Doctor Who writer’s protest at ‘colour-blind’ casting of soldier
THE writer of Doctor Who has revealed how he protested against the “colourblind” casting of a black actor as a Victorian soldier in the BBC show.
Mark Gatiss said he was uneasy about a young black actor being cast as a soldier, because “there weren’t any black soldiers in Victoria’s army”.
He put the decision down to the BBC’S drive to become “more representational and make everything less homogeneously white”.
Gatiss described the “very difficult” email he sent to a colleague explaining his feelings on the matter. It was only after he discovered records showing that there was in fact a single black soldier in Victoria’s army, that he accepted the decision.
The 50-year-old actor and script writer, who is also the co-creator of the BBC drama Sherlock, was speaking to an audience of around 200 Oxford University students about his latest Doctor Who episode, which aired on Saturday.
He said he discussed his reservations about the casting with his colleagues, telling them: “I don’t think we can do this… these are soldiers from the South African war, they’ve just been fighting the Zulus. There weren’t any black soldiers in Victoria’s army.”
He added: “But obviously we try to be more representational, and to make everything less homogeneously white. But then the argument is ‘It’s Doctor Who’, so everything is already a strange and different world.
“From the time the show came back, Russell T Davies [showrunner of Doctor Who] has been particular about making sure the show had colour-blind casting.”
The Doctor Who episode, Empress of Mars, was set in 1888, with the Doctor, Bill and Nardole visiting Mars where there is a war between Victorian soldiers and the Ice Warriors.
Gatiss told how he researched the issue, and came across the story of Jimmy Durham, a Sudanese boy who was rescued from the Nile in 1886 and brought up by soldiers of The Durham Light Infantry. The soldiers looked after him, giving him the name James Francies Durham, after one of the men who cared for him. “This boy became what was called a listed officer, by special dispensation of Queen Victoria. He retired to the North East, married a white girl, and his descendants still live there. It’s an amazing story,” he said.
The black soldier, named Vincey, was played by Bayo Gbadamosi who has appeared in the BBC series Casualty and a sci-fi film The Swarm. The BBC’S director-general pledged that by this year, one in seven presenters and actors will be black, Asian or minority ethnic. Earlier this year the head of Ofcom said the BBC must stop focusing on middle-aged, middle-class audiences, or risk becoming irrelevant.
A spokesman for the BBC said: “We cast the best actors for the role.”