Rosa

Chapter The 116th, a race against time in a time that's very much against a race.

Plot: 
The Doctor is trying to get Yaz, Ryan and Graham back to present day Sheffield, but the TARDIS has other ideas; it materialises in 1955 Alabama , after detecting evidence of another leaper, sorry, time traveller. This time and place is not very hospitable to anyone who's not white; before long, Ryan's been punched by a local meathead just for talking to said meathead's wife. A woman steps in to diffuse this situation, and she turns out to be Rosa Parks. The team's investigations reveal that a white supremacist ex-con from the future, Krasko, has travelled back in time to prevent Rosa's historic protest - refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus - which is due to happen the next day, thereby derailing the civil rights movement and white-washing future history. Hampered by Krasko's efforts and the hostile environment (in a Theresa May way, rather than a Terry Nation way), the Doctor and friends manage to get Rosa and bus driver James Blake into their correct positions at the correct moment. But they cannot get off the bus, as that will mean there is enough space for all the passengers, and Rosa won't be asked to give up her seat. So, they have to watch, and not help, as Rosa makes history.

Context:

Another week, another box set. I haven't quite finished the Peter Davison Season 19 Blu-rays - I still have the commentaries and info text to consume - and already another two releases have arrived: the complete series 11, and a separate disc for Resolution, Jodie Whittaker's New Year's special. Soon, the bumper back of Tom Baker's last run, and then an animated The Macra Terror, are going to be dropping through my letterbox. The release rate hasn't been this frantic since the early 1990s. Anyway, as always with a new set, I rolled a die to decide which story to blog. There are ten stories in the series, so I rolled a ten-sided die. If a '1' had come up, I'd not have blogged anything at all at this time (having already covered the first story of the series when it was broadcast). I rolled a '3', and so Rosa it was. Good choice, Fate.

Regular readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know that my youngest (girl of 6) stopped watching any and all new series episodes at the precise moment that Tim Shaw bared his teeth in episode 1. Rosa, having no monsters, and no creeping round dark corridors or the like, seemed like a good one to tempt her back. After much persuasion, she agreed. Accompanying her, as well as myself, were her brothers (boys of 12 and 6). Afterwards, I asked her what she thought of the new female Doctor. She held up a completely flat hand, which when I pressed her she clarified to mean that she thought she was "good, but not her favourite". Since then, she has watched and enjoyed the Pting one too (the Pting is cute, after all), so the curse might just be lifted. I won't be trying her on any giant arachnids any time soon, though.

First-time round:

Watched live on its BBC1 transmission last October, with the Better Half and all the children (my daughter was facing away from the screen watching something else on her tablet with headphones, but wanted to be in the same room as the rest of us). It was only when checking comments online after the broadcast that I twigged Rosa's similarity to an episode Quantum Leap. Throughout, I'd instead been reminded of a different example of early 1990s genre fare: the Star Trek TNG two-parter, Time's Arrow (time travel back to an American city searching for another, and nastier, time interloper, a historical celebrity heavily involved, etc.).

Reaction

When Doctor Who started in 1963, it alternated between science and history-based educational adventures, with the occasional short detour sideways into the bizarre. Remind you of anything? There was even a regular TARDIS team consisting of four people in those days. Series 11 is very much Doctor Who 'back to basics'. A similar attempt to recreate the format of the very earliest years of Who took place in 1982, again with four regulars and coincidentally it also happened at the point the show moved from a regular Saturday slot with a new Doctor in charge. This time it has been much more successful, in my opinion, as it's a more whole-hearted effort. Back then, they tried to have their cake and eat it: the history wasn't that educational, and the science non-existent, it was all so much window dressing, and the show was still all about the monsters. Likely, this was to avoid alienating the alien-loving section of the fanbase. In 2018, that section of the fanbase were indeed vocal in some quarters about their displeasure at a similar change.

Rosa was broadcast while the Whittaker / Chibnall era was still in its honeymoon period, so the critics didn't cut through so much, though I'm sure they were there. Just a few weeks later, when Demons of the Punjab was shown, they were much more voluble. The complaints were about the show being too PC, or pushing an agenda, but at heart it was a cry of "Where are the monsters!", and - if one were to give less benefit of the doubt - "I'm scared of history that isn't about white people". That second point is of course indefensible, mainly because the history being less well-known was the main and best part of this story. I'm a Guardian leftie tree-hugging stereotype, and - while I know who Rosa Parks was and the headline about what she did - I didn't know the details. And I should have done; so, consider me educated. The first point might be a bit more valid. Demons of the Punjab had a couple of token monsters, but Rosa eschews all of that. Krasko's not even that much of a villain: there's good scripting reasons why he can't be violent, and he can't be too nasty either, or risk overshadowing the true historical injustices.

Does it matter, though? I'd have been happy if it was just some random quirk of the space-time continuum knocking history off track for the Doctor and friends to put right; then, Rosa would have been the closest to a "pure" historical there's been since the 1960s, i.e. an exploration of a particular moment in history with no SF distractions. Perhaps, though, that might have made it too flat. It's a trade off between interesting subject matter and thrills. Rosa doesn't ever really excite, though there's a great moment of dread towards the end when the TARDIS team realise they have become part of this moment of history, and must keep their seats and not intervene. This cleverly allows for an ending where our heroes still act as protagonists but without robbing Rosa Parks of agency.

Instead of thrills, Rosa leavens the serious history plot with some good humour and character moments. The Doctor teasing that she's Banksy, Graham and Ryan's scene fishing with James Blake. Ryan serving coffee at a meeting of his heroes. The absurdity of racism highlighted in Yaz's "Mexican" status, and her wondering where that means she should sit on a segregated bus. More seriously, there is the conversation between Yaz and Ryan about the racism they still face daily in the present day. And all this is wrapped up in exemplary production values: the use of some great South African locations, blending seamlessly with studio and Cardiff-shot material, creates 1950s America perfectly. Segun Akinola's tremendous score with the repeated motif of a lone brass reveille also invokes the feel of the era. I wasn't so sure about Andra Day's Rise Up being the end credits music. It's stirring and all, but it does seem odd to use it to celebrate a protest, the point of which was to stay seated and not rise up at all. Maybe I'm the only person crazy enough to worry about these sort of things. Obviously script intentions and production values would be worth nothing if the central performance of Rosa Parks were not good, but Vinette Robinson is excellent throughout, displaying dignity, hope and steely resolve at different points in the narrative, without ever looking like she's performing. Exquisite, quite exquisite.

Connectivity: 

Two stories in a row that feature a Doctor accompanied by three companions travelling back into twentieth-century history; neither story features a monster (except those in human form).

Deeper Thoughts:
The Doctor Who / Star Trek non-synchronisation. In the early years of this century, back when I was screenwriting, I wrote a pilot for an odd couple flat-share sitcom about a Doctor Who fan and a Star Trek fan and their comic adventures trying to live with one another, attempting to hold down jobs and relationships, etc. It's fair to say that my experience of both fan groups is that they are tribal, and sometimes antagonistic. But a lot of people must like both shows; their similarities outweigh their differences, which was the ultimately heart-warming message of my scripts (nobody paid me to develop this idea, needless to say, but it wasn't that niche - Big Bang Theory, anyone? grumble, grumble). Recently, with the first two series of Star Trek Discovery and the most recent two series of Doctor Who, both franchises have been on TV and firing on all cylinders, simultaneously. Prior to that, though, it was as if they were two out of phase waveforms - when one was peaking, the other was usually troughing.

Although it started in 1966 in the US, Star Trek was not shown in the UK for another three years: the black-and-white era of Doctor Who was therefore untroubled by this rival. It was only after the end of The War Games, when Who took it's longest break ever, that Star Trek stepped into the breach (in  full colour before our favourite TV Time Lord managed it, too). After that, for the best part of two decades, original series Star Trek was repeated, usually when Doctor Who was off air. But no new series was being made; in fact, the show had already been cancelled in the US before that first ever UK transmission). Doctor Who reigned supreme for most of the 1970s, with Tom Baker in his magnificent rock-star pomp. But Bill Shatner had the upper hand again starting in 1979, when Star Trek hit the big time and the big screen. While Doctor Who's popularity waned as the 1980s continued, the Star Trek movies endured. Perhaps the best illustration of this was in the Autumn of 1986, when The Voyage Home, the fourth Star Trek film, was a massive crossover hit, grossing the most of any Star Trek film to date (a record that it still holds). Meanwhile, Who's Trial of a Time Lord season was struggling to find an audience.

Again, when Doctor Who went off the air in 1989, a new Star Trek series  - having started a few years earlier in the States - was there to fill the UK's tele-fantasy gap: The Next Generation had arrived. Star Trek ruled the roost in the 1990s, and this time it was Doctor Who that had no series in production. By 2005, though, the different series and movie runs of Star Trek had run out of steam, and - like the one-in, one-out figures on an Alpine Weather House - a new, successful and confident version of Doctor Who took over. When Who took a mini-break in 2009 with only a few special episodes being shown - wouldn't you know it - Star Trek got going again with a rebooted movie franchise. Now, both series seem to have found their groove. I think current series Star Trek Discovery is the freshest and best take on the franchise for some considerable time: it's the Trek I've been waiting for. Finally, too, its existence doesn't seem to mean Doctor Who needs to wither or disappear - which is nice. And with a plot like Rosa's, which could easily have been covered in one of Star Trek's rare time-travelling outings, the two shows are aligning on subject matter too. Is there a lesson here for the wider situation in the UK? Put aside tribalism, and meet in the centre ground, for the greater good of all? Anyone? No? Oh well...
 
In Summary:
Worthy, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun.

Black Orchid

Chapter The 115th, where some events are just not cricket (but most are).

Plot: 
The Doctor, accompanied by Tegan, Adric and Nyssa, arrives at a train station in a posh part of England in 1925. A driver at the station mistakes the Time Lord for an expected visitor to a local aristocratic family, and so the TARDIS team are whisked off to the nearby Cranleigh Hall, where a cricket match is underway. The Doctor plays cricket for, like, hours. By the sort of coincidence that only happens if you're finding something for a good actor with an underwritten part to do, Nyssa looks identical to the fiancee of Lord Cranleigh, Ann Talbot. Before you can say 'split screen' Nyssa and Ann are being mistaken for one another, which is made worse by everyone getting into costumes for a masked ball. Our heroes do the Charleston, and enjoy a nice fork buffet. There's then a brutal murder, the Doctor's accused of the crime, he's whisked off by the police, persuades them of his innocence, and returns to find it's the disfigured, mentally unstable and presumed dead older brother of the family whodunnit. This all goes by in a flash, but they didn't have much time to cover it at a better pace what with only having two episodes and having to include so much important cricket, eating and dancing.

Context:

This was a first for the blog. Most often, I make a selection of the next story using an online random number generator; when a new box set or series arrives, I use a dice roll or some other chance factor to choose which story from that set or series to blog; sometimes, I'll make a decision to watch a particular story and forget all about random selection. This time, we happened to be watching Black Orchid when the family insisted I had to blog it. Because it's so silly. I'd got the Season 19 Peter Davison Blu-ray box set last year, blogged a story from the set shortly afterwards, and have been making my way through the stories and the comprehensive set of extras since. When I got to this story, the Better Half expressed an interest in viewing it, as she hadn't seen it since its first broadcast. The children (boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) joined us too. The Better Half and eldest child were quizzical about different sections. Midway through the cricket sequence, the former was heard to say "Sally Scissors is going to appear we hope?", and the latter - after hearing the explanation about the elder Cranleigh brother's ordeals near where the Orinoco flows - asked "But why did it turn him into a zombie?" Good points, both. 

First-time round:

My weekly attendance of cub scouts in 1982 was particularly hard on this two-parter. I missed the first half of the story broadcast on the 1st March, but got the gist of it in school the following day. In Music, we were studying the Charleston, and a discussion during that lesson about the previous night's episode led by the teacher filled me in. At the time I thought this was just a coincidence, but presumably it was down to a clever teacher (whose name is now lost to my memory) engaging her pupils using something recent from the telly. That evening, I watched part 2, and - if memory serves - I caught up properly with episode 1 in summer 1983 when the serial was repeated. 

Reaction

It was Douglas Adams - one of the most talented people to work on Doctor Who - quoting Ken Campbell - one of the most talented people who surprisingly never worked on Doctor Who - who brought the term 'jokoid' to my attention: it refers to something that has the shape of a joke but is not actually funny. Black Orchid, then, must be an Agatha Christie-oid. The story has something of the shape of a country house murder mystery, if you squint. But it emphatically isn't a murder mystery: you see whodunnit in the first scene, so there's no suspects; there's never any speculation as to a deeper cause or meaning behind the crime; there's no clues or detection. It isn't structured much like any other Doctor Who story either. Calling out supposed lazy writing is lazy criticism: it's very difficult to tell from a finished product how many drafts of a particular screenplay were done, and what difficulties and effort were required. But it's impossible to see how Black Orchid could be so shaped unless as the product of automatic writing with no going back to redraft. It just might be the oddest structure I've come across for any piece of fiction ever.

The first sequence is the 'grab': someone commits a brutal murder. The audience sees enough to recognise the murderer isn't any character they'll meet in the rest of the episode, but they don't get any context at all, so it's hard to know why they should care. It's made worse by some brutal editing doing much heavy-lifting plotwise. The murderer creeps into a sleeping girl's bed chamber, then it cross fades to the murderer tied up on a bed guarded by a South American native. This is supposed to tell us that he's been recaptured before waking the girl up. According to trivia gleaned from the box set extras, this impressionistic way of conveying information was necessary because a proper scene fell through, and they had to borrow footage from elsewhere. I'll let them off a bit for that, but it's still confusing. No matter, though: some intrigue has been created as to how things will pan out.

Cut to: the Doctor and co. arriving. Aside from some petty bitching in the console room (script editor Eric Saward always adds such material to TARDIS scenes, as he presumably thinks it spices them up), the following 15 minutes or so show our heroes having honest to goodness, un-threatened fun. It's rather wonderful: they talk about trains, they play cricket, they have cocktails and get dressed up for a ball. Tegan flirts with an older man (Moray Watson's Sir Robert), Nyssa and her lookalike get to do some Parent Trap style shenanigans. It is refreshingly different, and almost certainly the main reason anyone looks fondly on this story. Adric being admonished by Nyssa for pigging out at the buffet, and - a little stung - justifying himself with "Well, I missed breakfast" is the closest the character ever comes to endearing. He seems like an awkward teenage boy and it's clearly intended (rather than inadvertent as it is everywhere else). In the next episode following this story, he'll be doing super-intelligent calculations and banging on about Alzarius and Terradon again, but just for a moment, he was a real live boy not made of wood.

It goes on too long of course. There's bin a murdah, and almost a whole episode's gone by since - with lots of flappers flapping very nicely, yes - but when are we going to get back to the main event (assuming the mysterious murderer scenes are the main event)? Then, all of a sudden, the Doctor gets lost in a secret passage, finds a dead body, and bumps into Lady Cranleigh and the South American man. Meanwhile, the murderer's escaped again, borrowed the Doctor's fancy dress costume, and is dancing with Ann Talbot. Then, he kills another servant. All that rushed couple of minutes of incident could have been spread out a bit and shuffled throughout the more fun subplots, then the main plot (assuming the mysterious murderer scenes are the main plot) would not have been left to go slack for so long.

In fact, though it might have upset Peter Davison - who is still proud of bowling someone out in one take on screen - the cricket could have been removed altogether. The masked ball has a plot function, but the cricket is just tacked on (writer Terence Dudley is the only person to suggest cricketing is part of the Doctor's characterisation rather than just being an excuse for a new outfit). So, the episode has been 20 minutes of free-wheeling with 2 minutes of incident at the end. But it looks like it's getting going now. The Doctor is accused of the murder. The raging, unthinking, bestial villain also has enough forethought and guile to neatly fold the costume and return it to the Doctor's room, so our hero has put on the same clothes as the killer wore when witnessed strangling the footman. The Doctor will need to investigate who the real killer is to prove his innocence. Won't he? Well, no, not really. Instead, there is another 20 minutes of free-wheeling where the Doctor and his friends do nothing proactive to prove his innocence, and all the tying up of plot is done in the last couple of minutes of part two.

Lady Cranleigh will not intervene to clear the Doctor's name, which is typical of a cold-hearted aristo in an Agatha Christie. (Side note: shouldn't she be a Dowager Countess or similar, rather than Lady Cranleigh, as her husband is dead and the lordship has passed to her son?) But she isn't conforming to the Christie stereotype at all, she just has a ludicrously patriotic faith that the British legal system will clear the Doctor of the capital crime for which she's just ensured he's been framed. Anyway, seconds after he's been taken away, she confesses all anyway. Meanwhile, to prove his innocence, even though it does no such thing, the Doctor shows the policemen and Sir Robert into the TARDIS. This breaks a fundamental rule both of Doctor Who - if that's all it takes to get him out of a jam, what's stopping the Doctor doing this every week? - as well as the mistaken identity subgenre of adventure story, as if Cary Grant in North by Northwest were to just produce his driver's licence and his pursuers accept his word and leave him alone.

The police and the TARDIS team return to the house. The Doctor claims that he had worked out who the killer was all along (so, why didn't he say so when there was a risk he was going to be hung for it?!). He doesn't actually offer any detail, though, leaving two guest characters to have a conversation to the side of stage, as it were, explaining everything. It's a ghastly info dump that is non-actable on the page, so kudos to Barbara Murray as Lady Cranliegh for making it seem almost natural: her eldest son was tortured by natives when he tried to steal an orchid which was sacred to the tribe, blah blah blah, and she's been hiding him in the attic, blah blah blah. We're beyond the realms of pastiche now. The murderer, George Cranleigh, escapes for a third time, and kills a servant for a third time.

He kidnaps Nyssa, mistaking her for Ann, and there's lots of worry about what will happen when he finds out he's got the wrong girl (spoiler alert: nothing happens when he realises he's got the wrong girl). He takes her up to the roof, but is cornered by the Doctor and Lord Cranleigh (well, technically George is Lord Cranleigh as the title will have passed to him being the elder brother and not being dead and all). George falls off the roof in the chaos of the climactic events (or maybe he'd just had enough of the chaos of the script). The final scene is set after George's funeral, which raises more questions than it answers. Did they have a funeral or service previously when they were pretending George had died abroad? How did they explain to people why they were having another funeral now? Did Adric really wear his bright yellow pyjamas to a funeral? And that's that: roll credits, bring on the Cybermen next week.

This story is only two episodes long. I've already written more than usual above, and I've barely scratched its surface. I haven't, for example, mentioned the serial's lack of any SF elements, which made it unique of any Doctor Who story made since the late 1960s, but probably also annoyed a lot of its audience at the time. The (much missed) Watcher, in Doctor Who Magazine, had a mini-cottage industry going over the years, producing more columns on Black Orchid than anything else. If you take the story's flaws at face value you can create all manner of wild theories about the Cranleighs' lineage, education, etc. The cast commentary (featured on the Blu-ray but originally from the DVD) is hilarious, as they rip into every aspect with glee. It makes one feel a bit sorry for Sarah Sutton - this was her showcase, where she gets to play two characters. She's really good too, as are all the cast, and the sets, costumes, lighting, etc. It's very well made. But it succeeds much more as a discussion topic than it does as a story.

Connectivity: 

Another in a succession of stories where six people or more travel in the TARDIS: after Resolution, which sees seven in the extended crew (four regulars and three guest cast), and A Good Man Goes to War (two regulars and four guest characters - River and Amy don't travel in the TARDIS during the episode), Black Orchid has the four regulars, Sir Robert and at least one British bobby.

Deeper Thoughts:
So, why did it turn him into a zombie? One of the most surprising references to Doctor Who in other media is in Salman Rushdie's infamous The Satanic Verses: "It seemed to him, as he idled across the channels, that the box was full of freaks: there were mutants – 'Mutts' – on Dr Who...". A very specific reference to The Mutants, a Jon Pertwee story from 1972, which had an anti-colonial subtext. Over the years since the 1988 publication of Rushie's book, Doctor Who fans have criticised the perceived interpretation that Doctor Who's monsters are a negative - racist - depiction of the 'other', particularly as the story in question was trying to convey the opposite message. The problem with this, though, is it's likely not what Salman Rushdie meant. But then the number of Doctor Who fans who have actually read The Satanic Verses is exactly zero. Well, maybe not, but I'm willing to bet there aren't many. I certainly haven't read it. I don't feel bad though; the quotation continues stating that the Mutts are "bizarre creatures who appeared to have been crossbred with different types of industrial machinery: forage harvesters, grabbers, donkeys, jackhammers, saws, and whose cruel priest-chieftains were called Mutilasians" indicating that Salman Rushdie similarly has never actually watched The Mutants.

Do Doctor Who's monsters, inadvertently or not, reflect the prejudices inherent in the society that gave rise to them? It's probably inevitable, but I'd have said that they were still relatively benign, undoubtedly instructive, and therefore worthwhile. But then, along comes Black Orchid and spoils everything. There's no two ways about it: in this fluffy two-part narrative, a person with a physical deformity is presented as a monster. He is also suffering from mental health issues, so it's insensitive - almost to the point of bigotry - in that area too. And to complete the hat trick, this has been done to him by stereotypical superstitious natives when he offended their god, so you can throw in casual racism too. In 1982 they knew better than this; it was only two stories on from Kinda, a much more nuanced take on the monstrous, and on the conflicts between supposedly advanced cultures and supposedly primitive ones. So what happened?

The issue is that Black Orchid is not the big departure it first appears to be. Despite its being celebrated as a bold experiment - a story about exploring history eschewing the usual SF trappings - Doctor Who in the 1980s was not really an SF show. Very early on, in William Hartnell's first year, the intention was that the show would use its time travel theme to explore science fiction for one serial, educational history for the next. Even before Hartnell left the series, though, this had changed, and - for better or worse - Doctor Who had become a monster show. It mostly gave some kind of scientific explanation for the monsters, but they may as well have been supernatural fairy tale creatures for all the difference it made to the narrative. Or indeed, in this one instance, they could just be a bloke. George Cranleigh is the monster in Black Orchid: he's made-up like a monster, lit and shot like a monster, represented in the credits like a monster ("The Unknown" is how the role is credited for episode 1): every part of the televisual grammar presented to us underlines this. But he's just a bloke, and an unfortunate one at that.

The answer to my son's pertinent question is that George Cranleigh has been implausibly turned into a zombie, because that's what the story needed; otherwise, it's just cricket, food and dancing. As this then injects slightly nasty and presumably unwanted subtexts about how we view people with mental and physical impairments, it might have been better to tell a different story. Perhaps, develop the half-hearted murder mystery and do a full-on Agatha Christie pastiche, but with a different motive? Or do it with an actual zombie, or any other monster? Such a thing had been done before by Doctor Who, and would be done again. Or maybe I'm missing the real meaning: perhaps it's a cleverly coded indictment on the ruling classes: George's raging entitlement to his ex-fiancee is a reflection of his colonial appropriation of a sacred orchid? Hmm. I can't help but feel Black Orchid is not as clever as all that, but somehow you can find myriad interpretations if you stare at it hard enough.

In Summary:

Doctor Who and the Cricket Men (oh, and there's a posh family's melodrama tacked on too).