Why the fuss over Rosa Parks? Doctor Who has always explored racism

Over many years, Doctor Who has met many famous figures in history – Shakespeare, Richard the Lionheart, Vincent van Gogh. None, however, have proved so controversial as the Time Lord’s encounter with civil rights activist Rosa Parks, the subject of Sunday night’s episode. As Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and her companions travelled back in time to Alabama 1955, so they experienced, at first hand, the divisions of the Deep South and encountered a man who was meddling with time in order to prevent Rosa getting on the bus – thus scotching the Montgomery bus boycott and impeding the Civil Rights movement. It was up to the Doctor to stop history changing its course. As she said, “It’s very delicate”.

Some of the criticism aimed at the episode, ‘Rosa’, was absurd. One commenter described it as “multicultural propaganda”, while another was apoplectic about the historical inaccuracies (which is perhaps taking things too seriously for a fantasy show). But others were more positive, with one saying:

"Loving all the people screaming about how horrid it is for Doctor Who to dare to deal with racism at 7pm on a Sunday. This won't harm your children. Shielding them from the harsh reality of humanity’s failures will."

And this, of course is crucial. Doctor Who may be a family show, but that does not mean it shouldn’t explore the big issues. All human (and alien) life is there and always has been – and for a show that has consistently dealt with interplanetary warfare, the issue of race has been prominent since the show began in 1963.

The Doctor’s most famous foes, the Daleks, were genetically engineered mutants, created as pure killing machines. When William Hartnell’s Doctor first encountered them, they were intent on wiping out the gentle, peace-loving Thals. This story was written by Terry Nation less than 20 years after the end of the Second World War and it is no surprise that memories of genocide still resonated for much of the show’s audience.

Nation modelled these pepperpot creations on the Nazis and explored the theme to even greater effect in the 1975 story Genesis of the Daleks in which the Doctor (then played by Tom Baker) directly addressed genocide and whether the Time Lord should actually destroy the Daleks and change the course of history. The story also introduced Davros, whose dictatorship was clearly modelled on Hitler. At Saturday teatime, the nation’s children were being taught an alternative history of race and allowed to witness extraordinarily heavy themes. It was an extreme example, but time and again, Doctor Who would come back to the “other” and the Doctor, as a pacifist, would always do his best to negotiate peace and understanding.

It is, of course, easy to apply a post-rationalist attitude to some of the earlier stories and how they were conceived behind the scenes. Occasionally, primitive cultures were portrayed as savage, while the 1977 story, The Talons of Weng Chiang, was notorious for its less-than-enlightened depiction of Chinese villainy, compounded by the casting of a white actor, John Bennett, in the lead role. Conversely, Doctor Who did give slightly better opportunities to non-white actors than other TV shows of the time with fine actors such as Carmen Munroe and Rudolph Walker allowed roles that were not simply racial stereotypes.

By the time Doctor Who was rebooted in the mid-Noughties, times had changed, and the series has worked hard to make its casting representative of the national demographic. But in terms of storylines, it has been perceptive enough to realise that issues of race are still pertinent. Two of the Doctor’s assistants, Martha Jones and Bill Potts, suffered discrimination when they stepped back in time, and witnessed different cultural attitudes of English history. And of course, the idea of the “alien” remains, with the series even promoting a brand of steam-punk lesbianism in the form of same-sex, inter-species couple Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint.

Some may question this way-out approach to ideas of racial identity, but it must never be forgotten that Doctor Who is science fantasy. It can explore serious subjects but it is free from the shackles of reality. Critics of last night’s episode should perhaps consider this – certainly the idea of Rosa Parks being suffused with artron energy is bonkers but it is merely using the genre to explore wider issues and it certainly isn’t trivialising them.

The Doctor, a renegade himself/herself from the planet Gallifrey, is and always will be, a force for good. ‘Rosa’ was simply the latest example of the show’s plea for tolerance.