10 Doctor Who Characters More Important Than You Realised

The history of LGBTQ+ representation in Doctor Who pre-2005 is barely worth mentioning, despite what fans may think of Tegan and Nyssa's sleeping arrangements. However, it's worth taking a look at classic Who's final year for how the show was trying to push forward a positive message from within the confines of family entertainment.

Writer Rona Munro has said that the relationship between Ace and Karra in classic Who's final story, Survival, had a lesbian subtext to it. This raises the possibility that Ace is technically Doctor Who's first LGBTQ+ companion.

However, the first LGBTQ+ characters of note in Doctor Who were featured earlier in the same season, in The Curse of Fenric. Writer Ian Briggs has said that Alan Turing inspired Judson – the wheelchair was effectively a metaphor for society's suppression of Judson's true sexual identity. Briggs expanded on this idea in his novelisation of The Curse of Fenric, published a year later.

The book recounts how the young Commander Millington had fallen in love with Judson at boarding school, and became jealous when his affections were unrequited. This rejection manifested in the accident on the rugby pitch that left Judson in a wheelchair, and Millington wracked with guilt for the rest of their lives.