wrote a series called Queer as Folk in 1999 that broke down many barriers and I’m never going to step back from that,” he continued. “In fairness, no one’s ever asked me to step back from that – and I just think it doesn’t even feel particularly queer to me. It feels natural, it’s 2024, and we’re all embracing this – Twitter might kick off, and in dark little corners people might argue, but that’s not the real world, the real world is one of acceptance and with battles to be fought and votes to be gained.”
In a separate interview given to The Verge‘s Charles Pullam-Moore that same month, when asked for his thoughts the fanbase’s division of opinion towards the narrative direction of the 15th Doctor’s premiere run, Davies likewise asserted, “I think we can be unfair to fans sometimes when we say the viewers are polarized because there’s nothing fans love more than a good debate.
“Just go and talk to a bunch of football fans,” he argued. “There are no football fans saying, ‘Our team is perfect, we’re really happy, and we’ve got nothing to say.’ They’re all arguing all the time, and that’s just what fandom is. If things are polarizing, I think we’re in a healthy position, but I also think we sometimes overstate the importance of discourse on Twitter.”
At present, Doctor Who is gearing up to land the Tardis back in our time on April 12th exclusively via Disney Plus.
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