Doctor Who is all about looking at things from a different perspective, about how the universe—how we—might be different if we just stood in a different place or time. As the audience, though, we’re used to being the voyeurs into someone else’s situation. What might things look like, though, if we were to step back and view our own little pocket of spacetime from the outside?

We like to think about Doctor Who as a relatively progressive show, expanding the circle of inclusivity both in front of and behind the camera. Even if there is always more to be done, it makes us proud as fans to know that Doctor Who is doing its best to push the current boundaries. It’s great to see an ever broader cross-section of humanity represented on-screen.

But how well are we really doing?

This show has always pushed boundaries, from its very first episode. Yet all of us can look back on its history and find moments that make us cringe. Sometimes it has fallen short in terms of race, sometimes in terms of gender, sometimes in terms of sexuality—or any number of other marginalizations that could really have used better treatment from the Doctor (and the production staff). Even so, and to the show’s (and the fandom’s) credit, it keeps working to improve.

Yet in how many ways that we can’t even see yet is it falling short right now? That’s the thing that really bakes my noodle (so to speak). Even assuming this is the most enlightened show on English-language television (a questionable claim), there are things that our current society thinks nothing of that will almost certainly horrify our cultural descendants.

Someone out there right now probably has a better idea than I (who sits on the “have’s” end of many axes of privilege) about what some of those things are likely to be. I can see a few—gender non-conforming folx, those in the disability community, non-neurotypical folx, etc.—who deserve better representation, but what am I missing? What is our society as a whole missing?

Maybe there is some other marginalized group that I’m too entrenched in my 21st-century perspective even to recognize as needing better consideration. Will future generations look back on our art and literature and think, “How backwards! They acted like other species weren’t sentient! Just look how they talked about eating cephalopods, or clipping corvids’ wings to keep them from leaving certain places. Disgusting!”?

Then there are the larger public health issues that will undoubtedly evolve. Today we shake our heads at the naïveté of the Romans, who regularly poisoned themselves because it was a common practice to use lead to sweeten their vegetables. Similarly, I remember having temporal culture shock recently when I re-watched a Japanese show from the 1980s; there were cigarettes everywhere. Perhaps some day the proliferation of guns in our current life will seem just as strange and off-putting.

We obviously can never know for certain how history will remember us, but I think it’s an interesting exercise to consider. Maybe, if we can expand our minds enough to imagine how those who come after us would find us disappointing, we can find a way to improve ourselves more quickly. Better to fall short when reaching beyond our grasp than never to stretch ourselves at all.