Monday 22 October 2018

WHO REVIEW: 11-3 - "Rosa"

Some supposed fans are decrying this episode, calling it "deliberately PC," among less polite terms. Talk about missing the point. Yes, it's deliberately PC. That's the idea. The fact that some angry viewers (every single one I have seen being a white male, of course) are upset that Doctor Who would take a political stance and use one episode's worth of runtime to look at the horrors of racism and the legacy of a black activist demonstrates exactly why episodes like this are important.

While Doctor Who has dealt with racism, and its cousins xenophobia and ethnic cleansing, before, it has generally done so in allegorical fashion, with the Daleks more often than not. While the expanded media have occasionally tackled the issue head-on, on television it's been like that with some fleeting exceptions. When the topic of racism has been explicitly remarked upon, it hasn't always been handled well: the twelfth Doctor punched a racist Victorian last year, and sheepishly accepted that he wasn't the person to ask when it came to allaying Bill's fears of being in that environment, but a few years earlier, the tenth Doctor advised Martha to "just act like (she) own(s) the place, it always works for (him)," in a spectacular moment of tone-deafness. And that's without delving into some very dodgy choices in the classic series that wouldn't have been so noticeable against the background of the time, but stick out when viewed now.

Things change, though, usually, but not always, for the better. This is exactly the sort of thing that Doctor Who should be doing. Chris Chibnall has stated that he wants to take the series back to its roots in some respects, engaging in more educational material than it has done since the earliest series. This is certainly light years away from the celebrity historicals of the Russell T. Davies or Stephen Moffat eras. The Doctor gets the odd name drop, but this is far from being a glamorisation of an historical event, or a sci-fi adventure set against the backdrop of one. Rosa Parks isn't so much a character here, but a portrayal of a real person. Necessarily dramatised, of course, by two writers who almost certainly never met the woman, but working from historical materials and real footage of interviews.

It could have horrendously wrong, of course. The finished episode isn't perfect, by any means, but it's a fine hour of television and for the most part is pitched just right. I had my concerns before watching it, though. I mean, it's co-written by Chris Chibnall, who's just about the whitest guy ever. There was a definite risk of a well-intentioned embarrassment. Thankfully, he writes this with Malorie Blackman, former Children's Laureate, who is one of the most celebrated writers of children's and young adults' literature today, and who has previously explored racism through science fiction in her acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series (one of those book series on my list of "things I really, really ought to have read by now"). As a black woman, Blackman is clearly going to have a different and more immediate perspective than Chibnall. Even watching and reviewing this, as a white man, is going to be different to how a black viewer would experience it. Of course it is, because I've simply never experienced the sort of treatment that is portrayed here.

There are certain moments when it's clear that the reception of the episode has been considered very carefully. The Doctor very sensibly asks Ryan and Yaz to stay in the TARDIS, knowing full well the danger they're in just by being out in public in 1955 Alabama. It's different for her, she admits that, and to attempt to ignore that or even leave it unsaid would have been catastrophic. A scene that worked particularly well sees the young companions hiding behind some bins, in fear of being found by a police officer. They note how much better it is in 2018, but how it's very, very far from perfect. Ryan, in particular, has dealt with the kind of discrimination commonplace in this era, being a young black man and being viewed as a criminal by dint of his appearance. He notes that he's stopped far more often by the police than his white mates. Yaz, on the other hand, is a police officer, and being of Pakistani descent experiences her own share of racist abuse, usually from people she's trying to help. It's an even-handed conversation that shows that this kind of thing can hit people in any position. Yaz talks about how in fifty-three years there'll be a black President of America, but the unspoken follow-up is just look at the shit that followed. Things are better in the US than they were in 1955, but they're worse than they were even in 2005, and there's the ever-present risk that things will slide backwards. After all, it's already started.

This is the closest Doctor Who has come to a purely historical story - where only the Doctor and co. provide any kind of sci-fi element - since Black Orchid in 1982, and that was an outlier. It's a brave move, and allows much more focus on the events and issues than bringing in an alien threat would ever have allowed. The inclusion of the villainous Krasko (Joshua Bowman) almost seems like a misstep. It would have been just as workable for the mere presence of the Doctor and her friends, bumping into Rosa Parks, to have derailed history by interrupting such delicate events. I think, though, that the inclusion of a racist villain, whose motive is to "put your kind back in their place," is actually a necessary inclusion. While it's a deeply depressing idea that we'll still be dealing with white supremacists in the 79th century, it's also a very important reminder that this is a problem that will not go away without a fight, and that the fight has to continue any time it rears its ugly head. Krasko's insistence that "this is where it all started to go wrong," and that things would just be better if there weren't black people around causing problems, is a familiar rhetoric. It's not unlike the (more common in Britain lately, but these things come in waves) tactic of lazily blaming immigrants for somehow causing all the problems in a society. Some commentators have pointed out that Krasko, artificially made incapable of violence like Spike from Buffy, is a weak villain and is dispatched too easily. Again, though, isn't that the point? He's pathetic, but sometimes pathetic men can do a lot of damage.

It would have been so easy to fall into the trap of having the Doctor and/or her companions be the saviours here, and that would have been terrible. Instead, they do little things to keep pushing events back on track, but do not actually cause any of the vital events. Rosa still makes her stand herself, triggering a series of events that have lasting impact on the Civil Rights movement and the rights of non-whites in the US. It was essential that this be maintained, or the point and purpose of the episode would be lost. Equally, though, the time travellers had to be affected by the environment. Most obviously, this is evident in the treatment of Ryan, forced to sit at the back of the bus and almost attacked for innocently trying to speak to a white woman. The most frustrating moment is watching him, trying desperately to get people to wait for the bus and just being dismissed, before aggressively chastised. Yaz's experiences in the episode are illustrative as well, being essentially uncategorised in the segregation system, uncertain just as to what she is allowed to do, which is potentially even more dangerous than for someone who has clear-cut rules to live by. I particularly liked how the locals called her Mexican, lumping her under the general category of "not black, not white, but brown and foreign-looking" that sees almost any other background as interchangeable.

With all the necessary attention on Ryan and Yaz, it would be easy for the Doctor and Graham to be given little to work with. However, both characters fare very well, with the Doctor balancing flippancy with deadly seriousness when required. Again, it could have been very easy for her character to be overbearing here, but instead, there's the sense that she's dragged down by her responsibility to history. It's handled better than the "fixed points in time" approach though, more an understanding of the delicate nature of important events, and how history could have proceeded very differently if circumstances and choices had been slightly different. Graham also fares extremely well, with another excellent performance from Bradley Walsh, portraying incredible discomfort as the scenes of history unfold around him. As a white man, Graham is of course the safest and least constrained in the setting, but is still affected. Indeed, he doubtless received his share of abuse due to his mixed marriage, even in 2018.

All the good work of the episode would have been wasted if it weren't for the right casting of Rosa Parks. Thankfully, Vinette Robinson is more than capable of giving the role the dignity and power it deserves. It's a very respectful, understated performance that underpins the episode. There's some question as to whether Parks's story is the one to tell in a British series. After all, we never had official segregation in the UK, and the very idea of it seems bizarre to us now. However, the themes resonate throughout our culture and the problems we have and have had in the UK are not divorced from the Jim Crow Laws and the oppression in the US. As Yaz says, it was Rosa Parks and "people like her" who made a measurable difference to people's lives today. While there were other people who could have been the focus of the episode, Parks is an emblem of the Civil Rights movement and as such deserves this episode (not forgetting the huge following the series now has in the States). On a related note, I applaud the decision to include Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ray Sesay), but not make the episode about him. He was, after all, the figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement and led the Montgomery bus boycott that followed Parks's protest, but to give him more than a short part of the story would have drawn attention away from her character. Again, it's a tough balance, and it's possibly a mistake to suggest that Parks was so important to the Civil Rights Movement that it would never have happened without her specific actions on that night; however, the event was a catalyst for change and Parks was hugely important to the ongoing struggle; and it's probably wise not to overcomplicate a 50-minute family drama too much.

Some have said that this is too political for children, which is of course rubbish, and frankly, the treatment of black people in this episode is significantly less horrific than a more adult-intended production might. The little we do have is limited to mention of Emmett Till, whose brutal murder (and the subsequent acquittal of his killers) also contributed to the anger of black Americans. And please, let's not forget that this is an episode that was broadcast on the same day footage was released of a British flight where a white man verbally abused a black woman and refused to let her sit next to him, while the white staff failed to effectively intervene. While reports from the southern states of America see local government changing voter registration laws to disenfranchise black citizens and make it impossible for them to vote. And filmed in South Africa, which had its own segregation laws until 1991, and is still one of the most racially divided countries in the developed world.

Hopefully, there will be a time when this sort of behaviour is just history, but for now, we truly need television like this.

Title-Tattle: The episode title is, of course, only one letter away from the first episode of the revived series, "Rose."

Continuity points: This is the fourteenth attempt by the Doctor to reach Sheffield after leaving Desolation, so there's a nice big gap for future novels, fanfic and Big Finish audios to slot in.

Space and Time: To that idiot on Facebook in the Geek Asylum, asteroid 284996 is indeed named Rosa Parks, an honour that bestowed four years ago, and the idea that it was a step too fair in making her "seem important" is spectacularly ignorant. Admittedly, a lot of people have asteroids named after them; it might have been better to show more of Rosa's life, such as her receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, to represent how she was honoured.

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