In the 2023-24 season of Doctor Who, Episodes 1.7 and 1.8, the time-and-space zapping Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his latest companion Ruby Sunday visit UNIT, the time-and-space anomaly-investigation agency, to solve two mysteries:
1. Why does an elderly woman pop up in various guises in all of their recent adventures?
2. Ruby's mother left her on a church doorstep on Christmas Day. They want to go back in time to discover who she is, but the Doctor can't use his regular time-traveling power, for reasons, so they use one of UNIT's experimental devices.
Things go terribly wrong, of course, and they release Sutekh, the Great Beast, the Abomination, the Destroyer, the Bringer of Death, the One Who Waits...who actually looks rather like a giant dog. He intends to destroy all life in the universe. Well, it's better than yet another visit from the Dahh-leks.
UNIT is staffed primarily by the Doctor's retired companions, all ladies, but there are a few hunks wandering around:
Tachia Newall (top photo) as Col. Chidozie, who gets sanded to death by the Giant Dog
Alexander Devrient as Col. Ibrahaim, whose muscles are praised by the Doctor (bisexual this season): "You've been working out!"
Aneurin Barnard (butt in candlelight, left) as Roger ap Gwillam, who will become the most evil Prime Minister in the history of Britain.
And a cute kid: Lenny Rush as12-year old super-genius Morris Gibbons, who runs the time-travel device, fights the Giant Dog, gets dusted and resurrected, and after the Dog's demise, invites everyone out to a pizza party.
Lenny was originally cast in Episode 1.1, as one of the sentient babies running an orbiting space nursery, but he was so great that they decided to cut his scene and cast him in this much bigger role.
As of this writing, Lenny is 16 years old and looks a bit younger, so I won't be searching for beefcake or n*de photos. I'll post some of his co-stars instead.
But at 3'2" he's a perfect addition to the Short Guy Brigade, so I'm going to research the other usual questions of a profile:
1. Has he played any gay characters?
Lenny has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with 4 episodes of the animated Apple Tree House (2018-19) and 7 episodes of The Dumping Ground (2021-22), about children "dumped" in a foster home.
There were two lesbians in The Dumping Ground, but no gay boys.
Dodger (2022-23) featured the Victorian-era pickpocket Artful Dodger (Billy Jenkins, left) and his mentor Fagin (Christopher Eccleston) before their adventures in Dickens' Oliver Twist. Lenny (right) played Morgan the Crossing Sweeper, the Dodger's gay-subtext boyfriend.
His most significant work to date is in Am I Being Unreasonable (2022-25), a Britcom about a disagreeable lady hiding a dark secret. Lenny won a BAFTA Best Male Actor award for playing her son, who is also hiding a dark secret (Dustin Demri-Burns played her boyfriend).
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