It showing up is not the problem. The problem was always ratio. The ratio was addressed 20 years ago and has been ever since. The point is by the turn of the century 90% of people consuming media if they saw someone morally bad who was disabled was then going out into the world and making a judgment of disabled people's moral worth based upon them being disabled. Nor were the majority of disabled people walking away feeling disrespected by such depictions.
You analogy of the Doctor being in a whllechair is a flase equivilancy. the reason the doctor doesn't even have a limp is a production practicality issue. But would they accept a Doctor whose face has major scarring? I'd say yes they absolutely would.
Xavier having a juxtoposition isn't problematic in the first place. If anything it ehances the resonance of the character. Moreover, Xavier's role in the X-Men predominantly has been as their founder and moral northstar, not someone who gets involved in fights.
300 was adapting a comic book made in the 20th century and was slavishly faithful to it. Moreover, the movie is explicitely in-universe pro-Spartan propoganda. the narrator is literally a one eyed Spartan, communicating tot he audience that he is absolutely not unbiased and that what we see shouldn't be taken as 'this is actually how it happened'
Voldemort's not disabled. The story is very explicit. His inhuman features are a biproduct of his choices, of what he did to himself. Again, no one who sees someone in a wheelchair presumes that was somehow their own fault, and no one felt that way about Davros either. They DID feel that way about the Master in the Deadly Assassin, his body rotting away due to burning thorugh his regenerations. That was from the same era but the audience response even back then was different.
Snoke, like all the Sith, have deformaties because of the darkside. Again, it is understood to be a consequence of the choices the characters made. Story context matters
You are not wrong that villains tend to be scarred up more than heroes as part of visual short hand for communicating symbolism. But I think you are yourself overestimating the wider societal impact that has. Again, in the UK and USA compassion and treatment for disabled people has been on a near constant increase if we date it back to when Davros was introduced. And yet, we've had more scarred up villains since then, loads of Bond movies as such. Clearly, the antidote was therefore a) more and better conversations in the real world, which was of parmount of importance b) of lesser importance was more positively portrayed disabled characters.
'Because if making the main hero disabled seems implausible or risky, or gets called DEI/pandering, but giving those traits to a villain is just considered “flavor” or “depth,” then we’re still very much stuck in the same pattern.'
I think this is a false equivlancy that doesn't take account current societal context. Simply put, our discussions on these subjects are nuclear levels more volatile now than they were 20 years ago. 20 years ago such a thing WOULDN'T have been called pandering or DEI (presuming the actor was good ofc). Nowadays? Different ball game. The modern era of media has unfortunately cried wolf too many times in this regard so now people will reflexively not trust such an example to have not been done for reasons that do boil down to DEI/pandering/whatever terminology you wish to use. Of course it is not always the case. Maybe it isn't even half of all cases. But the number is starkly higher than it was in 2005 therefore audience trust has been eroded. But, in 2010 hqad they cast someone with a disability to be the Doctor, no most people would've have believed it to have been pandering. But they definitely would now. Its not even a Doctor Who thing, it is a wider media thing and a 'we have the receipts' thing. Disney employees caught on secret camera admitting they discriminate in their hiring practices based upon race, gender and sexuality. Larry Fink on camera talking about how they will 'force certain behaviours'. It is disgusting not just because it is racist, sexist, etc in and of itself, but precisely because it then leads people to in the present day or retroactively label things as 'DEI' (or whatever term you want) when they are not. In 2010 maybe 2% of the conversation online or in MSM would ever claim a black actor was in a film or TV show as a token. Now its more like 70%, even if they are obviously there off the back of their talent. I recall a recent example of this I had, where someone claimed Michael Clarke Duncan was a diversity hire on Daredevil 2003 when in reality he was the ONLY actor in Hollywood who had the skills and physical size to play the Kingpin at the time. Hopefully in the near future this will change back to how it used to be when society was in a healthier place.
'And the “disabled saint” trope doesn’t solve this either, because it still treats disability as a symbol of something—wisdom, inner strength, moral purity—rather than something mundane or simply part of a person’s existence. Not to mention, any "heroic" examples will be usually in a mentor/assistant/sidekick role.'
This is rather unfair. In the context f genre fiction (sci-fi/fantasy/superheoes) there is a massive emphasis upon action. Doctor Who involves running away from monsters. Marvel involves punching and kicking. Lord of the Rings involves armoured up armies clashing. There is therefore a pragmatic reason as to why characters with physical disabilities that would compromise the story's ability to generate action set pieces wouldn't be at the forefront. Therefore support or mentor roles become the next best thing for them. In stories that don't prioritise action that's different, but that is also simply not the majority of the most popular franchises and never has been. That being said there is something to be said for characters like the Hulk who have a mental disability (no, not his destructive anger, his DID).
The disabled saint trope was the clumsy attempt to counterbalance what came before, but it was an important stepping stone for more nuanced representation later which did address the issue.
There are way more characters than just Xavier and Oracle. They alone didn't fix the problem but they absolutely controdubted to it. Xavier was far from a saint' he was shown repeatedly to be a good man but also a flawed man. The why of Oracle's existence is irrelevant. She was a vey well rounded character who was disabled to the point where most people were pissed off in 2011 when they undisabled her. I don't know wtf is going on with her right now but modern comics is a shit show for far too many reasons.
I'm not going to defend RTD's particular decision, but I am a bit miffed by the definitive tone you're using—because the issue is far from “fixed,” and I think you might be misunderstanding the core problem with the trope. I'm sorry for the length of this reply, but the issue is important to me.
You're right that the "disabled villain" or "evil is deformed/disfigured" trope saw reduced usage by 2008 and is generally less prevalent now—but it still shows up where it counts, and it can still be damaging. 300 came out in 2006 and was a successful major motion picture with a depiction of disability that would make 1999's Wild Wild West say, “Whoa there, that’s a bit much.” The Bond franchise can’t seem to quit this trope no matter the year—just count the number of villains with "signature" abnormalities; it’s practically a trope within a trope. Voldemort in Harry Potter is one of the most recognizable villains of the last 30+ years. Snoke? 2018. Those are all relatively recent big cultural depictions.
I also think you're vastly underestimating its impact—especially on the subconscious. Significant disability, scarring, or deformity is still mostly reserved for villains. When heroes are scarred, it’s usually minimal—because they still need to be attractive and, more importantly, relatable.
Ask yourself: would the audience accept a Doctor-like figure who looks similar to Davros? Or even a version of the Doctor who, due to regeneration complications, is a wheelchair user—yet is otherwise conventionally attractive or just unremarkably human? If not, then no, the trope hasn’t been “fixed.”
Because if making the main hero disabled seems implausible or risky, or gets called DEI/pandering, but giving those traits to a villain is just considered “flavor” or “depth,” then we’re still very much stuck in the same pattern. Because the core issue isn’t that people once literally equated disability with evil and have since “moved on”—it’s that the trope continues to reinforce the idea that disability is “weird,” “other,” and not relatable. Because it’s still used, to this day, to reduce a villain’s relatability compared to the designated hero.
And the “disabled saint” trope doesn’t solve this either, because it still treats disability as a symbol of something—wisdom, inner strength, moral purity—rather than something mundane or simply part of a person’s existence. Not to mention, any "heroic" examples will be usually in a mentor/assistant/sidekick role.
And a few characters like The Oracle or Professor X, while important, don’t fix the issue. Xavier was clearly created on a juxtaposition - "let's make a guy who is weak physically but has mind powers to compensate", Oracle was a valiant attempt to keep Barbara Gordon after the Killing Joke, and I remember a vocal backlash about that sometime during the 2010s (wasn't she "cured" in like 2012? What's her status now, because I genuinely don't know?)
'I also think Tyrion Lannister is a better example of how to do it well - his physical situation informs his character, but it's not his whole deal, and he's a pretty nuanced person. '
So just like Xavier, Oracle and Davros.
'Most of them are still created by non-disabled writers who treat disability as something exotic'
I'm sorry but I just reject this argument in the first place. There are lots of disabled characters and in my experience their disabilities are NOT treated the way you describe. We might simply be consuming different media.
Regarrdless, my central point was this.
RTD's argument was that Davros cannot look like Davros anymore because it harms disabled people by making people in real life treat them worse and making disabled people feel bad about themselves. But the argument was false. Across the last 50 years no body did actually treat disabled people badly because they consumed media involving Davros or characters akin to him and most disabled people didn't feel bad about themselves for similar reasons. Disabled people could feel GOOD about good disabled characters, but characters like Davros did not make them feel bad.
RTD's efforts in regards to Davros were therefore ill considered and reductive to the character and world building.
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