Doctor Who: Rosa, review – a well-intended but poorly executed riff on history

The road to Sheffield is paved with good intentions. Having conquered Planet Desolation last week, the Time Lord (Jodie Whittaker) and companions pitched up in 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, the heart of segregation in the Deep South. When Ryan’s (Tosin Cole) efforts to help out a local white woman met with a violent response, in stepped one Rosa Parks (Vinette Robinson, dignified forbearance and resilience personified).

When allowed to riff on history rather than be confined by it, Doctor Who (BBC One) can be a ludicrous romp (Let’s Kill Hitler) or deeply poignant (Vincent and the Doctor). Barring a couple of good gags about Elvis and Banksy, however, Chris Chibnall and Malorie Blackman’s episode felt overawed by the history it was depicting, short-changing some imaginative direction from Mark Tonderai and bearing a score weighed down by French horns straight from the gloopier end of The West Wing. 

It didn’t help that the villain was insubstantial in the extreme: an intergalactic mass murderer and white supremacist by the name of Krasko (Joshua Bowman), released from prison with his violent tendencies neutered by technology. Undeterred, Krasko instead resolved to exercise his repugnant philosophy through small, inconsequential actions, nudging history in a different direction.

Could the Doctor and co ensure the bus boycott took place as planned, lighting the flame of the civil rights movement? Well, obviously. This was, in short, Quantum Leap in reverse, where rather than changing history for the better, the heroes were attempting to stop history being changed for the worse.

Rosa Parks was a deeply significant, inspiring figure and clearly it’s important that children should know about her, but this felt didactic and stodgy, lacking the fizz and fun of both classic Who and Blackman’s lively children’s novels. The latter routinely tackle serious issues with a light touch. Here, I couldn’t quibble with the sentiment, just the execution.