Rosa (TV story)

 was the third episode of the eleventh series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales.

Set a day before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to surrender her seat for white passengers, this is the first racially-charged story in Doctor Who history, dealing with heavy themes and depictions of racism, mainly directed at the Doctor's companions Ryan and Yasmin.

Synopsis
Attempting to return home to Sheffield, the TARDIS instead drops the Doctor and friends in 1955 Alabama, where somebody is planning on meddling with time. Meeting seamstress Rosa Parks, the Doctor and her friends must work together to correct the flow of time and keep events in order before things go horribly wrong.

Plot
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Cast

 * The Doctor - Jodie Whittaker
 * Graham O'Brien - Bradley Walsh
 * Ryan Sinclair - Tosin Cole
 * Yasmin Khan - Mandip Gill
 * Rosa Parks - Vinette Robinson
 * Krasko - Joshua Bowman
 * James Blake - Trevor White
 * Mr Steele - Richard Lothian
 * Waitress - Jessica Claire Preddy
 * Police Officer Mason - Gareth Marks
 * Raymond Parks - David Rubin
 * Martin Luther King - Ray Sesay
 * Fred Gray - Aki Omoshaybi
 * Elias Griffin Jr - David Dukas

Crew
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People

 * Yaz states that 53 years in the future, America will have a black leader as president.
 * The Doctor teases herself as the identity of Banksy.
 * Yaz is revealed to be of Pakistani descent. The waitress at the diner they visit thinks she’s Mexican.

Insults

 * Yaz has previously been called a “paki” and a “terrorist”.
 * Black people are often referred to, in 1955 Alabama, as “negroes” or “coloreds”.

Story notes

 * This was the first television story since The Return of Doctor Mysterio in 2016 to be principally set in America.
 * This was the first televised story since The Day of the Doctor in 2013 to feature a historical figure.
 * The episode didn't feature the Doctor Who theme over the ending credits, replacing it instead with Rise Up by Andra Day, the same song used in the sequence of Rosa's arrest.

Ratings
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Filming locations
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Production errors
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Continuity

 * Krasko has a vortex manipulator. (TV: Utopia) The Doctor comments that it is "cheap and nasty time travel", resembling her eleventh incarnation's view of the device. (TV: The Big Bang) Missy also referred to it as such. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
 * Krasko was imprisoned in the Stormcage Containment Facility. River Song was also imprisoned there. (TV: Flesh and Stone/The Time of Angels, The Pandorica Opens, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War)
 * Ryan recalls his grandmother, Grace O'Brien's, death. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
 * Yaz remarks on how dangerous it is for her and Ryan to walk around Alabama given their racial ethnicity. Martha Jones held similar reservations in Elizabethan England, (TV: The Shakespeare Code) as did Bill Potts in the Regency era. (TV: Thin Ice)
 * The Doctor mentions how the TARDIS feeds on artron energy. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
 * The Doctor remarks how she intended to return Graham, Ryan and Yaz to Sheffield. (TV: The Ghost Monument)
 * The TARDIS shows events from history in a similar way to the Time-Space Visualiser. (TV: The Chase)
 * The Doctor still hasn’t gotten used to being addressed as a woman. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth, TV: The Ghost Monument)

DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
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Digital releases
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