Doctor Who (2005) 11-03: Rosa (Quick Review)

Episode:

843

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Serial:

279

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Writer:

Malorie Blackman and Chris Chibnall

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Air Date:

21-Oct-2018

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I've got another relatively brief Doctor Who review for you! It's all opinions, no recap, and like the shiny text says it's for an episode called Rosa.

The shiny text also claims that it was written by showrunner Chris Chibnall, continuing his streak of writing every episode this season, and Malorie Blackman, who's new to the series. I was going to make a dumb and shameful joke about her being both the first Blackman and black woman to write for the series, but it turns out that the situation's more depressing than that, as she's apparently the first non-white writer that the TV show has ever had. Still, I can't say that the Rosa Parks episode was a bad time to bring her on board.

This is the first celebrity pseudo-historical of the Chris Chibnall era, arriving right on schedule. Russell T Davies brought in Charles Dickens for his third episode and Steven Moffat had Winston Churchill, so it seems like it's become a tradition now. Hopefully it's a little better than those two stories though. I mean I don't actually know if The Unquiet Dead's any good or not, I've never seen it, I just hope this is better than it anyway.

There will be SPOILERS for this episode below this point and I might mention something that happened in an earlier story too. Like just then when I carelessly mentioned that Charles Dickens was in The Unquiet Dead.

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Before watching, I'd wondered if Rosa was going to be more like Back to the Future, Quantum Leap, or that very special episode of Legends of Tomorrow that dealt with slavery, and the answer is yes on all counts (they even visited 1955... which incidentally was just 8 years before the first ep of Doctor Who). It's a surprisingly novel idea for Doctor Who though, as it has to be the only time travel series where the heroes never put right what once went wrong. Well, what was going to go wrong.

If I had to guess, I'd say that this episode was probably about racism. I spotted clues woven throughout, like in the scene where Ryan and Yaz are in the middle of planning to defeat a time racist, but have to take a quick break to hide from a racist cop and discuss modern racism for a bit instead. It's not the first episode to tackle racism without any sci-fi metaphor, there's been Remembrance of the Daleks and Thin Ice off the top of my head, but this makes those stories seem subtle by comparison. It ain't tiptoeing around.

In the past, the show's shied away from making the past too uncomfortable to the dark-skinned companions, at least in the stories I've seen, but this time they've found themselves in a scary hostile alien world they don't know the rules to, and the episode puts us right there with them.

A lot of people were concerned that the episode would pull a Doctor Who and either completely misrepresent history or have our heroes inspire the historical figure, and it did not. Well I don't think it did anyway, though as a Brit without a particular interest in history my knowledge of Rosa Parks going in was roughly equal to Ryan's. Either way it was clearly treating the subject with a great deal of respect and a keenness to teach about history that I appreciated. I much prefer it when the series does its best to show history as it was and then have sci-fi on top of that, instead of saying 'everything you knew was wrong' or doing something jokey with it.

Plus I'm used to the art and props departments putting the effort in to get things like Rosa's outfit and the bus as close as possible, but I was surprised that to learn that the prologue set twelve years earlier with the bus driving off and leaving Rosa in the street was based on historical events as well. Plus it really was the same driver both times in real life! It's rare to get an 'X years earlier' scene in Doctor Who but I though it made sense in this case as it established what the rules for the buses were and how long this had been going on for. In fact there were a lot of scenes to set up the bus segregation situation and I think the episode really needed them to give context for Rosa's actions as otherwise the whole scenario seems kind of ridiculous.

It was also kind of absurd how every single white American in the episode was so racist they were practically foaming at the mouth, but I've never been to Alabama, in 1955 or otherwise, so I don't know how accurate it was. It would've rang more true to me if some of them were a bit more reserved with their bigotry, but then it would've also felt more real if they'd been using language you don't typically get in family TV. I guess what I really needed was text scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying:

"THIS IS WHAT BASICALLY EVERYONE WAS ACTUALLY LIKE, WE'RE NOT EXAGGERATING FOR THE SAKE OF DRAMA. THOUGH WE ADMIT THAT THE ACCENTS ARE A BIT DODGY."

But even if the episode did tell the truth, it deliberately avoided telling the whole truth. Sure it showed that Rosa was already an activist in the civil rights movement and had met Martin Luther King, but from what I've gathered from my extensive five minutes of research on Wikipedia, the important thing about Rosa's protest was that she was "above reproach", as community leaders had been planning to challenge the segregation laws and start a boycott just as soon as the right person was arrested. In reality this seems like it was more of a 'lots of determined people (including Rosa) making a calculated effort to fix society' situation, not a 'one person sat down and it set the dominoes falling that led to the good future' situation. Though I can understand why the writers would want to keep the story simple, as it let them use Rosa Parks' legend in the same way it was used back then: to inspire people to protest prejudice and take action to make the world a better place. Plus it meant less exposition.

Speaking of people taking action, all the companions got something to do this time, as they were facing a problem they were very suited to dealing with. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if Graham's bus driver backstory was added especially for this episode, as his skills and knowledge are still somehow more proving to be more useful than police officer Yaz's. Though it did help show how crazy things were when a cop was being hunted by another cop for the crime of being in a motel room. Plus I liked Yaz's confusion about what side of the bus she was meant to sit on as it really exposed how arbitrary and senseless the segregation was.

The group have apparently had a dozen off-screen stops by this point, though it's unclear whether they've had a full adventure at each one. Seems unlikely that the Tardis would take the Doctor somewhere she didn't need to be, so they might be up to mid-season 2 now in Hartnell terms, but all we know is that they've been travelling long enough to change their clothes (with the Doctor finding a matching T-shirt in a different colour somewhere). I don't know if they seem any closer knit as a team by this point, but they certainly worked together well. Though I was surprised by how the episode twisted the tone when they got everything in place right at the last moment and found themselves horrified by what they did instead of relieved. There was a real City on the Edge of Forever feel when Graham realised that he had to be the one that Rosa was asked to move for. Better that than having to take the place of the bus driver though I suppose.

I was getting really worried about Ryan when he went off on his own, but he did well in the end too. It's a bit strange how grabbing a gun and going off alone had the exact opposite outcome this time than it did in The Ghost Monument, I kept waiting for that decision to bite him on the ass, but I guess this wasn't going to be the episode to judge a black character for taking action to save the day. Ryan saved the civil rights movement in America by shooting a helpless unarmed white man in the street and then taking his car, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving bloke.

Man, it's been ages since we've had a proper time meddler in Doctor Who and this one was... well, he was a bit crap really. I was expecting there to be a little more to him, but Krasko was just a racist from the future and that was the full extent of his character. The actor could've been replaced with a cardboard cut out with "git" written on his forehead for all that he got to do. Or "git who wants to ruin the future despite the fact this would antagonise the person with the time machine he needs in order to return to it" if it was written really small.

The chip in his head made him the least threatening racist in the episode, but I suppose that was intentional, as he's dangerous because he's sabotaging other people's attempts to make a difference rather than making anything worse himself. I'm sure if he could've just shot Rosa with his time gadget he would've done, but all he's able to do with it is fire wildly to scare people away, so he has to resort to Looney Tunes antics to mess things up. Though he did teleport the cameraman five minutes into the future with a direct hit at one point.

The trouble with him being so pathetic though is that there's no good explanation why the heroes don't just grab him and drag him back to the Tardis to stop him from meddling. And stranding butterfly-effect guy back in the time of the dinosaurs is just asking for trouble!

Also, why did he keep his gadgets in an invisible suitcase on the floor in the middle of a bus depot? I mean that's just weird.

I wish I could say that the Tardis console room is growing on me, but nope. Especially when it's filmed like this, with everyone's in a cheesy pose with the giant iceberg time rotor going up and down in the background. But I've whined enough about the new set and its giant plastic fingers, when the truth is that I'm not really that bothered. I was more concerned that this era of Doctor Who would be a lot like the Davison era, with its ineffective Doctor and crowded Tardis full of underused miserable companions, and so far my fears haven't entirely come true. Though the Doctor's sure having trouble getting her companions back to Heathrow Sheffield. At least there was a fairly good reason for it this time. Plus after watching the classic series I'm so glad that she's got a scanner that tells her the location and date on this console so she doesn't accidentally get caught in the French Revolution again.

It's just a shame really that after all the fantastic shots of South Africa standing in for 50s Alabama, the episode ended with this. For the most part this is a really great looking episode that looks like nothing else in Doctor Who. Though I did notice that they didn't put the Tardis interior behind the Doctor as she was standing in the doorway, which annoys me. Plus I could tell it had the same director as the last episode because of all the extreme close ups at odd angles.

Mark Tonderai has a fondness for putting the camera right up in his actors' faces it seems. I can't say it didn't suit the tone though. Though there was plenty of light comedy in there too and he handled that just fine as well.

Even he couldn't make the ending work though, where the Doctor opens the Tardis doors to reveal that Rosa Parks didn't just help make life better for countless Americans, she also had a space rock named after her! I wonder why the episode neglected to mention that other people who've "changed the universe" like this include: Arthur Dent, Kamen Rider, Donald Duck, Apophis from Stargate, Terry Farrell from Deep Space Nine and Lalla Ward from Doctor Who...

Also while I'm moaning about things, I thought using Audrey Day's Rise Up when Rosa was taken off the bus worked great, but then playing it a second time over the end credits and the next time trailer was a bit daft. This is the only time they've ever done that by the way, to my knowledge, though Earthshock took out the music entirely.

Overall I liked the episode, though maybe a fraction less than the last two. I'd say it's a little better than Rose and a lot better than the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Sub Rosa, though not quite as good as Back to the Future or City on the Edge of Forever. When the series started way back in 1963 the intention was that it would teach people about science and history and I think it's cool that it's finally getting back to that. I'd rather historical episodes encouraged people to check Wikipedia to find out more rather than to find out what really happened.

But they really should've called the episode 'Rosa Parks' like Ryan kept calling her.

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COMING SOON

Doctor Who will return with Arachnids in the UK. I guess they felt that viewing figures were getting too high and decided to cull all of the arachnophobes.

Comments are very much appreciated.