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Spoilers Rosa grade and discussion thread

How do you rate Rosa?


  • Total voters
    99
Maybe if he actually were an evil criminal mastermind, then yeah, preventing Rosa Parks her historical bus ride is a bit of a random idea for an evil plan. But he's not a criminal mastermind, he's just a douche intent on making life miserable for someone.

I agree with this thought and the notion that his motivations were clear. He's just a racist who thinks other who don't look like him have equal rights and can compete with him. Motivation-wise he's covered.

However, that all said, the fact that he was so neutered and really couldn't do much other than disrupt the bus schedule really reduced his impact as a character. The fact that plot was to restore the bus schedule with passengers was also wearing. I would have preferred a more menacing bad guy who could've done more would've been more interesting. It's just basically storytelling principles.

The dude just disrupted the bus schedule, tried to keep it off-track, and then was zapped out of there. Really just a plot device.

I did like the character moments and the menacing impression that the time period made.
 
And the asteroid named for Rosa Parks. Also, historical record.
That asteroid reference struck me as a very crude, quite irrelevant way to end another "meh" episode. So a few Earth people decided they want to call a hunk of inconsequential space rock Rosa Parks. That's changing the universe?

So far, I'm still waiting for the show to reel me back in, and it hasn't happened. I have no problem with a female Doctor, but this one doesn't do anything for me. She's just more Tennant/Smith/Capaldi wackiness. I would have liked a change of pace, like a Doctor who's a little more staid and elegant, with a droll and understated sense of humor, sort of a throwback to Jon Pertwee's Doctor. Or John Steed, Emma Peel or Roger Moore's James Bond. Or like Higgins in the original Magnum P.I. The classic series had a wider range of Doctor personalities, including more serious ones. For that matter, Paul McGann's Doctor was also quite serious. Don't like her voice, either. I swear that any time she says anything, my mind flashes back to Jane Leeves as Daphne in Frasier. Come to think of it, I think I would prefer Daphne's slight obliviousness to yet more frenetic clownishness. Can we get a Doctor as the straight man (woman) with silliness delegated to the companions instead?
 
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I just watched it with hubby tonight. I really liked; hubby thought it was a bit too full of exposition -- too much like an After School Special.

I found it rather touching --something for both the adults and kids, but still not too hokey. I was actually a bit put off when I first heard about the episode --I thought it was too important, too serious a topic to be handled on Doctor. However, I was very pleased with it. I have it 8/10.
 
A lot has been said already, so I don't have much to add.

I found this probably the most frightening episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen.
This was all too real, horrifying and depressing.

I find it upsetting that people are complaining about message episode, look at the world.

This is a message that still needs repeating today.

I voted Oh, Brilliant even though I found the end scene in the TARDIS a bit odd. Mainly who it was filmed making feel like they were staring off-set.

The Banksy jokes were amusing and gave the episode a bit of lightness, because mainly it was pretty grim.
 
I thought the same thing! That the show was sorta trolling the “fans” who were screaming to high heaven about a female Doctor.

It was?


Oops. Had included your quote by accident and got caught up between responses. Didn't mean to confuse, mostly because I was myself at the time. :blush:

Why do people think he needed more motivation? He explained his motivation quite clearly. He's just another loser who blames his failures on the fact that people who don't look like him have a place in society, and assumes he'd be more successful if they weren't free to compete with him. The thing about racists is that their motivations are very simplistic and their worldviews aren't that interesting.

Many people are conflating motivation as narrative depth, while using sentiment to coast on. The villain is still underdeveloped and flat. He could have been far more compelling. He is racist - that was explained clearly, that's obvious. But letting the audience coast on that instead of having a more structured narrative to tell an even better story involving the villain. He still came across as being throwaway and secondary. He's barely in it. In which case all we need is a 3 minute story telling just his scene and it would be no more or less effective than in a 49 minute one. I believe that is the real issue, the lack of use?

I maintain the story would have been better if the Doctor and crew dealt with him instead of contriving Rosa's situation, which DOES trivialize and diminish dignity from both Rosa and Doctor. The episode is still "first draft", regardless. Heck, we don't even see MLK saying anything. It's all implied. The writers did not take much creative liberty or risk and played it safe. That's written all over the episode. Of course, how risky should it be?

If the villain returns, then there's an arc worth having and there are plenty of reasons for him to not have ended up where he was allegedly zapped to and even the most pedestrian explanation would suffice. If he doesn't, then he was used rather underwhelmingly and was a real missed opportunity.

I massively disagree. I loved her tweaking of Graham about being Banksy.

Who is Banksy? The British graffiti artist?

I think she ran the screwdriver for a bit before it overheated, so I think she triggered it to do that

ROTFLMAO

Isn't it obvious? How else would we have known there was a 12-year time jump between the opening scene and what followed? After all, the TARDIS hadn't arrived yet, so we couldn't have gotten that information in dialogue.

Plenty of possibilities. Very simple to do, actually.

"Now?" The Doctor's been using the screwdriver as a tricorder ever since the new series began, and it's never had any kind of readout. It's implicitly been telepathic all along -- either that or it was conveying information through the sound pattern it gave off.

Yes, "now". NuWHO is still NuWHO. 2005-present. It's use has just been ramped up.

At least the new one actually does have a opening on the side with lights inside, and the way Whittaker looks at it makes me think there actually is supposed to be a visual readout in the side now.

Yes because the wireframe design allows that by design. And how many lights are there? More than 4, depending on how much data is being conveyed.

And then the other problem if recreating Gallifreyan technology with Stenza crystals and AA batteries that allows all the previous 2005-present technology PLUS teleportation as told in the season opener...

Umm... you're blaming Chris Chibnall for things that have been typical of Doctor Who since before Chris Chibnall was born.

Nope. The sonic screwdriver was never used as a tricorder, bacteria detector, and other complex things prior to 2005. It certainly wasn't whipped out half a dozen times or more during the course of a story either. The show tried to legitimize it by saying "It's like a sonic swiss army knife". Fine and dandy, let's just swallow anything no matter how shallow. And no worries, when "The Time Monster" had the Doctor building a device that could jam the Master's control box housing Kronos with a booze bottle and corks and forks was equally stupid. It's 2018 now, not 1972. Shouldn't we see more writing of sophistication from storytellers nowadays and fewer throwaway cop-outs?

That's racism 101 -- buying into the belief that your problems are the fault of people who are different from you. Of course it doesn't make sense, but it's hardly a new or unprecedented idea that racists think that way.

No argument from me on that.

It may not even have been a reference, just a parallel story device. I saw someone elsewhere assume it was a reference to Spike's control chip in Buffy. The idea of an implant that prevents people from committing violence didn't originate with Blake's 7, and it has no unique claim to it. It might've been a wink in its direction, but it could've just been an independent use of a shared trope.

Very much agreed.
 
I'm not sure I wanted any more info on the bad guy tbh. I mean if you came up with some heart wrenching background that showed there are two sides to every story type thing then fine but it felt like he was just your garden variety serial killer, racist. I didn't need a whole American history X of showing him falling in with the wrong crowd, going to jail etc. Not if you still want to do the whole Rosa Parks history thing. I think he was a villain who served his purpose for this story, nothing more and nothing less.
The use of the sonic didn't seem any worse than it has since Who came back so I'm kind of, not accepting but over that. She didn't wave it round like a weapon so that's something.
 
Over on Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston posted ten thoughts on the episode, and his first point leaves me scratching my head.

Quoting: "The episode is called Rosa -- not just a reference to Rosa Parks, the American Civil Rights icon. It is also a reference to the very first episode of the revived Doctor Who -- Rose."

What the foxtrot is Johnston on about? The episode title, and the episode itself, had foxtrot all to do with Rose Tyler and her eponymous episode. Did anyone else spot links to "Rose"?
 
^Yeah, that's a reach. Sometimes people (often including professional reviewers and scholarly critics) are far too quick to assume that a similarity proves a deliberate reference. They mistake their own noticing of a similarity for the creator's intention to include that similarity, and that's pure solipsism.
 
The last time I teared up with Doctor Who is when David left. This whole episode has me completely upset and ashamed of the past. This needs to go down as one of the greatest episodes ever. Plot be damned. I hoped Krasko would be a time agent like Jack but alas. But still... This was powerful. A++
 
I hoped Krasko would be a time agent like Jack but alas.

Hmm. I just realized... We know the names of exactly two inmates of Stormcage Containment Facility, River Song and Krasko. And both of them obtained vortex manipulators somehow. Okay, two examples is not enough to prove a pattern or a conspiracy -- and of course the sample of far-future prisoners that we know of in the present has a massive selection bias in favor of time travelers -- but it does make me wonder.

I do wish they'd had Krasko be from the 51st-52nd century, because that's when the previous known users of vortex manipulators were from and when Stormcage was from. It's hard to believe the exact same tech and the exact same prison are still around 2,700 years later. Of course, the fact that VMs are time-travel devices kind of resolves that objection where they're concerned, but having the same prison still in use is implausible.
 
I'm not sure I wanted any more info on the bad guy tbh..

It's not that we need more information about him. He and his motivation were sufficiently explained. He's a racist from the future who thinks civil rights is where things went wrong.

We needed more effective use of the villain in this story. He was not menacing at all. His plan involved disrupting the bus schedule. Just something more there would've been nice.

So, not more information about him. More effective use of him to make him an interesting character who is more dynamically involved with the story.
 
Did anyone else spot links to "Rose"?
It did pass through my head the name Rosa is basically Rose with one letter different, but otherwise no.
We know the names of exactly two inmates of Stormcage Containment Facility, River Song and Krasko. And both of them obtained vortex manipulators somehow.
It always bothered me, we know River possessed an illegally obtained Vortex Manipulator, yet the people at Stormcage never returned it to the Time Agency.
 
Over on Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston posted ten thoughts on the episode, and his first point leaves me scratching my head.

Quoting: "The episode is called Rosa -- not just a reference to Rosa Parks, the American Civil Rights icon. It is also a reference to the very first episode of the revived Doctor Who -- Rose."

What the foxtrot is Johnston on about? The episode title, and the episode itself, had foxtrot all to do with Rose Tyler and her eponymous episode. Did anyone else spot links to "Rose"?
It might have had some basis on truth if it had at least been the second episode. But the third, I don't think the "parallel" works at all.
 
Over on Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston posted ten thoughts on the episode, and his first point leaves me scratching my head.

Quoting: "The episode is called Rosa -- not just a reference to Rosa Parks, the American Civil Rights icon. It is also a reference to the very first episode of the revived Doctor Who -- Rose."

What the foxtrot is Johnston on about? The episode title, and the episode itself, had foxtrot all to do with Rose Tyler and her eponymous episode. Did anyone else spot links to "Rose"?
Wow, there's grasping at straws and then there's whatever bull crap Johnston is trying to stick to the wall (mixed metaphors seem appropriate here). :lol:
 

100%? I don't know. You would have to ask the writers. All I can say is account for are my own personal thoughts on the matter and to me, it looked like they were putting bigots on display in Doctor Who featuring the first female Doctor that many "fans" took issue with because she is a woman--the very definition of bigotry.

So, yeah, it went through my mind.
 
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