This series strength is it's acting. For the first time I felt Bradley Walsh actually pulled his weight, at least at the end. The two younger ones have done well with the material they have been given but meh they need more. I think if they were to put more faith in them, it would improve the show massively. That scene behind the bin could have been done in a much more emotionally charged way and I think it would have given us much more to the characters. Show us the injustice and the frustration! I think they could have handled it and it would have given more dimension to the show and the characters themselves, who I feel aren't as fleshed out as they should be at this stage.
Here is my issue, I think it was brave to tackle the time period but my feelings are pretty much the exact same issues that I had when the whole "dr is female" thing came about. The writing isn't good enough at the moment without making a big hash of it. I'm not bothered by the gender, but I am bothered by the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" aspect of it, a lot of the advertising has been "look at us, being so progressive" and actually I think that is ironically very regressive of the BBC.
The writing here was actually alright though. The ideas were great and executed well (except my biggest gripe). I loved the fact it was exclusively a human villain, it's not often that happens. (I can't think of any nu-who where that is the case) For the subject matter I think it needed to be. I thought that for the most part the time period was handled well, the racial tension was portrayed in a educational and interesting way and made me feel uncomfortable. The sets were excellent, the pace was good and generally I felt the story itself was a good one.
I have almost exclusively hated "the doctor visits the past and meets someone famous" stories. They are always a bit too on the nose for me and fawning over the person just because it's that person. This had that, but it felt different. Rosa Parks meant something to these characters and it came across well in the story (except for that fucking god-awful last scene that undercut everything). The villain manipulating things to go his way also I thought was a decent story (although I'm not sure how hinging history on that one moment - regardless, of it's importance - is something I'd be using as a plot point) I think it also is inherently sad and maybe an unintended by-product that racism is still rife in the 76th century in the who-niverse. I think the actress who played Rosa was phenomenal.
But even though the writing was good, the scripting wasn't. It let down the episode again, all 3 episodes would have been pretty decent if it wasn't for really terrible dialogue. It wasn't just bad. It was fucking dreadful. Everything that was said or done had relevance in the episode, so much so it became distracting and extremely clunkily done. "Elvis has a mobile phone" of course he does. That'll of course come in useful later on...
"that a time manipulator weapon, how do I use it?" Is that really your first question? After the doctor's just told you how nasty it is? The doctors just like "twist this knob, press this button and your good to go". This nasty weapon I'm telling you about, here is how you use it, it's fine, here you go. Feel free to use that information - cause you absolutely will because we made it a plot point. I won't use a weapon but here you can! There is so many issues with this...
It's not just that though. The problem I've had is that the show delights in telling you and repeatedly bashing you over the head with what it's going to do. It's more prevalent in US shows than UK ones but here it#s probably the worst examples I've ever seen. SHOW us don't TELL us, or even worse SHOW us don't TELL us then show us. The material was strong enough to stand on it's own. As a result the show became like an educational special - once again - a really patronising one. "I don't like knives" "Never use guns" "Racism is wrong" Stop making your characters "holier than thou"! Yeah I get that your not going to make your characters racists, but at least allow them some flaws. This episode really needed to be non-preachy and unfortunately because they felt the need to have the characters say everything they were thinking it became overly so. "We're not in the habit of explaining things..." Yeah right, doctor!
This was all very much summed up in the last scene of the show. A scene so misjudged that I can't think of anything in Who that made me feel that they got it just so badly wrong. The thing is, they could have ended it perfectly with Rosa being escorted off the bus, the music had reached a crescendo (the music was on point this episode) and it would have been a bitter-sweet ending. But that needless final scene on the TARDIS, to me smacked of "white woman tells two black youngsters about Rosa Parks" even though every single member of the team (including Ryan who did need a bit of a memory jog) knows exactly who she is. Then showing the asteroid, it's ancillary to my point, but it's taken 15 attempts to get home, but they got to Rosa's asteroid first time! What significance does that have to the universe beyond naming an asteroid or was that just another bit of pithy dialogue to crowbar an ending onto what was already a better ending?
There were other minor things, find more for your background actors to do for instance, the amount of people standing in small groups not going anywhere was starting to get funny. Also "Yaz... Ryan... it's safe" Call to the police officer you only are really newly acquainted to before your grandson... it's a minor thing, but it's yet another detail that should have been thought about a second more. Have the black guy with the shortest temper go off on his own... sideline Yaz... again! Graeme's a bus driver, did you know that? How can we use that as a plot point in every episode?
I've gone on a bit too much, but this could have been one of the shows best and this recurring problem let it down and it frustrated the hell out of me. I look forward to next weeks show, I like Chris Noth and Shobna Gulati I seem to remember being in something I enjoyed in the past. I like that they might be focusing on Yaz a bit more. I also like it if they are laying down some sort of gun violence storyline for Ryan. I don't trust the writing enough to be sure that they are, but that's two episodes now where he has fired a weapon and been willing to do so, so I hope there is some collision with the doctor down the road.
As for this episode I give it a 7