Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Big Questions We Are Asking After 'Rosa'

This was one of Doctor Who’s most political episodes, taking the civil rights struggle in 1950s America and using it to expose prejudices that are sadly still present today. But it’s not the first time the show has tackled such issues.

Often science-fiction works best by providing analogies to contemporary life. In 2015 for instance the two part Zygon story had much to say about assimilation and how societies treat people from different cultures, and in 1988 The Happiness Patrol satirised societies who demand conformity and punish dissidents.

Both Martha Jones and Bill Potts were subjected to discrimination when they travelled back in time with the Doctor. Martha is confronted by racist attitudes in a 1913 boarding school, where even the sympathetic Joan is accepting of the fact that people ‘of colour’ cannot train to be doctors.

Almost 100 years earlier, in 1914 the Doctor nearly knocked out the sociopathic businessman Lord Sutcliffe for calling Bill an animal on account of her skin colour. There is little effort in either episode to encourage or educate, as if because it was part of the cultural context of the time it cannot be challenged.

Although every single companion in the classic series was white, in Ace we had a feisty character who was rigorously opposed to racism, motivated partly from the experiences of her friend Manisha whose home had been firebombed. In Remembrance of the Daleks, a story about a race war between different factions of Daleks, Ace reacts with anger to a ‘no coloureds’ display. By the end of the episode the racists (Daleks included) are killed off.

So whilst the show has not shied away from such issues, it has never quite got it right when it comes to offering a positive alternative. Rosa goes a long way in correcting the mistakes of the past, even if it still managed to send the racist from the future back in time, unredeemed. Thankfully, this was Rosa’s story and not the Doctor’s or her companions.