Doctor Who Rosa Review

Well that was… Horrific. On many different levels.

Trying to review this episode is difficult because its a difficult topic. They try to address it in a ridiculously short amount of time. 50 minutes is not long enough to go into any real detail. Add in the pointless time criminal sub plot (seriously what was the point of that guy?) and we have even less.

The problem is I don’t feel like I’m qualified to comment on it. Being English, from the hills of Lancashire and born long after the events in question, it’s not something I have the context to address. Certainly not in a short written review of the Episode in question

Yes I know who Rosa Parks was and yes I know why she was famous. I have the morals to say the very concept of segregation appals me. It’s a vile practice from a time I hope has long since past, but unfortunately still effects people to this day. It is something I would hope to have the courage to have fought against, were I there at the time, and would stand up against today should I be in a position to do so. I didn’t need the episode to tell me this. I most importantly didn’t need this episode to make me feel guilty about it! 

But I wasn’t the audience for this episode of Doctor Who. The audience was the people who are only just learning about this stuff and that’s alright. There are people in this world that don’t know about Rosa Parks just yet that could have watched it. That needs to learn that one woman’s bravery, and her anger, was important.

The problem there is that, again, it was and remains a complex issue that 50 minutes can’t do justice.

For example every “White man”, with the exception of Graham, was a piggishly evil, throughly racist individual to an almost parody level. 

James F Blake, the bus driver, is portrayed as a smirking guiltless monster. A petty little man with a small amount of power that he abuses to an obscene degree. He’s a pantomime villain. From what little research I’ve done this is incorrect. The facts are more that he was overworked, the bus was crowded and he had to follow the law. Now yes, segregation was the real enemy here and Blake wasn’t exactly a hero. He wasn’t a good man, especially by the standards of today, but he was never this monster. Things are never that cut and dry in reality.

One of the problems with that period in the southern USA was that the casual racism was considered a fact of life. It just was. I’m not saying there wasn’t a vindictiveness to it, there was after all the Klu Klux Klan, but that was a minority. Relatively, it was still a number of influential people but there were more moderates. For most it was just one of those facts of life you couldn’t change. What Rosa Parks did was show that you can change it, you can do something about it. The protests (which we didn’t get to see) were not just by African Americans, and other minorities, but by everyone!

The impression left by this episode was if you happen to be Caucasian then you’re the problem. This is blatantly wrong. A lot of people in the civil rights movement were actually Caucasian, they supported a more inclusive world and, like myself today, were horrified at the state of things. These people were also beaten, even hung, for sympathising with their plight. Sometimes much as those they chose to stand with in solidarity. 

Yes, the main movement was by people like Martin Luthor King Jr and yes they were the driving force, but to say it was just as simple as Blacks versus Whites is an oversimplification that I find deeply misguided and not a little offensive. There are other issues; For instance while the bus protest might have eventually removed the segregation there the Jim Crow Laws were still a thing. Separate water fountains for "coloureds", different schools and the like were not changed. Even today there are places that, while the laws have long since been over turned, have actual segregation. Enforced culturally not legally.

These ongoing issues are not involved, not even mentioned. Neither is Claudette Colvin, a young black woman who made the exact same protest as Rosa Parks months earlier, but due to a bit of controversy was not made a focal point for changing the law.

Clever sci-fi, Science Fiction in general, works best with analogy. Taking a lesson from history and transposing it into a fictionalised future. There, one step removed from the subject, we can look at things more objectively. We can oversimplify the issues to get the message across by boiling it down to it’s basics without getting caught up in complications.

We’ve seen this trick done well before. Remember the Oodkind? How they were enslaved and treated as a lower class of life form? That was an analogy of racism. It got lost somewhere along the way, but that was part of their story.

I think a better approach to this would have been to set this story on a colony, or space station in the future, and use clones or vat grown as the minority that is being suppressed. The natural born see the clones as sub human, little more than the cattle and foodstuff they also grown. Then you just take the Rosa Parks story and fly with it. You can even have the Doctor and her companions bring up Rosa as an example to the oppressed and inspire them with it. Free of the uncomfortable realities they couldn't address with the time allowed.

Chris Chibnall and his team wanted to tell an important story, wanted to help educate and inform. These are good things. Hopefully people, inspired by the episode, will research and look into the real histories like I have. Other than that… This was a massive failure. It succeeded in some ways, most noticeably making you feel uncomfortable, but hopelessly naive in others.

So with the history butchered to fit in the narrow time frame… What else is there to say? Good performances, well I’ve said that every episode so far. The villain? Weak, again. A time agent that’s doing something evil. Why? No idea. He’s a racist scumbag is the best we get. Barely one dimensional and utterly pointless. It's a clever plan on the surface, change enough minor things and disrupt something major further down the line. The problem is that Rosa's arrest is only the catalyst. As I've tried to hint at above, there was more going on and a growing pressure to overthrow the segregation for months, if not years, previously. Stop Rosa, somebody else would have just done the same later.

Stoping the death of Franz Ferdinand wouldn't have stopped the First World War, just change the details. 

As it is that’s it. A heavy handed, misguided attempt to tell a story that everyone should know. I admire the bravery, while at the same time despair at the result.

3 out of 13

An easily skippable episode despite it’s heavy premise. Read book instead.