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.