Does anyone else want to talk about America’s racism problem? No, just me. So for those that don’t know, Rosa Parks is a woman who sat on a bus, and if Chibnall wrote this episode alone, that is all you’d learn. The truth is that there is a lot more to the problem than that, and when it came to Doctor Who covering this point in modern history, oh, the tabloids got out their sticks to rattle some cages. Particularly unsavory cages rattled by the likes of the Daily Express/Daily Star, full of people who either can’t voice their full opinion or don’t like hearing that “White people did a bad” not too long ago.

Malorie Blackman is probably the best hiring Chris Chibnall made, and subsequently, the most under-used writer of his entire run. For the benefit of my editor and others that don’t know, Blackman wrote the Noughts and Crosses series. An alt-history story where the power dynamics of Black and White relations have shifted, Noughts and Crosses is used to explain racism to children with segregation at the heart of the story. She has won multiple awards, including the Children’s Laureate and the PEN Pinter Prize, alongside being nominated for many others. She was the perfect person to write about a woman sitting on a bus in the US South.

“Rosa” is easily one of the best stories of this era, cage rattlers be damned. That isn’t to say it is a perfect episode, but it certainly is up there in terms of the Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who. The biggest issue is of course the finale, a rock. If Rosa Parks’ legacy in space is supposed to be big but believable, a rock isn’t that Sci-Fi, hope in humanity moment to end a show on. A giant space dock, a trading post that many races join in bartering, that would have been more impactful than clapping your hands like a school teacher and saying, “everything is fine now, the Black bus lady has a rock named after her and Obama was President.”

When the rest of the episode does so much good to say that, “no, the world wasn’t fixed because of desegregation and specific instances of improvement,” the rock was out of place. In fact, Tosin Cole’s Ryan and Mandip Gill’s Yaz finally got a moment where I wanted to know more about them as characters because they showed vulnerability instead of espousing the exposition on paper that does nothing. For once, Ryan has something to react to, being threatened and called a racial slur, and Yaz could empathize with being a woman of color who’s regularly called a racial slur that I’ve heard far too much of.

This is character, this is reacting to a situation and where external forces, such as a cop checking there “aren’t no coloreds” in the motel or being threatened with being lynched, allow for a character to grow and share experiences. It allowed the Doctor to finally put her foot down and say that she wants to protect people, tell off the antagonists, and get some character of her own in. The Banksy line is just a lovely little example. Then you have Graham: A retired bus driver, whose dead wife that he loves more than anyone was a Black activist and idolized Rosa Parks, has to sit on the bus as Parks is arrested.

The villains even have character. Sure, for the space-racist it is Torchwood-era Captain Jack, and for Blake, it is a man who views anything beyond the color beige to be a threat to his life. Is it the most nuanced story of racism? No, and anyone that expects Doctor Who to perfectly execute Lionel Hutz’s nightmares with ease for the rest of time clearly isn’t paying attention. There is only so much you can do with 50-minutes of TV and tell the story well, and that is what Malorie Blackman did beautifully, and Chibnall did some reworkings, sadly.

It is the little details that clinch it for me. The bus timetables as a central plot point, showing Martin Luther King Jr (and having Ryan react to that) at Parks’ house, and those back-of-the-seat clip-on labels. Those labels show just how industrialized segregation was; it is a two-second thing for a bus driver to move that label and force someone to stand. It is like a stamp, click-click, and highlights how little thought it takes to propagate an entire system built to hold one collection of people down. Then you have Yaz, a woman of color that has to deal with that racism that isn’t aimed directly at her.

This is what an episode of Doctor Who‘s historicals should be. I’ll happily say “Victory of the Daleks” is a banger of an episode despite the historical accuracy or featuring the most acceptably left-leaning figures of history, but just the same, I’d kill for more of this “lesson” style of an episode from time to time. Get someone in who’s a specialist on a topic and do a story on that. Of course, intersperse it with the likes of “Vincent and the Doctor,” because an episode like that is beyond Doctor Who‘s standard peaks and troughs.

If the rock thing wasn’t a Chibnall edit we know the neck implant is. Three episodes in, all three have had neck implants; one is an explosive, the other a universal translator, and here it is an inhibitor. This one I don’t mind, as it makes the villain more interesting since he can’t actively harm anyone, so his whole thing is being a racist trying to stop the end of segregation. Like most of Chibnall’s writing toolbox, he is like a dad who’s just bought a new power drill, he wants to use it on everything including stirring the sugar in your coffee. It is that and the fact he overloaded the last episode that screams how insecure he is as a writer.

In terms of casting and direction, the whole crew pulled it out of the bag. Vinette Robinson doesn’t miss a beat, though improved Tosin and Mandip aren’t perfect and still feel uncomfortable in their character’s shoes, and of course, the star of the entire episode is Bradley Walsh as Graham. The way he felt uncomfortable to just be there, to be the reason Rosa is forced to stand, to have those interactions with the White people of that period, he did it so well it felt real. I’m only surprised he didn’t need to be held back from decking the guy that uses the racial slur.

“Rosa” is ultimately a fantastic episode doing exactly what Sydney Newman wanted of the show back in its inception stage of March-April 1963, to educate young audiences about points in history. The perfect episode? No, it has its clunky rock-based problems, but in the face of everything else we’ve seen in the Nu-Who era, it was a breath of fresh air from the perfect writer for this type of thing. Full of character, big moments on a small scale, and evidently did what Chibnall will fail to next time out, entertain.

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Doctor Who "Rosa"

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Malorie Blackman.
• Bradley Walsh's fantastic performance throughout.
• Yaz, Ryan, and the Doc finally getting character.
• No shying away from the slurs, for the right reasons.

Cons

• Why was it just a Rock?