Kraksko scans OK…
Me, too. I expected the Doctor to have some major criticism of Ryan for doing that.
I also knew that he was going to do it. Why else have her give him that mini-tutorial on how the temporal displacement gun worked?
This episode worked better than I had hoped. They did avoid making the Doctor the force behind the Civil Rights Movement, and it wasn’t “The Doctor and Rosa Parks team up to fight aliens” (something that often happens when the Doctor meets well-known historical figures). I liked that they acknowledged that Rosa Parks did not have an easy time of it after that–she and her husband both losing their jobs, etc.–and that it took an awfully long time before the country really began to honor her.
On another note, it probably doesn’t mean anything terribly profound, but I notice that Graham consistently calls the Doctor “Doc,” and she seems okay with it. Historically the Doctor hasn’t much liked that nickname. To quote the First Doctor: “Kindly refrain from addressing me as ‘Doc!’”
Episode was intense.
I’m sure Krasko will reappear. The Doctor has her reasons for not getting on Ryan’s case for that move.
A friend speculated that his motive in derailing history wasn’t racism per se, but that he wanted to alter the civil rights movement because in his time, this was the first step in an ultimately unified Earth which, in the Doctor Who universe, is something Krasko’s people in the future are enemies of.
The best so far. The attempt to get the timeline on track was tense and exciting. I could have done without the history lecture at the end, thought since the show was conceived as a way of teaching history, I guess it’s OK.
Still trying to get a feel for the new Doctor, but I think she’s just fine.
Didn’t Alabama have anti-miscegenation laws at the time? I took the show’s Mr Parks to be a light-skinned “colored” man. In real life, Raymond Parks had visible “colored” features.
David Rubin (the actor who played Raymond Parks) is black, although light-skinned as you noted.
Yes.
I didn’t like the villain very much, but I kind of hope they bring him back, and elaborate on his background… Otherwise, if any rando can just get hold of a vortex manipulator and wreak havoc with history, the Doctor ought to have her hands full with cleaning up the timeline after them.
Other than that, I thought it was a strong episode.
That felt like an episode of Timeless. I like Timeless.
They’ve sort of established that vortex manipulators are difficult to come by. Jack Harkness had one because he was a Time Agent. River Song got it from Dorium Maldovar who got it “fresh off the wrist of a handsome Time Agent." I don’t think we’ve seen another one until now, at least not in the new series.
The baddie here had spent time in the prison River Song used to regularly escape from…
Speaking of River–the Doctor identifies Krasko as an ex-con because he has a “Stormcage identifier” on his wrist. But River also did time in the Stormcage and has no such mark that I recall, not even in the episodes that show her escaping from Stormcage. Did they change ID policies at some point?
I fear that is asking a bit too much of Who continuity 
Has anyone else noticed that the perception filter and the vortex manipulator are two things that originated in Jack Harkness / Torchwood stories? I wonder if we may not see a return…
I still haven’t forgiven Jack. Even if The Doctor did.
Good ep, but some clunky bits; as Mr Atoz pointed out, the Doctor telling Ryan how to use the timey-wimey gun might as well have had a big flashing arrow saying “Chekov’s Temporal Displacement Weapon!!” over it. And the Uplifting Moment Of Virtue Rewarded at the end - when the Doctor and the Scoobies are watching the RL Rosa Parks being honored by President Clinton - felt like emotional junk food.
Some things did strain my suspension of belief; I live in Atlanta, the home of the civil rights movement, and am reasonably familiar with the history of the movement. But I had no idea of the name of the bus driver who confronted Ms. Parks. It strains credibility, a bit, that a British woman fifty years later would know that. Ryan thinking Rosa Parks was the first black woman to drive a bus sounds reasonable for a young man with, I have to assume, minimal exposure to the history of a foreign nation. (Albeit, he was in a class named for her.) I mean, how many Americans know what set off the Brixton race riots? I certainly don’t.
That said, they did avoid the pitfalls of Mighty Whitey saves the day; as cringeworthy as a British writing team could have been tackling American racism, His Chibs *et al * did a pretty good job. Like Mr Atoz noted, they did a good job with noting that the Parks had a hard life, by hinting that she wasn’t just a random seamstress but was involved in the civil rights movement (IIRC, she was a secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP), and by acknowledging both that the UK has problems with racism, and that nevertheless, things have gotten better.
The actors did a pretty good job, considering they were all British or South African. I was very impressed by Vinette Robinson, who played Ms. Parks. Her accent was very good. Most of them, in fact - I only spotted one misuse of “y’all”*, when James Clarke said “Y’all get out of my seat!” to Graham. But he could very easily have been addressing both Graham and Ryan. I have heard people pronounce “police” as “PO-lice”, but only when they’re emphasizing the word: “Git in the car, Delroy! They done called the PO-leese!” The racist cop would have more likely introduced himself as an officer of the “Munt-gumry p’leece”.
Note to non-Southerners - using “y’all” as a singular pronoun is a dead giveaway that you ain’t from 'round heah.
Anyone have any idea why this episode was shot in South Africa? Last week’s was shot in … oh crap, I forget, but some interesting place in Europe, presumably for the needed barren vistas. But South Africa? Surely there are enough black actors in the UK that that’s not the reason. I’m baffled.
I’m typing this cold, no reading. I hope I am not the only one that thinks that was the best episode since the David Tennant & Russell T. Davies years. It was well done, well paced and so much more enjoyable than anything in the Moffat years.
OK, now reading other comments:
Oh good, most of you enjoyed it.
I thought the deadly alien planet episode was shot in South Africa.
Maybe it’s more like a prison tattoo?