Rosa

[0:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Jody Interterterra, the only Doctor Who flash cast that is glad for once that this celebrity historical didn't have a terraleptil in it.

We're all here.

We're joined tonight by Richard for the 1st time on Jody and Terra, and we've...

You are not glad, you are not glad that there was no pteroreptils.

No, I seriously am.

I'll tell you why later.

But we've all just watched Rosa, and we're ready to give you our hot, ill-considered takes on the episode.

So Todd, would you like to start?

Sure, Nathan.

Well, hi everyone.

Look, I thought this was wonderful.

I have to say that this time round.

The nicest doctor of them all, gets her resting bitch face on, the deal with Dylan slash Brandon from Beverly Hills 90210, a believe, aided by her 3 travelling companions, anger management, Steve Jobs, and our investigator Mexicano, who's great at investigating bars, buses, bathrooms, and back alleys.

[01:07]

But in all seriousness, everyone, I just thought that, um, uh, this was just a great episode.

I thought that Bradley Walsh knocked it out of the ballpark.

I mean, he made me cry twice when he was talking about the woman who fell to earth, that devastating look that he gave in the bus at the end.

Jody's look at the camera at that point was just heartbreaking.

I thought she was just given ample opportunity to shine in this with some great confrontation scenes that were just so natural and witty and I just loved her so much more of this episode than previous.

The music was sensational, the score opening Indian credits can't be done a lot of times, but it was just perfect for this.

The villain might have been a bit one note, but that didn't really affect my enjoyment of things.

I still think that, you know, they probably underplayed that a bit.

Maybe it's something that, you know, might come back to bite them in the bum later on.

But I'm giving this, you know, wow, I'm giving this like 9 out of 10.

Perhaps the only thing I really didn't like was that silly time rotor thing going up in the background was the end, which was just appalling.

[02:13]

But other than that, that's my hot take.

Okay, fantastic.

Thanks, Todd.

Richard, what did you think?

Are we already up to the Himalayan salt light clickable dildo thing already?

are we?

Doesn't she, doesn't she realise that when you use those Himalayan salt light things and you like, you warm them up for too long, they melt and go gooey and sticky, and I know use to anyone.

No, look, my whole house is full of them.

It's a nightmare. can barely get to the back door. will never be able to prize Chatterton off that thing.

Yes, sir.

I like the episode.

Oh, where are we?

Well, look, I, I, being a fond, a fond afficionado of, of stuff, I was delighted that they were going to feature the groundbreaking story of Miss Claudette Colvin, who was, was born in 1939, and um, in March, 1955, was the 1st woman to be arrested for sitting on, um, on a bus in, um, in the south, in Montgomery.

[03:21]

It just happened it just happened to be 9 months before Rosa Parks did it.

Really?

It was a thing.

She wasn't even original.

Well, you know, I just have to mention that because as with all things, maybe, maybe the um, rather, rather photogenic. white supremacist.

Why do they always have to be so attractive?

Really?

He was in time after the time.

He's super pretty.

Why do fascists always have to have the best outfits in the, you know, fascism, fashion, you know, there's, there's a reason for the, for the conflation.

Yeah, this goal, Miss Colvin, Oh, look, it's, I think it's the best, possibly the best piece of Doctor Who I've ever seen or heard, possibly, simply because it touches, just like Todd said, it touches the heart and it touches the mind and the soul and also feeds our love of history and our love, it's what Doctor Who should do.

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

That it's taken this long to get a story like this onto screen.

[04:21]

Yeah.

I can't fault it.

Bradley Walsh Walsh, I think, is the strongest member of the cast, but that's kind of unfair because they are, without doubt, possibly since Saint Barbara, the 1st ensemble cast that is with Maureen O'Brien, I have to say, is the strongest ensemble cast they've had of this many, this many players.

And you might argue that the 5th doctor, and I definitely feel this is a semblance.

Sorry, everyone.

I've missed the last 2 weeks.

But there's definitely a semblance of and echos of maybe Chibnol's, one of Chibnol's favourite eras, which appears to be the 5th doctor.

So I'm just getting lots of vibes of that.

But it's, I'll let someone else talk.

But yeah, I urge anyone to look up Miss Colvin's story because it's deeply, deeply tragic and there is a whole other history to this if you're interested that goes even deeper than they could have done in the 45 minutes, 50 minutes.

[05:21]

Thanks.

Well, let's move on to which one are you?

James.

Apparently.

Look, I totally agree with you, Richard.

I think this is possibly the best episode of the new series.

In terms of its the issues it deals with, I mean, Doctor Who, it deals with racism and prejudice, tends to do it through allegory.

And sometimes it comes out in favour of it as well.

But, um, Tackling it so, so, like, straight on and and being so angry about it was, um, look, it's a product of the time it's made in.

Yeah.

I think, I think looking at what is happening in America today, you can see why that resonates with The world.

[06:24]

You know that the song at the end is kind of, I've heard the unofficial kind of anthem for Black Lives Matter and was used for a sort of documentary series on the rise of sort of gay civil rights movement.

It was used in that documentary series called When We Rise.

Like it is.

It's not just a pretty song.

Um, it is, you know, political, yeah.

And a perfect choice for the content of the episode.

I really, I found myself welling up.

How did Dan put it in?

Moisten up.

Yes, moistening up.

It was it was just beautiful.

Um, I, yeah, I, if I struggle to actually find anything negative to say about it.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, the pacing's a bit off.

But the heart.

The heart that I think I've said this every week so far, there's so much heart in the series now.

[07:30]

Yeah.

Um, they've, they've really tried to do something which is actually, You feel like they they really feel like they want to say something.

With the characters with the, um, the approach that they're taking, they're trying to, they're really trying to, um, make an impact.

Todd, can I get back to you in a sec after we've heard from Brendan?

Yeah, yeah, Brendan.

Hello.

Hello, darling.

What did you think?

Hello, sir.

Yes, um, look, uh, uh, I'm not going to say too much because I'll just be echoing what everyone else said, but, um, yeah, this, this is a magnificent piece of, it's a magnificent piece of Doctor Who.

I saw on Twitter, someone say it, they thought it was an 8 out of 10 piece of television, but 2 out of 10 Doctor Who.

And I think, you know, they would have liked to tear a lapsel to be in it.

[08:30]

But I, but no, I think it's so important at the moment that the villain was a hiku, someone who appears to be an ordinary human, albeit one from the future with advanced technology, who is a white supremacist.

So he is a threat we recognise.

It's not a white supremacist crammed into a, a pepper mill, you know what I mean?

It's not, um, in the previous series, we had, um, you know, racism that Bill had to deal with, which was then inverted when she met a blue person.

And, yeah, it was sort of treated as a bit of a joke.

Ah, in that context.

What I loved about this episode was that the episode had humour, just like real life has tragedy and real life has laughed.

The episode had humour, but unlike other Doctor Who celebrity historical episodes, the jokes were never at the expense of the historical figure.

[09:33]

You know, we get jokes at Charles Dickens and at Agatha Christie, and that's fine, but there could have been a temptation to do that here.

But instead, just one thing I'm going to comment on is when Ryan meets, goes to Rose's house and meets Martin Luther King.

And Towson Cole, who is becoming my favourite, like Bradley Walsh is brilliant, but Towson Cole gets that wonderful line of, excuse me, Dr. King.

Yes, Rosa Park.

And it's just the way he delivers it.

And something I love about the story so much.

Get it, there's, there's all their faces on the bus when they realise they have to stay sitting down and Graham has to stay standing up so that Rosa will be forced to move.

Yeah.

But, just, I just, I just love the interplay between the characters and how they deal with this.

[10:34]

You know, Jody gets that wonderful line in the hotel room, like there's no one here who doesn't have a right to be here.

Meanwhile, out by the bins, Yaz has come into her room this week, you know. been saying she's been a bit underused, but that beautiful speech is of, you know, of course I get trouble when I'm out, you know, as a cop, I get, I get, the ratio was thrown at me.

But I am a police officer.

And you know, 50 years ago, I couldn't have done that.

And watching her give that speech, I got flashes of when Ace would give features about growing up.

And you all know how much that era holds the place in my art.

So to get that connection.

And Ace was another character who spoke about racism and spoke about discrimination to get that connection.

Absolutely, gave me chill.

I think I said to you, Nathan, last night.

My immediate reaction is 10 out of 10 and I was holding off on giving it that, but I've thought about it all day.

[11:35]

No, it's a 10 out of density.

Man, I'm knocking at least one point off for the asteroid, I have to say.

Which I just thought was a profoundly terrible and sort of that's a legacy is a bit of space rock.

Now we look out and see the Rosa Parks rock, which is probably next to the, you know, Pope Benedict the 16th rock.

I thought that that was really very bad.

But...

It's true.

There is an asteroid named after her.

Yeah, I know, but all sorts of assholes have asteroids named after them.

Do you know what I mean?

There's a huge Wikipedia page and one of them is Pope Benedict the 16th.

Oh, there's like a constellation named after the Tartar.

Yeah, well...

Look, I agree.

I think it was a great episode and I think that it sidestepped some really, really obvious traps.

And what it got absolutely right, was not having Rosa Parks menaced by men in rubber suits, not having her aware of the doctor or the TARDIS.

The worst thing that they could have done was have Jody Whittaker inspiring Rosa Parkes to face up to discrimination.

[12:42]

That would have been just appalling.

And, you know, that's, you know, the doctor inspires people to be better.

But it was absolutely not her job as a white woman to do that this week and she didn't.

And so the, you know, all of our characters stay on the periphery and don't interfere with Rosa.

Don't take her into the Tartars to show her what's inside. you know, any of that.

And I think that that was absolutely the right decision.

I think it was right to have, you know, this is the sort of thing that only Tubinal could do.

I've been worried for the past few weeks about the simplicity of the storyline.

Uh, the, the sort of very basic sort of storytelling, that some cleverness has been lost this series.

But this is an episode that could only have been done in this era, that it needed to be simple and straightforward.

It needed to have very, very few stupid science fiction things in it.

And, you know, the idea of, you know, a time traveller, a time travelling white supremacist coming back to stop this is, you know, very, very straightforward, very, you know, it's high concept, but not for Doctor Who.

[13:46]

And I thought that that was absolutely right.

I do have to say that there was one moment that, um, that gave me pause, and that was when they were talking about the fact that in 50 years time, that have a black man in the White House, where they didn't say in 58 years time, they'd have a sort of loathsome swollen racist in the White House.

And, you know, there was that speech talking about the difficulties of both Yaz and, um, that Yaz and Ryan experience uh, in the present day, but there was a kind of sort of liberal hopefulness about things getting better, which I'm not sure that we can help ourselves to quite so easily at this present moment.

And, you know, like as a lot of white people, we were tearing up at the episode.

But, you know, things are still pretty bad out there in ways that we probably, you know, that we're absolutely unable to properly recognise.

[14:47]

Now, these are the chimes of diva loca that are going off here.

So I'm going to wake Tegan up.

And of course, we've got time to continue.

And I've been talking for a while.

Todd, I think that you wanted to say something earlier.

Well, I think so much has been said.

I mean, I just like the, you've all said it about how this construction, how it was dealt with.

I was just going to say, you look at the Shakespeare code and how racism.

I think you need to be a bit louder, Todd.

Okay.

The racism that sort of, I mean, the Shakespeare code was all sort of, all sort of, you know, playful and jokey and made a joke of rather than the seriousness of this, but this could only have been done in this era and now.

The one thing I was going to say is that I'm seeing some people online commenting now about the fact that Ryan actually shoots the villain of the piece with a weapon that effectively sends him back into the past, where there is nothing, and thus he is traded with nothing and will probably die.

[15:52]

Wow, that's terrible.

Well, look, putting up from the point of view that it was a gun of a weapon and doctors carried a gun last week and did any of you have problems with that at all or thought about that?

Or, I mean, I, you know, good difference.

Look, I mean, I, I'm beginning to wonder whether they're going to make a point of this.

Two weeks in a row.

He's picked up a weapon and been violent and is that going to be addressed in some way?

Well, I don't think it was violent.

In fact, a lot of dialogue was spent on making it clear that Grasco wasn't capable of violence.

So by using his equipment.

He doesn't do anything violent.

He just transports him back in time.

And, you know, there are nice caves back in time, you know.

He gets he gets killed by Cyberman's spaceship crashing.

[16:54]

No, no, he meets... and Charles Joe Grover, and they and both of them would like him a great deal, I imagine.

The doctor's got the device.

The doctor's got the device.

She can read the settings.

You can go pick him up and take him back to Stormcage.

She can go pick him up and drop him in the heart of a black sand.

I don't think I don't think that's that's violent.

And I did kind of like that limit.

You know, it was a very sort of setting up the story sort of limit so that things could be done without sort of big shootouts and stuff, but that's good.

That's good.

Having them sort of, you know, try to trick someone into not taking a day off and go fishing and, you know, all of that sort of stuff was so fun. racism against them.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

The simplicity of it, I thought, was delightful.

I was worried about it the last 2 weeks, but I did like it this episode.

This is a this is a tribinal kind of approach to drama, isn't it?

[17:55]

Like, he tries to find the heart in character.

Yeah.

You know, like the Broadchurch plots are actually a bit more complex, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, last orders, does anyone have anything pressing that um, we have yet to say?

Dead, yeah.

I'll take that as a no.

No, no.

It's beautifully.

It's beautifully done.

I think we're all, I think we're all just stunned into silence because...

Yeah.

Okay.

You were asking.

But it's only at the just like Eccleston season one, which we've just been looking at, there really is a benefit to put to giving yourself another 9 months to work on the show.

Yeah, absolutely. absolutely. that's right And I guess maybe the thing is that every year, every season I'd like to do, I want, at least one story.

A classic or.

Yeah.

And it's achieved this.

So it's a good seasoning doctor.

[18:56]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right.

We might wind it up there.

I'm off to petition NASA to get an asteroid named after James.

So, you know, keep up with our Twitter feed to find out how that goes.

Um, we are obviously here on Jody into Tera, and we'll be recording every Tuesday night with our red hot takes on the episode.

If you want some far more lukewarm takes on Doctor Who series one. uh you can catch them at flightsorentirety.com and flights through entirety on Apple Podcasts.

And is there anything more that I need to say, James?

I think so.

All right.

Thank you very much for listening and good night, everyone.

Good night.

See you soon.

Good night.