Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, Vinette Robinson, Joshua Bowman, Trevor White, Richard Lothian, Jessica Claire Preddy, Gareth Marks, David Rubin, Ray Sesay, Aki Omoshaybi, David Dukas, Morgan Deare.
Doctor Who has arguably never been better than when it deals with the issues of our own history, for all the aliens that crowd and jostle for the audience’s attention, for all the elements of science fiction that is associated with the writing, it is to Earth’s history in which the programme excels. For what else can an alien traveller do but show us how at times, we as a species, are as alien to each other by our actions and deeds, our thoughts and the ugly side of our personalities?
It is in the details, the seemingly small moments that make the world change, in which history is made. A volcano can explode and blot out the sun for six weeks over a far off land and yet it is in the survival of one person in which perhaps the future can change, the discovery of the tiniest bacteria in the water which can lead to a radical overhaul of the whole way we look at medicine. The refusal of one woman to give up her seat on a bus because of the insanity of racial segregation, one person can change the lives of millions, just a simple gesture of defiance, of not putting up with the outrage of being classed as different because of the colour of your skin, your sexual orientation, your gender, or your ability.
Small moments can lead to historic events and in Rosa Parks, alongside Neil Armstrong being the first human to set foot on the Moon, the chance filming by Robert Zapruder of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, defining moments of United States of America history in the 20th Century, all coming together from the interaction of the thought of introspective and thought of insignificant challenges. It is these moments that changed America, that have changed the world, and it is right that the leading science-fiction programme of the last 55 years should put a stamp and viewpoint on it.
In such a radical point in history, to single out someone for praise might seem crass but to Vinette Robinson who played the determined and lauded Rosa Parks, this is a huge role in which to perform, one that perhaps the makers of the episode didn’t quite take in to consideration of the actions of Claudette Colvin, who some nine months earlier had also rightly refused to move, to make way for a white person. Even with that in mind, Vinette Robinson’s portrayal was sensitively recreated, an astonishing and complete performance in which the audience could not but help surely admire.
The allusions to today’s society in Britain in startling, we are at a cross roads of opinions in which our country once fought against at the bitter cost, we should not make the same mistakes as faced in Germany in the 1930s and in America in what seems to be an ongoing situation. History judges such actions with harshness, are we willing to be seen in a such a way that it takes another brave woman like Rosa Parks or Claudette Colvin to make us sit up and feel the shame of history’s gaze.
Ian D. Hall