Doctor Who vs. Star Wars vs. Star Trek: who leads sci-fi in disability representation?

Out there, across infinite stars and impossible timelines, three legends stand. Doctor Who. Star Wars. Star Trek. Universes that dared to imagine strange new worlds, rebel hearts, and madmen with boxes—stories that reshaped the face of science fiction and the very dreams of those watching.

But there’s one question these universes rarely ask out loud: who do they let exist? Who gets to stand on the bridge, to wield a lightsaber, to race against time while carrying the marks of disability? Not the scars erased with prosthetics, not the blindness solved with tech, but the real, raw presence of characters who live and lead without needing to be fixed.

This is the heart of science fiction, imagining better futures, braver futures, where heroes rise with their disabilities, not despite them. So across all the galaxies and timelines, who truly leads? Whose stories dare to open that door?

Here, one saga pulls ahead in ways the others still fumble. Doctor Who is the universe where a woman in a wheelchair commands UNIT, where difference isn’t smoothed away by magic or machines, and where time and space bend for everyone.

Star Wars hints at it sometimes, with characters like JB in Skeleton Crew, whose body carries the story of an accident but whose world still speaks little of it. Star Trek, pioneer of so much, often hides disability behind visor tech or future medicine, folding it neatly out of sight.

Let’s step into the TARDIS, board the Enterprise, ignite the hyperspace drive, and analyze this.

Doctor Who: a universe where everyone fits

The TARDIS is many things: a blue box, a ship, and a sanctuary. But above all, it’s a space where anyone can belong. Doctor Who has always been a series about the unlikely, the overlooked, the strange, and the broken shining brilliantly in the chaos of the universe. It’s no surprise, then, that among the great sci-fi sagas, it’s this one that has most fearlessly embraced disability, not as a footnote or a technical problem, but as a living, beating part of its world.

Look at Shirley Bingham of UNIT, commanding operations from her wheelchair with sharp wit, unwavering authority, and no need for the narrative to make excuses for her presence. She isn’t a symbol of triumph over adversity. She’s simply essential.

Look further back, and you find the show’s long-standing dance with mental health, depression, trauma, and neurodivergence. Vincent van Gogh in Vincent and the Doctor is perhaps one of the most tender portrayals ever broadcast of how genius and despair coexist. The Doctor’s own history brims with characters who carry invisible wounds, who live with difference, and who aren’t shunted aside or magically cured.

It’s this seamless weaving of disability into the heart of its universe that makes Doctor Who stand apart. Not with loud declarations, but with steady presence. This universe is vast because everyone fits inside it.

In the Whoniverse, disability isn’t a detail to be explained or excused. It’s part of the adventure, part of the danger, and part of the triumph. It’s a story that says, again and again, you’re needed here, exactly as you are.

Star Wars: myth and silence

In a galaxy far, far away, rebellion burns, dynasties fall, and destinies are shaped by the Force. Star Wars is a saga of mythic proportions, built on heroes and villains larger than life. Yet when it comes to disability, the galaxy often falls into silence.

There are glimmers. JB in Skeleton Crew carries the marks of an accident, her body visibly adapted and her story shaped by that past. She’s the clearest recent step toward bringing disability into the open, and she’s the one who speaks about it most directly.

However, even around her, the narrative moves quietly, leaving those conversations at the margins. Her friends don’t sit with her and talk about what it means. The world treats disability as something to be integrated naturally, almost invisibly, without drawing focus.

Elsewhere in the saga, disability is often masked or rewritten. Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand, Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader, General Grievous’s part-mechanical body—these are visual markers, but the narrative rarely lingers on the human experience beneath.

The prosthetics become tools of war, extensions of power, not moments to reflect on vulnerability or adaptation. Star Wars excels at grand myth, at the dance between light and dark, but it rarely slows down to ask how living with disability shapes a person’s journey beyond the battlefield.

Star Trek: the future that leaves things behind

Out among the stars, aboard ships that explore strange new worlds, Star Trek has long been hailed as a pioneer of inclusion. It dared to imagine a future where humanity overcomes prejudice, where diverse cultures work side by side, where peace is the ultimate mission. But when the conversation turns to disability, the shining decks of the Enterprise fall oddly quiet.

There have been moments. Geordi La Forge, the brilliant engineer of The Next Generation, is blind, but his VISOR allows him to see wavelengths far beyond human limits. It’s an extraordinary concept, yet one that frames disability mostly as something conquered by technology.

Captain Pike, both in the original series and reimagined in modern Star Trek, is perhaps the most striking image, not because he leads with disability but because he stands as a reminder of loss. His condition becomes a symbol of what has been taken away, a figure caught in memory, in tragedy.

The future imagined by Star Trek solves so many challenges through science and medicine, smoothing away the imperfections of the body and folding disability out of sight. This is a universe that has championed diversity in race, culture, and gender with groundbreaking vision but has struggled to give disability the same narrative presence.

Where Doctor Who integrates it into the story and Star Wars edges toward it cautiously, Star Trek often bypasses it entirely, imagining a future where such human realities have been rendered obsolete. And in doing so, it sometimes leaves the quiet suggestion that disability belongs not to the future but to the shadows of the past.

Who truly leads in terms of disability representation?

Across timelines and galaxies, these sagas have shaped how we dream of the future. Star Wars gives us rebellion and myth but still hesitates to let disability step fully into its spotlight. Star Trek shows us a universe where humanity has evolved past so many divides but often envisions a future where disability has been neatly engineered away.

And then there’s Doctor Who. A mad, glorious story where time bends, worlds collide, and every broken, brilliant, hurting, different soul has a place inside the adventure. Here, you can lead UNIT in a wheelchair, paint the stars through your sorrow, or stumble through lifetimes carrying wounds no one sees, and still, you matter.

These stories stretch beyond the surface of representation, diving into the heart of what it means to be part of a world, to stand woven into the very fabric of the universe. They explore whose experiences are seen and whose lives are valued not as decoration or afterthought, but as essential to the beating pulse of the adventure.

They are here to remind us that the stories we tell shape the futures we imagine and the people we welcome into them. In these tales of starships and sabers, of time machines and endless skies, what matters is whose truth is allowed to shine, to lead, to matter in the storm and the stillness alike.

And when the TARDIS hums through the vortex, when the Doctor smiles and says, “Fantastic,” the answer is clear. Doctor Who leads the way.