{"id":2162,"date":"2018-10-22T20:37:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T20:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2162"},"modified":"2018-10-24T22:11:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T22:11:09","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-rosa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/22\/so-what-did-i-think-of-rosa\/","title":{"rendered":"So… what did I think of Rosa?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Way back when Doctor Who was created, its remit was to be educational as well as entertaining. Roughly speaking, stories set in Earth\u2019s history, which generally had no science-fiction elements at all, apart from the fact of the presence of the TARDIS crew, alternated with science-fiction stories. Viewers could see adventures taking place in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, during the Reign of Terror, and (rather tediously) at the dawn of humanity.<\/p>\n

Gradually, it became clear that the science-fiction stories, specifically the monster stories, were much more popular, and so after Troughton\u2019s second story, The Highlanders<\/em>, historical stories were pretty much retired. When they did return, in tales such as Pertwee\u2019s The Time Warrior<\/em> or Tom Baker\u2019s The Masque of Mandragora<\/em>, they tended to be science-fiction tales in a historical setting.<\/p>\n

Under Russell T Davies, the historicals evolved again. Now, the celebrity historical was the order of the day. Going back to Elizabethan London, and meeting science fiction witches, wasn\u2019t enough. Now they have to meet Shakespeare too. Or Dickens. Or Queen Victoria. And it\u2019s this template which Chris Chibnall is working from. Sounds like a good pitch, doesn\u2019t it? Doctor Who meets Rosa Parks. But is fast-moving, adventure series Doctor Who really the right forum to explore the American civil rights movement? Might we not prefer a home grown series like Quantum Leap, whose episode set in this time period is a fan favourite?<\/p>\n

Or, I wonder if any other readers have seen the current American sci-fi series Timeless? In this pleasantly jolly adventure series, a small team has to pursue evil-doers bent on changing history through time, trying to make sure that none of their meddling alters the present in any meaningful way. It\u2019s only rarely what Doctor Who has as its mission. The Doctor\u2019s remit is usually to try and alter things for the better. Timeless bakes the need to preserve the status quo into its format.<\/p>\n

It also works with a small team (the time ship only has three seats), all of whom have clearly-defined qualities and skills. Abigail Spencer is Lucy, the historian with a personal connection to the evil-doers. Matt Lanter is Wyatt, the army guy who can keep them safe and who is handy with his fists, and comfortable with firearms. And Malcolm Barrett is Rufus, the engineer who knows how the time ship works, and who also is black, which is consistently an issue as they travel into America\u2019s racist past. All three are charming and funny, and the tone is usually fairly irreverent and fun, even as they tackle important issues.<\/p>\n

Bluntly, Rosa<\/em> wasn\u2019t half as much fun, half as interesting, or half as well judged as even a pretty poor episode of Timeless.<\/p>\n

Now, before I go on, let me take in a bit of the wider context.<\/p>\n

I finished watching this episode with a heavy sigh, and had a quick look online, expecting to see a general chorus of \u201cWhat the hell was that?\u201d \u201cHow clumsy, trite and uninteresting!\u201d and \u201cChibnall must go now!\u201d And there were some.<\/p>\n

But there was also a preponderance of lavish praise. \u201cBeautiful\u201d, \u201cmoving\u201d, \u201cbest episode for years\u201d and so on. This gives me pause.<\/p>\n

I was already pretty familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, and from my brief research since the episode aired, it seems as if writers Chibnall and Malorie Blackman have rendered it pretty faithfully. Could it be that what people are responding to is the power of Rosa Parks\u2019 story, rather than any particular imaginative leap on the part of the writing and production team? Does that matter? Is the fact the Doctor Who is returning to its educational roots a good thing? If more 11 year olds are inspired to Google \u201cRosa Parks\u201d who would otherwise not have heard of her, isn\u2019t that a huge benefit? Must I really give Doctor Who no credit at all for rendering the story accurately – even the bits which sound made-up, like the fact that Parks was refused entry eleven years earlier by the same bus driver on which she made her stand?<\/p>\n

Well\u2026 okay. I\u2019ll tell you what. I\u2019ll give all of the historical aspects of this story a pass. I do this with some misgivings, because I don\u2019t know that Doctor Who should be just retelling stories from history, with no twist, fillip or imaginative leap (I didn\u2019t like Vincent and the Doctor<\/em> much<\/a>, but at least it tried to show us a famous figure from history from a new angle). But okay.<\/p>\n

That leaves two other elements – the time travel story (our twenty-first century heroes interacting with 1955 Alabama) and the science fiction story (the need to foil the evil exploits of one \u201cKrasko\u201d).<\/p>\n

Sorry, but both of these I thought were sorely wanting. The time travel story needed much stronger characters than it has at this point. When Rufus (of Timeless) goes back in time to America\u2019s racist past, he\u2019s smart and primed and ready for the attitudes of the people he\u2019s going to meet. He doesn\u2019t like it, and when people are super-racist, there\u2019s often a moment for him to take mild revenge, but he gets it – it\u2019s part of the territory.<\/p>\n

Ryan, on the other hand, just blunders into racist white folks\u2019 way, without a second thought. What are we supposed to make of him as a character now? Has he never cracked a book? Has he never experienced racism in his personal life? Maybe he has led a life of relative privilege and always thought that people who bang on about civil rights are exaggerating? Could be interesting. I still wouldn\u2019t think that he had managed to earn his place on board the TARDIS, but I might be engaged in watching him slowly grow up. Alas, a later scene makes it very clear that he has experienced racism, so he\u2019s just a dummy then?<\/p>\n

Bradley Walsh, the most experienced actor of the three, just about manages to cling on to something resembling a character, but Yaz again is just a blank. Neither black nor white, neither brave nor cowardly, neither smart nor naive, she\u2019s engaging because Mandip Gill plays her with spirit, but I have no idea what drives her or what she adds to the team.<\/p>\n

That brings us to the science-fiction element of the story. With a script credited to two writers, it\u2019s impossible to say who worked on what, and it\u2019s likely that they both worked on everything to a large extent, but it might be a reasonable assumption that Blackman was researching Rosa Parks while Chibnall devised Krasko with his call-backs to Doctor Who stories of the recent past. All of the bad habits which have been on display in the last two stories are here again.<\/p>\n

The whole team trailing behind while the Doctor does all the actual story? Check. The long conversation with the bizarrely impotent villain? Check – two of them this time. The threat just vanishes at the 42 minute mark? Check. The Doctor professes not to use guns, but the enemy is dispatched with lethal force in any event? Check.<\/p>\n

And much else besides just doesn\u2019t make sense. In the motel, there\u2019s an attempt to provide a sense of the whole team working together, as if they all had Timeless-style complimentary skills. But the scene is pointlessly interrupted for an intrusion by a cop which goes nowhere before I think the Doctor actually says \u201cRight, where were we?\u201d And, as the final scene of the episode shows, the Doctor has a wonderful device which can tell them everything they want to know about Rosa Parks and which would also provide an entirely safe place to hide. It\u2019s the conveniently located, but also quite well-hidden TARDIS. Still, nice Banksy gag.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s all this about limiting the villain? First he can\u2019t shoot straight. Fair enough, neither can anyone in a science-fiction adventure story. Then it turns out, he\u2019s incapable of killing anyone. Way to raise the stakes, Chibnall! So, does the fact that his gun is a time disruptor mean that he could have shot the Doctor and he just missed? Or does the gun not count as lethal force? Who cares, before long it\u2019s out of batteries and the villain is deprived of it. He basically just stands there and lets the Doctor take the vortex manipulator off his wrist. Now all the team needs to do is keep an eye on him, or preferably lock him up somewhere, and the story is over. Instead, like children playing hide-and-seek, the Doctor turns her back and obediently lets him put his evil plan into action.<\/p>\n

And what is his plan exactly? To keep parts of America racist, even though those parts of America are centuries in his past. Even if we buy that that would be desirable to a man from so far in the future – would it even work? To give Rosa Parks essentially all of the credit for the American Civil Rights movement isn\u2019t very flattering to the rest of America, nor is it particularly accurate. Rosa Parks was not the only person to stand up to (or sit down to) segregated buses in Alabama, it\u2019s just that her case was the one chosen by the NAACP. If she hadn\u2019t ridden on that bus that day, then – given that none of the other meddling by either side seems to make a difference – chances are that America would be just the same today.<\/p>\n

And it doesn\u2019t help that all of the nonsense with tailoring, fishing, bus timetables and so on is incredibly, ball-achingly, mind-numbingly boring and stupid. The fact that it finally, improbably, builds to a single scene in which the time travel plot, science fiction plot and history lesson actually combine with some semblance of power, is unexpected to say the least. Making Graham, Yas and Ryan have to keep their seats and refuse to help Parks is genuinely arresting. It hasn\u2019t been built up to, it\u2019s almost immediately laughed off, and it doesn\u2019t reverberate beyond the couple of minutes for which it lasts, but it does work.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m grumbling, I hate everything about Krasko from his stupid penny-dreadful name to his sub-Fonzie costume to his \u201cI\u2019m-so-evil\u201d delivery. And although Jodie Whittaker continues to do decent work with the thin material given her, this incarnation of the Doctor is turning into a pretty bland David Tennant impersonation. After the genuinely bold Capaldi incarnation, this is very disappointing.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s a write-off then? Yeah, pretty much. I was underwhelmed by The Ghost Monument<\/em>, but gutted at Rosa<\/em>\u2019s lack of ambition, scope, threat, adventure or sensitivity. It told me nothing I didn\u2019t already know about the Civil Rights Movement or contemporary racism in Britain or America, and it failed to be an entertaining adventure story. Did you like it? Great – I\u2019m honestly super happy for you, and I really hope that reading all this hasn\u2019t put you off it. Does it help if you don\u2019t know the story of Rosa Parks? Maybe. Does that make all the problems I\u2019ve identified vanish? No.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s what I\u2019m looking for in the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

The characters have to be sharpened up. I need to know what makes Ryan different from the teenager sitting next to him on the school bus. I need Yas to show a bit more of that ambition and bravery from episode one. I need Graham to want to be charging around the universe with the Doctor. And I need stories which are designed to let these character traits get them into trouble or get them out of it. I need to know why this story with these characters. This, of course, is drama 101.<\/p>\n

I also need proper adventures with proper threats. Not races to the death which turn into a stroll across a desert. Not a vile white supremacist who it\u2019s revealed can\u2019t kill anyone and who has to be left alone to do his evil deeds to give him a chance. The Doctor\u2019s mad jump from crane to crane in episode one was really exciting. Nothing\u2019s matched it since or even come close. This, of course, is adventure 101.<\/p>\n

This desperately thin, remorselessly uninvolving stuff really isn\u2019t worth more than one star, but I\u2019ll give it two on the basis that Rosa Parks\u2019s story needs telling, and it was told here with clarity, taste and accuracy. That\u2019s just not what I turn on Doctor Who for.<\/p>\n\"2\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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