Doctor Who Visits Montgomery in 1955

February 4 was the anniversary of Rosa Park's birth. As luck would have it, just a few days earlier I had watched "Rosa", an episode from the most recent season of Doctor Who.That British show has been around since 1963, but despite being a science fiction and fantasy fan, I've only seen a few episodes. I watched this one because of the Alabama connection, and enjoyed it so much I'll have to catch some more. 

Doctor Who is not the only television show to make a time traveling leap back to segregated Alabama. Perhaps one day I'll do a blog post on those Quantum Leap episodes...

Further comments are below.  

Doctor Who fandom is massive, which is not surprising since the show has survived so long. If you want to learn a bit, start here

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The 2018 series brought something new to the Doctor Who universe. For the first time, the good Doctor is played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker. She is the 13th actor to play the lead in the BBC series. 

Malorie Blackman is an author of young adult novels and children's books who often uses science fiction settings. Chris Chibnall is currently Doctor Who's showrunner and head writer.  

Our episode opens with Rosa boarding through the front door and sitting in the white section of a bus in 1943. She was ordered by the driver James F. Blake to get off and enter from the back door. That same driver will be driving the bus Rosa boards twelve years later.

Rosa reluctantly gets off the bus intending to enter through the back door. As was apparently fairly common in those days, the driver took off before she could get back on. 

Doctor Who is an alien Time Lord, so she and her friends make their way around the universe in a time machine, the Tardis, disguised as a British police box. Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill play the Doctor's newest travelling companions, Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair, and Yasmin Khan, respectively. 

They have quickly learned how things are in the segregated U.S. South. Ryan--a black man--is punched for touching a white woman, and Yasmin--a Pakistani--is called a Mexican. 

Who and friends set up shop in a motel--fictional as far as I've been able to determine. Ryan and Yasmin must of course remain out of sight. Who and her third friend must pose as a couple to take the room. They have all spent the day of their arrival learning the nature of segregation in Montgomery in 1955. The groups happens to meet Rosa Parks, who sets them straight on some of life's parameters in Alabama. 

 The group has arrived in Montgomery in 1955 by accident, but decide to stay after detecting another time traveler. The four soon learn he has come to change history by preventing Parks from riding that bus, hopefully preventing the boycott, a major spark of the Civil Rights movement in America.

Why? Well, evil time travelers do that sort of thing. Hey, it's this episode's McGuffin. But rest easy--Doctor Who and companions are going to make sure Rosa boards the right bus.

One of the delights of this episode are the realistic background touches that help recreate Montgomery in 1955. Doctor Who and the others use these bus schedules and phone books to try and locate where Rosa Parks will be on that fateful day. 

We also see an ad for the Montgomery Fair department store, the real place where Parks worked as a seamstress. Once the bus boycott began, she was fired from this job. 

Here's the Montgomery Fair department store where Rosa Parks worked as a seamstress as depicted in this episode. 

And here is the real department store ca. 1940. You can see more photos at the online Department Store Museum.

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives and History 

Parks was living in unit 634 of the Cleveland Heights Apartments when the boycott began. 

Doctor Who and Rosa meet again. 

The black man among Doctor Who's companions, Ryan Sinclair, makes his way to Rosa Parks's apartment where she is meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., and attorney Fred Gray. 

A determined Rosa takes her seat in the white section of the bus. 

She refuses to move, the driver calls the police, and Rosa is arrested. History is not interrupted. 

Back aboard the Tardis, Doctor Who winds up the episode with a rousing explanation of what happened next in the Civil Rights movement.

The episode ends with Doctor Who and friends viewing the asteroid named after Rosa Parks.

"Rosa" is not a documentary, and some liberties are taken with historical reality. But as this article notes, "Rosa" is remarkably accurate for an episode of a weekly fantasy series. 

Some Alabamians in New Orleans (3)

This post continues one about a visit to see our son Amos at Christmas 2018. You can read the first part here. And further down in this post there is some actual Alabama history!

On Sunday afternoon we went to this  brewery and watched the Saints beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-28 in an exciting game. Amos and I always enjoy testing out local brews. 

 We ate dinner that night at the St. Charles Tavern, which is close to Amos' apartment, open 24 hours, and has great food and reasonable prices. We had eaten there on our previous trip as well. 

Our visit included a nice walk around part of Audubon Park, which has walk and bike paths in addition to a zoo, aquarium, insectarium, and a golf course and other athletic facilities. Oh, and lots of large trees with Spanish moss. 

I presume that sign does not apply to the abundant water fowl population we saw. 

Audubon Park is 350 acres purchased by the city in 1871 and named after the famed naturalist John James Audubon who lived in New Orleans beginning in 1821. Before the Civil War the land was a plantation. 

And here we have it, the Alabama history connection in this blog post. You can read more about the Centennial here. This event was held in 1884, when Birmingham's reputation as the "Magic City" was being developed with its rapid industrial growth. Iron ore was a big part of that development.

On our way to a Christmas Eve meal at Commander's Palace, we stopped in at another of the city's well-known independent bookstores. 

We managed to get a 3 p.m. reservation on Christmas Eve at Commander's Palace and had a wonderful meal. In order to be properly dressed, I had to borrow a sport coat from Amos. 

After dinner we eventually made our way back to the Green House Inn, where we did our annual viewing of A Christmas Story. 

Not only are there huge houses all over New Orleans, but many of them are very colorful. 

We made it to City Park on Christmas Day for a brief visit. Alas, the coffee shop that Amos said was very good was closed. 

Late Christmas afternoon we headed to the Arts/Warehouse District and found ourselves at the Legacy Kitchen and Craft Tavern. Notice the Talladega and Georgia-named items on the menu. I ended up with an excellent steak. 

As sort of a dessert, we found three Dale Chihuly pieces in the Renaissance Hotel next to the Legacy Kitchen. We've been fans of his glass art for a long time. 

On the way home we stopped for lunch at an old style IHOP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Across the street from that IHOP is the University of Southern Mississippi campus.

The street where the IHOP and campus are located is known as Hardy Street and there is a Hardy Hall on the USM campus. William L. Hardy founded Hattiesburg, Gulfport and Laurel, Mississippi. Interestingly, he was an Alabama native. 

Some Alabamians in New Orleans (2)

We spent Christmas 2018 with our son Amos in New Orleans, driving down on Friday, December 21 and returning home to Pelham on December 26. As with our previous trip in March, we had a great time. See below for all the details. 

And in part 3 there is even some Alabama history! 

On Friday night we had dinner at Gris-Gris on the balcony above Magazine Street. The view was great and so was the shrimp and grits!

New Orleans has a lot of green space and great old houses. 

We had lunch Saturday at Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar and Fish House on St. Charles and started with some delicious crawfish beignets. 

On Saturday afternoon we made it to Octavia Books, one of several independent bookstores in New Orleans. 

We are always up for bookstore visits, but this place had Amos' new book of short stories on display. 

Nighttime New Orleans looks glorious from the Pontchartrain Hotel's rooftop bar.

Dianne and I stayed at the Green House Inn for this Christmas visit. Conveniently, there was a coffee house next door, a bar across the street, and a craft brewery right around the corner. 

The dining room was festively decorated for Christmas.

Up on the second floor is a nice library/reading room that we passed  on the way to our room. Amos and I spent a little time examining the shelves and wished we had time for more. We learned the collection was the owner's. 

We also passed this large model on the way to our room. The small plaque reads, "Model of R.M.S. Olympic built by R.S. Anderson Wallsend 1912."

The Olympic was an ocean liner of the White Star line that operated between 1911 and 1935, including a stint as a troop transport in World War I. The ship was sold for scrap and demolished by 1937.

I was unable to find anything about Anderson. Wallsend is a town in northeastern England.

The Green House has a number of interesting decorative touches, including on the stairway landing. Large paintings of sailing ship are also hung in several places. 

"The Bad Seed", Rob Lowe Edition

On September 9, 2018, the Lifetime television network broadcast the latest interpretation of Alabama author William March's final and probably best known novel, The Bad Seed. This version starred Rob Lowe as David Grossman, the father of the killer child named Emma. Lowe was also executive producer and director on the project. 

I've written a bit about March, his writing and that final novel in two blog posts, "Alabama Book Covers (9): William March" and "The Many Versions of the Bad Seed." I recently watched this latest Bad Seed and thought I'd share a few comments here. 

If you are familiar with the original novel and the classic 1956 film, you can already tell that this version makes some changes. The eight year-old girl was named Rhoda Penmark in the novel, the first film and the 1954 Maxwell Anderson play. Her mother Christine is the parent who realizes her child is a monster. In the 1985 film version Rhoda becomes Rachel, but the mother is still Christine. 

This latest film, scripted by Barbara Marshall, makes other changes as well. The penmanship medal Rhoda covets so much in the original becomes a citizenship medal. I suppose many people today might not have any idea what "penmanship" is or why a prize for it would be a big deal. The old grizzly gardener in the original has become a fetching young nanny, but she meets the same fate.  

This new film met with mixed reviews. Hanh Nguyen on IndieWire found the remake of an "outdated story" a "basket of misses". Patrick Ryan at USA Today and Nguyen again at least had fun pointing out all the places where the new version paid homage to the old one. 

In March's novel and Anderson's play, the mother dies and the evil child survives. Of course, a U.S. film made in 1956 had to punish evil, so mom survives her suicide attempt, and Rhoda is taken out by a bolt of lightening. The ending of Lowe's film follows the spirit of the novel. 

Today the child born "evil" is not as new and shocking a character as it was in the 1950's. The endless number of "demon" children in horror movies has added to the glut. Lowe has made a watchable though not gripping film that tries to tell a straightforward story. He succeeded at that and added a few pleasing twists as well. 

More comments are below.   

Lowe's version was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. His film thus had a different look and feel from the original, which was a Warner Brothers production made at its Burbank, California, studio. 

The film opens with a domestic breakfast scene between father David and daughter Emma. You can find a detailed look here at the pretty impressive house where filming was done.

Emma interacts with the future winner of the citizenship medal she covets so much. 

Emma and the winner before his "fall". 

Actress Patty McCormick plays child psychiatrist Dr. March in the new film. 

Wait--why are those names familiar? Oh, yes, McCormick played Rhoda in the 1956 film; her chilling performance earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations as Best Supporting Actress. She has since had an extensive acting career and even has an Alabama connection. In 1957 she played Helen Keller in the Playhouse 90 television production of The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. 

Her character's name of March is a wave to William March, author of the novel. She also has the creepiest lines of dialog in the film. As Ryan notes in the article linked above, 

After a frank conversation about death and empathy with the stone-faced Emma, Dr. March smilingly comforts her, saying, "I did the exact same things as you when I was your age." She assures Emma's dad that his daughter is "perfectly average" and "reminds me of myself." 

It's as if Rhoda has grown up, become a psychiatrist, and is now counselling another evil child. The mind does flips. 

After daddy's death, Emma is taken in by a relative. We know her job isn't finished. 

Alabama's Bicentennial Stamp

Alabama will reach its bicentennial as a state in December 2019. Celebrations of various kinds have been underway since 2017, the year the Alabama Territory was created. As it did for the state's sesquicentennial in 1969, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp in honor of the event. 

More comments are below. 

In 2015 I wrote five posts on stamps related to Alabama. You can find links to them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. 

More about U.S. stamps and postal history can be found here.

The new stamp will be issued on February 23 at Constitution Hall in Huntsville. The photo was taken at Cheaha State Park by Joe Miller. 

The post office issued this stamp in 1969 for the sesquicentennial on August 2, 1969, also in Huntsville. Back in April 2018 I wrote a post on the sesquicentennial activities in 1969.

In 1919 the Alabama Centennial Commission planned various activities to celebrate the milestone, but issuance of this half dollar was not one of them. The coin was finally struck by the U.S. Mint in 1921; follow the link to get the details of this convoluted story. The obverse of the coin features busts of William Wyatt, governor in 1819, and Thomas Kilby in 1919. 

Wikipedia also has a long entry on this coin.