Initially ‘Dot and Bubble’, the latest episode of Doctor whoseems to borrow from Black mirror‘s box of tricks. It takes place on Finetime, a planet where everyone is accompanied by a small spherical AI assistant called a Dot, which projects a “Bubble” around their head. Inside their individual Bubbles, people live their whole lives – chatting in groups, watching funny videos or pop star performances – and only seem to go to sleep. Even walking is mediated by the Bubble, which tells them how many steps to take in each direction and guides them to the office, home and to meals. It’s very “kids these days and their damn phones!” kind of premise, but again: alone initial.
The initially blunt metaphor only becomes blunter when the monster of the week is introduced: terrifying aliens that eat the residents of Finetime alive, unknowingly walking into their gaping maws because they can’t see past their bubbles. Our heroine of the week, the hapless Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), finds her Bubble’s feed being invaded by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who spend the entire episode trying to keep her safe from a distance to take. despite her skepticism.
It’s a clever setup, one that harkens back to the fan favorite Doctor who stories like ‘Blink’ and tropes beloved of writers like Steven Moffat (who, surprisingly, didn’t write this episode): terrible things at the edge of one’s perception, a hard limit to the Doctor’s ability to intervene , and a world designed for conformity, where safety depends on the characters’ ability to escape societal gravity. This clever structure clashes with the painfully patronizing metaphor at the heart of ‘Dot and Bubble’ – which writer Russell T. Davies exploits to obscure what he is. Real doing.
Image: Disney Plus
Because between the seemingly lazy satire of terminally online youth and the chilling tension of the plot, Davies quietly drops relevant details about Finetime and what’s really happening here. Who are these people? Wat are they doing? Why are they there? Each answer, given verbally in an episode filled with a loud, candy-colored palette, louder social commentary, and one of the creepiest monsters of the season, barely registers. So when you finally get to the end and the truth about Finetime is made clear, it’s like the floor opens up from under you and “Dot and Bubble” immediately becomes one of the grimmest films. Doctor who stories told in a certain time.
(Ed. remark: This means spoilers before the end of “Dot and Bubble.”)
Ultimately, there is no salvation for the people of Finetime. The first hint was that Lindy quickly brushed aside the Doctor’s warnings at the beginning of ‘Dot and Bubble’, and only started listening when Ruby Sunday spoke to her. More hints piled up, leading to the answer to what brought the slug aliens to Finetime in the first place: the Dots. The Dots have learned from this in their algorithmic services to their users too many about them, and began to hate them. And it’s not because their technology-addicted brains blind them to the real world; it’s because they’re fucking racist.
Lindy and the other survivors of Finetime refuse to take the Doctor up on his offer to allow Finetime to escape safely, instead choosing to brave the wilderness where they face certain death just because of how the Doctor looks. It’s here where the final tidbits fall into place: chilling glimpses of selfishness from Lindy, her lily-white group of friends, the fact that Finetime is only inhabited by the young adult children of the 1%.
Image: Disney Plus
Up to now, Doctor who has been quite unconcerned about how the doctor taking on the appearance of a black man might change the dynamic of the show. On the one hand, this is understandable and even desirable: it would be rude and arguably retrograde to immediately subject the Doctor to racism as soon as this became a possible outcome of the story. It also feels intellectually dishonest to pretend that it does never matter. Davies, the white showrunner who created this situation, chose neither trauma porn nor avoidance. Instead, he opted for specificity: this is what the doctor is like function is more difficult now. There are people who do not want to be saved by him. There are some problems that cannot be solved by cosmically deep sources of compassion and empathy. There are people with hearts so mean that they don’t even want to save themselves.
“Dot and Bubble” posits that its hero’s role is to stand in the gap and help, even in the face of such shocking disregard, because life is precious above all, even hateful little ones – presumably because life can be redeemed and death is final. It’s hard to accept this, and Gatwa’s performance suggests that such idealism may not be deserved here. He laughs at the madness of the situation and then screams in fear. Who knows if it’s the right decision, but he made one. He tried.