Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Creator / RussellTDavies

Go To

1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mv5bmje1mzexmdq5mf5bml5banbnxkftztgwmtkynje2ntm_v1.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:300:[[{{Recap/TheFiveishDoctorsReboot}} Quel dommage, Davros!]]]]
3
4->''"Saving it from extinction."''
5-->-- '''Frank Cottrell-Boyce''', when asked what Davies' greatest contribution to British television was
6
7%% One quote is sufficient. Please place additional entries on the quotes tab.
8
9%% Personal tropes aren't allowed on Creator pages.
10
11Stephen Russell Davies (born 27 April 1963 in Swansea, UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}), better known as Russell T Davies, is a British producer and screenwriter, born in Swansea. He added the T to his name because there was already a Russell Davies in UK media.
12
13Known as RTD (or sometimes "Rusty") by Whovians, he has a penchant for naming characters "Tyler", "Smith", and/or "Jones". He also tends to inject {{Camp}} and {{Technobabble}} in very large doses, and his characters are [[EveryoneIsBi highly likely to be bisexual]].
14
15Originally from a background in children's TV, he wrote and produced a number of adult dramas between the mid 90s and the revival of ''Series/DoctorWho'' in 2005, most notably ''Series/{{Queer As Folk|UK}}'', and soon became one of the most influential and popular TV writers in the UK.
16
17He was one of the executive producers on ''Doctor Who'', along with Mal Young, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson. RTD, however, was in charge of the creative aspect and is the "showrunner" as a US person would think of it. He is responsible for the revival of ''Doctor Who'' in 2005, and he also created its spin-offs ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' and ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures''.
18
19Davies has written several ''Doctor Who'' episodes and specials over his tenure as producer, and been responsible for rewrites on many more. He stepped down from the position following the conclusion of production on the Creator/DavidTennant era, handing the reins to Creator/StevenMoffat. He is currently set to return to the position in 2023, after the departure of Moffat's own replacement Creator/ChrisChibnall, thus making him the first ''Doctor Who'' showrunner to return to the position after departing[[note]]Creator/JonPertwee-era producer Creator/BarryLetts was previously appointed executive producer in Season 18 to mentor Creator/JohnNathanTurner, but wasn't the show's creative head during this time; that was Nathan-Turner's duty[[/note]].
20
21Master of the WhamLine and the WhamEpisode: in his five years on ''Doctor Who'', he was infamous for leaving the penultimate episode on a ''massive'' cliffhanger to whet appetite for the finale. He's also critical of [[ExecutiveMeddling TV executives]] using "TonightSomeoneDies" and similar catchlines in commercials and claims that it impacts ratings -- and admittedly, he has a point.
22
23Liberally uses AuthorAppeal, and as a result, placed Wales firmly in the centre of the Franchise/{{Whoniverse}} alongside London. Also became famous for finally upgrading all the [[invoked]]HoYay subtext in ''Doctor Who'' to proper TV canon, for abolishing NoHuggingNoKissing in the series forever, and for dialing all of the above -- Wales, HoYay and tons of sex -- up to eleven and beyond in ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''.
24
25He is also known for being ''obscenely tall'', standing at ''6'6"'' (198cm). To wit, he once relayed a story of a casual talk with a taxi driver he once had, during which he mentioned he was working with ''Doctor Who'', to which the driver asked if his job was playing one of the monsters.
26
27Was awarded an [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever OBE]] in 2008.
28
29'''Writer on:'''
30* ''Breakfast Serials''
31* ''Series/DarkSeason''
32* ''Series/CenturyFalls''
33* ''Series/{{Chucklevision}}''
34* ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresDamagedGoods Damaged Goods]]'', a novel of the Virgin ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' and his first published ''Doctor Who'' work.
35
36
37'''Writer/Producer on:'''
38* ''Children's Ward''
39* ''Series/BobAndRose''
40* ''Series/{{Casanova}}''
41* ''Series/TheSecondComing''
42* ''Series/{{Queer As Folk|UK}}''
43* The 2005 revival of ''Series/DoctorWho'' (31 episodes, plus one 2005 Children in Need special, written or co-written, 2005-2010. Returned to the position in 2022 after Chris Chibnall’s departure.)
44* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'', spinoff of ''Doctor Who'' (Six episodes written or co-written)
45* ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'', another ''Doctor Who'' spinoff (Three episodes written or co-written)
46* ''Series/WizardsVsAliens'' (co-created with PhilFord, two episodes written)
47* ''Series/{{Cucumber}}'' and sibling shows ''Banana'' and ''Tofu''
48* ''Series/YearsAndYears''
49* ''Series/ItsASin''
50----
51
52[[folder:Recurring and over-arching tropes in his Whoniverse work (''Doctor Who'', ''Torchwood'', ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'' and the Virgin New Adventures) :]]
53* AlienInvasion: ''Doctor Who'', ''Torchwood'', and ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'', all frequently feature these.
54** EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion: Most of them are taken care of in just an episode or two.
55* AliensInCardiff:
56** The trope namer via ''Doctor Who'' and ''Torchwood''. There is a dimensional rift in Cardiff that lets aliens and other entities through, which the Doctor encounters on occasion and Torchwood encounters every episode.
57** More generally, he made aliens in mundane settings a big part of his revival of ''Who''.
58* AppliedPhlebotinum: Frequently uses this to move his plots along.
59* ArcVillain: Each of his [[HalfArcSeason Half-Arc Seasons]] in ''Doctor Who'' had them:
60** The Daleks were indirectly this for Season 1: Their attack in the season finale caused the Bad Wolf message to spread through time and space, connecting to past episodes.
61** The Cybermen for Season 2, given how they first appear mid-season, and then come back for the season finale.
62** The Master for Season 3, who was manipulating events on present-day Earth the entire season, and revealed himself enacted his plans in the finale.
63** The Daleks and Davros for Season 4, whose plans for the destruction of all reality left fingerprints through several episodes of the season.
64** Both the Master and Rassilon with the Time Lords were this for the 2009 series of specials, seeing as how they were both involved in a prophecy that haunted the Doctor through the specials.
65* AssimilationPlot: Many of the villains on his run of ''Doctor Who'' get involved in this at some point. It's the entire purpose of the Cybermen and the Empty Child, and the Daleks and Master have tried it as well.
66* AuthorAppeal: UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, [[invoked]]HoYay, self-aware campiness, and, in ''Doctor Who'', the Daleks.
67* AstronomicZoom: He likes to open ''Doctor Who'' episodes this way. "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]", [[Recap/DoctorWho2005CSTheChristmasInvasion The Christmas Invasion]]", and "[[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride The Runaway Bride]]" all begin like this.
68* AttackOfTheKillerWhatever: True to Whoniverse tradition, he frequently creates monsters and threats out of innocuous Earth things: stretches of skin, game shows, Santa Clauses and Christmas trees, monks, little old ladies, human fat, beetles, manta rays, water... and that's just ''Doctor Who''.
69* BackForTheFinale: Uses characters for this a lot.
70* BloodierAndGorier: ''Torchwood'' is definitely more so than ''Doctor Who''. His [[Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures Virgin New Adventures]] novel too, even by the generous standards of that series.
71* {{Camp}}: He made sure the ''Doctor Who'' revival retained plenty of the classic show's campiness.
72* CharacterCheck: Applied this to characters he brought back in ''DW'''s revival.
73** Over the course of the classic series, the Daleks grew from a single-minded race united under an emperor or other leader to a conflicted race fighting a civil war amongst themselves, largely due to the introduction of Davros, who played his army of Daleks against the rest. When they reappeared in the new series, the Time War backstory completely removed all mentions of infighting between themselves, and Davros does not appear for several seasons. Their stripped-down and muted design in the new series also harkens back to their first appearances in the 1960s, rather than the more colourful and trimmed looks in the later eras of the classic show.
74** During the classic series, less focus was put on the Cybermen's aim of assimilation, and they became generic robotic soldiers, often displaying being downright emotional as well. In the new series, the emphasis was placed on the BodyHorror and LossOfIdentity aspects of their nature, more like their debut appearance.
75** The John Simm's Master's first appearance harkens back to the original/Delgado master by not having a decaying body, pulling a GrandTheftMe, or having any worries about his mortality, and being only concerned with evil and power, unlike the previous incarnations from Pratt onward. In his second appearance, after his resurrection, he again has a decaying body.
76*** The [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands unexplained]] [[LovecraftianSuperpower Lovecraftian Superpowers]] he had in the TV movie are also never brought up.
77** The TARDIS started out broken; completely unsteerable to the point where the Doctor can never leave a place and time that he's not completely done with, because he can never return. During the Fourth Doctor's tenure, he switched to using the "secondary control room", which allowed him to steer the TARDIS for the first time ([[invoked]][[FanWank onscreen, anyway]]), although due to his personality he often wouldn't and even installed a "Randomiser" to make control of it impossible again. The new series establishes right from the very beginning that the Doctor knows how to fly his TARDIS now, showing it capable of manoeuvres stated to be completely impossible for most of the Classic Doctors (the earliest example being the Ninth Doctor's AndAnotherThing rematerialization in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]"), but every so often a story will start with the Doctor mis-steering the TARDIS and ending up somewhere unwanted, such as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern The Idiot's Lantern]]" ('50s Britain and not '50s America), "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw Tooth and Claw]]" (the Victorian era rather than the '70s), and completely {{Deconstructed}} in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]" (a year after Rose left instead of a few hours).
78* CivvieSpandex: Both the incarnations of the Doctor under his run wore decidedly modern-looking clothing, with only subtle touches of eccentricness, as their normal costumes, instead of the more old-fashioned and anachronistic costumes of many of the classic series Doctors.
79* DarkerAndEdgier:
80** His take on ''Doctor Who'''s mythos was this. The premise was altered from an exiled member of an alien race wandering around the universe, to an alien who had actually ''killed his entire race,'' and had no small amount of angst about it, wandering around the universe.
81** ''Torchwood'' was this to ''Doctor Who'', with more [[BloodierAndGorier violence]], [[PrecisionFStrike harsher language,]] and [[CerebusSyndrome grim themes]].
82* DrivenToMadness: Most of his recurring villains go through this to an extent. The Daleks from ''Bad Wolf''/''The Parting of the Ways'' are driven mad by the knowledge that they are made of material taken from humans. Driving the Cybermen crazy by suddenly giving them back their emotions is the only way to defeat them. The Master's backstory is expanded with the revaletion that he was driven mad by looking into the Untempered Schism (although actually this was done deliberately by Rassilon). And in the GrandFinale to Davies's time on the show, the Time War is revealed to have done this to many of the Time Lords themselves.
83* EvilIsHammy: Not always, but his villains do tend to ham it up. Goes along with the {{Camp}}.
84* GenreRoulette: While ''Doctor Who'' has always been able to go from one genre to another between episodes with ease, Davies deliberately emphasized this in his revival. The first three episodes of Series One went from an AlienInvasion on modern-day Earth to a Whodunnit in the far future to a ghost story with Creator/CharlesDickens in the past. And then back to an Alien Invasion on modern-day Earth again...
85** Concerning the wider Whoniverse, Davies tried to cover all bases with ''Doctor Who'', ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'' (which was for younger audiences) and ''Torchwood'' (which was for older teens and adults).
86* GrandFinale: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]] was one for both his time as the showrunner and Creator/DavidTennant's time as the Tenth Doctor.
87* HalfArcSeason: Made these the structure of ''Doctor Who'' in his revival of it.
88* HotterAndSexier: While never actually explicit, Russell's run on ''Doctor Who'' contained more references to sex than most of the Classic Era.
89** Then he produced ''Torchwood'', which was often ''very'' explicit.
90* HumanResources: Aliens and monsters of his tenure frequently need resources that can are harvested from humans, whether it be whole bodies (the Cybermen), skin (the Slitheen) raw genetic material (the Daleks) fat (the Adipose), life energy (the Lazarus monster) or various organs (the Clockword Droids).
91* JokerImmunity: He has a tendency to wipe villains out, then bring them back/reveal they weren't dead after all. Examples from ''Doctor Who'' are the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, Lady Cassandra, Margaret Blaine, the Time Lords [[note]] while the Time Lords never actually returned under Davies's tenure, they ''did'' briefly escape the Time War into the present day before being sent right back again to die. Technically not this trope, but effectively so.[[/note]]...
92* LastOfHisKind: His concept behind the ''Doctor Who'' made the Doctor into this.
93* LighterAndSofter: ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'' was this to ''Doctor Who'' and ''Torchwood''.
94* MonsterOfTheWeek: ''Doctor Who'', ''Torchwood'', and ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'' all follow this format.
95* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Nazi-esque villains do tend to pop up in his stories:
96** The Daleks have always been like this, and Davies sticks to that very well. It was even lampshaded in the 2008 episode "Journey's End" where Martha teleports to Germany to play her part in activating the Osterhagen Key, and Daleks can be heard shouting in German '''"Exterminieren!"'''
97** In "The End of Time", the Master transforms everyone on Earth into copies of himself (a blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian man) and then declares that "There is no human race. There is only the ''Master'' race!"
98** In "Turn Left", an alternate-universe version of Britain is ruled by a fascist government that, among other things, ends up transporting immigrants to "labour camps". WWII veteran Wilf spots the resemblance.
99* NoodleIncident: He'll reference these, oftentimes for comedy, but other times for more dramatic purposes, see the entry for Nothing Is Scarier below.
100* NothingIsScarier: Very little was revealed about the Time War after it was first mentioned in his tenure; vieweres were only given [[SarcasmMode delightful]] little hints with phrases like the Nightmare Child, the Skaro Degradations, or the Fall of Arcadia.
101** Up until Season 4, nothing much was known about the Shadow Proclamation other than it was an ancient force of law.
102* OverlyLongName: A RunningGag in ''Doctor Who'':
103** Series 1 gave us Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius (getting the planet's name right became a RunningGag of its own) and the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe. This one so stumped Simon Pegg the one time he had to say it that he was told to just say it the best he could and a roaring sound was added in post-production to cover his very minor mispronunciation. He eased off on the gag a bit after the first series, but as late as ''[[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned Voyage of the Damned]]'' we had Bannakaffalatta.
104* ReimaginingTheArtifact: Pulled this off with a few different elements while resurrecting ''Doctor Who'':
105** The Daleks had suffered some extreme VillainDecay by the end of the Classic series, becoming quite easily explodable and harmless even in great numbers, as well as having no agency thanks to the introduction of their leader, Davros. This was not helped by the species being a UK cultural meme for forty years - impressions of their obnoxious, squawky voices and jokes about their use of [[invoked]][[SpecialEffectsFailure plungers]] [[ImprobableWeaponUser as weapons]] and (imagined) inability to climb stairs were something of a hack comedian standard routine. The new series reintroduced the Daleks in the episode "Dalek", in which we find out that the Dalek race was on the brink of annihilating the Doctor's race, and the Doctor had to commit genocide against both species in order to save the universe itself - the Dalek in the episode gets a much less shrill, much scarier and much more expressive voice than the original series Daleks had, is treated realistically as the death machine that it is, and incorporated elements from the very first Dalek serial (such as the idea of Daleks as objects of pity as well as revulsion) in order to make them just as terrifying as they had first been forty years ago. Throughout both Davies' (and later Moffat's) showrunning of the revival era, there's also been an added emphasis on delving into the psychology of the Daleks and the Doctor's relationship with them. (For example, they claim they grew stronger in fear of him. He's tempted by them to lose his temper several times, and also ponders in private whether he could maybe redeem them one day, somehow.) This effort helped the Daleks return to the sort of nuance and cred they had as antagonists back in the 60s and 70s. And Davros, previously overused in the classic era after his first appearance, has had a guest role in only one story during RTD's run.
106** The TARDIS' police box design. At first, in TheSixties, it wasn't anachronistic, but nowadays, characters ask "What is a 'police public call box?'" and the broken chameleon circuit, though part of the setting from day one to a smaller degree[[note]]The First Doctor noticed the TARDIS hadn't adapted to its new location once they ''left'' Earth, and it was the first sign that something was wrong. They wound up with the more pressing problem of not being able to control their destination.[[/note]], is sometimes a running gag (It's fixed! ...and its new form is not under the Doctor's control, highly inconvenient, and at least you know where to ''enter'' the police box version. It's fixed! ...and when it scans the area and decides on an "appropriate" form, it's always a police box. Or Donna can fix it with her new Time Lord knowledge! ...which is about to burn out her brain, and what comes next is ''not funny.'') and the Doctor has at least once admitted that he could probably fix it if he really wanted to, but likes it the way it is. Davies's era introduced (and [[TropeNamer named]]) the idea that the TARDIS has a PerceptionFilter that makes people not notice it even if its apparent form isn't period-appropriate.
107** The Cybermen started out fairly scary for the 60s, with their emotionless desire to convert other beings into more Cybermen. As time went by, less focus was put on the assimilation aspect of their personalities, and they became generic robotic soldiers, often openly displaying emotions as well. When they reappeared in the new series (as parallel universe counterparts that never had the originals' {{Weaksauce Weakness}}es), much more focus was placed on the BodyHorror and LossOfIdentity aspects of their nature, making them scary once more. The way of defeating them went from 'throw gold coins at them' to 'give them their emotions back,' creating heart-wrenching scenes of Cybermen screaming in agony, dropping dead, or outright exploding as they were destroyed by the sheer horror of what they'd become. (However, VillainDecay set in once again as this became easier to do.)
108* RevisitingTheRoots: How he began the ''Doctor Who'' revival. The Ninth Doctor's tenure, while very different in a lot of ways, stripped away a lot of continuity for a 'back to basics' approach and re-established points about the tone and the Doctor's character that had been part of the show right at the very beginning but were forgotten about later. The Doctor being a refugee from a terrible war who could never return home was part of the initial series premise (that got changed by Creator/TerranceDicks when he actually got to write TheReveal) and agony over changing the past and the DirtyBusiness involved in world-saving were emblematic tropes of the early years that soon got buried by the MonsterOfTheWeek premise the show developed - and RTD dug them both back up again in order to connect new viewers to the Doctor. While the show drew a lot from the ExpandedUniverse, it was much closer in tone and feel to the old show than the books had become by that point.
109* SignatureStyle:
110** He tends to introduce new shows by using a NaiveNewcomer GenreRefugee [[ActionGirl Action]] GirlNextDoor as an AudienceSurrogate. This technique is used in ''Doctor Who'', ''Torchwood,'' and ''The Sarah Jane Adventures''.
111** {{Camp}}, {{Camp}}, [[{{Camp}} CAMP!]]
112** Using [[WhamLine Wham Lines]] and [[WhamShot Wham Shots]] to set up extreme [[{{Cliffhanger}} Cliffhangers]].
113** He has a habit of creating characters with disembodied heads/faces. The Face of Boe (a giant disembodies head) and Cassandra (a stretch of skin with only a face on it) both appear in "The End of the World", a characters gets turned into a face on a slab of stone at the ends of "Love and Monsters", the Toclafane in the Season 3 finale are nothing but emaciated faces inside their spheres, and Max Capricorn in "Voyage of the Damned" is revealed to be a cyborg with a human head on top of a mechanical, boxy body.
114* SoftReboot: When ''Doctor Who'' came back in 2005, Davies could adequately be described as a man utterly terrified of [[ContinuityLockout continuity running amok]], like in the 1980s.
115** Information about the Doctor and the show's lore was tightly controlled and parcelled out in the tiniest possible portions. When it became an enormous hit, he relaxed this policy, but never truly abolished it - Series 2's "School Reunion" brought back Sarah Jane and K-9, the two most iconic elements of the show's 70s heyday and recognisable to even the most casual viewer. Even the montage of previous Doctors in "The Next Doctor", the most 'for the fans' moment in his tenure, was included solely on the suggestion of producer Julie Gardner, whose judgement he trusted specifically because she was not an old-school fan.
116** Particularly used with the Cybermen. Rather than try to explain the messy history of the Cybermen and Mondas, they were given a new, simpler origin story and a new design. (Though usefully, the new AlternateUniverse also avoided treading on their established backstory, allowing the show to eventually bring back the originals.)
117* StepfordSmiler: Both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors were this, due to their guilt about what they did in the Time War, Ten more so than Nine. Most of the main characters of ''Torchwood'' are this to a degree, too.
118* {{Technobabble}}: He isn't shy with this.
119** Subverted in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]": Not wanting to scare new viewers away in the very first episode of ''Who'''s revival, he avoided giving long scientific-sounding explanations. The explanation of the Nestene's plastic-controlling powers isn't really elaborated on, and the substance the Doctor uses to defeat it is called "anti-plastic" and left at that.
120* TragicVillain: His take on classic monsters and villains in ''Doctor Who'' often brings out their more human and sympathetic side, with this being the result. Notable examples are:
121** The Daleks. A recurring element with them under Davies's run was them becoming "infected" with human thoughts and emotions. The Doctor also points out how they live their whole lives without being touched, utterly alone.
122** The Cybermen are shown being converted from human to Cyber form, and the tragedy of it. When their emotional inhibitors are destroyed, they're shown to be horrified by what they are before dying from the shock of their emotions returning.
123** The Master, once it's revealed that the constant drumming in his head turned him mad, and that he's been used as a tool for Rassilon all along.
124* UrbanFantasy: Most of the episodes under his run centred around aliens in regular earthly settings, both present and past.
125* WasOnceAMan: His ''Who'' scripts frequently have monsters who used to be human, monsters that were made from humans, or humans that end up becoming something else: Lady Cassandra, the Face of Boe (possibly), the patients in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E1NewEarth New Earth]]'', the werewolf in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw Tooth and Claw]]'', the Cybermen (although that was already their origin in the classic series, Davies made sure to bring this aspect to the forefront in the revival), Ursula Blake, the Futurekind and Toclafane, Maxwell Capricorn, the Adipose, the possessed Sky, and the flood-zombies in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars The Waters of Mars]]'', from his ''Doctor Who'' scripts alone, never mind his other Whoniverse work. He even manages to incorporate this into villains that aren't normally associated with it: the Daleks have used humans as genetic material for new Dalek forms a couple times during his run, and in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]'', the Time Lord known as the Master turns every human on Earth into a duplicate of himself (although it gets undone later).
126[[/folder]]
127
128
129[[folder:Tropes in and shared with his other works:]]
130* AlienInvasion: Common in the Whoniverse, and ''Wizards Vs Aliens'' revolves around one.
131* AuthorTract: In projects where he's served as showrunner, he constitutes a mild case of this (for sufficiently flexible values of 'mild'). While he does tend to harp on about homosexuality and atheism a lot, he rarely cops out, and he makes an effort not to devalue the opposing views of either topic- being straight or religious is just as likely to be explored in one of his stories.
132* {{Camp}}: Pops up often, usually with a sense of self-awareness. He produced ''Doctor Who'' and a show called ''Wizards Vs. Aliens'', for crying out loud!
133* CreatorThumbprint: The surnames "Smith" and "Tyler" tend to show up no matter what show he's working on.
134* EveryoneIsBi: Bisexual people are ''very'' common in his works.
135* FantasticRacism: Aliens are frequently prejudiced against humans or occasionally other kinds of aliens in the Whoniverse and ''Wizards vs. Aliens''.
136* GayAesop: Pops up to some degree in almost everything he does. Some are directly about gay life (''Queer as Folk'', ''Cucumber'') while others usually include positive portrayals of gay people wherever possible (''Doctor Who'', ''Torchwood'').
137* {{Gayngst}}:
138** While RTD stories are very progressive, even for the era, a major theme in his stories about homosexual love is loss and mourning. His ''Torchwood'' hero, Jack Harkness, is the poster boy for pansexual hedonism, while his lovers (Ianto and Angelo in particular) serve as [[{{Foil}} a cold splash of reality]].
139** Of special note: RTD, himself gay, has gone on record about not being the biggest fan of this trope, arguing that it in some ways perpetuates gay shame both as something experienced by homosexuals and how it is viewed by non-homosexuals, and also because it can be a bit boring, cliched and stereotypical to watch and write. As such, while most of his works deal with homosexuality and are not entirely free of angst, the characters usually angst about things other than being homosexual.
140* MagicVersusScience: This conflict comes up in the ''Doctor Who'' episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode "The Shakespeare Code"]], and in ''Wizards vs. Aliens''.
141[[/folder]]

Top