Doctor Who Season 13 Updates: Doctor Who, when it comes to diversity and breaking bounds, has always been ahead of the curve.
We saw Captain Jack Harkness kiss both Rose Tyler and the Doctor, who was played by Christopher Eccleston at the time, in the first revival series that aired back in 2005.
At the moment, this was revolutionary, and since then, the show has continued to improve its portrayal of minorities and their exposure. Yet disability is lagging behind, as is too often the case in TV and movies.
So many people will now watch the show and see themselves reflected, but for people with disabilities, we can’t exactly say that’s true yet.
Doctor Who Season 13 New Casting:
John Bishop’s latest casting has once again moved this dilemma to the forefront. Although John is sure to do a good job, watching another white, non-disabled person be cast in a primary role is frustrating.
It seems miles away from the casting of Jo Martin, who was announced back in season 12 as an unknown revival of The Doctor, making her the first black woman in the role.
This latest casting was a lost opportunity to expand visibility for people with disabilities, welcoming a broader spectrum of persons into Doctor Who’s the universe.
The show often offers conflicting signals as to where diversity stands, and disabilities are no exception to the law. Saying that, over the years, autism has not been entirely absent from Doctor Who, but its presence is mostly reduced to only a few episodes or occurs in odd forms.
About Disability Representation:
Disability is not a mask that you can put on and off, and it felt damaging that the writers felt a desire to heal his blindness so that he could again be The Doctor, sending out the message successfully that until you are fully sighted and non-disabled, you can not perform that role.
Perhaps this was an attempt to provide some insight into what it is like to be visually challenged, but it only came off as tokenistic and naïve in the end. Doctor Who has so much promise for disabled people to be a beacon of hope, to have the much-needed representation and honest narrative, but they keep hitting the mark over and over again.
It could turn it all around and eventually encourage a significant minority to see themselves in the show as more than just a villain or in a one-episode plot by recruiting a disabled actor for a key role, such as a companion, as well as hiring disabled writers.
