To be fair I didn't become a fan till 2005 so to me the new era is how I define the show. I am not against change or diversity. Just that it needs to hold onto the fun and weird stuff. That is why I reference often to Legends of Tommorow. It has all of the modern sensibilities. While Who is giving us a lecture on Rosa Parks the other is giving us nipple eating unicorns. Not that you can't do Rosa Parks but that episode would have been less dull if it involved nipple eating unicorns trying to get on the bus to attack people. Jason
When doing something a bit serious, you shouldn’t go too far out there, even in Who ( if it’s real history anyway.) but the problem with Rosa is that it tells a story most kids get in school anyway, adds SF elements to make it modern Who, but the bits added make no sense. Modern historically will als have the Hitler in a cupboard problem...The Doctor showing up in any other planets Nazi Germany would immediately overthrow it. Why not ours? Then you need an explanation (he flimsy one usually being ‘fixed point in time’ or something like the Genesis Of The Daleks speech fused with a ‘and you sorted it out in the end didn’t you?’) for why they didn’t. Or you have to have the Doctor help nudge history in the right direction (which they sort of did here) and hope you don’t take anything away from the achievements of real important historical figures. (One of the reasons Classic Who did not touch WW2 until practically the end of its run...it’s too important to people still living at that time.)
The villain in this case use makes no sense, unless you have a grand speech which makes America the single most important country in the development of Earth, só that it’s Civil Rights movement becomes somehow something that leads to a Great And Bountiful Human Empire that somehow let’s in all sorts of aliens and what have you, and Future Space Rascist thinks this is wrong and decides this moment is the one that derails that future history. Which really doesn’t fit well in Who and it’s general avoidance of overt really big history stuff.
What it needed was a smaller, human story, or to go pure historical...a better story would be a time displaced human trying to change history for smaller personal reasons. Or the old Aztecs standby...someone trying to change the culture overnight with future knowledge, and the Doctor having to make sure history unfolds at its correct pace, even if that feels like the wrong thing to do.
(Basically what Demons of the Punjab gets right is that it is this smaller personal story tied to a companion. History is the setting, it’s historical events are not the story, the small personal one is.)
It needed more time to bake, and certainly the question needed asking, not ‘is It right to choose this moment in history to tell people about?’ (Because people should know about it, even if practically everyone does...though that’s probably why Who never does the Gunpowder Plot...we all know how it goes, and it’s far too politically charged to touch in an entertainment show for families.) so much as ‘is this the right moment to do in Doctor Who?’ And if you are determined to do it, a lot more needs to go into ‘how do we make that work?’ And not quite enough went into that. Enough to be respectful and not piss people off yes, but not enough to make it really make sense.
Imagine if you will, that it turns out the villain is an older, time displaced Graham ( a la Amy) who having been separated from the others with Ryan at some other point in the episode actually did see and fail Ryan being lynched (we don’t need to see any of this, because it’s all personal to this older Graham.) and turns to violently trying to bring about the end to segregation using foreknowledge etc. He plans to shoot the police that take Rosa off the bus say, and begin a violent campaign there, Or perhaps it is simply that Older Graham knows it was the same officers that killed ‘his’ Ryan, and it’s a little smaller but will get bigger.
This is antiethical to the peaceful aims of MLK (Who is perhaps friends with the older Graham, not realising his darker purpose.) and the Doctor (Who is responsible for Older Graham’s darker path by inadvertently causing this temporal shenanigans in the first place) and her companions, including the young Graham and still-living Ryan, have to prevent this and find the right place to intervene to make sure Graham and Ryan don’t end up in the situation that creates it in the first place.
Now there is a personal story, personal stakes for the shows characters. There’s a thematic link about peaceful protest and why the Doctor doesn’t interfere in history, how violence begets violence (perhaps we see a future where the whole earth is segregated following the violence that Old Graham creates accidentally spreading across the globe and the knee jerk reaction to that.) and at no point do we need to take anything away from actual historical events or compromise the lead characters (apart from a version of Graham that Graham himself will ultimately deal with perhaps in a way very similar to his role in events in the actual episode. Perhaps he grapples himself and we get the old blinovitch limitation effect going boom and putting things back to ‘normal’ history.) whilst still showcasing an historical event. This also helps build the characters across the series, and ties in with the final episode as we saw it...Graham knows not to go for vengeance, because he’s seen what it did to the other version of him.
That is just off the cuff thinking literally as I typed...but it makes more sense than Space Rascist, and making Ryan into a (gunwielding) killer by proxy.
