Doctor Who Is Finally For People Of Colour — Almost

Doctor Who has always had two leads, the Doctor and the Doctor’s companion, and one or both have always been white until 2025. Originally aired in 1963, Doctor Who is about an alien called the Doctor who wanders through time, saving worlds and changing the lives of the (mostly) human friends they bring along. The Doctor was born a Time Lord, a member of an ancient race who nominated themselves the overseers of history. However, the Doctor stole a time machine (the iconic TARDIS) and ran, swapping the stuffy legacy of their peers for the life of a nomad. Most importantly, because of Time Lord regeneration, the Doctor never dies. Instead, their body heals into a new body that can be any gender or race, allowing for multiple actors to play the character in one epic tale.

Joining the Doctor on these adventures is a revolving door of friends and allies. The most important are the Doctor’s companions, characters who travel with the Doctor and help save the world. There have been over 40 companions in Doctor Who’s history. Between the Doctor’s changing face and the character’s tendency to make friends wherever and whenever they go, the show’s capacity for change within a never-ending odyssey is part of why it’s so loved.

This capacity for change was not always reflected in the show’s leads. Over a dozen actors from the UK have played the lead role since, and until recently, all of them were white. Finally, in 2022, after Jodie Whittaker served as the series’ first female lead, Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education, Barbie) became the first Black man to play the series’ titular role. Then, in 2025, Indian-British actor Varada Sethu was cast as companion Belinda Chandra alongside Gatwa, making Season 15 the first ever without a white person in either role.

Part of why this beautiful duo is so momentous is that, well, it’s been a bumpy journey to get here. Like the role of the Doctor, the companion has mostly been white. Noel Clarke’s portrayal as Mickey Smith, boyfriend of 2005-2006 lead-companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), is sometimes credited as the first non-white companion. But Freema Agyeman was the first person of colour and Black woman to be cast as companion, Martha Jones, in 2007.

After Agyeman’s departure, there would not be another non-white companion for a decade until Pearl Mackie was cast as the show’s first Black lesbian companion, Bill Potts, in 2017. The 13th Doctor also travelled with Ryan Sinclair (Tosin Cole) and Yasmin Kahn (Mandip Gil) between 2018-2021, with Gil’s turn as Yasmin Khan making history as the series’ first South Asian companion.

Each aforementioned companion made Who-history and paved the way for the 15th Doctor and Belinda to shine. However, their tenures were often marked by culturally inadequate creative decisions made by almost entirely white creative teams. None of the seasons with Mickey Smith, Martha Jones or Bill Potts as companions credited Black writers, or any writers of colour. An absence that led to many cringeworthy, “oh, yikes, a white person wrote this” moments.

The casual racism, and lack of empathy endured by Mickey and Martha within the show will always be shameful. Mickey was referred to consistently as a dog or a pet of his white girlfriend for laughs. During Agyeman’s tenure, Martha was treated downright apathetically by the 10th Doctor (David Tennant). In an episode set in the 1500s, Martha expressed concern that she might be kidnapped and made a slave. Infamously, the Doctor dismissed her concerns, saying she should just walk around like she belongs, like he does.

It would take over a decade before Malorie Blackman and Vinay Patel became the first writers of colour to write episodes for Doctor Who’s 11th season in 2018. Blackman’s episode saw the Doctor, Ryan and Yaz meet Rosa Parks in 1955, and Patel’s episode showed Yaz explore her family’s past during the Partition of India. These acclaimed episodes notwithstanding, the season was nevertheless marked by harmful white feminist tropes, in which these characters were chronically underdeveloped and made subservient to the narrative of a white character.

The reality is that diversity on camera does not always translate to inclusivity behind the scenes. In the past, companions of colour were not necessarily written by writers with an empathetic understanding of what it would be like for someone who isn’t white to time travel. One of the
many reasons Gatwa’s 15th Doctor and Sethu’s Belinda Chandra are so refreshing is the contributions of writers of colour. While still mostly white behind the camera with ex-showrunner Russell T Davies at the helm, this recent season features episodes by award-winning Black British scribes Sharma Angel-Walfall and Inua Ellams. Angel-Witfall’s episode, ‘The Well’ has already been widely credited as the season’s most acclaimed. It’s best to go in blind if you haven’t seen it, but the episode offers a fresh take on an old, iconic Doctor Who monster.

After all, not everything people of colour write has to be rooted in racialised trauma. We have stories to tell too. And ‘The Well’ is a spine-chilling testament to the elevation that Doctor Who is capable of with the embrace of new, diverse voices. Similarly, Inua Ellams’ Doctor Who debut, ‘The Story and the Engine’, is the first to culturally engage with the Doctor’s newfound Blackness. The episode sees the Doctor land in Nigeria, where he has a standing appointment with a local barber.

When Bel asks why he needs the appointment when the TARDIS does his hair, he explains, “In some parts of the Earth, I’m treated differently. But here, in Africa, in that Barbershop, I’m accepted. I’m able to forget… They treat [me] like one of their own.” But when the Doctor arrives for his appointment, he finds the barbershop populated with missing people at the mercy of a being posing as the West African god Anansi.

The episode is a fantastic sci-fi exploration of the power of oral tradition and the historical significance of Black hairstyles. A story made meaningful by embracing the Doctor’s blackness, not treating it as simply an aesthetic fact of his appearance. Of course, time-travelling as people of colour comes with challenges, which the newer series acknowledges with more compassion and consistency than in times past.

In the recent episode, ‘Lux’, the Doctor and Belinda land in segregated 1952 Miami, Florida. Bel is upset that they have to ask to sit in the “whites only” section of a local diner. Later, the eldritch villain of the episode tries to trick our iconic duo into thinking they’ve been arrested for entering a whites-only space. But the Doctor wittily calls out the hallucination's lack of accuracy when the “policeman” uniform is from New York, not Florida.

What is significant about these episodes, and this season as a whole, is that it is not one of them is tokenism. This is not characters of colour written by white writers to benefit a white character. For the first time in its long history, Doctor Who is about people of colour, with episodes written by people of colour.

Doctor Who has a complicated, and at times dicey, relationship with British colonial history as one of the BBC’s longest-running major IP export. It’s no accident that the Doctor’s alien race is a bunch of white bureaucrats who have appointed themselves in charge of history. Nor is it a coincidence that, despite their ability to transform into anyone, the Doctor always assumed the form of an upper-class British man for most of their on-screen life.

It’s a legacy the show has clumsily and, more often than not, avoided grappling with. But it's also a legacy that makes the current cast and crew all the more exciting, and all the more radiant. In the last 20 years, Doctor Who went from a show that habitually demeaned people of colour to a show led by Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu. There’s still room for improvement. After all, you would think a show with two non-white leads would call for more than just two episodes penned by people of colour.

Casting people of colour as leads does not immediately “fix” a colonial legacy either. A show about a time-travelling, face-changing alien trapesing about the universe with their human besties should reflect the vast diversity of such a concept. It’s taken 60+ years, but we’re finally well on the way to Doctor Who living up to its premise.