Disabled Davros is a Dodo? Amputee vs RTD

By Owen Quinn disabled author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

ME IN MY WHEELCHAIR PRAYING SANTA DOESN’T THINK I’M EVIL LIKE DAVROS!

Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010 (does not apply to Northern Ireland)

You’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

What ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ mean

• ‘substantial’ is more than minor or trivial, eg it takes much longer than it usually would to complete a daily task like getting dressed
• ‘long-term’ means 12 months or more, eg a breathing condition that develops as a result of a lung infection

There are special rules about recurring or fluctuating conditions, eg arthritis.

Progressive conditions

A progressive condition is one that gets worse over time. People with progressive conditions can be classed as disabled.

However, you automatically meet the disability definition under the Equality Act 2010 from the day you’re diagnosed with HIV infection, cancer or multiple sclerosis.

What isn’t counted as a disability

There’s guidance on conditions that aren’t covered by the disability definition, eg addiction to non–prescribed drugs or alcohol.

Before writing this article, which was prompted by how Russell T Davies’ changed Davros into a two legged Grand Moff Tarkin clone, it is important to understand that I am in a wheelchair (when I am not using my prosthetic leg) and what the definition of disabled actual means. I became an amputee a little under a year ago, adjusting to this new condition over that time, only to watch Davros grow legs just so people like me don’t associate evil with wheelchairs or be seen to be evil because someone may mistake me for Davros; which is utter pedigree nonsense. My wheelchair nor my disability define me so how dare someone else define people like me. How can someone as groundbreaking as Russell T Davies think that even makes sense? Shall we get rid of small moustaches and side shades for people with black hair in case someone mistakes them for Hitler? That may seem absurd but the illogical logic is the same.

There has been a rising bad feeling about this new Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who. He has been gender slapped in The Star Beast by Rose for assuming the Meep’s gender, yet five minutes earlier Rose did exactly that when she cried out upon seeing the Doctor in her home, ‘there’s that man’. Assumption much?

I smell a double standard right there. It happened again when Donna calls him a male presenting Time Lord. The jury is still out on the fifteenth Doctor with many seeing the influence of the mouse behind the scenes with things like wheelchair access to the Tardis, a person in a wheelchair working for UNIT with weapons in said chair.

Also Isaac Newton was played by a man of colour going against historical fact that he is indeed white. I am wholeheartedly behind inclusion as you see in my books the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues. The human race is a diverse multicultural organism and while the whole world is mad at the moment we all love, hate, bleed red, cry, feel out of place, piss and shit. We look different on the outside but the human race is identical all over the world in our hearts and feelings but historical fact is historical fact.

Doctor Who began life as an educational programme so it must continue to be to a certain degree but to randomly use inclusion for the wrong reasons makes no sense. It feels like programme makers of today are falling over themselves to be seen as inclusive and woke for fear of offending someone somewhere to the point it seems facts are irrelevant.

Now that does not really impact my life but the disability part does. I wrote my review of Children In Need; Destination Skaro thinking it was set at a time just before Davros’ accident. It would be pointless bringing out the iconic Davros we know (due to cost) for only a minute or so of screen time. But I was wrong. In the Doctor Who Unleashed episode Russell T Davies caught me off guard and said this. 

“Time and society and culture and taste has moved on and there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he is a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, associating evil with disability. And trust me there is a very long tradition of this. I’m not blaming people in the past at all. But the world changes then Doctor Who has to change as well. So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and his wheelchair or his support unit which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is ours lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white. they are not in black and white anymore. And Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now. And that we are absolutely standing by. I think because it’s Children In Need night. It’s a night where issues of disability or otherness or being excluded from society come right to the front of the conversation so of all the nights to make this change it was absolutely vital to do this and I’m very, very, very proud of the fact we have.”

My initial excitement at this new second golden era hit a wall right there. I’m not proud of that at all.

Ok so let me point something out. A wheelchair is not a support unit by any means in the way Davros Dalek half is. This stupidity is also done in The Giggle when Donna tells Mel tat calling themselves companions makes them sound like they park the Doctor on the seafront at Weston uper Mare. She then looks to scientific adviser wheelchair user Shirley and asks is ‘parked’ rude. Shirley says it is borderline. No it bloody isn’t, We park our wheelchairs when not in motion so to even suggest this by using a disabled character is insulting ; that offends me.

This is again an example of what happens when able bodied people who haven’t asked an actual person in a wheelchair their opinion. It is then translated to the audience that this is what disabled people think too. Believe me, it is far from the truth.

Now in the far future we may have mobile support units that regulate the person, filled with circuitry and weapons but we live right here, right now. If I get hit by a car while in my chair, I ain’t coming back unlike Davros in Destiny of the Daleks. The support unit saves him and puts him in stasis. Lumic was scarier but he was a man trying to beat death. 

So the Doctor Who team are acting from their own assumptions and labels of what being disabled means to someone and the devices we use to live day by day. Secondly, he states that they got rid of the facial scarring before bringing Davros back. How does that make people with such injuries feel? If Davies thinks it is fine to brush away someone with extensive scars for fear of them being identified as evil by the world then someone really needs go away and think about their lens and eyes. What Davies and the team have effectively done is say people with facial disfigurement or in a wheelchair can’t be seen as bad. Aren’t people good and bad despite what they look like? Haven’t they just drawn more attention to people with scarring and not necessarily in a good way? How does this encourage people to embrace this idea which is clearly trying to justify a world that does not exist and an ideology that thinks people cannot think for themselves or form their own opinions?

Add to that Davros will no longer be disabled but a Grand Moff Tarkin type as seen in the Children In Need mini-episode and I have a problem about that. Wipe out an iconic villain because it may offend? Who is it offending because it doesn’t offend this disabled person or anyone else I know. Indeed at a recent podiatry appointment I was told that several other patients felt they had lost their representation due to the Davros reinvention. As for disability being associated with evil is just bollocks. Yes villains are sometimes but not always disabled; scars do not count as a disability. Russell T Davies in the behind the scenes show Doctor Who unleashed has been very vocal that this is why Davros now walks on two legs but is it him speaking or the mouse?

To come back and claim it is going to be a brand new way of storytelling prepared no one for the fact woke has taken away probably the most iconic villain to have ever graced the screens. Such was the initial impact of Davros on fans that he came back several times and crossed generations last seen battling the twelfth Doctor. As Davies says writing changes which is true but to have an agenda seriously change the nature of the show and rewrite the past is outrageous. You might as well tip me out of my wheelchair and kick me in the balls right now. In fact wheel me off a mountain in case anyone is offended by my one leg and two wheels.

Changing Davros is totally contradicting what Davies thinks he is doing. For someone that does love the show so much and it’s a part of his soul, it is not clear if he is acting under orders here from the Disney side or not. Let’s look at it.

According to Davies and this new woke bollocks, Davros’ image reminds us that disability is evil. So what do I do with my 12 inch Davros figure and my other Davros figures. I’d better get rid quick because everytime I look at them I see how evil I and others like me are. Let’s point out that the bottom half of Davros is not a wheelchair but a Dalek. It is a life support system to keep him alive. By this very logic this means that every Dalek is also disabled and a painful reminder that an entire army of mutated beings in wheelchairs are the absolute evil. There is no good in them at all (bar a couple of exceptions like Rusty) and will give viewers the wrong impression of us wheelchair users. So therefore Davies must convert all future Daleks into versions of Dalek Sec from Daleks Take Manhattan. That way disability will not cloud anyone’s view of disabled people who are all good and kind people.

Rubbish.

Just like any section of the populace you have good and bad. There are no disabled James Bond villains, bar Dr No with his metallic hands. As I said before, scars do not constitute a disability. They impact the person’s view of how they see themselves much in the same way a birthmark on the face can make an individual feel uncomfortable. But those that love them see the person not the birthmark or the injury. Are we now to only see wheelchair users as good guys? I’ll let you into a little secret; when I am in my wheelchair, when I cannot use my prosthetic leg, I pretend I am Davros and have a laugh. “Welcome to my new empire Doctor!”

I’m 55 years young.

How is that detrimental to me or those around me? Our kids see me as great craic because they get to push me round and the youngest sits on my lap like a chauffeur driven limo. Am I missing the evil connotations here Russell? Thank God the world will now be filled with wheelchair and disabled heroes and legends. Oh wait, it already is.

Let’s not forget that Professor X from the X-Men is probably the most famous disabled person for kids to look up to out there. Matt Murdoch as Daredevil is blind. Echo is an amputee so is Luke Skywalker with his hand. Echo is a great ecample of diversity and inclusion done right. Norton Drake in the 80s War of the Worlds television series is wheelchair bound as is Barbara Gordon shot by the Joker becoming Oracle in Birds of Prey. Winter Soldier and Nebula have prosthetics as does War Machine to help him walk. Did you know Hawkeye wears a hearing aid? There are three wheelchair users in that paragraph alone.

We can’t forget the Bionic family which includes Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner, Sandra Bullock and our very own Michelle Ryan herself plus Katee Sackhoff and Max the bionic dog.

We also have Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek the original series in the two parter; Menagrie. In the same universe is Geordi La Forge, the blind engineer from Star Trek the Next Generation. Now if you ever want to highlight a disabled character that offends; Geordi is it. Before returning to Picard, Levar Burton raised these concerns. Geordi was written so badly as such a loser with women that he became a literal stalker via the holodeck. Now there are people that do that able-bodied and disabled but Geordi should stand as an example of owning what life has dealt you and making it part of you. With disabled characters show-makers should be treated as anyone else; they have good and bad days, are pissy and welcoming. Sometimes I think writers are not sure of how to write for disabled people but the key word is people.

By labeling us wheelchair users and disabled people as ‘snowflakes’ that need to be patted on the head in case someone compares us to Davros or any other evil character offends big time. That will only make us speak up and tell you were to go. In that assumption without asking our view you are not honouring society but putting us in a pigeon hole that you have made up. Restore the iconic Davros now before you end up erasing a villain that spans generations just as Darth Vader does. Stop creating a false view of people that young viewers will believe until they get older and realise life is completely different. Talk to the people you think are going to take offense and make an informed decision on their advice. Most people will tell you to wise up and leave as is.

Doctor Who has always kept the best interests of children at its core. With moves like this, agendas seem to take priority rather than people in general. We are part of the audience that keeps those ratings up. Piss people off and ratings fall. Wake up, not woke up.