Doctor Who Series 11: Ranking Every Episode From Worst To Best

3. Rosa

Chibnall should receive huge plaudits for not only bringing back the genre of historical drama to Doctor Who, but for actually making such stories the top three episodes of this series. Forget the regendered Doctor, the new music, the new design team, the fam of companions, this turn to the past is the biggest shift in Doctor Who this series. Each one takes a slightly different approach to using the past to both illuminate the present and point us to a more hopeful future.

Rosa is the most conservative when it comes to retelling history. The facts of the case are what matters and we are bombarded with them throughout the episode, so much so that it often feels like a history lesson. None of the details already known by the Doctor and her companions are called into question. The story plays out just as it is most commonly told today. In fact, the sole mission of the Doctor and co is to protect and reinforce our received history.

The episode’s ending is superb, pointing away from the Doctor and towards Rosa Parks, just as it ought to. Even the theme tune is made redundant and so the production team turned instead to Andra Day’s Rise Up, a song based on the poem Still I Rise by civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Rosa is treated as a hero in her own right, but she also stands for all those who came before and after her in the fight against segregation and discrimination.