Well that was some white savior bullshit.

Not cool, Chibnall.

Ugh, people on Twitter are falling over themselves with love for this ep and I think maybe they just found out about racism?

There's supposed to be a new season for Legends of Tomorrow starting tonight, fyi.

Jessica, I have not watched this ep for that very reason. I suspected that it would be offensive to Americans generally, and POC specifically. When it started out with the bus driver carrying a gun I knew that they did not understand and it would be completely over the top.

Any general plot points I should know about?

The episode made me deeply uncomfortable.

I forgot Legends of Tomorrow started today I'll have to watch it tomorrow if it's on CW app tomorrow. Tonight is The Voice and I don't want to flip between them and I don't think I can get Mom even partly caught up on Legends.

Any general plot points I should know about?

Not anything that will be relevant later in the season, I don't think.

On top of the iffy race/American history stuff, this just wasn't a very good episode, period. Chibnall's crime drama roots are showing, and it's a bad fit for The Doctor. The focus on researching minute factual details was very CSI-esque.

"Doctor Who and the Bedsheets of Death"

Every time I struggle with fitted sheets.

Not anything that will be relevant later in the season, I don't think.

You don't think the character trying to mess with history will be back in some form?

I'm mindful of being a white guy from a completely other country, but I have so many undigested thoughts and feelings about this.

I was deeply sceptical of this ep coming in. Chris Chibnall is the guy who gave us a villainous Jewish stereotype named Solomon in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, after all. In the end, I was... pleasantly surprised, I think. I mean, I'm still not convinced that Doctor Who should even try a story like this. But it exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. (I assume that Malorie Blackman had rather more to do with the writing than Chris Chibnall did himself.)

• First and foremost, it wasn't just a White Saviour trope. (Which Doctor Who has unquestionably been guilty of in the past.) Rosa Parks remains the hero of her own story. The Doctor's actions throughout aren't anything more than obstructing a space racist from subverting Rosa's agency. She doesn't refuse to give up her seat because the TARDIS crew inspired her or helped her. She doesn't thank them for anything (She mostly seems bemused by them). Said crew does almost nothing in the big scene - the sum total of their contribution there is literally just to take up space. (I was deeply concerned at one point that they were going to have Graham drive the bus.)
• Given that Doctor Who is a family show, they did pretty well in showing segregation as pervasive, inescapable and sustained by violence.
• I liked they at least gave a nod to racism not having been 'solved' by our day - Ryan and Yaz talking about some of the racism they face, Grace's lesson - "Don't give them an excuse", noting that Parks' life remained hard.
• I think it was the right call not to play Parks' arrest as a triumphant moment, but as something uncomfortable to watch.
• As I understand it, the episode prompted a spike in searches on Rosa Parks. It's a bad ending point on the civil rights movement, but maybe a decent starting point.

On that note, I watched this with Ryan, during which we had the following conversation:

"Oh, Rosa Parks! I know about her! She was one of the women in the book from the library, Sheep Assisted!"
"...Oh, that's -- wait, which book? Sheep Assisted?"
"Yes, that book about the American women."
"About the -- Oh! You mean She Persisted!"
"That's what I said."

So on to some of the problematic stuff.

• We don't meet Rosa Parks, we meet Celebrity Rosa Parks. That's pretty much always the way it goes in Doctor Who historicals. You meet celebrity famous people in Theme Park Britain.
• It's weirdly Great Man Theory. Like the entire civil rights movement could be stymied by changing a bus timetable. (I doubt this says anything helpful about combatting actual racism.)
• It's oddly depressing that the only real window we get into the future is that we can still expect white supremacists.
• Like I said, there are nods to present-day racism. But not enough. There was still an overarching self-congratulatory tone going on - not so much touting how much better things are today, as how much better we understand how wrong things were 'back then'.
• Further to that point: it was all very safe. There's no "Rosa Parks: Good or Bad?" controversy, at least for anyone still watching now the Doctor's a woman. It lets the audience confront the unpleasantness while congratulating themselves for not being like that.
• If this were on any other planet the Doctor would have burned it all down. (Or looked on while the oppressed group burned it all down.)

That last point especially makes me sceptical that Doctor Who should even try something like this. A lot of these points are structural. (Not that DW can't handle social issues. Eps like The Mutants, Turn Left and Oxygen - and the DW-adjacent Torchwood: Children of Earth, are just savage. But historical race relations... Under Chibnall's care...) I don't know. There's something to be said for giving children a way into learning more about such periods. But still sceptical.