Doctor Who: Dot And Bubble Review (Ups & Downs)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
- Doctor Who does Black Mirror, with some big swings that don't all pay off. Here's Seán with our review of Dot and Bubble!
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More coverage of Dot and Bubble here!
Breakdown: th-cam.com/video/_vozCv-9x6Q/w-d-xo.html
Spoiler discussion: th-cam.com/video/DkwTRa6uVKw/w-d-xo.html
i think to say this episode is a commentary on social media is misunderstanding the actual message. this episode felt like commentary on echo chambers, surrounding yourself with people who only think and act like you do, being reluctant to ever look outside that "bubble" you're in and risk popping it.
100% on the mark. I'd love to know if the people who are entranced in echo chambers are the ones misunderstanding the message
Was going to post similar to this but you said it best. It’s not about technology bad, although there is an element to the story.
100%
That's great! I need to rewatch the episode, and think about echo chambers
Absolutely, the twist at the end wasn't just for a shock, it deliberately recontextualised the whole perceived theme of the episode.
JUSTICE FOR RICKY SEPTEMBER
WE HARDLY KNEW YE
Nah man, justice for Richard Combes haha
I've said in other comments on the episode that "I really liked it until I didn't." I left it ambiguous because of spoilers. But the fact that she just basically betrayed the guy helping her, I got to that point and was like 'I don't know how I feel about this episode anymore."
Hear, hear…
His story reminded me of Plato's "Allegory of the cave", he's seen the outside of the cave/bubble, which Lindy and others couldn't see it.
I, personally, loved the ending. It was The Doctor directly experiencing something directly for the first time. And given that his words are his power, it must have been utterly shattering to have them rendered ineffectual -- not because of something alien or technological but simple stupidity and banal racism. I definitely think he felt some pain in that.
I know it’s not the same when I say this, but this is how I should have felt when they did the binary/non binary speech in the meeps episode!
@@kimberlyPerth I don't disagree. I think this had the benefit of RTD pondering the concept and final scene/speech for over a decade. Finetuning it. Whereas that stuff, he clearly wrote on the fly and not nearly enough research. Then again, I wonder how much was Ncuti just choosing in the moment how he'd react and going with it.
@@GroundhogJay I think you hit on something there with the time element. Because I also think of how much I hated Space Babies because it was as subtle as a sledgehammer to the ear, but the subdueness of this ending made it hit so much harder
The same way some Dr who fans reject the new actor based on their preferences.
You forgot "Midnight." That was the first episode I can remember where all standard "Doctor" stuff was totally ineffectual, and he only survived because of the actions of someone else.
"I can't walk without the bubble"
(minutes after meeting Ricky)
*Sprints down multiple stair cases unassisted*
She was being led. It was only when she had no guidance that she had trouble.
@Becvar80 rewatch the episode, you're wrong
She can both walk and run, her visual stimuli had completely changed from virtual to real life leading to disorientation, but I do believe it may have been overdone and there were a few moments that didn’t follow this logic.
i wish she had character growth by the end but nope. i do hope the doctor goes back to save them later
@@aaronmerkel5216why or how would he save people who would rather die than receive his aide lol
This is not about "social media bad". This is pointing out how becoming overly reliant in social media, and surrounding yourself with only people who look, act, and believe just like you creates an "echo chamber" or "bubble" that warps your view of reality.
I agree. Also Sean didn't mention when Lindy started being weird about Ruby and the Doctor maybe being in the same room and her also saying (when he popped up again after she blocked him), you 'look like that other guy/are you the same guy as before' as if she couldn't tell the difference.
Yeah. The whole not knowing how to walk thing seems ridiculous, but it’s true that if you over rely on technology, you can loose/forget basic cognitive skills. For example, some people can’t boil an egg because they’ve only ever used a microwave.
@@BritGirlJay
‘He will be disciplined after this’
‘I thought you were just a different person’
‘Guys he’s not as dumb as he looks’
These guys should watch the episodes twice before doing their commentaries. There were plenty of clues to where it was going. This is a great episode to rewatch and see differently the second time around.
@@christopherflux6254 This is a thing in the education field actually! Early school teachers now have to teach physical skills because kids are not learning them at home. Classes will do things with playdough or slime not for fun but because some kids don't have the hand strength and coordination to hold a pencil. Since little kids play with tablets/phones which require minimal muscles, their hands physically can't hold pencils.
I interpreted Lindy's inability to walk as a loss of hand-eye coordination taken to the extreme. She has the muscles to walk, but her brain can't translate what her eyes see into movement. This matches the theme- Lindy is a person who can't interpret what she sees into correct action. She can't see a slug and avoid it. She can't see a someone (not Ricky or the Doctor) save her and be grateful. She's broken.
I think there is a lot more nuance to this whole episode that this up's and down's gives it credit for that I can go into, but I wanna say something about THAT ending.
I watched this with my girlfriend who is black and afterwards we talked about it and something that surprised me was how my initial take on this episode was the commentary on social media and class and the racism was a 'twist' at the end that I had to look back on to see the signs. This was not the case for her. My girlfriend watched this and picked up on those lines and behaviors from Lindy right away and was able to point them out to me when discussing them. The end wasn't a twist to her, it was obvious and she felt that was the point of the episode the entire time.
There is a post on reddit for this episode that I think sums it up perfectly:
"I got to spend an entire episode laughing at a girl not notice a massive problem just barely outside the bubble she's presented with.
Then the end of the episode happened and I realized I hadn't noticed the massive problem just barely outside what I was presented with."
I was in my own bubble that took the 'reveal' at the end to pop.
That quote is so spot on. Thanks for sharing!
This was very, very well said. I am honestly feeling super bad I missed so much. We do all live in our own bubbles.
Wow. Well said.
I remember seeing that comment actually, really piercing stuff
Oh my God, why didn't i see that??
I just thought "Well, some people are just to stubborn to be saved", but now...
I'm really sorry, but they deserve to sailing in their doom.
Why would FineTime not be dull looking? If they’d made it look great, we’d have been asking why? - what’s the point if no one is ever going to see it?
I thought the same. It would have been better to have been the dullest plain concrete with no decor at all, but I think that might have been a bit too much.
To add FineTime looks plain because it lacks culture, depth and personality like the population that inhabits it's walls
I don't think it was a matter of being unable to walk, but a matter of the brain failing to understand spacial physics because it never had to learn that. She keeps running into the furniture because she does not comprehend how close she is to it.
One subtlety that I don't think you may have picked up on is that while she rejects the Doctor and his advice, scolding him and attempting to block him and only begrudgingly hearing what he has to say, she responds with fascinated attention to Ricky's every word when he essentially tells her the exact same things the Doctor had said.
It is extremely subtle. We are taken in by the social media message allowing us to enter into our own bubbles. I totally missed the white supremacist nature of the society, which illustrates my own difficulty in looking past my own bubble. So deep. Mr Russll T is such a challenging and thought-provoking writer.
The slugs are an analegy of the world that the members of the are avoiding. The vapid positivity is avoidance also. Avoidance that comes with extreme views..
This is not about the banality of racism. If you missed the clues from the start, then it was about how we might enter our own bubbles and avoid noticing racism even when it is right in front of us.
It has the subtlety of a hammer to the face.
@@TheBayzentagreed lmfao
The biggest hint that there would be something continually wrong with her was when she said it might be her best day and RIcky says "there's still a bunch of people dying."
That kinda scene happens a log with vapid self-absorbed characters so it did not stand out much for me beyond it being a common scene ticked off
social media amps up one's narcissism and we see that anything not directly in your orbit.. is not important.
yeah, I felt like that was hinting at something to come
Yea but idk at the end she like wasn’t upset about her mom dying she calls it “going to the sky” and it seems like maybe this society believes in some kind of afterlife and like death is celebratory. Which is actually true in some cultures today, they celebrate death. I guess it doesn’t make it less sad but it just seems like nobody there is concerned about their whole family dying. Like when she says “lucky mummy” in response to finding out she died, it wasn’t seen out of the ordinary by anybody there. The other characters didn’t even make any sort of strange confused expression on their face or anything. It was just normal.
@@Happymama12 Yeah the sky thing reminded me of evangelical christians in America (I am American).
You complain that she was a flat, two-dimensional character, but fail to understand that that’s the point. She has isolated herself in her bubble, surrounded herself with only like-minded people, in an echo chamber of sameness. She hasn’t had the chance to grow or change because she’s never been exposed to new ideas.
Seán _always_ gives downs to things like that done on purpose. It’s like he doesn’t even understand what the point of ups and downs are.
I thought he did acknowledge that her character was intentionally written like that but I agree that her character was well written and even better executed by the actress
I thought that the message wasn't so much "the Doctor saves everyone no matter what", but rather "the Doctor can't save everyone... because some people won't LET HIM."
Something that I just realised after watching this episode; Ricky checking on the Homeworld and them all being dead, makes this a planet of orphans, continuing the Doctor and Ruby’s trend of continuously encountering orphans.
yes, they go and start a new planet, orphan 55
Yea that's 1 thing I thought too, it could have been ventured into in the last few minutes rather than the Doc being left to know that they wouldn't let him help them
Oh, good point!
A theme of Orphans. Hmm.
Question is, did they ever have parents in the first place, or were they created by AI as some kind of plaything, were the slugs created as a kind of garbage disposal.
When the reveal happens Ruby immediately knows exactly what shes dealing with and just gives up on them while the doctor tries, likely because shes had to deal with that same thing with who her mother and grandmother are and has no patience left for it.
"If only I were still that blonde woman... but then the accent...." ~The Doctor
The Doctor had the experience of defending others against racism (e.g., when the 12th Doctor punches the Sutcliffe in "Thin Ice"), but this would be the first time he's experienced it directly (well, strictly speaking, he'd been a black woman among humans at least once -- the Fugitive Doctor -- but he retains few to no memories of that incarnation)
Another thing is that it really just shows The Doctor's strong sense of morality. Even when it's clear that Lindy and her people won't get over their own prejudices, he still offers to help them. He knows it likely wouldn't change their opinions of him, but he still doesn't want them to die.
@@alexanderparker2219 Also The Doctor KNOWS these people aren't capable of taking care of themselves and now they'll likely die off in the wilderness having to do all their own work.
@@scottboswell6406Yeah, these people are the last survivors of yet another genocide and the poor Doctor's watching them prepare to march off the metaphorical cliff together.
The social media message / metaphor was deliberately delivered in an over the top way, in order to allow the REAL message to be subtly snuck in - a brilliant way to do this!
"subtly", Well if you consider a sledgehammer subtle...
@@SpikeyMikey341they don’t even say the word race
@@j.i.nthenobody54 They didn't need to. Who used to be a story with maybe a bit of social commentary thrown in. Now it's just messaging with bits of plot thrown in. Makes it pretty unwatchable because you are just sitting there waiting to be hit over the head with the next 'point' without even the benefit of a decent plot to take your mind off it.
@@SpikeyMikey341 the “racism bad” messaging isn’t even exposed until the final 5 minutes.
@@j.i.nthenobody54 I don't want 'messaging', if I wanted to be lectured I'd go to a church.
One interpretation about the 'point' of Finetime is that it was a place the younger members of the population were sent to for safety. Clearly the people of Homeworld were also using Dot and Bubble systems, maybe they realised the Man-Traps were starting to take over and sent them away to protect them. Especially if Homeworld never figured out that the Man-Traps were creations of the Dot and Bubble system. Could also explain why the security on Finetime was so tight.
I think the point at the end was that even though all those people didn’t have their digital “bubble” up anymore, they still never escaped they’re actual bubble; they people exactly like them who will never challenge their beliefs
I agree. They even outright said so, that they would uphold the social order of the city, which in my eyes doesn't make them racist, but elitist. They consider themselves to be the elite and everyone outside their former bubble as beneath them. So, even without the technology this isolationist mindset survived, so in a way they still exist in a bubble, as you already implied.
so you're saying that the real bubble was inside them all along
@@Streifithey’re still racist, that was confirmed to be the case
@@Streifithey racist and elitist. They were rude to Ruby because she's a worker but they hated the doctor for being black.
Lindy's inability to walk without directions is actually realistic. Experiments putting filters in front of animals' eyes show that when the filters are removed, the animals still have trouble recognizing certain obstacles. It's not that they can't walk. It's that they don't recognize what's in front of them.
Also…me without my GPS going anywhere. 😂❤
Yup when all you do is follow arrows on a screen all your life, it probably programs your brain to only be able to walk that certain way. So I can totally see this being a thing.
its not realistic its dumb and a silly juvenile take on social media obsession.
@@Johnny_Thunder You missed the point of the episode then if you think it's saying "social media bad". It's about echo chambers
@@basicbluetrash No you missed the point it was hitting you over the head with the obvious criticism of social media obsession to the point that people can't even walk in a straight line with directions lol.
Another element I loved was how that the "influencer" was the least influenced: it makes me think of people like Zuckerberg who doesn't let their kids use social media.
The betrayal of Ricky makes sense for Lindy's character but how does the computer not know that Ricky has just changed his name
The computer probably liked Ricky and decided to give him a bit more slack.
It probably just defaulted to use everyone's screen names
@@dandywaysofliving I thought this too, like maybe since he would take it off and go about his business, it didn't learn to hate him SPECIFICALLY and only killed Ricky because the dot thought that Lindy would care
I think the point of the episode was missed. It's not social media = bad. It's that being in a curated echo chamber where we are only fed things we agree with by people who look and think like us = bad. It's not just that the banality of racism = bad (tho it is bad). It's the fact that the banal racist comments are so commonplace irl that the majority of viewers didn't notice them until it was spelled out to them.
As a Black American, I think the way they handled race was brilliant. Something that I think is clever about this episode is that they didn't wait for a historical to handle race. We don't need to see a lynch mob go after The Doctor in the antebellum South to understand racism. In fact, I think depicting more overt racism would be a disservice to Ncuti as the first Black mainline Doctor. In reality, the subtle microaggressions depicted are very real, both in society and on social media, and are far more common than overt racism.
We're supposed to be angry that they get away without immediate danger, we're supposed to be frustrated that the racists got to continue living in ignorance. It's sadly very true to life.
Strongly agree with this. I like that it also shows racism harming the racist without them having some big moment of realisation about it (because they're racists).
I also appreciate that, between this episode and Rosa, Doctor Who has shown that racism isn't something that just goes away because it's the future now.
I agree. In fact, I'm actually disappointed that we didn't see more microaggressions against The Doctor to foreshadow the ending more. As is, if it didn't have the racism ending, it could seem a little, "So, we have her reject and want to ignore the only Black individual she is interacting with, were the WRITERS being racist?" But there could easily have been enough in there that, looking back after the episode ended (without the ending), we could have put the dots (pun intended) together and said, "Hell, that *brat* is racist!"
I agree with everything you said but I took something different from the ending. I don't think we're supposed to be angry because they got away without danger, I think we're supposed to be like the doctor frustrated and sad that they were too ignorant to take a better option that was right in front of their faces
@@j.rileyindependentproductionsI think there were a few "dots" actually like Lindy saying "oh I thought you just looked like the one from before" and her disgust that they were in the same room and her joy that he was going to be punished and the instant block as soon as she saw him dispute all the red warning signs but she still talked to Ruby
I knew she was racist the moment she blocked the doctor and went back to her uniformally vanilla bubble
Susan Twist playing Lindy's mom makes me wonder if her parents are even *real*, or if they're simulated. If she's never been hugged, if she's only interacted with them via dot and bubble, then maybe they aren't even real.
I has the same thought. I think theyre corporate test tube babies just like the space station babies!
Well, we do see a devastated Homeworld. With a slug. So, real people were there. Even if they bottle-reproduce, like in "Space Babies".
In the Space Babies episode Ruby asked what those babies are for: "Food?" - maybe this batch of 17 to 27 year old useless bubble kids are just that: "slug food" - fully grown and not yet rancid they make a nice meal for slug-kind, before the next generation starts and the moon gets resettled by a new group of future food ("Soylent Green" processed their victims before they reached age 30 - and that 1973 movie is set at the futuristic year 2022, just when Ncuti began shooting)
@@LisaBeta-42A few other SF references: the domed city (with presumably no exit - but how's did new folk come in at 17 and exit at 28?) and the age limit reminded me of _Logan's Run_. There are differences: the folk in the Logan's Run dome worked real jobs; there were babies (likely cloned or otherwise decanted from artificial uteri, since there seems to be no such thing as pregnancy) who were communally reared in a creche; when you reached your age limit, you were expected to go to Carnival (where you were killed in a major spectacle, and presumably - according to their mythology - reincarnated); if you didn't go to Carnival as expected, you became a "runner" who had to be [killed] by Sandmen (a job not dissimilar to police, except for the killing part)... Alphabetical order doesn't seem that dissimilar to birth order, when you stop to think about it...
He didnt mention my favorite scene with the elevator opening and her feeling almost compelled to walk into the monster because the dot was telling her to walk forward.
I don't think it was saying social media is bad. It was saying how people engage with it can be toxic. As evidence by some of the dialogue, not every one in Lindy's friend group was as oblivious. One was onto the disappearances immediately but was ignored until it was too late.
But even the one guy who noticed that people were missing, never actually looked out the bubble to see that people were getting eaten cos he didn't believe Lindy when she told him. I think it definitely was hinting towards the fact that people get too dependent on devices and use them as a comfort space rather than facing challenges in real life.
Her betrayal was SOO good, it both matches her character AND I didn't see it coming. She went from protagonist survivor to villian real quick
potrayal I think you meant! But yeahhh soo good.
@kianbrayshaw9841 no I'm saying the betrayal she did was super good
@@zachh6868 ohhh I see
You mentioned Ncuti Gatwa's reaction to finding out that everyone racist but Millie Gibson's acting killed me. She tried to put her arm on him to pull him away. She puts her hands on her hips. She looks down. She just looks ashamed and can't even look the doctor in the face.
She's probably dealt with that bs with her mother and grandmother a million times. I think she feels bad that it seems to be a new feeling for the Doctor.
They already knew the society was racist. That's demonstrated by how the Doctor and Ruby act throughout the episode. That's why they're both so subdued at the ending; that's why the Doctor realises that the Dot AI hates this society and decided to purge it (it's a whole society of racist white supremacists - the purge ain't happening because they're vapid rich kids. 'Homeworld' ain't that far off 'Fatherland').
@@NicoleM_radiantbaby Never thought of that. He just wants to help them. It feels so deliberately self-destructive. Frustrating for him.
Everyone keeps saying racism just because everyone on the planet is light skinned but nobody picks up on age *and* finances... Is it racism and not age? What about class, you see what I'm saying? They were all rich kids in a rich world full of rich young people. Nobody said a single racist thing the whole episode.
@@NicoleM_radiantbaby I wonder if he's explained to her that he's been different people throughout his life. Cause I know 11 explained it to Amy and Rory off screen, same with 12 and Bill.
As a person of colour, I struggled with the ending of this episode because there wasn't any exploration of how that actually affected the Doctor. It's not the immediate aftermath of racism that's the most difficult part, it's the minutes, hours, days, weeks after that really make it difficult. Now obviously there could be something in the next episode that makes the Doctor reflect on it, but for me, I'd just liked one more scene at the end of the episode, where after he and Ruby go back into the Tardis, Ruby asks if he's okay. I just wanted to hear the Doctor's perspective because it just felt to me like a white person trying to tackle racism while still not giving the victim a voice. Yes, the immediate reaction was powerful, but now I'm going to be sat here disappointed with this episode until at least next week, and if it's just not addressed then it's going to sour the whole season for me, which sucks because I've really enjoyed it until now.
I think it didn't affect him at all because he knew that they are just idiots in a bubble universe where they were led to believe certain ideals. He didn't place their worth on their beliefs because humans are susceptable to being misled about certain things. What frustrated me was the fact that they left the episode with the racists still on their high horse, I would've loved if they had to come crawling back to the doctor after realising they are completely helpless
@@shalinimahalingam9064 That's the thing though, it's not a good representation if it didn't affect him in any way - cause it does.
Especially if it's happened often to you. It changes the way you think about people, on if you're safe or if X choice or getting X job stopped at the face to face interview because of past experiences. It effects what schools you send your kids to and even the things you have to teach them.
There's ways it changes your entire life when you know you live in a area or country where people treat you differently. Take me for example, I know through youthful naivety, ignorance and trial and error that people see my 6ft+ polynesian ass as a threat for just existing. It's also something you have to adjust your life around because you not participating doesn't stop others from doing it. Even a being like the Doctor couldn't be immune from it
@@tanepukenga1421 It does happen all the time to me, more often than not, I'd explain it away but there's always that uncomfortable feeling in the back of my head where I question, "is it me who's in the wrong or is it just them?".
But you have to remember, the doctor, at least in this life, has always been white so he's never experienced this before. Think back to the first time you experienced racism, you probably felt confused and angry that the whole situation wouldn't be a problem if the colour of your skin was lighter which has nothing to do with who you are. I think that was what the doctor was going through.
The episode could really benefit from an epilogue like at the end of midnight. Where we see the doctor just sit in (what he feels like is) his failure, and we could see ruby try and comfort the doctor but he has a moment where he stands in judgement of humanity. Just my opinion, but I really really think an extra 3 min epilogue would have made all the difference.
Some of the best episodes of Dr Who are the ones where he can't save humanity from themselves at their worst.
I get the impression that Finetime is meant to be the space equivalent of a gated community.
That does make some sense
As someone who lives in a gated community I wholeheartedly agree with your theory. It can seem like it's own pocket world.
No. Then, they be killed for having trash on their lawns or something.
Lol, yep. They lose their dot privileges if they plant the wrong kind of tree. Or leave their trash cans out too long. 🤣
With "Okay"/"Not Okay" "paint sample cards, like in Family Guy.
I seem to be in the minority, but I loved Lindy as a protagonist. She was meant to be an unlikable, selfish, racist rich kid, and she absolutely nailed it. The actress did a fantastic job. And the ending, after she was being nice to Ricky, and they had some heartfelt moments together, and you think she might turn over a new leaf, and then she doesn't. It was such a punch in the gut. And it really just hammers the idea home that some people just don't want to change, no matter what information is given to them. And Lindy really portrayed that concept so well. And I loved it.
when people say they dont like her, they arent saying the actress was bad or she had bad writing, i fucking despised her
I thought Lindy might have betrayed Ricky because of him going home and reading books. The horror and surprise she played was great.
I agree. In contrast to Shawn feeling that she was one dimensional, I thought she was far from that. Several times I exclaimed to the people I was watching with "oh, she's bright". Her bubble had made her utterly reliant on its virtual world and she was shallow and social-media-ish because that's her life. And it wasn't just her saying (a few times) that she isn't stupid, but rather that there were several points where we saw flashes of her thinking, working stuff out and coming to her solutions. In the short time that we had with her, I thought that there were a lot of subtleties brought out from what was, to some extent at least, a brainwashed character. She was meant to appear shallow and one dimensional, but we got lots of hints that, given a different environment, she might have been quite different.
So, when it came time for her to betray Rickie, it was horrible and morally wrong (and I guess that's who Lindy is - regardless of whether it is as a result of her upbringing, or whatever), but it was an intelligent move. She had knowledge of Rickie, she was smart enough to figure out how to use that information to save herself, and she was ruthless enough to use it without hesitation.
The really interesting thing, for me, is that she's not the good guy. We *think* she is, but then the "twist at (near) the end" is her ruthless immorality when she sacrifices Ricky. Also, when she is with "her people" at the actual end, we see her fall back to her default of rejecting the Doctor because he's "not like us" and sailing off with her shallow "friends". She's not the good guy. She wasn't just a shallow one dimensional character. She was a bright, immoral, fundamentally broken person.
My prediction is that when things start to go wrong for the escaping group in the boat, there will be plenty of them prepared to betray each other to save themselves, much like Lindy did to Ricky.
@@DrPickle205Sean gave the character a literal down.
She's a good protagonist. I enjoyed watching her struggle with a world and a way of living that was obviously completely alien to her, despite being literally right in front of her all the time. Her betrayal of Ricky hit hard not just because it was a dick thing to do, but because before that point, we were kind of willing her to become a better person. It was like watching a recovering addict relapse.
While there’s still a plot hole, I could see the dot creating the slugs because, like most ai, there probably is some sort of code saying they can’t hurt humans. So the dot created the slugs so that all they had to do was maliciously comply with its instructions and simply walk people into them. But it still doesn’t totally explain why it was suddenly able to kill.
The bubble itself is the main message - they are living in a bubble which doesn't allow the young people from one socioeconomic background to interact with anyone from a different background. Just like with our own social media, they're not encouraged to interact with anyone outside of their bubble.
The shock at How Ruby and the Doctor are in the same Room also hits a bit more once the racism aspect comes out.
Racism aspect hit me so hard..
That was when I started to think it was racism and not coming from the classism or even the possible ageism (since no one in the bubbles looked to be older than their mid 20's) angle.
YES FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE GOT IT!
Yeah, good point, I hadn't connected that. I was thinking it was an odd mistake in the writing, since she had obviously believed she was in the same room "working" as some of her peers, but that bit seemed to imply that these children were never in the same room as each other at all, to me. Now you connect it to the racism, it makes perfect sense - it wasn't two people in the same room, it was *these* specific two people. I honestly was completely ambushed by the racism aspect, never saw it coming, and that made me feel bad feels about myself, and why I didn't even once think so much as "hey, odd these kids are all so light skinned, just about Arian, huh", right? Like how did my half-German white-as-anything self miss that? Oh, right. I hope people who weren't prepared to face that about themselves had the same sudden revelation. I hope it really threw them for a loop and opened their minds up a bit. F-ing brilliant episode.
The comment in which she said, in lines of, "Didn't I blocked you, I thought you looked alike, but you are the same person." How racist could she get?
The banality, simplicity, and stupidity of the racism at the end was kinda the point. Other shows that deal with this type of twist gets too complex and multifaceted which, true, is part of reality, but this episode captured the base stupidity of the racism and echo chamber (whether social media or social construct), cutting through all the usual excuses. The episode does its job.
This was about leftism, not race. They didn’t treat Ruby any better, and she’s about as white as it gets.
In terms of your questions around ‘Why Finetime?’ and what it is in particular, I think perhaps it’s a reflection of gentrification. Rich kids of ages 17-27 moving into an area far outside of their home, forcing out the native culture and using it as a playground, effectively, for partying and socialising, meanwhile doing a marginal amount of work to feel some thin sense of contribution. I think considering areas like Dalston and Clapham in London, and how much they begin looking like Finetime, it ties into the themes of the episode quite nicely.
This is the third episode in this season that death is mentioned as a neutral or positive thing to happen to you, and it's strongly intimated that death is not the end. In Boom, the little girl isn't upset that her parents are dead. She says her dad is not gone, 'just dead'. In 73 Yards, at the moment of her death, Ruby Sunday's character is transported to her past, and you get her point of visual focus, which is the sky. In Dot and Bubble, when Lindy is told that her home world is gone, no character says her mummy is 'dead', but that she's gone 'to the sky' and Lindy says "lucky Mummy'. We know that SM has a bit of an issue around death being the be-all-and-end-all, and Russell T Davies would have reasons for wanting death not to be the end (death of his long term partner) but I think that this particular sky referencing means something in plot terms, and is probably going to form a part of the reveal with Ruby and/or Susan Twist.
From my perspective as a black man (and I’d imagine non-racist ppl) I thought it was a masterclass on how it feels and often works when you’re hit with or observe racism you aren’t expecting… In my experience it has been situations where you hear and experience these micro-aggressions, but you don’t want to “go there” and feel you’re overreacting, so you just pay it no mind and move forward. But when it’s ultimately confirmed there’s a realization/frustration moment…and I SAW THAT in Ncuti, it hit me the same way it hit the Doctor bc I thought I heard it but just kept watching and that last scene felt real to me. I’m going to be thinking about this episode for awhile…it not one of my all-time favorites, but it’s definitely is one of the most memorable for me.
Love the channel
Well said!
Yes. It’s well acted. It’s almost realized by Ruby first but she doesn’t know what to do.
Oh thank god, sorry I'm late to the party. but saw the episode today. watched a few reviews and people really missed what was going on. I'm a MoC so I guess RTD can write from a black perspective. Clever Episode x
as a person of colour, i think it handled its themes very well
The thing that bugged me was how the Doctor kept asking for her to close her bubble to look at the world and tell him what’s going on. But then in the tunnel she is able to just flip the Doctor’s screen to OUTSIDE the bubble allowing him to see the area all around.
Why not just do that before??!
It did immediately make me think of Nosedive. But with almost the exact polar opposite ending, in some ways.
I really loved the way Lindy was portrayed in terms of being a believable result of an incredibly sheltered, stunted, and privileged existence. She was childlike(in some of the worst ways) but without being stupid or incapable, just dealing with things that she had never encountered before, however ordinary they were to the rest of us. The way she struggled to even walk, and got frustrated and panicked at her inability to do something so basic, was really well done.
What I wish they had gone in a bit harder on is the fact that they were all stinking rich. It is a documented phenomenon that the ultra-wealthy lack empathy - past a certain point of wealth, they don’t see other people as people. This makes sense of Lindy throwing Ricky to the wolves while he was actively in the process of saving her life, even though she probably didn’t even need the extra time it bought her. Maybe the intention was “social media is making The Youth selfish and evil”, but “billionaires are literally incapable of human empathy” can also be found in there and is arguably more true.
It took me far too long to pick up on the racism. At least, consciously - I picked up on the fact that Ruby could infiltrate Finetime and pass for a resident while the Doctor could not almost immediately, but I didn't put my finger on why. I think they left it a little bit too deniable, though. It would have been possible to make it undeniably racist without using any slurs. Possibly the antiracism angle of the episode was a bit too sidelined/sanitised to be entirely effective.
I feel conflicted over the ending. On the one hand, if Lindy is a good representative of the rest of them, they were rude, homicidally selfish, ignorant, cosseted little bigots. On the other, they were effectively children. Nasty children, to be sure, but they were not making an informed decision to go and die in the wilderness. That makes it all the more bleak.
I can totally believe the walking badly thing. Imagine wearing a VR headset for the first 20 years of you life. You’ve not had proper depth of vision for an extended period of time. With the bubble, walking became a passive activity. Once they had to think about it I can see there being an adjustment period of being wibbly-wobbly and walking into things.
I agree. Walking was not the problem. The problem was having to use a sense of direction for the first time. The feet work. But spatially the brain does not know where to guide the feet. That's why when Ricky grabbed her hand she could run. He created her direction.
yeah, it's like when I first got glasses, I almost stumbled and fell walking out of the eye doctors office. It was maybe overdone, but it made sense to me.
Agreed. There have actually been several psychology experiments that demonstrate pretty much this.
Apparently there are studies out there showing this is mostly fine and it takes just a few minutes to adjust. Turns out you can navigate yourself even from an external camera feed pretty much fine.
I didn't mind the walking joke, although it's as subtle as a rock to the face, like the rest of the episode. I did mind that once she holds hands with Ricky she doesn't just get over it, she's suddenly running all over the place, climbing stairs and ladders and dodging obstacles with no help. Once the painfully obvious joke is out of the way they drop the concept completely and immediately, which just makes how long they rely on it earlier more frustrating.
I kind of think it could be linked to Lindy's privilege and how she's had everything basically handed to her (such as the arrows in the bubble), so when that's taken away from her she doesn't know what to do and she is struggling to do normal daily things in a society that only really caters for people with privelege
I think you can't see this from the pov of a Black person Shawn. This episode was AMAZING. The way I'm so used to microaggressions that I don't even always notice them bc I shrug them off and then looking back I see everything. And the pain the doctor feels at his first time EXPERIENCING racism against him was 😮💨.
Imagine how people like me feel dealing with all you neurotypicals.
Based Nicole
Exactly!!! I didn't even notice. Until rewatching The fact she immediately blocked him. And so many tiny little things.
This...yes, this.
Exactly! I was so taken aback by her sheer stupidity that I missed the racism at first. Truthfully, I just wish we could have seen karma in action! That would have been so satisfying.
Sean, I much prefer your perspective and manner because you're more critical and honest, rather than seemingly trying to put a silver lining and positive spin on everything. I do tend to agree with your opinions a lot more, so I welcome seeing you next week also.
This isn’t the social media episode bruh. This is the “Rich and Gated communities never see anything they don’t want to see and seeing a black person is worse than the end of the world to them” episode
Tbh, I started with the same idea that this was about social media. But if you strip that idea away (or if you look at the social media aspect as just a storytelling tool and not the point), the whole episode is about racism.
Most Black folks noticed immediately that there were no POCs in the bubble. Also, Lindy immediately dismissed the Doctor but she gave Ruby a chance.
It's not about the tech, it's about the system that isolates people in their bubbles. You don't need social media for that. Regular mainstream media does that.
Yeah as a white guy, I admit I was so distracted by them being privileged rich kids to notice the microaggressions. Thought it was class-based arrogance more than racism but... that ending hurts still.
Now black folks doesn't sound condescending in any way,
@@shallwego4 WE Black folks often call ourselves Black folks, so...
I presume it was immediately apparent to most everyone that all these people looked nearly identical, and very fake, and very northern European, not even just Caucasian in general. The guy who was the least blond-and-pretty, the punk, was dismissed nearly as easily as Ruby and the Doctor, simply for not being fake positive.
I'm a white guy in my fifties and noticed in the first 10 seconds that everyone was white - and knew this was the theme of the episode. Then the Doctor appearing was very jarring - particularly because of colour.
That end scene, I felt that in my soul. I absolutely did. I have been there. In that type of moment. And reflect on wtf just happened.
Frustration, anger, confusion, emotions all over the place, tears of pain, a gut punch. You cannot control it. It welds up, and you just wail. You feel like you've gone mad.
I want to give the Doctor a hug 🫂
Regarding your point on the protagonist not being a character one cares about: I really do think, that this IS the whole point.
The viewer is made to endure the try to save someone you are neither particularly fond of nor care about. This kind of puts you in the doctors perpective, which makes the ending even more meaningful in terms of perspective.
Imagine (though the doctor ist Not Like that) having the power and possibilities of the doctor, trying to save everyone regardless of their moral or ethical values only to be confronted with this. I think the viewer is made to feel uncomfortable about Lindy on purpose and made to not care about her that much to make the ending hit even harder when you as the viewer, who ist forced into Lindy's perspective fromm the get go, are suddenly made to change your perpective into the one of the Doctor.
Sometimes making you not care about a character can be a powerful tool.
I think this is one of the best episodes of the new doctor so far!
I thought the ending was brilliant and it absolutely achieved what it set out to. The social media thing plays a part but i dont think thats the main message. The main message is that after ALL that trying, the doctor cant believe that the thing that stops him from saving these people is how they see him. Loved it.
You need to rewatch this episode and take into account the ending
all the glib and arrogant replies to the Doctor the comments about when this is over
how he will be disciplined. RTD IHMO wrote one of his best stories it 1st started out
as commentary on social media, then he flicked the switch and basically the Dot's saw what we did and decided these people needed to be punished. What she did to Ricky will shock a lot of people who will miss the racism, when she said about voodoo and they were all white
basically think Nazi Barbie. These idiots went off in a boat into the wilds the Doctor and Ruby knew it would be death within days if not hours and stood there while they humiliated and insulted him but he still wanted to save them. That scene was his 1st and 1st day on the job, For people to suggest he cant... the amount of spit released put a Certain 007 actor to shame. He's nailed the passion the anger the kindness of the doctor. What started off as maybe an iffy episode RTD turned it right on its head. This was dark mirror meets Dr Who.
Fascinating, right? Racism did not occur to me the entire episode - even the end. I guess like in real life, people who are not discriminated against sometimes don't see whats happening. I am shocked (and worried) that I did not see it. I will re watch with a different mindset but that realization made this episode more impactful.
@@roncenti when you rewatch and listen to all her comments right from the start she's putting him down. Just watched again on BBC Ricky seemed a lot warmer it looks as if he really was one of the only decent ones
the way she not only killed him but lied so easy, she is one very nasty person.
If this was a commentary on racism it was a very bad one. Or it wasn’t, and some people just see ‘racism’ in everything.
@@oathy03 she's putting him down since he was a literal definition of a spam message, she wanted to drop Ruby as well but Ruby was able to talk her up instead of scaring her from the get-go.
If that was really supposed to mean a racist behavior, it would surely be not visible to people who are not subject of it and that's the problem.
Your comment made me rethink how I was looking at the episode after I finished watching it.
I really thought it was going to be killing people based on follower count. They made such a big deal out of who it was targeting, then it killed Gothic Pete who only had about 350 followers and we could guess her coworkers weren't very popular, and it would give the same indication that it's all part of the system whilst also putting Ricky September at the end of the list which could have built some tension around him being the last one standing. I think it also would have fit better with the whole social media aspect of the episode and constantly showing follower counts throughout the episode, rather than a simple A-Z.
this episode is more black mirror than doctor who
I feel like we totally watched very different episodes! The whole episode seems like it’s about trying to negotiate between getting sympathy for Lindy and also realizing who she actually is. The symbols of how she was disgusted by the doctor, can’t believe they’re in the same room with him. It’s supposed to tease this thing. It’s supposed to hint at right wing echo chambers and bubbles. You start in the bubble with her and have sympathy with her, and then Russell navigates between you liking her more, thinking she’s coming into her own, and then her betrayal and then her fundamental racist beliefs.
Like that’s the twist! It’s playing with your sympathy! It’s taking a relationship with her that makes you think it’s one kind of story where she finds herself, and instead it reveals who she actually is.
Definitely wasn’t tacked on to a message about social media being bad. It’s a story about right wing echo chambers and how people inside them think they’re nice and fun, but then damage and harm. And then it’s sort of about how the dots aren’t evil at all. They’re like horrified at the evil of the people.
Yeah I just feel like your reading of this one is off.
I love the balancing act. On one hand- you have a person who is completely awful and kills her crush to save her own life. On the other hand- you have a girl who was sent to party world when she was 17, is trying to buy and use sustainably, and is so sheltered she can't walk without direction. Before you notice how terrible she is, you kinda pity her.
The problem with the idea of creating a main character who's so one dimensional, as Seán pointed out, is that the primary message of the Doctor is that we humans can be better. We can mature as the human race, even if it might take him one human at a time to help find the best parts of themselves. I understand the appeal of writing a character we might want to loathe in the end, but it's not good Doctor Who. Of course, it's possible, that this whole season is sort of "alternative reality Doctor" where the Doctor, which could end up being ok (and a good excuse for the writers to do something new). But so far, it's been frustrating for me to watch this season, especially after having so many seasons of frustrating writing in the past years, and being excited for RTD to return. I can't tell if he's just not enjoying the process anymore, or if there's some hidden goal that will play out later. Either way, it's not fun.
@@thewiseturtle I disagree. I have no idea what show you've been watching your entire life. It's surely not Doctor Who.
The Happiness Patrol - McCoy - Humans culling the population in order of how depressed they were
Paradise Tower - McCoy - Older humans eating the younger generation
The Doctor's Daughter - Tennant - Humans literally fighting for countless generations for no reason
The Ark - Hartnell - Humans literally fighting for countless generations for no reason
And just as an entire concept to refute your statement - THE CYBERMEN
Like, OMG, have you not watched a single episode with CYBERMEN in it? Do you not understand WHY they keep happening?
This is the conversation underpinning many, if not most episodes of Doctor Who. It constantly challenges us to be better BY Showing us the 'or else' part in countless, wonderous ways. Showing the best, and worst of humanity, getting us to make our choices in view of where it all could lead us. Good doesn't always prevail, that's reality, but WE should always strive to BE part of the good in the world. That's what makes Doctor Who the best heartfelt drama out there.
For this reason, I will watch, no matter how cringe the writers take their material.
He was the wrong person to review this
@@thewiseturtleI'm not sure why you think he's not enjoying the process anymore (other than you personally not liking the season). I think he's having a great time and, other than Space Babies, I haven't enjoyed a season as a whole like this since the second Smith season
100% agree that Lindy is one dimensional but maybe that's the point, that there's no more to her because she's in a bubble of ignorance
Yeah ngl that down felt like an up to me, she's one dimensional, with things like the hug she shows a hint that she might be able grow out of it but by the end its clear she is just that ignorant and self absorbed she will always be so one dimensional and it'll always be reinforced around her.
She looks too similar to Ellie. That's why,
@@dmitriiglass lol having the same shitty behavior yourself🤣
I noticed about fifteen minutes in that everyone was very light-skinned, and that seemed a bit odd but I was still caught off-guard in the best way by the ending.
What a great rug pull too, to make you think this was specifically a social media/AI/big tech episode, but it actually ended up being a much older story about echo chambers.
And the rings of Akatosh song (a song of togetherness and unity) being quoted and then swerving hard into the main Doctor theme as they slip from view?
Incredible work all around
Sean not understanding the reaction the Doctor had to realizing the racism occurring, I think tracks. The Doctor has never experienced that before. He is essentially a deity who is more or less used to people questioning him then coming around on him when he shows what he can do, (think Voyage of the Damned) who The Doctor is. In this episode it took the Doctor a while to get through to these characters to get them out of the city. He had already broken through to them, I am the Doctor and I save people. So not only was this a very unusual incident for the Doctor to be told sure you can save me but I don't want you to save me. This was also the first time that the Doctor had experienced racism from the perspective of the victim. You can rationalize the problem with racism and comprehend the pain that accompanies that maltreatment HOWEVER if you are not the actual victim of it then you cant really understand what that bewilderment is like, what that pain is like. So then take a character, a deity, the Doctor and say yes you led me out and maybe you can save me but I would rather risk the very high likelihood of death than go with you, trust you or even speak face to face with you.
I think Gatwa nailed what it would be like to be an individual thousands of years old experiencing that for the first time. Gatwa is prone to a little bit of over acting with the crying and emoting (we saw that in Boom) but the flood of emotions, shock, pain, rage, speechless he nailed what that would be like.
I also think they nailed the twist and this an episode that when you re-watch it you will see how aggressively they telegraphed the ending but because we are so accustomed to vapid dumb dumbs like Lindy being nothing more than self- obsessed shallow nothings we accepted her for that and didn't see that her reactions to the Doctor specifically were always rooted in that unspoken racisms. I found myself through out wondering why she listened to Ruby but not the Doctor and why she blocked the Doctor but not Ruby and I was still shocked by the ending. When you view things like her shock they were in the same room through Lindy's view her shock was because she couldn't understand why Ruby would be in the room with a black man not because of the social media distancing things (she had been in the room with her co-workers etc.) I think this is an episode that with a 2nd watch you get something completely different out of it knowing the twist and you will see how much the twist was telegraphed.
Sean also completely missed how the echo chambers of social media lead to these racist, ego centric ideas not only becoming wide spread but that they are validated and become the norms depending on what side of the internet the algorithms send you to. Think about the AI that turned racist in like 12 hours just based on reading the internet. Reset your tiktok algorithm sometime and then intentionally land yourself on the racist side of tiktok and then imagine living in that as the algorithm only feeds you more of that type of content. I cant fault Sean for missing some of these things, I do think as POC it was easier for me to immediately relate to the concepts and make the connections.
Dot and Bubble was my favorite episode of the season so far exactly because of how much it had to say. It had a hilariously on the nose satire of social media bubbles and a fairly subtle (until the end) commentary on racism, all while very literally screaming, eat the rich. And it still managed to throw in a couple of very shocking betrayals at the end. It was brilliant.
What I loved is having Ricky there as an almost surrogate Doctor. He was everything The Doctor is, right down to holding her hand and running.
It showed how easily Lindy would have gone with The Doctor if he were white.
But then she killed him. Which I hate.
JUSTICE FOR RICKY SEPTEMBER.
Disagree. Ricky was a "celebrity" and she was enamored of him. Do you actually think she would've gone with any of the other Doctors, if it had been one of them? I don't. She and her friends displayed the same kind of arrogance and xenophobia as did the people on that bus in Midnight toward the poor Tenth Doctor.
yeppers
@@mrwittyone I mean definitely would've helped if he was white, like she is undeniably a racist on the second watch and you realise how differently she acts with Ruby and the Doctor and when she realises they're in the same room the first time you watch it she looks surprised but kinda making a weird face, but knowing the end its pretty clear shes actually just disgusted. Maybe she wouldn't have gone along with the Doctor exactly like Ricky, since yeah hes a celeb shes obsessed with, but it definitely would've channge how she acts around him.
I think part of the point of this episode is that people with prejudices can hide it and present themselves as ‘social, friendly and welcoming’ when they’re with the ‘right’ kind of people. It’s like in Boom Town when the Slitheen ‘Margaret Blaine’ claims she’s not really evil, just because she spared a person’s life. The Doctor calls her out, saying that being nice in certain circumstances is just a way of covering up the bad
There was one thing that bothered me, and that was the fact that, on the way to the escape tunnel, Lindey went from not being able to walk in a straight line to running up and down stairs in a matter of minutes. I just stopped and thought, "Was she faking it? Is this about weaponized incompetence?"
It's nuts how Ricky September had every quality of The Doctor, even having to quickly move on from the loss of his home world to save someone, yet Lindy still doesn't like The Doctor. The only difference between them was the colour of their skin.
and that Ricky was a "celebrity."
Except that she didn't like Ricky either, obviously. She just used him.
@@thewiseturtle Of course she liked the celebrity.
Her understanding of the world started online. She simply continued applying those 'disposable' concepts when the bubble was off. Her IRL self wasn't developed to include such things as empathy. People she associated with only existed on her terms, or she simply flicked them away. Social media rules applied to irl.
A wholly intolerable, empty-headed brat incapable on transacting emotionally when that other person needed her. Seriouslym the only time she cared was when she was losing something.
The world, according to Lindy.
The subtlety of this episode was masterfully done. The mentality of people who live in their own bubble, including the belief that some people are better than others, because of skin colour or wealth, was such a gut punch of a punchline. Kudos to the actors and RTD, so well done.
Spin around 10 times and then try to walk straight
Now instead of spinning around I'll imagine that you have a bubble around you that's constantly moving and spinning and you can't actually see the outside world, instead your eyes are just used to only looking 12 in in front of you, so you're far away vision probably very bad from lack of use... And you're used to your field of vision in front of you moving all the time and so you're not used to walking when everything around you is still
What I really love about the she has trouble walking at first is that a lot of people will at first look at that and say wow that's so dumb, so unbelievable but when you really dig into it, it's actually really smart and requires knowledge of how the brain processes information to allow us to walk normally
Basically it's so deep that most people are going to walk away thinking it's dumb 😅
I actually think this episode nailed it...I think that the episode wasn't about the doctor wanting to save everyone, or social media being bad. The episode is specifically about the danger of echo chambers. It shows the danger that can come from not being able to step out of our bubbles that we so carefully construct for ourselves, regardless of whether it's social media or not. Something I think people don't mention enough is...even though he's "outside of the bubble" Ricky September is still very much apart of the society, he still has this world that has been carefully constructed around him, this echo chamber, and you can see it because he's also uncomfortable talking to the doctor. He constantly avoids eye contact with him and is condescending towards him.
This is the first doctor who episode that I was routing for the protagonist to get eaten.
EAT THE RICH!
Yeah, clearly the doctor is a way better person than me. I'd have looked around, shrugged, and said, "Slug's gotta eat too." 🤷♂️
Yep.
Feel sean is so fixated on his preconception of this being a social media episode that he is missing the forest from the trees.
It certainly happened to me and now I realize I was in my own bubble lol
He does this a lot over on Trek Culture too. It's like he judges episodes according to how closely they align with his favorite tropes.
have to give him a down for that
Right, there's 3 "bubbles" in the episode and social media is only one of them
@@darkthirty7855this video is seriously reminding me of how he continuously misinterpreted Mariner's arc in last season of LD
Laughing at “Lindy is one dimensional” being said like he wishes we got more LOGICAL and RICHLY EXPLORED takes on racists
Lie what do you want,her side of the story? She can’t walk
@@OWLMASTERYi mean it would be nice to not waste 80% of the runtime with an unlikable and boring character then, the message was fine but man I couldnt have been less captivated by that blonde nonce
That's because he has a sophisticated and mature view of the world, rather than a cartoon one. Humans are complex.
@Jamie-sr1ye sometimes maybe you should hit the button that says “Cancel” instead. Wow.
Other people have commented more eloquently than I could about the themes of the episode; I just wanted to add - how can we be sure that the homeworld was actually destroyed? Might it just be the AI showing the Finetimers something to stop them fleeing?
I think the ending is a comment on the idea that "you can't help people who don't want to be helped". The Doctor is ALWAYS, it seems, helping people who need his help whether they realize it at the beginning or not. Often throughout the history of the Doctor, there is skepticism of who he is, or his ability to help, but by the end, everyone realizes they could not have gotten through their troubles without the help of the Doctor.
This episode is different. At the beginning, Lindsey doesn't want to listen to the Doctor (we find out later that is mainly because of racism), then listens to the Doctor while he could be a servant to her, then when they meet in person, she rejects him and any further offer of help. The people of FineTime have things under control because they are affluent and the upper crust of wealth. They want to carry on their beliefs no matter if a brick is tossed into their head throughout the episode. The Doctor expresses incredulity at these people who are still wrapped up in their own bubble.
They did have things under control because they WERE affluent and the upper crust of wealth. But Finetime is gone, everyone from their homeworld is dead. They're a bunch of self-centered rich kids, with no supplies or like skills, who are going into the wilderness to die. And part of me enjoys that.
Many people don't want help to better themselves I see it everyday, not a new thing.
Yes. You cannot save someone who does not want to be saved
Sadly, I don’t think Dr. Pee survived, if we’re going by alphabetical order.
Bet his urge to urinate skyrocketed too in that moment
Oh, I thought he was an AI avatar
They kinda gloss over that but the fact that she hadn't peed in three days implies the AI were dehydrating them
@@Dracattack all the better for slug digestion?
@@Zhadnost Even if he was a real person I am hoping "Dr. Pee" wasn't his legal name.
I wish the dog could have a teenager boy, so Ruby will be happy
I love how this episode used the red herring of the “social Media bubble” commentary to talk to the audience about something far deeper and more challenging than that conversation. We’re handed a veritable cornucopia of red flags about Lindy and the world she inhabits throughout the entire episode, and yet somehow we’re shocked when she turns out to be a coward, a killer, and a racist. That’s holding a mirror up to us. Wow! Brilliant! I think it speaks to how practiced we are at dismissing micro aggressions and explaining away inequities and awful behavior in favor of giving people the benefit of the doubt. We want Lindy to be on a redemption arc. We want her to come through and be better than she shows herself to be. And our desire for that gets in the way of us seeing her for who she actually is. All throughout the episode she’s mean, she’s vapid, she’s lazy, she’s bratty, she’s cruel-and she’s racist. But we ignore all that because we think we’re supposed to be rooting for her-that she’s supposed to be the protagonist. What an exceptional piece of writing! It lays bare the underlying cause by which we allow people of bad character get away with offensive and repellent behavior. It’s our need for Lindy to be good that supports her terrible conduct. And by showing us that, the show asks us to examine ourselves. Why was her blatant racism at the end a gut punch? It never should have been. And what does that say about us?
This is some of the best social commentary I’ve ever seen on TV. 10 out of 10. I loved it.
Two thoughts:
1) 1000% thought that Ricky September was the Doctor as a holigram projection. His mannerisims and speech patterns were so similar.
2) Right as the whole "I can't walk" scene played out, I asked aloud if it was wrong that I was rooting for the slugs.
I asked my best friend while we were watching the episode if it was a bad thing to hope she got eaten by the slugs. She looked at me and said “no”.
#teamslugs
I was also convinced Ricky was the Doctor in disguise. His positive, helpful attitude, his running around, him accepting and hiding that everyone on the planet is dead, his knowledge of the underground river. It all felt very Doctor-y.
Oh I was actively rooting for the slugs to get her nearly from the very beginning. That feeling only got stronger as the episode went on.
@@donkeysunited I feel like at some early version of the plot this was meant to be the Doctor, but then they changed it to be some random heroic guy who saved the wrong woman.
One trend I've noticed in the commentary regarding this episode is that white viewers say the ending was a twist, but black viewers say they saw it coming a mile off. That alone has just really made me stop and think.
yep. didn't surprise me at all. Trans and mixed race, i'd be surprised if it didn't end that way.
I actually didn’t catch the racism (until somebody mentioned the rich kids were all white) but I also didn’t see the ending as a twist. I came to the ending from a classism view. Nobody (that I’ve seen at least) talks about how rude & dismissive Lindy was to Ruby with her ‘rough’ accent & the fact she identified herself as staff. The only reason she initially listened to Ruby was a ‘ugh I’m only doing this so that you will leave me alone!’ type thing. So of course she’s going to look down on the Doctor he’s just an annoying servant to her. It also rings true with the ending of ‘you’re not one of us’ = ‘you’re poor’. Although racism & classism do go hand in hand.
Im black and i personally didn't see it coming. I loved the ending. saw it more like a situation where its like a gang vs an opposing gang "oh we don't ride with yall, you have blue and I have red" kind of situation. maybe I'm missing something. i really saw it as a " YOU ARE A STRANGER AND THEY ARE NOT". The doctors reaction is perfect in my book "I just did all of that for you to say no to me saving you" LOVED IT. he took an L to the CHIN and is gonna help someone else. their loss.
I come from a pretty upper middle class part of a pretty white country and the realisation hit me like just about 30 seconds before the "reveal" and like yeah it really does make you think a bit because theres so many lines and hints that can sorta be written off as "oh shes just self absorbed and in her bubble thats why" but then thinking back while knowing the context its painfully obvious that it wasn't just because he was someone not on here bubble and when she said you people all look the same she didn't mean it as non-Finetimers. I think it just might be my fav ep of the season, 73 yards was the most fun on a first watch but kinda falls apart a bit the more you thing about it, boom was good too but I just don't think it's quite a memorable and theres a few bits n pieces that could be more polished.
@@withersheep9009very well put and totally agree.
I think this is how they are starting to address racism, not the only acknowledgement. This is the 1st Doctor we follow that's a person of course; the vast majority have been white men. RTD needed to acknowledge how different his experience of the world would be in the body of a black man than his experiences as white men (or woman.) This episode speaks to who society allows to be in positions of power by focusing on who we are willing to listen to. No matter what planet/time period the Doctor has traveled to, he has always been able to take control easily and be listened to (except Midnight of course) when he too charge. Even in Flatliners, the Doctor coached Clara about how key the emergence of a leader is to group dynamics. Yet in D&B, even though the Doctor saved the only survivors, they still scoffed at the idea of going with him. Racism makes people ignore the gifts and talents of others. Even when someone is offering you something of value (like a way to survive!) racism and prejudice still make people blind to how they are harming themselves by trusting their hateful biases.
I do think that this was a clever way of showing that sometimes, the Doctor saves people who are totally horrible.
Ones that in the end, you feel the “maybe they deserved to be eaten after all”
It was kinda nice to see that.
And, perhaps, the bubble was more a way of saying “we live in a bubble” rather than looking at the world around us.
The reason why the Doctor & Ruby couldn't go inside was because of the Doctor... The City identified him as different and wouldn't let them in 🤔💙💙
Dang! Missed that! You're right. 👏 👏
I absolutely agree and I don't know how Sean and the team didn't realize that? It was very obvious at least at the end that there was no way he could be in the same place as them.
Oh man
I think the security just didn't let anything in or out, hence having to use abandoned maintenance areas.
@@ImmortalAbsolor could be that those maintenance areas is where that particular society felt People of Color belonged. Underground, out of sight, out of mind, laboring to keep the white people above happy.
This episode is great for the reason that you can speculate on so much
The villain is not social media. It is not even the giant isopods. It is, as Ruby calls them, the "rich kids" themselves. That is why they are rounder than the bugs or the bubbles.
As a black man, I'm so apalled that I missed the sub text of racism on my initial watch to the point where when the twist was happening, "I was like, are we gonna talk about how she betrayed Ricky !?!?" But on second viewing, the twist hit me, and I screamed an audible."No way!!!" The twist was very subtle that when it hit, it really hit.
Limy wasn’t being Racist, at least not because of Doctors skin color. She’s being SPECIEST. If it was simply because Doctor was a black guy, then why did she treat Ruby exactly the same? Look how in the beginning where she refused to talk to BOTH of them, simply because they weren’t on her official ‘friends list’ in the bubble dot network, and she was more irritated that these two strangers she never seen or talked to before somehow hacked into her network and were bothering her with talks about ‘monsters’ until the convinced to actually look and see for herself.
Plus for all you know there might have been non-whites on the planet as well. They said there were about 200,000 people between 17-25 there. *lol* plus they said people were going missing for weeks before anybody finally started noticing there were a lot less people around. Plus I doubt all 200,000 people were on Lindy’s friend group dot bubble. Plus she mainly talked to her main group of friends the whole episode.
plus I think if the age limit for being on that planet was 17-25 with no adults, I guess after 25 they have to go back to Homeworld to start their adult lives. Lindy was being a typical teenage (or twenty something) spoiled little rich girl who’s been living on her own since coming there at age 17, with no adults around to tell her right from wrong if her parents bothered teaching her any before sending her away for 8 years.
And it’s probably been a LONG time since anybody actually called Homeworld, like Ricky eventually did and discovered it’s been destroyed. Or somebody did discover it destroyed and never reported it to Lindy and everybody else on the other planet.
She and other residents were too busy having fun and doing the things they were probably couldn’t do back home, while literally living inside of a bubble, where it looks like their only interactions with each other is through video. They didn’t know how to act in REAL LIFE situations outside of the dot bubbles or act without coming off as rude to people.
Plus when she says Doctor wasn’t ‘their kind’ sure it could mean his skin color, but at the same time she might have also meant she wasn’t part of HER green blooded (remember the first victim lying on the ground being dragged away leaving green blood behind) alien species. He and Ruby literally were outsiders in both race and species to Lindy and the others despite everything they had done to save them. If you weren’t from Homeworld or thought like the way Lindys gang did you don’t belong with them period whether you are rich, poor, black, white, etc.
Though I think Lindy and the kids have all been brainwashed by somebody to think and act like the way they do? How else do you think Lindy somehow got a ‘video call’ from her ‘mummy’ while Doctor and Ruby were trying to help her. Seeing what Homeworld looked like when they called it hours later shouldn’t ‘mummy’ have been as dead as everybody else on the planet? Or seeing how bad Homeworld now looked, wouldn’t ‘mummy’ have MENTIONED what was going on back on Homeworld especially when she brought up how she was hoping to see Lindy home again soon?
Another reason I say they’ve been brainwashed is because ‘mummy’s’ face suspiciously looks a lot like a younger version of the AI face on the Ambulances on that war torn alien planet the Doctor and Ruby visited. If the mummy who called Lindy was the same AI, wouldn’t that mean the dots belong with to the same company as the Ambulances? I wonder if we had seen videos of Lindy’s friends own moms, they would somehow have the exact same mom. If they had been brainwashed by the dots they probably don’t even remember their real mom’s faces.
The ending worked for me. I saw it as growth for the Doctor, realizing that sometimes you just can't save people. No matter how much you want to and no matter how much you try, some people will just refuse you and there is nothing you can do about it. It was a lesson this Doctor maybe needed.
The ending kinda reminded me of the end of Voyage of the Damned where Rickston survived and the Doctor's conversation about "sometimes we feel that the wrong people survive but if we had a say, that would make us no better than them"
I mean, it's not the first time it happened. In the Night of the Doctor, the girl in the ship preferred to die than being saved by the Doctor just because he was a time lord
Dont you think the Doctor has already learned that lesson before? XD
Well, he could've regenerated...
@@dbsnoxian7647 It's different when it's over something you don't really have control over - especially when it has to do with you. It's a really weird and difficult emotion to process. It happened to me once in a papa johns and Im still weird about it. I'm usually very outgoing but that shut me up for a while. I still don't know what to make of it - all I can do is move on.
I think this was a very VERY accurate portrayal of racism. It looks like they’re just being snobs but then once you come outside their bubble you see the bigger picture. Racism is insidious and is experienced as a series of micro aggressions that you wouldn’t totally notice. As a black person it absolutely blew me away. Often times it’s perpetrated by people casually who come across as harmless. But then, like Lindy, you lift up the bonnet and see the selfish workings underneath.
Definitely! Thank you for sharing! I initially read her as being a snob who’d been taught to follow rules blindly. Really forced me to look at my own “bubble”!
Can not agree more. This is what everyday racism looks like.
I didn't even realise it was racism until watching this video! I recognised it as discrimination but, as you say, I saw it as snobbery, sort of a sci-fi rich vs poor or popular vs unpopular discrimination kind of thing, but it's 100% actually racism based on skin colour and silly white me feels bad for not seeing that at first! Scary stuff man.
no it wasn't accurate at all. It didn't even bother to try and tackle anti white racism.
It's the typical BBC bollocks. When the BBC aren't busy recruiting different ethnicities and supposed cultures to make themselves look good, they're all snorting cocaine and sitting there thinking how to destroy their own shows. Doctor who is ruined, no thanks to that repugnant Russell T Davies whose obsession with LGBTQ and homosexual antic's has ruined the show
The walking thing is primarily being used as satire but it is actually plausible. If Lindy is used to always walking with the bubble, that will have impacted her depth perception. It's like when you get new glasses and it takes a bit of time to adapt to the lenses; stumbling/tripping are real risks.
I don't understand how Finetime works? Like are there servants that we don't see cos they're already been slugged? Cos I cannot see the young people changing their bedsheets or washing up dishes!? Who cleans the streets or plants the plants? Why did the main character have stuff in her flat if she never saw it. How did she even get dressed if she cannot walk? Are there a hoard of robots we just never saw that do all the manual labour? How do they 'party all night' if they never ever interact with each other? Is it like "you become a toddler and get a bubble and never interact with another human ever again?" If so - what is this 'parting all night' that they do? Because it cannot include sex. Also how did everyone else get into the dock area with the boat? Did they also get codes from Ruby/Doctor? Was there anyone left in the bubble still alive? How the society even worked is bizarre & not thought out and therefore leaves the audience going 'huh?' endlessly.
I really liked the episode. I was getting bored, thinking that it was yet another episode about how young people are wasting their lives on social media. But once she meets Ricky, and says “This is the best day of my life!” And he looks at her in a politely disgusted way, and reminds her that thousands are dying, and she just shrugs it off, the whole thing just snowballs, and her character turns out to be a full blown racist psychopath, my mind was absolutely blown. The fact that these people were so confident in their prejudices, that they ended up walking straight into certain death, instead of accepting help from a black person, was so very on the nose.
I loved this episode. It has many nuances that make us enraged throughout the time, and when the last twist happens, it is like a train coming at full speed.
I loved how they used Ricky as a counterpart of the Doctor, to show us the difference with how Lindy treats both of them. I think Ricky would be an amazing companion btw (rip)
Ncuti was astounding in the last scenes and i sat in silence looking to the screen crying an stunned. I will think of this episode for a long time and i hope that it opens people's eyes.
And I believe rtd said it was impossible to make back then for a simple reason: the doctor was white.
"If only I were still that blonde woman...." ~The Doctor
Justice for Ricky.
Omg I thought sticky would have been awesome companion!
My main thing I don't understand about this episode is that RTD was lauding Ncuti's performance in 'that scene'. Why? I just didn't get the emotion from his performance - especially given the emotional extremes he was supposed to be portraying. His frustrated rage was unconvincing. It made me think of Capaldi hammering the console in Death in Heaven or Tennant raging against the dying of the light in The End of Time. Those performances connected with me. Ncuti in this and other scenes just hasn't connected with me yet.
I do think that this was a clever way of showing that sometimes, the Doctor saves people who are totally horrible.
Ones that in the end, you feel the “maybe they deserved to be eaten after all”
It was kinda nice to see.
I don't think Lindy's character being just dull is a mistake. I interpreted it as if you spend all your life like her (same things, same people, not experiencing anything from outside...) you will be in fact dull. There can't possibly be any development. The only person we see who really has a personality is the one who refused to live in his bubble. The rest are all dull because... Well, what else can they be?
Exactly as I read it! Glad I'm not alone :)
Painfully obvious
There might have been others who realised without knowing a way out due to lack of knowledge
Lindy is basically a villain masquerading as a civilian because of her betrayal, she is literally going to betray a lot of people in the future!
I feel some of the responses to Lindy is because they can't see why you would make a character like her (vapid, dismissive, etc) and make her the "Main Character" of the episode. The whole of the episode is from her POV and is one sided from the audience perspective. That's pretty good writing I'd say.
Easily the best written and most consistent episode of the series so far.
I think another "Down" for me would be in the little moment right after she meets Ricky September where they run down the street. I find it has the same energy as the cold open to "Blink" when the angel *throws a rock* at Sally. Lindy has been stuck in her bubble for ages upon ages, being unable to walk without it, but all of a sudden she can run now?
That's the bit where I lost it
Thats the thing, Lindsey can walk perfectly fine, she does it every day, I assume she exercises at some point so she can also run. Her issue is direction and spatial awareness, which isn't an issue when being literally lead by the hand by Ricky.
Considering the whole Timeless Child thing, I think it's a great idea to have more Doctor lite episodes. It puts more focus on the story itself and keeps the Doctor mysterious.
One of the strongest episodes of the season so far, Boom - 73 Yards - Dot and Bubble, has been a surprisingly good run of episodes. This episodes Social Media commentary obviously isn’t the main commentary aspect of this episode, so it didn’t bother me much.
I don’t want to say this but Sean does not get this episode. It’s not about social media, it’s so much more. Even though Sean gets what the message is at the end, throughout the episode you could feel something was just off about the people and the place.
I was watching the episode wondering why all the people were so pale. Then to find out they are all rich. They all acted similar…rich white privileged people who “work” 2 hours a day to maintain their frivolous lifestyle.
Yeah, it clearly wasn’t about social media.
The funniest part of this episode was the massive spool of spit that exited Ncuti's mouth at the end as he turns in rage.. The way millie just looked at it fall to the floor and very clearly was trying so hard not to laugh.. Its hilarious
loved your work (this video) and the intersectionality you've brought in! thank you for helping me process this episode in my mind:)
Sorry-not-sorry to "sound" like an Angry Black (American) Man, but:
P.S. The character is only interested in herself and her kind. That's it because that's it. (It's *not* about social media, Sean! It's about bubbles. And as a Black American, I'd be so okay if I never saw them again.) I think the character was well-designed. And FineTime is all those "exclusive," gated spaces.
P.P.S. I might be in the minority here but I kinda like seeing this (vulnerable) Doctor kinda from the side, so to speak. Now I *do* hope he will *star* in *his own finale* :)
P.P.P.S. A fun Whovian game to play is "Which Doctor *would have just walked away* at the end of 'Dot and Bubble'?" My votes would be Nine, Eleven and Twelve.
1st, 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th I think.
11 I can see going either way. Depends on where it is in his timeline.
I’d have liked to see her operate with a veneer of pleasantness initially that slipped more as the episode went on.
@@GlenFinney Oh 6 would definitely not have just walked away from them. He would've been just as desperate to save them as Ncuti. If nothing else than to save them from themselves. To help them be better. He would've let them go in the end of course, but this would've broken him. 12 would've tried to save them still but he would've been WAY more insulting and blunt with them. Honestly would've been hilarious.
But I think all incarnations would've understood that these were still a lot of REALLY young people. People that could still have been saved from their own prejudices. Who could've risen above all of that horribleness they were raised on and been better people. But there are definitely a few that would've left a bit faster than Ncuti did. I think the ones to walk away the fastest would've been 4, 7 and 10. The ones that would've still tried hard like 15 and stayed the longest? 2, 5, 6, 8 and 12.
@@katrose5179 Right! And if she had to learn how to deal with other kinds of people she would have developed that skill and that's what would have happened; that's why she said what she said to Ncuti at the end. Russell really thought about how to handle this character, in my view.
the message is NAWT "social media bad". as many have pointed out, it is about echo chambers, living our lives in literal bubbles. ppl can live in bubbles and echo chambers without social media, yknow...
They can, but to suggest that RTD wasn't playing on social media echo chambers/the negative effects of social media specifically is just false. RTD actually mentions smartphones and screen addiction and "Visible Twitter" in Doctor Who Magazine.
The thing I hate about stuff like this is that RTD depicts people like this as 100% vile.....but people aren't like that. No one is completely good or completely evil; they're shades of gray. There really should have been more people than Ricky September and that other guy who were questioning and challenging the way things work in Fine time. And at least one person should have been like "You know what, I will go with you" at the end. No group of people is a monolith. Other than that, I really enjoyed the episode
I’m not sure. I’d disagree with the fact that there are no completely good or evil people.
Fred Rogers could definitely be seen as a completely good person, but that depends what you define as “good”. Do they have to never hurt a bug in their lives, or even not get angry at any point?
As for evil however, I would have to say there are undeniably completely evil people. There just are some people with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, who you would struggle to even consider as a human. Oskar Dirlewanger and his brigade committed atrocities so disgusting that you would think they had been made up by a teenager trying to be as edgy as possible. They were so bad even the Nazis were afraid they might be turned on by them.