YMMV / Doctor Who S37 E3 "Rosa"

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Despite the good intentions of the episode, the plot of the story left some viewers less than pleased as the Doctor's insistence that history had to go exactly as it had in our timeline (same bus, same driver, same time) implied that, without Rosa Parks, the civil rights movement would never have happened. While Rosa made quite an achievement, the episode rather undermined the effort and the role the NAACP had to make it happen, as well as the fact that society's changing values meant that racial equality would have happened sooner or later.
  • The episode got a lot of praise for allowing Rosa's protest to stand as her own action done with her own agency, but there were still some made uneasy by how this could also be read as meaning people should never be involved in the fight for equal rights outside their own experience, even when a clear opportunity is in front of them.
• Anvilicious:
  • The episode is not subtle at all about the racism of The '50s. Which wasn't subtle in real life.
  • The examples given of Ryan and Yaz facing racism in the modern day, for each (Ryan apparently getting stopped by the police significantly more than his white friends, and Yaz being called a terrorist when walking home from her mosque) are almost laughably stereotypical — the ever-repeated examples of underreported modern-day racism in Europe.
• Narm Charm: While slightly cheesy, "Rise Up" is considered a Black Lives Matter anthem, so many consider its use in the climactic scene to be appropriate.
• Retroactive Recognition: Krasko is Rufus Shinra.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Krasko could have been an interesting recurring villain, but he's zapped into the past and quickly forgotten.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Krasko's meddling would have had little to no effect on what follows, likely only changing the names and dates involved. The Doctor could have pointed this out, and still insisted on stopping him from delaying justice by even one more day.
  • In a series that goes out of its way to represent fixed points in time, no matter how apparently insignificant to history as a whole, as capable of bringing extinction-level events if tampered with, you would think that the Doctor would make mention of this at some moment, especially to Krasko. The story makes a lot more emphasis on the Bait-and-Switch and Disappointed by the Motive elements of Krasko's racism.
  • The companions' collective guilt at turning their backs on Rosa, and especially Graham's personal feelings on it, get glossed over quickly, with nobody challenging the Doctor's claim that they helped in the long run.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: A depressing number of fans have stated that this episode taught them more about the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights Movement than their own schools. This Tumblr post, for example, has over 500 likes and reblogs.

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