Author: Team TVLine / Source: TVLine
Fall behind? Read our previous Doctor Who recap here.
The first two episodes of Doctor Who Season 11 made many viewers tear up because of what it meant to see a woman play the fictional hero, to be (re)united with the TARDIS. Episode 3, “Rosa,” co-written by famed British author Malorie Blackman and showrunner Chris Chibnall, was an even more emotional tearjerker because it was about guarding the history made by real-life hero Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
As we saw at the opening of the hour (said to be the first to have a writer of color in the series’ long history), Team Doctor not only had to make sure Rosa got on a packed bus on the evening of Dec. 1, but that the bus was driven by James Blake. He really was the same driver who, 12 years earlier, had driven off without Rosa after insisting she re-board the bus using the back door to enter the “colored” section. The Doctor’s foe: the racist mass murderer Krasko (Revenge’s Josh Bowman), a former inmate of the prison Stormcage, which Whovians known as the facility where River Song did time (when she wasn’t busy escaping).
Let’s recap.
‘If She Can Live Here Her Whole Life, A Couple Of Hours Ain’t Gonna Kill Me. It Ain’t Gonna Kill Me, Right?’ | We began with the Doctor’s ninth — or fourteenth — attempt to get her companions home. This time the TARDIS had mistakenly brought them to Montgomery, one day before Rosa’s historic ride, because it’d located artron energy, the same energy it uses. As the team went out to investigate, Ryan tried to return a white woman’s dropped glove and got slapped hard by her racist husband, who threatened to have him lynched. Seamstress Rosa, played by Vinette Robinson — who, fun fact, appeared in the 2007 Doctor Who episode “42,” the first one Chibnall ever penned for the show — stepped in to diffuse the situation. She told the Doctor and her companions about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who’d been vacationing in Mississippi that August when his mutilated body was found in the river after he talked to a white woman. They all recognized Rosa’s name, of course (though Ryan had to be reminded of her brave act). After a waitress refused to serve both Ryan and “Mexican” Yaz, the Doctor told her companions they could all wait in the TARDIS while she made sure nothing stopped Rosa. Ryan and Yaz weren’t having it; they were in this together. No time to eat, though, as is the Doctor Who way.
‘Never Give Them The Excuse’ | The artron signals converged at the bus company, which naturally worried the Doctor. They found a suitcase (with the initials G.F.B.) hidden from view. We’d seen the Greaser-looking Krasko try to subtly intimidate Rosa earlier, so you could guess the tools inside belonged to him. Cue his entrance and some much-needed exposition about his backstory, his temporal displacement weapon that can blast someone or some things to another year, and the vortex manipulator on his wrist that allows for “cheap and nasty time travel” (something Whovians have seen used by Jack Harness and River Song). Krasko knew about the TARDIS, and made it clear he’s someone who steals and barters. He and the Doctor parted ways after issuing their respective warnings, and the team retreated to sneak Yaz and Ryan…
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