'Doctor Who' Season 12 Episode 6 abandons the 'Bury Your Gays' trope and fans laud the LGBTQ representation
In the 'Doctor Who' 2019 New Year special, a gay character named Connor Calland was introduced, only to be killed off moments later. Outrage ensued as fans called out the sci-fi show pointing out that this was not new -- Bill -- the companion to Peter Capaldi's Doctor -- was also killed off earlier in the series.
In this week's episode of 'Doctor Who' titled 'Praxeus', we first meet an ex-cop named Jake. As he is watching TV in a pub, he sees the news of a missing astronaut named Adam Lang. A few moments later, Jake gets a message from an unsaved number, saying "Find me," and a location from somewhere in Hong Kong. It turns out the missing astronaut, Adam, is Jake's estranged husband. Jake feels inferior compared to Adam and it caused issues in their relationship. What stood out in the episode was the way Jake's and Adam's relationship was normalized.
As Adam continued to get sicker from the alien bacteria, Jake stood by his side. While through the episode it looked like Adam might die, but he is cured. But then, Jake decides to sacrifices himself to manually pilot the alien spaceship that is dispersing the cure in the atmosphere.
That is until the Doctor materializes the TARDIS around Jake in the split second before the spaceship explodes, giving Adam and Jake a second chance they deserve at their relationship. Fans were thrilled at the direction the episode took with respect to Adam and Jake. One fan tweeted, "yesss #DoctorWho gave me a cute gay couple and didn't even rip them apart at the end, now THAT is representation lmao."
Another viewer wrote, "#DoctorWho gave us a gay relationship with two characters who were relevant to the plot, defined by more than just their sexuality, actually were allowed to show affection on-screen and didn’t die. It takes so, so little to make us happy but I will take it. And be happy."
One fan tweeted, "Kudos to #DoctorWho for consistently depicting gay relationships where being gay is not the primary thrust of the story. Normalizing queer folks FTW." Another viewer wrote, "Thank goodness #DoctorWho managed to avoid the dreaded Bury Your Gays trope."
The "bury your gays" trope indicates the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts.
'Doctor Who' airs on BBC America on Sunday nights.