Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
I was pleasantly surprised by tonight’s episode, which handled the realities of the past better than most episodes of “Doctor Who”. The classic series was often oblivious to racism and bigotry of the past, and the revival has too often sanitized the past, with glib explanations and multiracial casting that wasn’t authentic to the time and place being portrayed.
This episode understood that Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 was a very dangerous place and time to be black, especially when you don’t know the unwritten rules for survival. It also understood that Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 would be an uncomfortable but significantly less dangerous place for a South Asian woman – assuming that no misunderstandings occurred.
At the same time, there was far less speechifying than there could have been. The racial attitudes of time were treated like a dangerous environmental threat, just like any of the dangerous environmental threats on the countless alien worlds that the Doctor has visited.
The episode also gave us a more complex portrayal of Rosa Parks than we usually get, anchored by a top notch performance from Vinette Robinson that neither undersold nor oversold. In school, I remember being taught that Rosa Parks was a nice old woman who was too tired to move and got fed up. It wasn’t until much later – maybe college – that I learned of her role as the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP; the mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in late November 1955 concerning the murders of 14-year-old Emmett Till, civil rights leader George W. Lee, and voting rights activist Lamar Smith; or that Parks had had a run-in with the bus driver several years prior, in which he had closed the doors on her and left her behind after she’d paid her fare. When she refused to give up her seat, it was an explicitly political act by someone with a full understanding of the larger implications. An astonishing amount of that context made it into this episode, in mostly organic ways – especially given that this is a British show featuring British protagonists who might not be as well versed in American civil rights history.
Josh Bowman made a good villain: someone weak and pathetic but just dangerous enough to drastically affect history. And, given his run as Jack the Ripper on the “Time After Time” series adaptation, not exactly new territory. And unlike many of the supporting roles, he could pull off a convincing American accent when the moment called for it.
It was also an interesting exploration of time travel and key moments in history: From earlier series of new “Who” we know that there are fixed points in time, so important to history and the integrity of the timeline that even the Daleks didn’t dare mess with them. However, just because they shouldn’t be messed with doesn’t mean that they can’t be messed with. But time does seem to push back; thus the TARDIS’s reluctance to leave that place and that time. While the Doctor and her friends had to work hard to get things back on track, I think the timeline helped them along; that moment on that bus needed to happen, and those words needed to be exchanged.
This episode understood that Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 was a very dangerous place and time to be black, especially when you don’t know the unwritten rules for survival. It also understood that Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 would be an uncomfortable but significantly less dangerous place for a South Asian woman – assuming that no misunderstandings occurred.
At the same time, there was far less speechifying than there could have been. The racial attitudes of time were treated like a dangerous environmental threat, just like any of the dangerous environmental threats on the countless alien worlds that the Doctor has visited.
The episode also gave us a more complex portrayal of Rosa Parks than we usually get, anchored by a top notch performance from Vinette Robinson that neither undersold nor oversold. In school, I remember being taught that Rosa Parks was a nice old woman who was too tired to move and got fed up. It wasn’t until much later – maybe college – that I learned of her role as the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP; the mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in late November 1955 concerning the murders of 14-year-old Emmett Till, civil rights leader George W. Lee, and voting rights activist Lamar Smith; or that Parks had had a run-in with the bus driver several years prior, in which he had closed the doors on her and left her behind after she’d paid her fare. When she refused to give up her seat, it was an explicitly political act by someone with a full understanding of the larger implications. An astonishing amount of that context made it into this episode, in mostly organic ways – especially given that this is a British show featuring British protagonists who might not be as well versed in American civil rights history.
Josh Bowman made a good villain: someone weak and pathetic but just dangerous enough to drastically affect history. And, given his run as Jack the Ripper on the “Time After Time” series adaptation, not exactly new territory. And unlike many of the supporting roles, he could pull off a convincing American accent when the moment called for it.
It was also an interesting exploration of time travel and key moments in history: From earlier series of new “Who” we know that there are fixed points in time, so important to history and the integrity of the timeline that even the Daleks didn’t dare mess with them. However, just because they shouldn’t be messed with doesn’t mean that they can’t be messed with. But time does seem to push back; thus the TARDIS’s reluctance to leave that place and that time. While the Doctor and her friends had to work hard to get things back on track, I think the timeline helped them along; that moment on that bus needed to happen, and those words needed to be exchanged.
