In "Joy to the World," the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special, the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) visits the year 4202, where a Time Hotel offers vacationers portals to various eras in Earth's history: Aztec Mexico, the signing of the Magna Carta, and so on.
I didn't like it much: this Doctor was gay throughout Season 1 of the new series, but here a perfect potential boyfriend (Joel Fry) is killed off immediately, and the Doc spends a year living with a girlfriend before returning to the Time Hotel to save the day. (As Season 2 progresses, he falls head-over-heels for his new female companion.)
Left: Joel Fry nude in Plebes.
But I liked the two scenes with Sir Edmund Hillary (Phil Baxter) and Tenzing Norgay (Samuel Sherpa-Moore), the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest (March-May 1953). Wait -- guests at the Time Hotel can just drop in on them?
The Doctor drops in unexpectedly while searching for the episode Bad Guy, and offers them "a ham and cheese toastie" and a "pumpkin latte."
He reappears to steal rope and a grappling hook.
Later, the two watch the Christmas star together. They are definitely being presented as a gay couple. And though both men married (Tenzin three times) and had children, who can say that they didn't find time for each other?
Tenzing was played by Samuel Sherpa-Moore, his great-grandnephew!
Born in 2000 in Bloxham (a village in the Cotswolds about 25 miles from Oxford), Sam studied law at university (and played for the Easlington Football Club). In Britain, you complete an undergraduate degree in law, then take a one-year apprenticeship to become a barrister or solicitor, but the COVID lockdown put the apprenticeship on hold. With nothing else to do, Sam began submitting his acting reel to open casting auditions. Soon he had an agent, and was picking up small parts.
A rower in The Boys in the Boat (2023), about the University of Washington rowing team in the 1930s. Directed by George Clooney, with Callum Turner (left) as a teammate.
Two episodes of The Crown (2023), playing a classmate of Prince William (Ed McVey).
A student at Shiz University in Wicked (2024). He notes: "I had to act like Glinda (Ariana Grande) was 'the bee's knees.'" So pretending to be into a girl was a real test of your acting ability?
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
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Don't Kip on the Locomotive (2024): Sam falls asleep on the underground and has "a strange adventure through London." He encounters several odd characters, including a man (Puranjay Saini) who fights a watermelon; they have a buddy-bonding moment. He ends up playing with a guitarist (another moment, perhaps).
The Limits of Light and Sound (2024): Two strangers (Sam, Vincent Oblyschuk) meet at screening, and realize that they both have a deep connection to the film.
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When his agent called with an audition for the part of Tenzing Norgay, Sam was overwhelmed. He grew up in the Sherpa community. His mother is from Nepal, and his aunt runs the trekking company founded by his grandfather (Tenzing's nephew ). He looked up to Tenzing not only as a muscleman, "one of the fittest men in the world," but as a spiritual figure. Mount Everest. Chomolungma, is holy, and Tenzing's conquest suggests that he was favored by the gods. Let's go back to that muscleman reference.
But Sam played it cool, and didn't refer to his relationship to Tenzing until after he got the part.
I always thought that a sherpa was a job title, but it's also an ethnic group in the Solukhumbu region of Nepal (on the Chinese border, near Mount Everest). Their language is related to Tibetan, and they practice Tibetan Buddhism. There are about 250,000 Sherpas in Nepal and 18,000 in the U.S.
Left: Sherpa guy shows his stuff.
Despite the spiritual significance of his role, Sam had fun on the set: "Ncuti was so lovely, always putting his arm around me between takes. He brings such a fun, camp energy to the Doctor—it's brilliant." Dude, he was flirting with you. Or were you aware?
Since Doctor Who, Sam has played a dj in Playa Marina: Alice's Story (2025), played the guitar in an episode of Allegory (2026), and started a program that pairs British and Nepali kids as pen-pals.
Left: Another Sherpa, or at least a Nepali guy.
He doesn't have a social media presence and doesn't mention his personal life in interviews, so I can't tell if Sam is gay in real life or not. But there are a lot of hints. Let's revisit the flirting with Ncuti.
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See also: The New Doctor Who, Season 2: The gay doctor fights robots and cartoon characters, and gets a girlfriend. With bonus Groff and Projectionist penises
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