We've been watching the 2011 series of Doctor Who, the seemingly endless British sci-fi series that sends the last remaining Time Lord through time and space to save Earth, an alien planet, or the entire universe. Again and again. Oddly, when his world-saving takes him to modern day Britain, there are plenty of exteriors, but when it is a distant planet or the far future, all we see are endless corridors.
Doctors regenerate every few years, getting new bodies and personalities. Right now it's Matt Smith, an effervescent, jokey type, with an inner trauma that sometimes comes out. After all, he saw the destruction of his people, and he's over 1,000 years old, so dozens of human companions have died, gotten lost, or left him to go on with their lives.
Matt Smith has appeared as the Doctor in dozens of projects outside the show itself: videos exploring odd corners of his universe, video games, a lot of four-episode miniseries, spin-offs starring former companions Sarah Jane and Amy Pond
The Doctor would be enough for a career, but Matt has played a wide range of other characters, mostly based on real people:
Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of A Passage to India and Maurice, in Christopher and His Kind, a 2011 adaption of his memoirs. Left, the one without the biceps.
Rowing star Bert Bushnell in Bert & Dickie, 2012. Neither was gay.
Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth, in The Crown, 2016-7.
Robert Maplethorpe, the controversial gay artist, in Mapplethorpe: The Director's Cut , 2018
Left, the one with the ring
Hippie cult leader Charles Manson in Charlie Say, 2018
Plus a variety of fictional characters. As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual. I guess he only takes gay roles if they're of historical significance.
A detective fighting witchcraft.
An evil clone with a nice bulge.
A zombie-fighting parson in the Regency era.
The case worker of a refugee family facing evil
An evil spirit in the psychedelic 60s
A tourist in Morocco for whom things go terribly wrong
More Matt after the break