By Tracey Sinclair
Having once, for my sins, worked in the complaints department of the BBC, I have finely tuned antennae to anything that is likely to get the tabloid knickers in a twist: it used to be a longstanding joke among my colleagues that today’s Daily Mail front page would be tomorrow’s inbox. So even as I sat watching the episode of Torchwood where Captain Jack gets seriously frisky with Angelo the Italian hottie, I was mentally scripting the predictable outcry – and of course, I wasn’t disappointed. ‘It’s supposed to be sci-fi, not sex!’ the paper cried, happy to have any excuse to wheel out thinly-veiled homophobia (though, as ever, not above the double standard of illustrating the piece with some nice Jack and Angelo action) and never missing a chance to give the BBC a kicking, because if there’s one thing worse than gay sex, it’s licence-fee funded gay sex. So far, so predictable, and pretty much so ignorable: if I lived my life according to the Daily Mail, I’d be spending my days worrying that my house was going to be taken over by Romanian squatters when I pop out to the shops to buy the wine I badly need to drown my sorrows, what with how being a career woman has made no one want to marry me and will give me cancer.
But then things took a surprising turn. The Guardian, equally predictably, ran a counter piece in its Comment is Free section, where Richard Smith made the point that most people are actually not that shocked or offended by the sight of two men snogging on TV. While I generally try to adhere to the maxim ‘never read the bottom half or the internet’, I was shocked that a rather scary amount of commentators echoed the Daily Mail line: this being the Guardian, there were many ‘I’d be just annoyed if this was a straight sex scene’ (not sure I believe them, because it does seem the ‘gay’ is as important as the ‘sex’ in most complaints, but hey) but there seemed a fairly large consensus of opinion saying there is no room for sex scenes in science fiction shows. ‘Russell T Davies needs to remember this is Torchwood, not Queer as Folk’, huffed one commentator, and he wasn’t alone. But, here’s the question – why does he?
For a start, if Russell T Davies wants to make Torchwood into Queer as Folk in space, it’s his show – so presumably, as long as he can get a network to go along with it, he can do what the hell he likes. You don’t have to watch it. (Though it’s worth pointing out to those who carp on about Russell T Davies ‘shoving it down our throats’ that ‘Immortal Sins’, the episode with the non-stop shagging, was actually mainly written by a woman, Jane Espenson, who as far as I know can be cleared of having one of those secret gay agendas that the press seem so keen on uncovering.) Why does a show being science fiction preclude it including sex scenes – of whatever variety or strength?
It has long been a joke – albeit it neither a funny nor an accurate one – that the only people who like science fiction are badly dressed, dateless losers who live with their parents. It’s up there with the idea that women don’t like ‘proper’ science fiction (you know, we’re too busy buying shoes). If us females are allowed into the hallowed enclave of geekdom, we spoil it by caring about characters’ relationships or fancying vampires, when we should really just be dressing as slave Leia and keeping our pretty little mouths shut. So it’s us girls and gays, then, ruining it for everyone. I might have laughed through tightly gritted teeth when critic A A Gill said, in his review of short-lived sci-fi show Outcasts, that ‘kissing is Kryptonite for geeks’ but it’s starting to seem like he had a point. TV has grown up – the same way we wouldn’t expect a modern police show to be Dixon of Dock Green, why expect a science fiction show to be a plastic, shiny world where people do no more than a bit of light flirting? Do we really think in the future people won’t be having sex?
I disagree fairly vehemently with those, including this magazine’s Jamie Pohotsky, who say that the BBC was right to cut the sex scenes from Torchwood because of its unique, licence-fee remit, because unless you extend that argument to cut out the violence from post-watershed shows – and remember, Torchwood is shown after the watershed – you’re buying into the argument that sex, straight or gay (and let’s face it it’s more likely to be gay sex that gets the complaints in) is more offensive than violence, which I think is a pretty unhealthy view of the world, but at least that argument makes more sense than some blanket ban on sex in sci-fi. I’m not saying the Doctor should be getting his kit off on a Saturday teatime, but if you’re pitching a show at an adult audience, why is it unreasonable to show adult scenes? Some of the best science fiction of recent years has been created where the programme makers weren’t scared of being unashamedly grown up: shows like the rebooted Battlestar Galactica dealing in a world that reflects our own, where people live and die messily, where they have sex and swear and drink too much (and, shock horror, that includes women!).
Torchwood isn’t a children’s show, and it’s built around a character who has spent half his life shagging his way around the universe; it seems absurdly coy to complain when some of that is shown on screen. I’m not saying there isn’t a charm to those shows catering squarely to a family audience or that, god forbid, everything needs to be ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ to have merit. But why isn’t there room for both?
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