This week's Doctor Who episode is an adventure into the past, at a pivotal point of history.
What makes it unusual is that it's a pivotal point in American history and a relatively recent one at that.
This is not the distant history of the signing of the Magna Carta ("The King's Demons" from 1983) or the ancient history of the destruction of Pompeii ("The Fires of Pompei" from 2008).This is story from history where the principal figure was alive until 12 years ago. This is a story about an event that precipitated legal and social changes in a struggle that is still pretty much unresolved today.
Today we'll look at what happens when the Doctor and her friends meet Rosa Parks.
More after the break. Beware of spoilers, OK?
Rosa
by Malorie Blackman and Chris Chibnall
The episode opens in 1943. Rosa Parks' attempt to board a bus by the front door is rebuffed by the driver who then drives away before she can enter the back door reserved for black people.
We jump to 1955 and we see that the black men and women of Montgomery are still dealing with this system of enforced racism.
Then the TARDIS appears.
This is the Doctor's 14th attempt to get her friends back to Sheffield. So I presume there may be 13 adventures that can be covered in the comics and Big Finish audios.
At least they are on Earth. Just the wrong continent and the wrong century.
The Doctor discovers a mystery, the presence of artron energy in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, the energy that can power time travel such as that used by the TARDIS and other time travel thingies.
The Doctor and the gang go out to investigate but immediately run into a racially charged confrontation when Ryan attempts to return a handkerchief that at a white woman dropped; for his trouble, he gets slapped by her husband. The situation is defused by Rosa Parks who then warns Ryan to watch himself; it's only been a few months since Emmett Till was murdered for the temerity of speaking to a white woman.
Our foursome gets kicked out of a restaurant when the waitress reminds them they don't serve black people or (looking at Yaz) Mexicans.
What we have here is something fairly unique in Doctor Who. Two prior companions of color, Martha Jones & Bill Potts were the targets of racists comments in excursions to the past but they were at best what one might describe as "light to moderate racism". What Ryan and Yaz encounter is a far more harsh and sadly a far more realistic racism, one that genuinely hurts them and inhibits their ability to be of help to the Doctor. And even more, Ryan and Yaz observe Rosa Parks' actions did not "fix" racism. Things got better, yes, but back in their present day in 2018, Ryan and Yaz still face racist comments and actions.
Meanwhile, the Doctor has found another time traveller, a dude from the future named Krasko, oufitted with a vortex manipulator and other tech. Krasko is on a mission to stop Rosa Park's date with history, from switching our the bus driver, sabatoging the bus and interfering with the bus route to keep passengers from getting on the bus.
Here's what happened in history: Rosa Parks was on a bus. The bus was full with more white passengers than seats. The law of the day was that black passengers must cede their seats to any standing white passengers or face arrest. Parks' act of defiance was to not do that. She kept her seat and the bus driver called the cops and she was arrested.
Krasko is working to manipulate events to keep any part of that from happening. If the bus is less full, for example, the circumstances of Rosa Parks' defiance don't occur. History is changed.
The Doctor and her friends are working hard to re-manipulate events back to what history dictates. Except the bus is not quite full enough. The Doctor and Graham fill out the needed quota of white people to force the bus driver to force Rosa Parks to give up her seat. Graham is particularly disturbed by this turn of events. In 2018. he was married to a black woman. The whole system of enforced racism is anathema to him. But he is forced to stay on the bus to keep the sequence of events in place as Rosa Parks is arrested. The Doctor and Graham are forced to be complicit in Rosa Parks’ oppression to insure time moves forward as it should.
Life for Rosa was not good after that. As the Doctor notes in the episode's aftermath, her arrest led to the loss of her job and her husband was also fired, leaving them to face economic hardship. But it was a crucial event that led to a city wide boycott of the Montgomery bus system that forced a change to desegregate buses. Rosa Parks' singular act of courage radiated beyond Montgomery, leading to progress in black civil rights not just in America but around the world.
This is a very intense episode that engages the viewer not just to watch but to feel the weight of this oppressive society. Whenever some angry white man looms large over some black person for the purpose of making that person feeling small, feel worthless, the shame of the moment is visceral. Shame at the white people mired in their ignorance, hate and fear, shame for the black men and women who seek nothing more than to just live life, in freedom and with respect.
Vinette Robinson brings Rosa Parks to life with a quiet strength that is starting to wear a bit thin. By starting the episode in 1943 before we pick it up again in 1955, we see that Rosa Parks has been putting up with this crap for a very long time. Despite her optimistic perspective of looking towards tomorrow, each day is much like the one before, When the bus driver yells at Rosa to give up her seat for a white man, the look on her face says so much: she has had enough but she will face what comes next with dignity and resolve.
The power and the importance of the moment is underscored with Audra Day's "Rise Up", a powerful piece of music.
Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor faces a brutal fact of her time travelling existence. Krasko’s interference in Rosa’s timeline is a puzzle to be solved and a problem to be put right. But as the Doctor sits there in that bus seat, the look on her face betrays an torment bubbling below the surface. This is not just a puzzle and a problem, this is an event in a singular person’s life. It’s an important even to human history but in the moment, in that heartbreaking moment, it’s not history, it’s life. And life as it 's happening can hurt.
For all the weight of this episode, there is some lightness.
When Graham admonishes the Doctor for writing on a hotel wall, he says “You’re not Banksy!” And she replies, “Or am I?” The idea that the mysterious, anomynous street artist known as Banksy might actually be the Doctor is funny. It also makes sense. Gee, I wish Banksy really is the Doctor.
Ryan attends a meeting with Rosa Parks that includes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He keeps referring to them out of habit by their full names. “Yes, Rosa Parks.” “Thank you, Martin Luther King.”
Graham tells a police officer he’s Steve Jobs and he’s in town to sell an invention, a new kind of phone that is also a camera. The policeman thinks this is stupid. Graham also puts his arm around the Doctor’s shoulder to sell that they are a couple.
Any oddities associated with the Doctor or her friends is just chalked up to them being British. Time travelers? Visitor from outer space? Nah, they’re just being Brits.
We do get some continuity to past episodes.
Krasko’s vortex manipulator is like the ones used by Jack Harkness, River Song and Missy.
The Doctor’s description of a vortex manipulator as “cheap and nasty time travel” is how Missy described it back in Series 9.
Krasko did time in Stormcage penitentiary, the same prison where River Song was incarcerated.
The weak point of the episode is Krasko. Thanks to a plot device in his head (some kind of mental inhibitor put in his head when he was released from Stormcage), Krasko can’t kill anyone. So instead of just shooting Rosa Parks, he has to manipulate events to keep her act of civil disobedience from taking place. He’s there create the obstacles for the Doctor and friends to overcome but otherwise, he lacks any development. When Ryan dispatches Krasko into the past with one of Krasko’s own weapons, we hardly miss him.
I’ve read some other reviews that summarize Krasko as a white supremacist from the future. He does sort of spell that out when he tells Ryan his mission to stop “your kind”. But I suspect Krasko may have been speaking more broadly, of his Ryan’s “kind” as human, not black. Krasko’s is using humanity’s racism as a tool to stop humans. A world still divided by racism is not a unified world that will make it to the stars and be a force to be reckon with.
Or maybe Krasko is just a friggin’ racist. Since Krasko wasn’t killed but zapped to somewhere in the past, maybe the Doctor and friends will encounter him again and we’ll find out for sure. Maybe by then he will find some character development.
But overall, Rosa is a strong entry, not just for this new season of Doctor Who but in the history of the show. This is an episode that gave made us laugh , made us feel, made us think.
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