Every new era of Doctor Who begins with a new Doctor. That’s always the most exciting part: As a nigh-immortal alien whose personality shifts with his looks after he regenerates into a new form, meeting a new Doctor is like meeting a best friend all over again. Then comes a few other things: A new companion, a facelift for his spaceship/time machine, the TARDIS, and, finally, a new costume. A signature look that comes to define that version of the Doctor — from a stalk of celery on the lapel of the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) to Eleven’s (Matt Smith) affection for bow ties.
Not so with the Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor. One of the most striking things about this new era of Doctor Who is that Fifteen does not have a signature look — in fact, he is constantly changing clothes, and having so much fun doing so. According to showrunner Russell T. Davies, this was part of the plan from the start.
“I came into this thinking, why does he wear the same clothes all the time? The companion never has!” Davies says, in a recent interview with Polygon. “To be honest, it’s partly been a budget thing. So with a bigger budget — because don’t forget, no matter how much we talk about how extraordinary his clothes are, we keep forgetting to say in interviews that the most important thing about the clothes is that he can fly, do stunts, jump out of windows, run from a monster. It’s got to be able to have pads and wires and harnesses sewn into the whole thing. It’s always been a lot easier to keep the Doctor in the same clothes because of that.”
Image: Disney Plus
But for the first time in the program’s very long history, Doctor Who is (relatively) flush with cash. And that means greater ambition from Davies and the rest of the crew when it comes to spectacle, but also in their freedom to tell stories via costuming.
“Pam Downe, our costume designer, had a lot of discussions about trying to — in a subtle way — explore the subcultures of Britain sartorially,” says Ncuti Gatwa. “Because [the Doctor is] a character that exemplifies the U.K. Across my seasons, we will be exploring different subcultures of British fashion.”
Of course, once Doctor Who had Ncuti Gatwa as its new Doctor, the show definitely leaned into what he looked good wearing.
“The coincidence is beautiful,” Davies continues. “We were already thinking in that direction, and then we cast a man who can simply wear anything. He puts on a T-shirt and jeans and he looks extraordinary. We’d be mad as programmers if we didn’t lean into that. It’s been a real joy and I love it.”
