Just to make clear, I’m not suggesting that historicals should not omit or change any details for narrative purpose, it’s just that I think in this particular case the amount omitted does a real disservice to the actual history. The Civil Rights Movement is often taught in this manner that focuses largely on specific activist leaders and the broad concept of nonviolent protest and ignores the actual ways in which these protests are politically effective and often reduces the activists involved to a sort of sanitized version of themselves. And this sanitized version of the history is very intentionally created and has real impacts on modern politics, so I think it’s a real mistake to focus an episode on a major moment of the movement while doing barely anything to challenge that version.
You are right that one of the few things that it does make clear is that Rosa Parks was already an activist and that her refusal to stand was deliberate activism and not simply her being tired, but even there I feel like the way that is portrayed could have been better, as it does come across almost as if her qualifications as an activist are that she knows MLK, the more famous activist. And I think that does slightly diminish her own importance as not just some local activist but Secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. Plus I think it does further sanitize her image in a way, because while Parks and King certainly had respect for each other, Parks was actually supportive of more militant movements like the Black Panthers and her disagreement with King was a factor in her eventually leaving Montgomery.
Of course all of this context and more is a lot to nicely fit into a 50 minute episode, but some of it, particularly the existing plans from local activist groups to try to kickstart a boycott, would have gone a long way in making the episode properly move away from the more sanitized tellings of her story.
And to add on top of that, another thing that I think the episode does poorly is trying to address modern racism while having a police officer main character and essentially brushing it off with a “not all cops” kind of line. Which is a shame because Yaz does ultimately get an arc that at least gives implications that she leaves the police after traveling with the Doctor and discovering more meaningful ways of helping people, and I think that if Rosa had been positioned later in that arc they could have used it as a great moment to really expand on that and better address the issue instead of just vaguely mentioning it.
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I would say that people also basically know a sanitized version of MLK, for the most part, knowing basically that he was a big civil rights activist, gave the “I have a dream” speech, and got assassinated.
Which is a shame, because a lot of the issues he was concerned with are more relevant then ever:
And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…"
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective - the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income… The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
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All extremely valid points but - and I think this is where we will end up agreeing to disagree - I don’t think Doctor Who’s job is to depict historical settings in this way. If all prior historical set stories had been as thorough with their depiction of history or historical figures, then criticism could be levelled at Rosa.
But with all Doctor Who stories providing a relatively simplistic view of history, I don’t think it’s fair to critique Rosa in the way you are.
You could do exactly the same. I’m sure, for any historical story - I’m sure the Partition is ‘simplified’ in Demons of the Punjab for example.
There is a desire to make everything ‘political’, sadly, in modern discourse. Doctor Who is there for escapist fun and if it can slip in some ‘educational’ content then that is an extra benefit - but should never be the main motivation for doing a story or choosing a historical figure. Accusing it of sanitization is, for me, a step too far.
Plenty could be said about the depiction of Churchill in the show leaving out many of his less savoury personality traits but the moment Doctor Who becomes concerned with ‘doing right’ by history is the moment it loses sight of what it is actually there to do. As I say, as long as it doesn’t deliberately feed the audience misinformation, I think a degree of simplicity is absolutely fine.
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Oh yes, absolutely the broad picture of MLK that most people are taught is very heavily sanitized, and that sanitized version of him is so often used to try to diminish any modern movement that is at all militant or radical.
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Two of my favorites are when Six went giddy over seeing Marcel Proust at dinner in Year of the Pig (even though Proust didn’t actually speak) and when he and Evelyn met Julius Caesar and his wife in 100 BC. Both of those stories were silly.
I don’t have any particular celebrity I’d want the Doctor to meet, but I do have some classes of people that I wish Six would interact with more.
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What you write about Yaz and her police background is confusing me a bit here.
Being a police officer is an extremely meaningful way of helping people surely? I think if we meet Yaz again it would be great to show her using the skills she has picked up travelling in the TARDIS by being perhaps a ranking officer of the police, a real force for good - so I kind of feel that saying that these issues do not pertain to all contemporary police officers is an equally important message to send.
The family show aspect comes a bit into play here - you don’t want to have children being distrusting of the police as an institution.
There might be a cultural divide here as well as racism and racial profiling isn’t as big an issue where I’m from.
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Any piece of media portraying the Civil Rights Movement and discussing modern racism is inherently political by nature, though. That is simply not a subject you can broach without, intentionally or not, having political messages and biases. And I think it’s clear from the tone of the episode and interviews around it that there was an intention for it to be educational, so I think it’s very reasonable to criticize it for presenting a telling of the story that omits so much important context and ultimately does largely reinforce a sanitized version of the Civil Rights Movement.
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But the extent to which is is ‘sanitized’ is going to be subjective. As I say, we will have to agree to disagree and, as Bill says, cultural differences (UK vs US in this case) will influence our opinions.
I do want you to know I completely respect your point of view.
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Woah this conversation went deep 
I just wanted to add that I have a trope for celebrity historicals, if you could point out any I’ve missed that would be great!
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Marco Polo would definitely qualify 
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Done that, thanks (it was just down as pure historical)
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For what it’s worth I do kind of agree with @flora_snow00 because you can simplify something too much so it loses part of its meaning and becomes almost false. The idea that she had to be on that one bus or all of history would’ve changed is simplified a bit too much.
Also all the stuff with Winston Churchill leaves a very bad taste in my mouth since I read more about him.
Oh and the JK Rowling stuff 
we almost had an entire Christmas special with her in it, yuck.
But oh well! It’s just a show at the end of the day.
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I don’t see Tooth and Claw for Queen Victoria, or the Giggle, for Stooky Bill and such.
You also don’t have Satan or Santa on the list…
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I clearly have more work to do on that trope. Need help
I’m sure Satan is in there as a monster, not as an Historical figure…
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There is definitely some cultural divide here, because yes, racism and discrimination in policing is a massive issue here in the US, and to my understanding a fairly significant one in the UK as well. As a minority I fundamentally do not trust or feel safe around police (this is definitely worse in the US where every cop is armed and has a lot of legal protection that makes them hard to prosecute even if they kill someone). Getting deeper into all of that is pretty well beyond off topic for this thread, but I do simply find it to be a mistake to so quickly gloss over the issue with just a couple lines, and I really believe that if it were a bit later rather than being just the 3rd episode, they could have easily had a bit more depth to that conversation.
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In some ways I forgive the J.K. Rowling stuff because it was 2007 and well before she became the raging transphobe that she is now, but also I don’t because the writer of the episode also turned out to be transphobic…
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This is true and I do want @flora_snow00 know that I can see what is being said about simplifying. I suppose it’s all to do with the semantics of language. What I see as simplification, flora sees as sanitizing. Neither of us is necessarily wrong.
The JK Rowling stuff is tricky because I don’t think we can judge the past on what we know now. If she had been an obvious transphobe before The Shakespeare Code that would be a different matter. As it is, I can separate the fiction and the context of that fiction from the individual. Plenty of my class still read Harry Potter. It is still going to have a cultural impact regardless of how much nastiness the woman spouts online. Harry Potter is bigger than her.
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This is true and very sad. His doubling down was vile.
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I’m missing some conteXt here I feel like. What was said?
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Satan’s just as historical as Robin Hood, and Robot of Sherwood is listed.
Oh, also, how about City of Death? Offscreen Da Vinci, onscreen John Cleese.
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