After fifty years on the air, it is easy to forget Doctor Who‘s original purpose. Before Dalekmania, or the toy shops that had multiple iterations of the TARDIS littered on their shelves, Doctor Who was supposed to be more educational than fictional. The first ever episode of Doctor Who did not take place on a distant planet, or a spaceship in the future. Instead, it took us back millions of years into our own history in a bid to teach children about what the world looked like pre-humanity. The companions were Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, and a history teacher—Doctor Who being pitched as an educational history programme. Of course, a lot of time has passed, and a lot has changed. However, the latest episode, ‘Rosa’, seems to have brought the show back to its roots.
Episodes concerning historical figures usually reside in the ‘Eh, it was alright’ category for me. With the exception of ‘Girl in the Fireplace’ and ‘Vincent and the Doctor’, most historical figures in Doctor Who are reduced to over-the-top caricatures. For the likes of Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, or Nixon, their representations have been littered with stereotypes for so long, it is not really surprising to see the more fictionalised versions of these characters on a prime-time family science fiction show; nuance is a difficult thing to display in a guest-star role of a forty-minute run-time. Doctor Who‘s iteration of Rosa Parks, however, is handled a lot differently. Set in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, ‘Rosa’ follows the Doctor and her companions as they try to preserve the civil rights movement in history from somebody hailing from the future, trying to ensure Rosa Parks does not give up her seat to a white passenger on her famous bus ride. Far from the rubber-faced aliens and sonic screwdriving we are to now expect from nu-Who, we are given a story about the preservation of history and the celebration of progress.
The writers had to walk a very fine line in penning the screenplay for this one. If there was too much interference from the Doctor and co., the incredible, brave actions from Parks would have been reduced. Instead, the Doctor’s interaction with Parks was always quite minimal—our TARDIS crew were mostly relegated to behind-the-scenes transport management as Rosa continues on her fated journey. Nobody tells her what impact her actions are going to have on the future, and nobody is in her ear as she refuses to stand. The episode was mostly historically accurate with some nice emotional beats, and I could see a history teacher wheeling it out on the classroom TV if their students were learning about the civil rights movement.
Sometimes, the episode felt a little too forced—Yaz and Ryan had a conversation about modern-day racism that was a little on-the-nose, some inspiring music felt over-the-top at points, and the direction took some strange turns with too many extreme close-ups. The villain was also handled a little strangely. Krasko, a time-travelling ex-con from the future, is played quite well by Joshua Bowman. We learn he was imprisoned, that thousands died as a result of his actions and… that’s about it. His motivations for messing with Rosa Park’s timeline are relegated to ‘He’s just a racist’, which I felt did a disservice to his character. We had already seen the deeply entrenched racism present in mid-century Alabama, making the whole town seem full of danger for our protagonists-of-colour, so I expected a lot more from the episode’s ‘big bad’. I would probably forgive this characterisation if we learned a little more about him in a future episode, but for now, he seemed like a cheap afterthought once the writers decided they wanted to showcase Parks’ story on Doctor Who.
This episode was both a success and a failure to me. It failed in being an episode of the Doctor Who I know, but succeeded at the original intent of the series. After the episode, my social media lit up with stories of adolescents getting emotional at the end of the episode, and I must commend it for handling the subject matter with such grace and dignity. Those who were afraid of Whittaker’s season becoming a ‘social justice broadcast’ may have had those fears doubled down this week, but next week we are treated to killer spiders in Sheffield. As a show, Doctor Who can vary in intent, execution, and subject matter from episode to episode, and for a brief aside into serious territory, ‘Rosa’ was engaging and interesting.
Leave a Reply