The BBC blew it, big time.
Last week when the Doctor went blind I cringed, hard, because I knew they could either make this an awesome thing and take the opportunity to tactfully educate people, or they could treat it as a liability, a drawback, a weakness.

I was so hoping they would show the doctor with a white cane, even if just for a bit until he somehow fixes his sight. Instead, he is navigating fine with these special glasses that show him a FAINT GREEN OUTLINE about where walls and doors are. An outline so faint I (legally blind but still fairly sighted) can barely tell what it is supposed to be when my face is literally touching my 36 inch monitor. And the text on his magic glasses, I have no clue what they are supposed to be telling him. His character is supposedly blind enough to not notice the guy in front of him is wearing white papal robes, but he can see a faint green line.

When he is trying to read the mysterious Veritas book on the laptop and his vision is getting worse from his attempt to fix it I was so hopeful the BBC would show the amazing capabilities most computers have built-in, namely a screen-reader. He could have magnified the screen, he could have had the computer read it to him, he even could have used a braille display (because the doctor knows everything anyway). And when he does get the computer to read it to him all he says is “there’s a thing on here, it reads to you, it’s very useful.” The doctor highlights human ingenuity all the time, but instead of mentioning text to speech by name and addressing the amazing things technology can help blind people achieve the whole situation is blown off. That “thing” on the computer is a huge part of life for blind and visually impaired people. It enables us to read, to code computers, to communicate, to do almost everything a sighted person can do on a computer, but it was blown off. Just a “thing.”

Yes, I know, the doctor’s enemies can’t know he’s blind. And clearly the BBC didn’t set out to portray the doctor as a blind man, but can you imagine how meaningful it would be for the doctor to be blind and still kickass? It doesn’t matter how long he is blind for, even if it were just a single episode they had the chance to portray blind people in a positive light, instead of ignoring his vision problems until they create a problem.

For him to use the white cane would have been revolutionary. Doctor Who has a huge fanbase and they had a chance to show that blindness isn’t a weakness. They didn’t need to make it a kitchy-PSA, but they also didn’t need to treat it the way they did. This was a once in a lifetime chance for the BBC and Doctor Who, and they blew it. I said when I started losing my vision that I wouldn’t become an angry person. I said I wouldn’t become one of those people who become an internet-vigilante, that are angry about every portrayal if their disability/circumstances, but I am seriously upset by this.

I really hope next episode someone tells him that he can still “save them” even though he is blind. I would love to see the doctor have to mourn his vision loss and accept the changes before realizing it doesn’t have to limit him. I still love doctor who, and I finished the episode, and I will watch the next episode, but I am amazingly disappointed by BBC right now and I needed to vent.