Doctor Who is for the British, an iconic part of their pop culture heritage and history. Doctor Who is for nerds, for anyone who has ever wanted to take off in a little blue box and visit alien worlds and times. Doctor Who is for children, who may have to hide behind the couch while watching, but who can share the excitement of TV-induced terror with their family. Prior to that, Moffat said he was worried about casting a woman because of the show’s “Daily Mail-reading viewers,” elaborating… This is the thing with progress: It takes courage. Moffat could have done a whole lot less in pushing Doctor Who into a more representative future — after all, he gave us Missy, a female Time Lord, and I think he has legitimately tried to respond to criticisms that his writing of female characters is often problematic. The question of representation in media is a complicated one, but one part of it that I don’t think is complicated at all is how desperately we need more diverse representation both in front of and behind the camera. Sure, Doctor Who is for Brexit voters, but they’ve had fifty years of mostly white men in front of the camera and almost exclusively white men behind it. As a wise audience member at this year’s Long Island Who convention pointed out during a panel on the subject of the first female Doctor, the people who have a problem with a female Doctor are probably the ones who need to see it the most. A dangerous assumption that is often made in discussions like this one is that diverse characters are only for the people who share their identities. As anyone who is not a straight, white, rich man can tell you, it’s totally possible to empathize with and enjoy a character who has little in common with you, at least when it comes to things like race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. It’s what stories are for: seeing the world through someone else’s shoes.  In this age of late-capitalism desperation, it can be hard to remember: Just because something belongs to someone else, doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to you. However, if you can’t learn to share the sandbox, it’s time for you to go home and play by yourself.