Doctor Who: Varada Sethu is a breath of fresh air as new companion Belinda Chandra - and she's right about 'woke' critics
Varada Sethu made her debut in Doctor Who last week and wowed audiences as a new companion joined the TARDIS.
The actress, 32, impressed me and plenty of other Doctor Who fans as she introduced Belinda Chandra to millions of fans. In a first episode which has been roundly celebrated by the community, Sethu made her mark.
Belinda feels unconventional as a Doctor Who companion because she just doesn’t seem interested in getting caught up in The Doctor’s wild adventures. From her debut episode, The Robot Revolution, we find out that Belinda’s only motivation for the series is to get home and back to her life.
Instead, she has been thrust into galactic mysteries and dangerous situations, with The Doctor unable to currently return to the day when she disappeared off the Earth.
This is a far cry from companions such as Ruby Sunday, who quickly formed a jovial friendship with The Doctor and was happy to be whisked away. Belinda and The Doctor’s chemistry on screen is something we have seen little from the cult sci-fi show, and I personally can’t wait to see more from Sethu and Ncuti Gatwa.
Not only does it bring a new companion-Doctor dynamic to the show, but it also add layers to Gatwa’s already mesmerising performance as the 15th Doctor. During conversations between him and Belinda in the closing scenes of her first episode, I found myself questioning his intentions for the first time during his tenure.
The Doctor explains to Belinda that he has met her descendant Mundy Flynn (who we previously met in last year’s episode Boom) and is intrigued by the mystery of their almost exact genetic match. He launches into the normal Doctor Who spiel of how he was destined to meet Belinda and take her on adventures to uncover this mystery’s secrets.
However, while other companions in the past have followed The Doctor’s word without question, Sethu’s head-strong performance as Belinda shows us that the nurse is anything but happy to be caught up in this. Let down by the fact that she met now-dead character Sasha, who told Belinda that she trusted him with her life, she outright rejects his offer before she finds out she is stuck with him in space.
Sethu and Gatwa play this scene perfectly and prove that characters don’t have to get on onscreen to have great chemistry, a dynamic rarely explored in the show.
As for calls that the show is now “too woke” because of there being two people of colour in the main roles (paired with a premiere episode storyline that took a swing at incel culture) I urge you to go back and watch previous episodes and seasons.
Doctor Who’s so-called “wokeness” has been in front of your eyes the entire time, but for some reason is only an issue for some now. Previous storylines throughout the years have seen the Doctor take on monsters born from capitalism, xenophobia and climate change, among many other ‘woke’ issues.
I share Sethu’s thoughts on the matter. She told Radio Times: "There's been a couple of 'Doctor Woke' [comments] or whatever. But I just think we're doing the right thing if we're getting comments like that.
"Woke just means inclusive, progressive, and that you care about people. And, as far as I know, the core of Doctor Who is kindness, love and doing the right thing."