Rosa: Ranking - 123

 Rosa

(Series 11, Dr 13 with Graham, Ryan and Yaz, 21/10/2018, showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writers: Malorie Blackman, Chris Chibnall, director: Mark Tonderai) 

Rank: 123

  'When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all people — yes, Black humans as well as white humans, Sontarons as well as Rutans, green Silurians and red Racnoss and blue Moxx of Balhoon — would be guaranteed the deeply alienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where aliens will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.  Where thanks to some time travellers, we are free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last. I might not get there with you. Then again I might because the Doctor has a time machine and time is relative. But whichever of us get there I can see the promised land'.

 

 One of my biggest complaints with the Chibnall era is that while other producers, showrunners and script-editors from other period of DW show how you should feel, this era tells you. Over and over and over again. While the series run by Verity Lambert and Russell T in particular were all about exploring other worlds and times through other people’s eyes and leaving the viewer at home to sigh with relief that they lived where and when they did, the Chibnall era is all about why all the social values of past times were wrong and now is the place to be. Only, weirdly enough, this thought is somewhat undermined by the fact that the here and now is rarely a nice time or place to be – most stories show it to be a potential paradise interrupted by greed, whether it be Donald Trump like presidents, Amazon like businesses, environmental disasters, p’ting aliens run amok in space hospitals or talking frogs. If you were to look at the depiction of 21^st century Sheffield neutrally as just another era (as future generations who didn’t live through this time surely will) then you won’t ever get the sense of comfort and relief you do from 1960s stories when, say, Ian and Barbara finally make it back home (because the 1960s really was one of the best times to be alive – if only because we’re seeing it through Ian and Barbara and later Ben and Polly’s eyes and how much they miss it; none of this lot ever seem that pleased to be home). There’s one story, though, where this desire to tell us what to think comes out tops in a story that no other era and no other showrunner’s technique would have been able to tell so well and where that haranguing, lecturing tone is for once justified. ‘Rosa’ is, on the face of it, one of DW’s simplest plots: all the Tardis team have to do is make sure that the right person travels on the right bus on the right day to create history. But of course that one person isn’t just anyone but Rosa Parks and the history that rests on her shoulders is the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a key part of the Civil Rights movement. Short of the cliché of watching Martin Luther King Jnr give his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, its the most obvious place that the new-look equal-opportunities Who should be going to, especially with two companions of colour in the cast for the first time (in the show’s best and most telling line Yaz’s half-Indian half-white status is seen as so unusual everyone assumes she’s Mexican – by DW standards this time period really wasn’t that long ago but it feels longer ago than the cavemen of the first episode in other respects to our multi-cultural eyes). Usually I like subtlety and the grey area of baddies who are doing wrong things for the right reasons or a Doctor who accidentally makes things worse despite trying to do the right thing, but not here – we need to make out that the racist bus driver is a monster without ambiguity, to have clearcut heroes and villains, to be on the right side of history, for the sake of the audience watching this in 2018 in the middle of race riots and the rise of right-wingers more than 1962. It’s the sort of story we thought we were going to get every week when Chibnall took over and in terms of being told how to think it is, but this era of DW was never quite as on the money again, the baddies never quite as obvious the stakes never quite so high in a way that the audience can understand it and the links between the land we visit and the one we live in while watching this on first transmission never quite this much of a straight line. One of the biggest differences is how well the past is portrayed. Unlike the one-note portrayals of, say, Ada Lovelace or Mary Shelley, Rosa Parks is not an obvious icon. When the Tardis crew first meet her she’s wary at best and grumpy at worst, not prepared to indulge their nonsense of time travel in just the same way she won’t indulge the Montgomery’s idea of segregation. Usually she’s the sort of disbelieving fringe character who would be the first to be eaten in another story for not taking the Doctor’s pleas seriously. Though its probably coincidence I like to think that someone somewhere titled this story simply ‘Rosa’ to contrast so much with the person and episode ‘Rose’ because Rosa is everything Billie Piper’s companion isn’t: she’s wary not open-minded, she’s grumpy not joyous, she’s wary not curious, resigned to her fate where Rose would have ripped the whole universe apart to right one wrong. But both are brave and its that which comes over so well in this story, the idea that Rosa Parks is a heroine of history that changed the world not because she’s a natural do-gooder but because she couldn’t stand it any longer. She’s not a 19 year old shop girl no one listens to either but a respected elder citizen of the Montgomery community and its the shock of what happens to her that spurs others to join her in protest, a revolution started not from idealism or hope that things will get better so much as because she reached the point on a particularly weary day where she couldn’t take anymore. Like many of the biggest moments in human history its a small decision, a tiny point in time, far easier to change than a big battle or an invasion and so more vulnerable to evil time travellers. Watching events unfold, almost in real time, as passengers shift up and down the bus and James Blake, the white bus driver, becomes crueller and crueller, gives you a far better idea of real history taking place than many other DW historicals, showing change to be both accidental and inevitable – if not this day, then some day. Of course it nearly wasn’t this day at all and the simple plot follows Krasko, the time traveller determined to wreck history. While the Doctor expects him to do what so many time-travelling villains in DW have done and try to assassinate the hero, instead he tries to manipulate the villain, changing the world by changing the bus timetable – a typical DW twist on the ordinary becoming extraordinary. Montgomery is well presented on screen, only the fifth time DW has been to America and – against the odds – only the second not to feature the Empire State Building or surrounding district as part of the plot. It’s drab and grey, not unlike the scenes of 21^st century Sheffield as it happens but with a sepia tinge that makes everything seem a long time ago (unique for a historical story, which are almost always about making a long time ago seem now – but right for this one, all about attitudes that feel as if they belong to centuries past even if, sadly often aren’t: I still remember the shock from my childhood of finding out just how close this time was to my own and though we’re another generation or even two later on this story still captures that feel that these events aren’t as long ago as they really ought to be and how these battles are still being fought every day in some places still). With so much waiting between scenes we get more characterisation from the Tardis crew than pretty much any other series eleven story (Yaz, especially, almost feels like a real person at last) and the incidental characters are excellent too – Morgan Deare is far better here than he was in ‘Delta and the Bannerrmen’ 31 years earlier, while even Trevor White makes bus driver James Blake into a believable narrow-minded shouty baddy rather than a caricature. There are, along the way, a few false notes as there always are in this era. Ryan really is becoming unreadably thick and rude, there’s a whole sub-plot involving a suitcase full of time-travelling gadgets that ends up being ignored when the main plot comes into gear and this episode never quite shakes off the atmosphere of being a ‘learning for schools’ episode that’s teaching us first and entertaining us a distant second. So much so you’re half surprised the broadcast doesn’t end with a list of York (well, Sheffield) Notes and further reading material – though as a one-off that’s no bad thing. Indeed, of all the 21^st century DW stories this is the one closest in feel to Sydney Newman’s original vision for the series before the Daleks became so popular – DW as a series designed to educate, to show a way of life that the audience might never have had to contemplate before, to fulfil the BBC’s mantra of making sure everyone is represented on screen. If its a bit simple and black-and-white-ish, like pretty much all other Chibnall series, well for once this works in this story’s favour: anyone siding with the bus driver in this day and age is the problem, not the solution and clearly watching wrong multicultural all-embracing series. Other eras would have done this story better in many ways, been subtler, more complex or had the Tardis crew taking a more hands-on approach to saving the day. But for once they’d have been wrong and for this story and maybe this story only the standard Chibnall approach is the ‘right’ one: this is Rosa Parks’ story, set in a past delivered on screen as exquisitely as DW historicals in any era, while any of the more-hands on Doctors getting involved would only have taken away from the story (I can see this as a 5^th Dr story maybe, the hands-off regeneration closest to the 13^th in many ways, but even that would have had Adric siding with the villain and Tegan getting everyone thrown off the bus for getting stroppy – by contrast Graham getting out his sandwiches and gawping in a very British way is the right way to go). ‘Rosa’ may not be DW at its best or even the Chibnall era at its best but its the sort of story we’d have been sorry if they hadn’t tried – and relieved that they got pretty much right without too many of the era’s awkward errors.

+ Vinette Robinson is truly excellent as Rosa Parks. What could have been a very unlikeably crotchety haughty old lady is given just enough layers of warmth and vulnerability behind it all to show us why so many respected her and I’m even more relieved they didn’t just portray her as a happy carefree young woman (the way they did with Ada Lovelace or Nikola Tesla, who don’t resemble their real selves at all in character). Rosa is the way she is because she’s lived her whole life under the rule of others; free of their influence, even if its just in a chat with the Tardis crew, she shines. The best moment of this story isn’t when she stands up for her rights, or takes down the bus driver with insults, its when she finally trusts someone and smiles because the Doctor is actually listening to her and backing up what she says.

- The story’s biggest problem is that this great moment of history around which this episode and the whole civil rights movement pivots, is – like many great moments in history – small and short. The plot is literally a bunch of people playing musical chairs down a bus, trying to make history happen, which after a diet of bases under siege and mass invasions feels a bit, well, anti-climactical. There are no fireworks when Rosa takes her correct seat and for all we know what she does makes no difference at all, however much the Doctor lectures us at the end with all the changes that happened because she took a stand (maybe someone else would have had the same fight the next day? Or maybe Rosa herself would have crossed paths with James Blake another week?) The one thing this episode fails to show is that this fight was inevitable with someone, sometime – that changing the dates and bus numbers changes nothing in how outrage at an unfair system was always going to rise up at some point – its that feeling, at injustice that continues in our present day, this episode should be instilling in us too. And no, a couple of lecturing speeches and putting the anachronistic ‘Rise Up’ from 2015 over the end credits instead of the usual closing theme tune is no substitute at all.