#new who may be gay but it doesn’t feel queer in the same way as classic if that makes sense (tags from @the-worms-in-your-bones )
Okay I got things to say.
You know, one of these days, Worms is gonna get tired of me doing this to its tags
What is kinda wonderful about Classic Who is how completely undefined the character relationships are in that. Like what is the Doctor's relationship with the Brigadier? Or Romana? Or Sarah Jane? Or Jamie? Or Peri?
Like I can give you data about their relationships, but at no point is, like, any relationship in Doctor Who defined as to what type of relationship it is. Seriously we know Mike Yates and Jo Grant went on a date once or twice and... I think that's it? Not counting on-off love interests, of course, but even those aren't that common and they tend to be incredibly forgettable. In 26 years of show we had one relationship that was confirmed to be in any way romantic amongst our main cast. But at the same time, no one ever says "ah yes this person and I do not date ever."
So if you want to, say, decide that the Third Doctor and the Brigadier are fucking offscreen, and I want to decide that the Third Doctor is acearo and the Brig is straight, then we have basically equal evidence for this from the show itself. And this applies to pretty much everything in Classic Who.
And, frankly, that is fairly queer. I wished that the threshold for queerness was more than "not having hetrosexuality forced down my throat" but uh it kinda is. And, obviously, it opens the doors for it be very easy to decide basically any classic who character is whatever flavor of queer you can think of without it contradicting source material.
By contrast, NuWho has very defined relationships. The Doctor's relationships with Rose and Martha have some level of intentional (if one-sided in Martha's case) romantic element to them. His relationship to Donna is very explicitly platonic. The stupid Amy/Rory/Doctor love triangle is very explicit for at least some of the characters involved. I guess you could claim that Clara's relationship to the Doctor is more ambiguous, but there it feels like they're trying to run mixed messages instead of, like... just not interacting with relationship status as a concept. Bill and the Doctor are explicitly platonic. And so on.
And so while some of these relationships and characters are textually queer, they are queer in a very defined way. Like, sure. I can still headcanon Clara as acearo or Ruby Sunday as a lesbian if I want, but there's considerably more going on there in canon that needs to be explained or ignored.
To me, a big part of queerness is the not having strict boxes that characters (or people) fall into. NuWho may be gay, but it is accomplishing gay by putting certain characters in the Gay Box. Classic Who ignores this altogether and can come off as very queer as a result.
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