"In Doctor Who, all matters even passingly sexual are considered utterly taboo."
So claims Alan Barnes' article Sex and the Single Gallifreyan in Doctor Who Magazine issue 268. I don't think Alan and I watch the same show! Believe it or not, Doctor Who - yes, our harmless kid's show - has got loads of sex.
To Barnes' credit, his article really encourages fans to accept that sex and romance might have a place in the Who universe. But Barnes makes the critical error of mostly ignoring the show's long history of dabbling in matters "taboo." Just for laughs, I'm going to cut through every Doctor's era naming every saucy moment that I can think of.
Later on, Barbara is captured by cavemen. One of the big, hairy brutes walks slowly up to her, captivated by the sight of a woman who's got all her teeth. He reaches out to brush her face with his hand, and the matriarch of the tribe, Old Mother, sneers at him. Kal and Za battle for ownership of Hur, the prettiest girl in the tribe.
In The Daleks, the Thal men mercilessly tease Alydon about his meeting with Susan. They make a crass sexual pun out of Alydon's statement, "We're all working towards the same end." Barbara clearly has a thing for Ganatus.
In The Aztecs, the Doctor has a very sensitive and sweet romance with Cameca. If you doubt his sincerity, watch how he retains the keepsake Cameca gives him. The Perfect Victim insists that he wants to marry Susan a minute after he meets her. I wonder why?
In The Keys of Marinus, Barbara is chased around a log cabin by a big, hairy fur trapper. Emperor Nero spends half of The Romans trying to get his paws on her. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Susan and David have a flirty wrestling match over a fish before they decide to kiss and get married.
And let's not forget that, as Barnes points out in his article, the Doctor has a granddaughter. Therefore, he has at least one kid. Therefore, he did the business at least once! Later Doctor Who production teams may have claimed that Susan wasn't actually the Doctor's granddaughter, but the show's creators have stated, time and again, that they consider Susan to be the Time Lord's biological relative.
I could keep this up all day, but let's move on to another Doctor, shall we?
Also, there's a funny bit in The Ice Warriors when Jamie travels to the future and sees a bunch of female technicians in short short skirts. Jamie asks Victoria if she can "imagine" herself wearing one of those outfits. The prim and proper Victoria gets uppity and insists that they change the subject.
Robert Holmes litters The Time Warrior with sex jokes. Irongron and Bloodaxe remark that Sarah Jane is pretty smokin', but her bizarre behavior discourages them from acting on their desires. Lynx, the Sontaran warrior, states that sexual reproduction is "inefficient" (surely we're all supposed to smirk and think about how sex is much cooler than being a cloned rubber monster). The Doctor says to Professor Rubeish that he needs to find a "very young girl," and Rubeish quietly mutters that the Doctor looks a bit old for that sort of thing.
In The Green Death, Jo and Cliff enjoy a rare smooch opportunity. Yates is disappointed when they get married because he fancied Jo himself. Jo refers to Cliff as a "younger" version of the Doctor, perhaps indicating that she dug the Doctor a little bit too.
In City of Death, Count Scarlioni comments that following women around is a sign of intelligent behavior. The Doctor's remark that the Countess is "a beautiful woman, probably," is not an innocent statement. He's making a conscious effort to attack her vanity.
Then, of course, there's Leela's outfit.
In Snakedance, Lon enters a tent and finds the possessed Tegan inside. "After all...why not?" he muses as he approaches her with a smirk on his face. He's probably expecting to get some nooky, and not that he's about to be possessed by a rubber mind snake.
Robert Holmes serves up the sex jokes once again, in The Two Doctors. I think we're supposed to have a good chuckle when Shockeye refers to Peri as a, "fine, fleshy beast." Dastari is propositioned with a rose flung from a balcony. In The Mysterious Planet, Glitz claims that aging women are attracted to him. Shortly thereafter, Katryca refers to him as the "Fat One."
Jobel is sleeping with most of the women at the mortuary in Revelation of the Daleks. The homely Tasembecker says that she loves him, and he replies, "I'd sooner run off with my mother than own a fawning little creep like you." (ouch!) Kara and Vogel drink champagne with their arms linked, and when Vogel is shot Kara looks very very upset.
In The Curse of Fenric, Ace suggests that she can distract a guard. "How?" the Doctor asks. "I'm not a little girl anymore," she replies. And what do you know, she does distract the guard just by being generally hot. The episode is peppered with sexual references - girls who go to Maiden's Point are loose, and Kathleen is offended by the suggestion that she might've had a child out of wedlock.
The William Hartnell Era
It starts immediately. In An Unearthly Child, busybody schoolteachers Ian and Barbara follow Susan to the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane. Ian suggests that Susan could be meeting a boy inside. Barbara says that such an encounter would be "wonderfully normal."
The Patrick Troughton Era
Most of the Second Doctor's episodes are lost, so I haven't got much to say about them. However, I have a few theories about why Kaftan is able to manipulate Kleig so effectively in Tomb of the Cybermen.
The Jon Pertwee Era
Greg and Petra are very into each other in Inferno. The Doctor is pleased when he hears that they get together at the end.
The Tom Baker Era
In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a prostitute who is tired after a long night's work is kidnapped by Li H'sen Chang on her way home. Magnus Greel has a thing for "fresh, young" women.
In The Androids of Tara, Count Grendel remarks that he showed a certain "courtesy" to Madame Lamia in the past. It's pretty obvious that they were lovers, and she's still pining away for him. In The Leisure Hive, Hardin has a lot of affection for the Argolin Chairwoman.
The Peter Davison Era
A couple of mutated guys chase after pretty girls; George Cranleigh and Sharaz Jek spring to mind. In Enlightenment, Mariner has an odd romance with Tegan, and Turlough pretends to be attracted to Captain Wrack (he does a bad job, though, since he inches away from her when they're sitting next to each other).
The Colin Baker Era
Upon first meeting the Rani in Mark of the Rani, Colin Baker makes a decidedly un-Doctorish remark that goes something like "that outfit does nothing for you." The Rani retorts that the Doctor's latest regeneration is decidedly unattractive. Think they had a thing going in their Academy days? Both the Doctor and the Master seem totally enamoured with her.
The Sylvester McCoy Era
Mike and Ace start to grow close in Remembrance of the Daleks before he turns traitor. Bellboy and Flowerchild are decidely "together" in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Ancelyn and Bambera have one of the stupidest romances in television history in Battlefield.
The Paul McGann Episode
Paul lays a big wet one on Grace's lips. Bruce's wife comes on to the Master. Unfortunately, there's a joke about penis size (I guess Americans really did make this one, huh?)
So there you have it. Off the top of my head, I've come up with tons of passingly sexual stuff in Doctor Who. The show never featured nudity or scenes in bed,
but sex and romance were often barely concealed subtexts. Televised science fiction is usually pretty chaste, and I think that Doctor Who actually treads further onto "dangerous ground" than most other fantasy TV shows of the 60s, 70s, and 80s (nowadays, most entertainment is just about sex, isn't it?)