Last week, Doctor Who gave David Tennant’s 14th Doctor his shock debut in a particular scene recorded for the charity telethon Children in Need—one which took the Doctor again to the very genesis of their best foe, the Daleks. But in doing so, it additionally made an enormous change to their creator, one which returning showrunner Russell T. Davies intends to maintain.
In the transient scene—depicting the early days of Kaled scientists growing the journey casing that might ultimately rework them into the mutated Daleks—followers noticed Julian Bleach reprise his function as Davros, the Daleks’ creator. But Davros was very totally different to how we’ve largely seen him: not scarred, and not in a Dalek-esque wheelchair support. This wasn’t simply an early model of the villain; based on Davies, the intent behind that’s to maintain Davros as such going ahead—to push in opposition to again the trope of largely associating bodily disabilities with villainous characters.
“We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he’s a fantastic character,” Davies mentioned as a part of an interview broadcast in Doctor Who Unleashed, which accompanied the discharge of the quick scene on the BBC iPlayer. “Time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s 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, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there’s a very long tradition of this [in media].”
“I’m not blaming people in the past at all,” Davies continued. “But the world changes. And when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.”
Davies’ return to Doctor Who is already advocating to carry extra disabled actors in taking part in disabled characters—Ruth Madeley, an actress who makes use of a wheelchair, is ready to look within the trio of sixtieth anniversary specials as a wheelchair-using supporting character named Shirley Anne Bingham. But the transfer to overtake Davros—a serious character, albeit not often seen, having final appeared in 2015’s “The Magician’s Apprentice”—marks a big step that Davies is keen and able to having Doctor Who tackle previous representations of society in an effort to higher mirror the world it’s made in.
Want extra io9 information? Check out when to anticipate the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every part it’s essential to find out about the way forward for Doctor Who.