It’s that time again when we go on a time traveling adventure with The Doctor. Last week on Doctor Who, we were in the mist of an intergalactic race. This weeks episode is set in the past and has a very important message attached.
As always, Spoilers ahead.
Here goes, my Five thoughts on Doctor Who’s “Rosa.”
1, Doctor Who, History Teacher
Back in 1963, when Doctor Who first started in the U.K., Sydney Newman, the then head writer of the show wanted it to not feature any aliens or monsters, he wanted it to be a history lesson for kids and to teach them a thing or too. Well we have our first ‘past’ based episode this week, going back to the 1950s in southern America.
This is the first time we see our time team having to deal with the notion that they can travel in time, as they are trying to get back to where we started, Sheffield 2018. After 14 attempts to get where they need to go, The Doctor detects artron energy (same energy as the TARDIS) in the area, coming from a device, so she decides to go check it out. On arriving in Montgomery, Alabama, we are shown what the times were like for people of color, segregation on the buses and being treated horribly. This is a very bold move for Doctor Who, and I feel it paid off, telling history how it was, so we all can learn and make today a better place.
This is shown when walking down a street, the Doctor and the team walk past a couple, to which the women drops her gloves. Ryan, showing he’s polite and just wants to help, goes and picks up her gloves, to which point he gets into an argument with the man, who slaps him away, this was very powerful and very upsetting but is showing what went on in this time period.
2, Rosa Parks
The main focus for this episode is Rosa Parks, and features the events leading up to the the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The episode starts with Rosa being told to enter a bus the ‘right’ way, which back in the 1950s, in Alabama, people of color had to pay in the front and enter at the back. The one thing I did feel this episode needed, surprisingly, was more Rosa, we did’t see much of her at all and I would of liked a bit more of an interaction between her and The Doctor. In a previous Doctor Who episodes, 2005’s “The Unquiet Dead” we have a interesting meeting with the Doctor and Charles Dickens, this is what I would of wanted for this episode.
There was however a few meetings and occasions that did stand out for me; the first was when Yaz and Ryan are hiding away from a police man while the Doctor and Graham distract him from finding them. They talk about how life is different for them (or not so) in modern day times to being in the 50s, showing that things on the surface may have changed yet they do still get harassed because of their skin color. Another scene was when Ryan followed Rosa back to her house and asked about joining her cause and trying to help out. In doing so he is invited to a meeting where he meets Rosa’s husband and Matin Luther King Jr. He brings up is grandmother and how she would of loved to of met him. I feel that this was again a nice touch as after Rosa got arrested the night of December 5, King led the boycott.
3, Two time Rivals
I feel very much let down by the villain this week. We have Krasko (Josh Bowman), a lost time fugitive. His main motivation is that what Rosa does on December 1st changes everything and he’s intent on stopping it. However he can’t just go and kill Rosa as he has a chip implanted in his head which means he can’t kill, so he has come up with a device which, when shot at someone, deplaces them in time. I personally feel that this villain was very underused, as the Doctor and Krasko had a number of stand offs in the episode, these however did fall flat to me. They did however drop a number of what could be drescibed as Easter eggs, as he was kept in a prison which River Song (the Doctor’s wife) was kept in, plus he was wearing a vortex manipultor, a device once worn by River Song and Captain Jack Hakrness.
Continued belowThere could of been numerous ways he could of been used, or had connections to previous Whoniverse lore. This brings me to my next point.
4, It’s the small Things
The premise of this episode, as well as dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, it also dealt with the notion that it’s the small things that matter. For example if James F. Blake didn’t arrive for work that morning or if Rosa decided to walk back home from work instead going on the bus, then the Boycott might never of happened. I am on the fence with this as a plot point, as I stated above the villain was underused, and I feel he could of been a more menacing foe. I mean if he wanted to disrupt the cause of history, Martin Luther King was also in town, he could of targeted them both.
To this effect the episode played catch up most of the time, our time team was trying to fix everything that Krasko was destroying.
5, Making a stand
Once the Doctor and the gang had made sure that everything had been put on track and Ryan had teleported Krasko to another time using his own weapon against him, it was the moment of truth. Getting Rosa on the bus so she could make her stand and start a movement that would change the universe. What I did like about this was the end, when the time came to make a stand, the Doctor told the group to not do anything and just watch history unfold and unfold it did.
Coming from a modern point of view I like how informative this episode was and how it was about normal people doing what is right, little things do matter. A nice touch at the end featured the Doctor showing Graham, Ryan and Yaz, the Rosa Parks asteroid, and the moment when Rosa was given the congressional gold medal which read ‘Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement.’
It was an emotional ride and a very hard hitting important episode, next week we will finally get back to Sheffield, and arachnophobic people beware, there will be spiders in “Arachnids in the U.K.” written by Chris Chibnall.
