Killing death and saving the bad guys
What Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor Who shows us about Jesus
CN: mentions of racism and death
Warning: this article contains spoilers for the most recent series of Doctor Who!
“Death to death, everywhere!”
That triumphant cry rang out from Ncuti Gatwa in the Doctor Who series finale, as he dragged the god of Death through the Time Vortex, bringing life to a dead universe. In my own mind, bells were ringing too – from the hymn “Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer” with its well-known line “Death of death, and hell’s destruction”.
I wondered – did showrunner Russell T Davies realise how much his Doctor echoed Jesus?
If you know me well, you’ll know that I absolutely love Doctor Who. I come from a family of Whovians, and have fond memories of watching every episode from Christopher Ecclestone to Matt Smith on boxset with my family- a Saturday tradition that lasted for years. One of the best days of my life was bumping into Russell T Davies in front of the Doctor Who studios in Cardiff, where he generously and unexpectedly showed my family around the set of the Tardis. I was 15 and utterly giddy with joy – thank you Russell!
Another thing that you’ll hopefully have figured out by now is that I’m a Christian, and Jesus is the best thing in my life. However, being both a Christian and a Whovian may seem a surprising combination, given the show’s thinly veiled atheist ideology. From villains such as Weeping Angels and Headless Monks, to plotlines depicting the Church as a military operation and monsters that prey on people’s faith, Doctor Who has never hidden its scepticism of religion, though maintaining a respect for people of faith. Russell T Davies is, in his own words, “as atheist… as Richard Dawkins” yet has admitted that he is fascinated with why people are drawn to something bigger than themselves. He wants to depict those ideas in the show– even if only to show why they are wrong!
Nonetheless, I was thrilled when Russell T Davies announced his return as showrunner for the new series, eagerly awaiting the intriguing story arcs and heart for humanity that characterises his writing. Despite a rather anticlimactic finale, I was not disappointed, as it was, overall, a pretty banging series. But the highlight for me was Ncuti Gatwa’s portrayal of the Doctor.
For the uninitiated, the Doctor is an alien who travels through time and space in his bigger-on-the-inside ship, the Tardis, saving the universe every Saturday (as you do). Fun-loving, emotional, oozing with charisma, different from any of his previous incarnations, yet retaining the character’s complexity and heart, Gatwa lights up every scene he is in.
But for me, part of his appeal is that, surprisingly often, his Doctor reflects Jesus.
First of all, just like Jesus, Gatwa’s Doctor saves the bad guys. In the very first episode, the controversial Space Babies, the Doctor encounters a Bogeyman who has been terrorising a spaceship full of intelligent babies. (Yes, this show is very weird). Yet he risks his own life to save this monster, recognising something of his own loneliness in the beast, despite it attacking them repeatedly and doing nothing at all to merit being saved.
Even more strikingly, in the episode Dot and Bubble, Gatwa tries to save a group of privileged racists living on a futuristic planet, even after they gut-punch both him and the viewer by labelling his Tardis as “voodoo”, and him as “not one of us” purely because he is Black. As they look at him condescendingly and walk away to their deaths, the Doctor cries “You will die out there! And I could save you, if you’d just let me”. In a heart-rending performance, Gatwa breaks into incredulous laughter that turns into a scream of frustration and grief.
This Doctor breaks his heart over people who hate him. This Doctor would save the utterly undeserving, simply because that’s who he is.
Likewise, contrary to popular belief, Jesus’s offer of salvation isn’t restricted to well-behaved religious people. Rather, he came to save us even at our darkest and most messy, even the people who crucified him.
Romans 5:7-8 says that “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
To use a children’s talk example that I still find helpful, sin in the Bible means saying “Shove off God, I’m in charge, No to your rules”. The Bible says that every single human being, including you and me, has told the God who made us to shove off, by living in the world He made as if we were in charge and ignoring Him all together. Our broken relationship with Him leaks out into broken relationships with others, creating the selfishness, greed, conflict, hatred that ravage the world around us. There is only one person who has ever lived without sin – Jesus, God come to earth as a human to live the perfect life we never could.
But incredibly, our sin and rejection of Him doesn’t cause Jesus to shrink away from us. On the contrary, He sees the most shameful parts of you and me and loves us enough to die for us. No matter what we’ve done, said or thought, or how uninterested in Him we’ve been, He knows us entirely and wants to have a relationship with us, before we’ve even done anything to make ourselves better. It’s like Ncuti Gatwa holding his arms out to the racists who rejected him, only this time, he offers to die instead of them, this time, he offers to adopt them into his family.
Nuts, eh? That’s Jesus’ love for you.
Because Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty for all our sin, that means there’s nothing we have to do to earn His love – all we have to do is say “yes” to His offer of life and forgiveness and we are restored to the most loving, freeing, life-changing relationship with the One who made us. Knowing Him changes us from the inside out, as He heals the brokenness in us and helps us live lives of love.
And like Gatwa’s Doctor, it breaks Jesus’ heart when people walk away from him, for they are walking away from the source of life, and love, and light, to the death, and darkness, and separation that is all that exists without Him.
It's never too late to come back to Him.
Then, there’s the whole Death to Death business. Gatwa’s Doctor rails against the death-god Sutekh, shouting “If you represent death, surely I must represent life”. He mocks the dog-headed deity by attaching a leash to him and dragging him through the Time Vortex, in a sort of cosmic “Walkies”. And he undoes the “dust of Death” Sutekh casts to destroy the entire universe by plunging Sutekh himself to his death, bringing life back to every planet.
While death is something that our culture often tries to forget about, or worse romanticises, the Bible is clear: it is an intruder in our world and a source of devastating pain. Perhaps this might resonate with you if you’ve ever lost someone yourself. Death came into the world after human beings rejected the life God offered, but God had a plan to destroy it forever. In the book of Isaiah, a prophecy written hundreds of years before Jesus was even born, the prophet writes:
“On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8 he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:7-8)
Sounds familiar? Sounds like putting death to death to me…
And when Jesus died on a brutal cross, this prophecy was finally fulfilled, as He willingly died the death human beings deserve for rebelling against God. Three days later, He rose again, showing that the power of death was well and truly broken. Through putting our trust in Jesus, we can know eternal life too – not just life like we live on earth, but life as it should be, with all tears wiped away, and with all wrong things put right.
More than that, like the Doctor, Jesus even mocks death! In 1 Corinthians 15, one of the most beautiful, triumphant passages in the Bible, Paul breaks into song: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” With Jesus, death is no longer something to be feared, but something that holds no power over us.
We can live life knowing that death doesn’t have the last word- love does.
This might all sound completely too good to be true. I’m aware death is a difficult and deeply personal topic, and it’s not something I talk about lightly. I also want to highlight that my belief in life after death isn’t based on blind faith, but rather the strong historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, which I’ve put links to below.
But whether or not you watch Doctor Who, if saving the bad guys and putting death to death sound intriguing, I urge you to look at Jesus. Because even more than Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, Jesus offers life, and love, and light, to a world in desperate need of it.
Maybe one day, Russell will recognise him in Doctor Who.
Sources:
1. Den of Geek, 2024: Doctor Who Series 14 Just Gave the Doctor a Jesus Moment | Den of Geek
2. Balstrup, 2014: Doctor Who: Christianity, Atheism and the Source of Sacredness in the Davies Years. https://www.academia.edu/download/38076077/26.2.balstrup.pdf
Recommendations:
1. The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel – compelling historical evidence for the resurrection. The Case for Christ. Lee Strobel - Free PDF. (overwhelmingevidence.org)
2. Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? by William Lane Craig- evidence for the resurrection in short video form. (1494) Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? - Part One: The Facts - YouTube (there's also a part 2!)
3. The Chosen - a free TV show from Angel Studios, depicts the life of Jesus with humour and realism. Home | The Chosen
4. The Gospel of Mark- the best way to see what Jesus is like! Mark: The Gospel According to Mark (biblehub.com)