First Gay Doctor, NPHs comments. Romance in TARDIS good/bad?

Firstly, I think we have to take NPH's comments with a pinch of salt, I can't see there's any particular reason why he would know how Ncuti is going to perform in practice.

As to the wider question of whether the Doctor can work as a romantic lead, I'm inclined to say not. Firstly, the thirty-odd years of a (mostly) sexless character means that any move away from that (apart from the same kind of ambigous scenes we got with the first and perhaps fifth Doctors) will always be significant - and I think the idea that has developed in recent decades that storytelling is about character is a pernicious one.

Twenty years ago, there were a slew of dramas ruined by this principle, as The Bill and Casualty turned into soap operas. Look at the big explosions of literacy, the penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers and pulps people read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Characters tended to be bold but unchanging, with plots exciting and racing forward. In Doctor Who terms, story is spaceships and robots, not the people flying the spaceships or meeting the robots. And I don't think, in that regard, it matters if the Doctor is interested in a man or a woman - it's a distraction from the plot.

Is this referring to the character or the actor (is Ncuti even gay, I don't know?)

ps This thread is in the Other Audio Productions sub-board?