On Friday, I got a call from my kids’ school. One of them had injured her ankle in gym class, and couldn’t bear weight on it; I had to go pick her up. In the end, it turned out to be a bad sprain, rather than a break, but she still has to wear one of those boots to keep it immobilized, and is on crutches until the pain has improved enough that she can stand to walk with the boot.

The changes we have had to make to our routine and to the way we execute daily tasks in order to accommodate her altered mobility have made me think more about the way those of us without disabilities approach the world, blithely assuming everything will come easily to us. And that, in turn, got me thinking about the way the Doctor operates.

It’s kind of a character through-line that the Doctor tends to ignore any and all obstacles in their way. They rush in, always assuming they’ll pull out a win somehow, never stopping to think that it’s because of various advantages they possess that they have the freedom to do so.

Admittedly, some regenerations are more oblivious than others. Perhaps the most egregious example is the Tenth Doctor, who advised Martha in The Shakespeare Code to “just walk about like you own the place.” Because it “works for [him],” he never even considers the possibility that someone else might not be given the same latitude—or, for that matter, be able to walk about!

We eventually see the Thirteenth Doctor struggle with the sexism aspect of that issue, at least briefly, and the Twelfth Doctor is forced to cope with a physical disability over several episodes. But even that was never meant to be a permanent part of Capaldi’s character, nor is he ever really completely blind the way a human would be. It all feels like a cheat.

Frankly, while I’m pleased that Doctor Who has begun to look more directly at issues of racism and sexism, I’m well past ready for more disability representation. And I’m certainly not talking about tokenism or fetishization—I’m talking honest-to-goodness, written-by-people-with-lived-experience, inclusion.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page, let me clarify what I mean. I don’t mean, “put a single character with a disability into a single story so we can say we’ve had one.” That’s the tokenism I was talking about. While I really loved having the deaf character Cass in Under the Lake / Before the Flood—especially played by a deaf artist—it turned out she was there as a plot device; they needed her to be able to read the ghost!Doctor’s lips.

Similarly, I don’t want some inspiration porn crap. “Oh, isn’t So-and-so just so inspiring, the way they just attack life head-on even though they have condition-that-abled-person-finds-unfathomable!” Keep that ick out of my stories.

No, what I’m looking for is an expansion of the kind of thing we saw in Series Eleven with our more diverse TARDIS Team. Aside from expanding the racial, gender, and age demographics, Chibnall has made a gesture toward disability inclusion with Thirteen’s new besties. Ryan’s dyspraxia is presented as part of who he is; isn’t always at the forefront of his character; and occasionally affects how he interacts with his environment, in ways both related and unrelated to plot.

But I’d like to see more. I want to see a broader range of difference represented, brought to the scripts by writers who have lived experience with those differences. I want to see more characters with various disabilities; who are not neurotypical; who have a variety of gender identity and expression; who run the gamut of sexual and romantic orientation, including asexual and/or aromantic; who actively practice different religions. I want these characters to be the norm, not a one-per-episode tick box.

Because when we present the fabulous variety of humanity in our stories, we normalize it. It’s easier to notice the folks around us who don’t share our particular skin color or creed or ease in getting from place to place, and think of them as other people, worthy of our time, attention, and empathy. And sometimes we need a reminder. Sometimes we only get there by crutching a mile in another’s boot.