Story 279: Rosa

In which the TARDIS is drawn off course to materialise in the town of Montgomery, Alabama...

The year is 1955, and the Doctor and her companions experience first-hand the racial prejudices of the country when Ryan innocently picks up a dropped item to return to its white owner. As her husband threatens Ryan, the situation is eased by the intervention of a woman whom they discover to be Rosa Parks.

The exact date is 30th November - the eve of Rosa's public defiance of the segregation laws relating to public transport, where "Coloureds" have to sit at the rear of buses and are denied use of the "Whites Only" seats, even if empty.

The Doctor had discovered that it was Artron energy which had pulled the TARDIS off course - indicating advanced temporal technology is present. She can only assume that this is no coincidence.

They investigate and discover that a young man named Krasko is really a racist ex-convict from the 79th Century. He has a Vortex Manipulator, and has used it to travel to this crucial moment in the history of the civil rights movement to prevent Rosa's act of defiance. He cannot harm her as an anti-violence inhibitor chip was implanted in his brain whilst in prison. 

Instead, he will interfere with the course of events so that Rosa does not take the bus on the evening of 1st December.

The Doctor is able to send Krasko's manipulator into the future along with his other equipment, though he still possesses a weapon which can displace objects in time.

She and her companions must stay in the town to ensure history runs its course. They begin to make friends with Rosa and her circle in order to monitor her safety.

Ryan is invited to her home and is able to meet Martin Luther King and fellow preacher and activist Fred Gray amongst her friends, whilst the Doctor and Yaz give her some seamstress work to do in order to make her acquaintance.

Graham, meanwhile, befriends the bus driver - James Blake - to ensure that he will play his role in events. On learning that Blake won't be working - thanks to Krasko's efforts - the TARDIS crew have to prevent his replacement from being able to work. They send him to Las Vegas after convincing him he has won a trip there.

Krasko also tries to sabotage the bus itself.

All of his efforts fail, and Ryan uses his time-displacement weapon to send him back to the distant past. 

On the crucial evening, the Doctor and her companions board the bus to keep watch over Rosa.

Unfortunately, their presence leads to the bus being fuller than usual - and it is for Graham that Rosa must give up her seat.

Rosa makes her stand, and Blake has her arrested - leading ultimately to the Montgomery bus boycott, a key moment in the civil rights struggle. In the TARDIS, the Doctor shows her companions some of Rosa's celebrated future - including a sight of the asteroid named after her.

Rosa was written by Chris Chibnall and Malorie Blackman, and first broadcast on Sunday 21st October, 2018.

Blackman is a noted Young Adult (YA) author, best known for the Noughts and Crosses series of novels, which present a UK society in which ethnic roles are reversed. She was Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She became the first black writer in the history of the programme.

Fans were aware that a story revolving around Rosa Parks was in production when images appeared on-line of the Capetown, South Africa, filming. The distinctive Montgomery bus, which still exists, had been replicated and was recognised on location.

This triggered concerns as to how the narrative might be fitted into a Doctor Who adventure - the worry being how much involvement the Doctor - a white woman - might have in events initiated by a black woman. To have given the Doctor too prominent a role in events would have undermined the historical figure and her actions.

The solution - having a companion instigate key events purely by accident - works, but throws up a serious problem with this story. 

By preventing the Doctor from becoming involved in any meaningful way, the character is rendered impotent in her own series. We'll see the exact same thing happen later in the season with the Indian Partition story. 

The Doctor is the "hero" of an action adventure series. Whilst it can play around with its form on occasion, the Doctor really has to be a principal figure in any narrative. It wasn't always thus. The Doctor has very little to do in a story such as The Crusade - but that was when the series had a clearly defined hero figure in Ian Chesterton, and we had a Doctor who rarely involved himself in physical action. After Hartnell left the series, the Doctor took on the more dominant role in the narrative - physically so from Jon Pertwee onwards. 

Occasionally the companion might be given a more prominent role - especially since Rose in 2005, when episodes were used to establish a character - but in general the Doctor led.

With Rosa, the Doctor is forced to flit around the edges of her own series whilst guest characters do all the running. Which brings us to another problem - the protagonist.

Krasko is arguably one of the weakest leading guest characters of any Doctor Who story. There are incidental figures in stories, seen only in one scene perhaps, who are better conceived and written. Just look at Griffin the Chef in The Enemy of the World if you don't believe me. He features in a single scene, in a single episode, in a throwaway sequence - included for humour as much as anything else - but we know who this person is from this brief appearance. You could compose a biography of him. 

Krasko is written as a 2018 racist, but supposedly from the 79th Century. In the far future the peoples of Earth will be mixing with aliens of every conceivable shape, size - and colour. His narrow-minded brand of racism simply should no longer exist in the year 8000. As a background to a character, it's badly thought out. Without a realistic motivation for its main protagonist, the story is on a rocky foundation. Making him incapable of violence further weakens his threat.

Rendering him as impotent as the Doctor sets us up for a potentially dull 50 minutes. No-one can do anything remotely exciting on either side, with both characters side-lined.

Luckily, the story has important things to say about racism and intolerance which we can then concentrate on, with some strong guest performances. Chibnall was looking to the original 1963 line-up when he introduced three companions (even if he had an eye on 21st Century diversity when it came to their casting), and he may also have been considering the original intention that the series be educational.

He'll run with this educational notion - but fall foul of the audience when he trips over the border between lecturing and hectoring - over the rest of his tenure. Here, the topics are handled sensitively.

Viewers would have gone off and googled Rosa Parks afterwards.

Regarding those guest performances, Rosa is played by Vinette Robinson. She had previously played ship's medic Abi Lerner in 42 (another Chibnall story).

Krasko is Joshua Bowman. he had been a regular in Holby City before becoming the lead in Revenge. He had just played a young H.G. Wells prior to Rosa.

Playing bus driver Blake is Canadian actor Trevor White. he was recently cast as Harry Potter in the Toronto staging of the Cursed Child play.

Also in the cast, playing a character named Arthur, is Morgan Deare. Like Robinson he had also featured in the series before - but his involvement goes right back to 1987, when he played Hawk in Delta and the Bannermen.

Martin Luther King is played by Ray Sesay, with Fred Gray portrayed by Aki Omoshaybi. Gray was at the time a preacher and civil rights lawyer.

Overall, as a piece of drama this is very well done. As a Doctor Who story, however, it doesn't quite work as the historical limitations get in the way. Perhaps Blackman and Chibnall should have collaborated in a proper TV drama about Parks, rather than attempt it do it within the confines of  Doctor Who. As a prompt to get people to find out more about Parks and these events, it does its job.

Things you might like to know:

• Rosa Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92. Her actions of 1st December 1955 were used as a legal test case, which ultimately led to bus segregation being deemed illegal the following year. Already an activist with the NAACP, she lost her job and received death threats for a long time afterwards, and soon moved to Detroit. Among her awards were the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and on her death she became the first woman to lie in honour at the Capital Rotunda. A number of States officially mark either her birthday or the day of her arrest.
• Fred Gray is a rare example of a living person featuring in a Doctor Who story, something he shares with President Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, the Beatles and Bing Crosby.
• As well as the first black writer, this story is helmed by the series' first black director, Mark Tonderai.
• Instead of the usual closing theme, this episode ends with a song - Rise Up, by Andra Day. It's only the second episode to dispense with the closing theme - the other being Part Four of Earthshock which saw the credits pass in silence.
• Vinette Robinson auditioned to play Padme / Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace in 1999.
• Krasko is said to have been confined at Stormcage Containment Facility, where River Song had been held. He also possessed a Vortex Manipulator, as had she.
• The Doctor refers to him as "Brando" at one point. This is due to his outfit, as Marlon Brando had played the leader of a biker gang in similar gear in The Wild One (1953). This costume should have seen him persecuted by the authorities as it was synonymous with juvenile delinquency and criminality - so not a clever choice by him (or by the producers).