Spoilers Rosa grade and discussion thread

[The Nth Doctor]

Montgomery, Alabama. 1955. The Doctor and her friends find themselves in the Deep South of America. As they encounter a seamstress by the name of Rosa Parks, they begin to wonder whether someone is attempting to change history.

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Because several people have commented in the last two review threads their desire for a more precise poll, I've expanded it to a ten-point scale. Hopefully this will work better for everyone.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this episode, but like others, I'm also concerned how the episode will present such a seminal moment in history. I don't want The Doctor and her companions to act, directly or indirectly, as some kind of inspiration for Rosa Parks because the history of Parks and the bus strikes are sensitive topics that shouldn't be maligned in any way.

If the story, as suggested by the official synopsis, is purely about The Doctor and her companions stopping someone from the future who is trying to change history, than that story could potentially be presented honorably. Considering Malorie Blackman is the co-writer (along with Chris Chibnall), I want to believe that the episode will treat history with dignity and respect.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm hoping this will be clearer than it currently is in the episode itself, but isn't Rosa Parks and her bus ride an odd event for a villainous time traveller with a nefarious plan to change history to choose? Not trying to take away from the event or its importance, but even if Rosa Parks didn't ride the bus that day, isn't something like this inevitable to happen anyway? It would only have been a matter of time before another black person rode another bus, refused to give up their front seat and get everything moving again anyway. Hell, as it is, there was a similar situation nine years before Rosa Parks had her fateful bus ride, there was Viola Desmond in Nova Scotia, a situation not dissimilar to Rosa Parks.

Yes, Rosa Parks is an important historical figure and she and what she did should be taught to everyone, and as a historical subject for Doctor Who to cover and teach its audience about, I have no objection to getting an episode about her. But the story logic I'm not quite getting at the moment, though hopefully the episode itself will present things a bit more clearer than the promotional material is, admittedly out of necessity of protecting spoilers.

 

[Mr Soak]

It may be Monk-level meddling, rather than Master-level. Basically just change history slightly for shits and giggles.

 

[StCoop]

It may be Monk-level meddling, rather than Master-level. Basically just change history slightly for shits and giggles.

Judging by the early reviews it's Doctor Who vs The Alt-Right and pretty uncompromising in its depiction of Racism. Basically the opposite of the Elvis episode of Legends of Tomorrow.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Early reviews where?

 

[Qonundrum]

If it is about an evil leaper time traveler, I'm already hooked. DW hasn't done that before - let's count:
1. The Monk: He changes history for a whim, causing changes in war outcomes and other nasty things or depositing money in a bank and moving forward in time to collect the interest, and wanted Shakespeare to get television... reminiscent of Q in some ways.
2. The Rani: She wanted to change history just so she could further her own chemistry experiments
3. The Master: Apart from "The King's Demons" he's never actively meddled with time and history like this.
4. War Chief: kidnapped humans from various time periods and wars to play war games to help an alien race build a galactic-sized army

Plenty of room for others and for any number of reasons. And not always Time Lords, Daleks and other species can time travel. Hmm, if the Stenza are the big bad this year and there are hints that may be the case, what if they can or are learning how to time travel and there's more going on than meets everything shown? Which explains everything, even the Doctor falling from orbit through a train car, not feeling ill until much later in the episode inexplicably rather than at the time, since she may have been intercepted by the Stenza while falling (sounds familiar does it? ) and being mind-probed or something, without the human companions since she technically wouldn't have met them under those conditions. That's just a wild guess.

If the show had any historical research done, they would ideally mention Claudette Colvin. Been hearing her name more lately. And one of her quotes, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all."" That is something to remember. She, like Rosa, has a place in history. Is some credit not due?

 

[matthunter]

Early reviews where?

Yeah, it's unusual for DenOfGeek not to have a spoiler-free review up by now. Nothing at DigitalSpy either... press embargo due to major plot twist? Don't want the Alt-Right slagging the ep before it's aired (if indeed it tackles white supremacy head-on, which it damn well should)?

 

[Samurai8472]

Cautiously anticipating this episode because there's been alot of talk about it. The opening scene is supposed to treat Rosa Parks very badly in some way. I don't know whether that means implied beating or what.

10 More Teasers For Rosa

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/10-teasers-for-series-11-episode-3-rosa-88839.htm

11. “Nah, not that one. Second-hand. Huge mileage. One careless owner.”
12. ****** ***i*******!
13. Both the Doctor and Graham have aliases, and UK viewers will recognize them both!
14. Apparently, the Doctor and a companion are . . . married?
15. *t****a**!
16. Jodie Whittaker almost gets the Colin Baker treatment
17. Guess who else uses that mobile phone!
18. Literally caused me to tear up: “No, no, I don’t want to be **** ** ***.”
19. “Rosa” distinctly shows what “The Ghost Monument” did not: the TARDIS’ time rotor, despite being a jagged crystal column, does move up and down during flight.
20. We can add two more U.S. Presidents to the list of those who have appeared in Doctor Who.

• 3. Did . . . did they just make a joke about the female Doctor not being able to drive the TARDIS? Oh, that is not going to sit well with the Internet.

We'll see how that comes across

 

[Kibbin]

Big step up from last weeks episode. Loved the time meddling from the villain in this one and the Doctor playing escort quest to the time stream. Not sure how much I can say as I don't want to spoil but a big thumbs up for the episode about the first female black bus driver

 

[Jax]

Easily one of the greatest episodes of Doctor Who, that was brilliant and a whole generation of children just learned who Rosa Park was and what she took a stand for

 

[Butters]

Quite a stressful episode to watch, which I suppose was the point. Daleks fine, American law enforcement, I’ll watch from behind the sofa.

My 8 year old loved it, and I didn’t need to tell him who Rosa Parks was, or Martin Luther King. He already knew all about it.

 

[matthunter]

The characterisation is making this - the stories are nowhere near as convoluted or galaxy-shattering (yet) as Moff's era (which is not a BAD thing, a lot of folk struggled to keep up with the twists in stories like The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang). But the TARDIS team's interactions with each other and the folk they bump into are spot-on and add a human warmth that the show sometimes lacks (and was sorely needed here given the ugliness of the other human interactions).

Villain can presumably show up again, since Ryan displaced him further into the past. Not sure if "neutered alt-right snowflake" is interesting enough to warrant another outing though.

Interesting nods to Moff's era with the vortex manipulators and Stormcage (which is where River Song was imprisoned, for anyone who missed it).

 

[diankra]

Avoided all the obvious beats that would have been a bit crass, so thumbs up.

 

[Butters]

Plot point though. I didn’t follow the storm cage guy’s motives. Maybe that was the point too.

 

[Relayer1]

And, despite a few reservations, imho, that was the first good episode of this run.

I have it a slightly generous 8, but it was certainly better than a 7, so I rounded up.

 

[diankra]

Plot point though. I didn’t follow the storm cage guy’s motives. Maybe that was the point too.

He's racist (and probably lots of other -ist). Reckons the end of segregation was the start of 'it all going wrong'.

 

[Kibbin]

The characterisation is making this - the stories are nowhere near as convoluted or galaxy-shattering (yet) as Moff's era (which is not a BAD thing, a lot of folk struggled to keep up with the twists in stories like The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang). But the TARDIS team's interactions with each other and the folk they bump into are spot-on and add a human warmth that the show sometimes lacks (and was sorely needed here given the ugliness of the other human interactions).

Villain can presumably show up again, since Ryan displaced him further into the past. Not sure if "neutered alt-right snowflake" is interesting enough to warrant another outing though.

Interesting nods to Moff's era with the vortex manipulators and Stormcage (which is where River Song was imprisoned, for anyone who missed it).

Didn't realise stormcage was a refrence but I suppouse that shows it was a good reference as it didn't feel the need to hit me round the head and tell me so like a few of Moffat's did. Agree with you on the characterisation selling this one though I think Yas is still a little lacking. They drummed something up for her with the timeline thing and it fit because she's a cop but it still felt like they had drummed something up for her.

Plot point though. I didn’t follow the storm cage guy’s motives. Maybe that was the point too.

He didn't want those blacks to get ideas above their station and figured that this was the source .

 

[matthunter]

I took it to be that he blames "tolerance creep" on Rosa and the Civil Rights Movement. Probably despises the multi-species nature of 79th Century society (this is way past even Captain Jack's time of humanity being so accepting they'll get frisky with anything even vaguely sentient) and thinks that all this started when humanity decided to tolerate racial differences. So nudge history to be less tolerant. He was indeed a stand-in for the Alt-Right, who declare that tolerating blacks and Jews has led to tolerating LGBT people, Muslims and whatever else they lump into "The Other". Like them, he thinks such intolerance hasn't gone away just forced to hide itself, and all it will take is a nudge to bring it surging back to the surface. Like the Doctor, we have to nudge things back.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. While the story was careful in demonstrating that anything The Doctor and her companions did were direct counteractions against Krasko's meddling with history, it still couldn't resist tropes like Ryan being a little too expressive in front of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and The Doctor doing the same on the bus, where we have to suspend disbelief that no one on the bus (particularly Parks) didn't overhear what The Doctor and her companions were saying about keeping Parks on the bus.

The episode did balance the right amount of bigotry in the 50s South without coming off cartoonish and deliberately made sure that both the characters (particularly Ryan and Yaz) and the viewers felt uncomfortable in the face of such bigotry. However, I'm not sure if I quite believe multiple people mistaking Yaz as Mexican instead of Pakistani, but perhaps there's historical precedence for that.

I also wasn't entirely convinced by Krasko's motivations. I get that he was racist, ignorant asshole but did he really think that changing one moment in history would completely change the course of race relations in America, let alone the planet? What Rosa Parks did was momentous and helped set off the Civil Rights Movement, absolutely, but the 50s South was powder keg that was set to go off at any moment. Things were going to change, if not set off by Parks, then by someone else. This is probably my biggest issue with the episode: It predicates that history would be changed significantly if Parks hadn't refused her seat. It would be one thing if it was just Krasko's immense ignorance (which, I suppose, is believable since he's from the far future), but The Doctor double downs on that notion, too.

On the plus side, I did learn one piece of history: The incident depicted in the first scene actually happened. Well, at least in part. It seems the episode embellished on Parks sitting down in a "White" seat in order to pick up her purse and that Blake deliberately kept her from reboarding, whereas according to the L.A. Times article, Parks chose to wait for the next bus, swearing she wouldn't ride on another bus operated by Blake.

Another plus: I really enjoyed Vinette Robinson's performance as Parks with what felt like an authentic 50s southern accent. I was particularly impressed how much she disappeared into the role and I hardly recognized her from previous such as Sherlock and "42."

 

[Kibbin]

Slightly off topic but did anyone else get a James Horner Apollo 13 vibe from the music when she first got on the bus at the beginning?