Dr. Who , like all science fable , has always rooted its storytelling in allegory — raise idea tochallenge its contemporary audiencethrough stories of the past , the hereafter , of monsters , and running down hall . It always makes the mo the show wants to step away from an allegoric substance andexplicitly talk about a social agendatricky to navigate : what can be left to audience rendering , what has to be made absolved , what is the present moment to make your gaolbreak and be explicit about your substance ?
“ Dot and Bubble ” is an installment that think about this a lot — but whether it ’s an episode that really follow in effectively conveying its real message make for what is one of the most difficult episodes to talk about the series has done in a very long time .
So why is “ Dot and Bubble ” so unmanageable to talk over ? It ’s an episode that is , ostensibly , about one parable — the influence of social media on our life , filtered through a society of futuristic Not - TikTok ( the deed of conveyance is in fact the gimmick / platform , a holographic bubble that projects a hemisphere of social media screens around a user ’s read/write head ) influencers in a apparently idyllic residential district called Finetime . But what the episode actually is , like “ 73 Yards ” was before it , is a mystery box seat , structure around a final - aspect let out that radically realigns the rest of the episode you ’ve just been served for 40 minute .
Image: BBC/Disney
What you are serve , on the open , is a perhaps well substance , but clunky warning about the risk of societal media usage . “ loony toons and Bubble ” for the most part follows the story of Lindy Pepper - Bean ( Callie Cooke , a guest star in a role that , as we ’ll get into , becomes incredibly fraught ) , one of Finetime ’s ditzy indweller . Endlessly scrolling through video feeds of her friend from the moment she acquire up , Lindy is a walk , talking embodiment of the worse kind of assumptions people make about chronically online social media addicts — airheaded , rude , untried , and inexperienced with the world of the world beyond her metaphorical and genuine bubble . All her silver screen friends are the same : brassy , tawdry , petulantly unknowledgeable , and plaguy , and all Lindy does is natter back at them from her own screen , quetch how hard it is that they have to crop doing mindless data inputting for two 60 minutes a day before they can get back to endlessly scrolling through videos of vapid individual after vapid person , regurgitating endless , empty content back at each other .
So when it turns out that Finetime is really being attacked by an army of giant alien slugs — pluck off one resident after the next , devouring them because they ’re so control and addicted to their Dot and Bubbles they ca n’t see the threat staring them in the face until it ’s eating them alive — Lindy , at the behest of the Doctor and Ruby digitally sliding into her social feed to warn her of the threat to her life , becomes our progressively unlikeable friend . Barely stumble her way through our actual hero ’ advice , she tries to escape the giant slugs that , push comes to thrust , you at long last begin to find like should actually get to eat her . Meanwhile , the Doctor and Ruby sample to image out just how Finetime has plough into a Giant Slug Buffet . And if this was what “ Dot and house of cards ” was actually about , it would perhaps be okay , if a small rote learning — a heavy handed admonishment of the small fry these years with their apps and their viral videos , but one that play with Doctor Who ’s messages of empathy and savvy to have us , and the Doctor and Ruby , support a clearly unappealing protagonist as they look sure end of the world . possibly there ’s a rendering of “ Dot and house of cards ” where Lindy learn to affect grass or use societal medium for skilful instead of just endless sycophancy , and the Clarence Day is write , and we all move on to the next adventure .
But “ Dot and house of cards ” is n’t that episode at all . In its final moments — after Lindy has managed to survive and make her room out of Finetime , after cruelly and nonchalantly sacrificing a fellow occupant and her societal media matinee idol , simulated - net celebrity Ricky September ( Tom Rhys Harries)—the episode let out its actual intent and the nature of Finetime ’s society . Now that she ’s at last met the Doctor and Ruby outside of her Bubble ’s feed , Lindy and her fellow subsister are offered a safe direction off human beings on the TARDIS — but they turn down the Doctor , choosing to go beyond Finetime ’s protective shielding and attempt to adapt to the wild on their own , because the Doctor is a Black man . “ You , sir , are not one of us , ” Lindy spits at him , admonishing the Doctor for daring to make in - individual contact with her . Another subsister tells her to step back from him , lest they be “ foul . ” Finetime ’s society is not just a social medium - driven incubus , it turns out , it is a white supremacist , colonial structure , dropped down onto an alien world by its presumptively similarly anti-Semite dwelling house civilisation to produce what it see as mono - raceway haven for young , productive , white people who believe they have a god - pass on right to do whatever they desire because of their wash .
Image: BBC/Disney
In the second , it ’s appal and hits you like a net ton of brick . Ncuti Gatwa delivers an unbelievable , tortured functioning in just a unmarried , brief scenery , howling at first in baffled discombobulation , and then ramp , that Finetime ’s survivor are so catastrophically bigoted they ’d choose certain death over being save by a grim person . The episode ends in this minute of clarity , as Lindy and her antiblack friends go off in one direction , and the Doctor and Ruby , in tear , walk back towards the TARDIS . But for as effectively jarring as it is as a gimmick , this one individual , final scene — a handful of minutes ’ runtime at the very remnant of the episode — it ’s also a present moment that takes an incredibly serious message , and mishandle making it because instead of it being the dramatic crux of the matter of the sequence , it is exactly that : a last - minute bend .
Treating the cosmos of snowy supremacy as a “ gotcha ” in this manner is an incredibly fraught thought , and it ’s a theme that need to be more than a revelation in the final transactions of an sequence if Doctor Who is actually hold up to undertake it as a lineal idea , rather than through level of apologue . “ Dot and Bubble ” is structure in such a way that it can never do that , and support the bite of its last scene . Lindy is a caricature of an unlikable character even before just how vile she is becomes explicit in the final prospect , but “ Dot and house of cards ” still asks you to root for her for the huge bulk of its episode — even at what ab initio appear to be the depth of her selfish cruelty when she deliberately gets Ricky vote out so she can get out — because the vast majority of the episode is not really straight about Finetime being “ Planet of the Racist TikTokers , ” and Doctor Who is a TV serial that makes take us to be empathetic without judgment one of its key value . Even when the character is , on the Earth’s surface , passing annoying as Lindy is likely , Doctor Who want us to have empathy for its focal linear perspective , because that is what the Doctor would do . You ca n’t just take that approximation , and then wrench it by go “ Whoops , it was a racist all along ! ”
You ca n’t ever keep an eye on “ Dot and Bubble ” again for the first clip . You ca n’t view any secret or secret plan - gimmick driven narrative again the way you did for the first fourth dimension — every viewing after that is basically altered by your knowledge of whatever the closed book or reveal actually is . Every further engagement with the text after that becomes about being able to canvas and identify clues with in its structure , to see how effectively that divulge is built towards . “ Dot and Bubble ” is no exception to this , but it is both an episode that is completely , radically straighten out on re - view by the knowledge the final view lay out , and also one that has its of the essence flaw exposed in doing so . In being set up in help of a closed book with a last - minute twist , everything about the episode ’s actual specify fable — the evils of lily-white domination in our society and in online outer space , not just the idea that kids on social media are rotting their mind for non - racist reason — is allow up to the broad rendering of what is likely a majority - blanched interview .
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There are indeed plenty of “ clues ” throughout “ Dot and Bubble ” that click into place with the last reveal . It ’s there in Lindy ’s ceaseless bother whenever the Doctor tries to facilitate her , but can grin and bear it when it ’s Ruby that differentiate her what to do to get away the slugs instead . It ’s there , too , in the background realization you make that everyone on the screens in Lindy ’s bubble , everyone walking around Finetime , every glimpse we get of its governing body , is a white face — that the Doctor is the only person of color in the entire episode . That last point , in particular , is the authorial intent that writer Russell T Davies hangs the instalment ’s “ mystery ” on . “ What we ca n’t separate is how many masses will have worked that out before the ending , ” Davies notes in aninterview for Doctor Who Unleashed , the BBC ’s behind - the - aspect support series released after each episode of the serial publication , “ because they ’ve seen snowy individual after ashen person after white person [ in the episode ] … I inquire , will you be 10 minutes into it ? Will you be 15 ? Will you be 20 , before you start to intend ‘ everyone in this community is blank , ’ and if you do n’t think that , why did n’t you ? ”
But leaving that realisation up to the presumption of a predominantly blanched interview to puzzle out as a hint , rather than create it something explicitly address and engage with by the story of the installment before its final setting , is not only an extremely neoliberal glide slope to handling the topic of white domination — that recognizing that it exists is the matter that should be rewarded , instead of really say or doing something about it , especially in the context of a serial like Doctor Who , which has a 60 - yr phonograph recording of preponderantly honk white people in major and supporting role — it also dampen what the sequence itself can say about the evils of this political theory . The social organization of the episode is designed as such is that the intent is you are keeping the reveal that Finetime is a bigoted enclave a secret until the final minutes of the installment . This is a conflict that the current season of Doctor Who has face multiple times already — that its episodes leave , intentionally or otherwise , interruption in logic or exposition to ask of its audience their own interpretation for why something is the elbow room it is in the story , for better or risky . That ’s something you may do with , say , how the supernatural abilities of “ 73 Yards ” and its prison term loop-the-loop paradox make , or the computer logical system that leads to the world of the Boogeyman creature in “ Space Babies . ” It ’s not something that should be done when what you want to ask the audience to interpret is the existence of whitened supremacy and its horrors : that is something you have to reckon with clearly in the text itself .
So have ’s amount back to that last scene with the Doctor and Lindy then , and examine how “ Dot and house of cards ” actually approaches being a story about the evil of white mastery as its ending reveals . isolate its choice to be explicit until its terminal minutes — and leaving every wind that Finetime is a antiblack society up to the consultation divine it as a hint before the reveal — means that , structurally , “ Dot and Bubble ” can never give the Doctor a chance to be aware of , or even address , the take over microaggressions and discrimination he front prove to determine out what ’s go on in Finetime , until he is explicitly say to his face that the reason Lindy and the survivor do n’t want his help is because he is Black . He ’s never given a chance to be frustrated about the fact that Lindy and the other Bubble user wo n’t hear to him , even as he ’s stress to help them avoid being devoured alert , but will listen to Ruby — every mo of frustration along the way that he feel has to be made shadowy enough that it looks like he ’s just annoyed that Lindy is unlikable and selfish , and for so many other reasons , because the episode is structurally treating her bigotry as a closed book to be reveal later . “ loony toons and Bubble ” want its audience to interrogate the world of Finetime , and see how long it take them to detect its morphological racism , which means the Doctor himself is never allowed to comment on it along the manner .
Image: BBC/Disney
For all the clew to pick up along the way , “ Dot and house of cards ” is not structured to allow itself to be “ The Episode Where the Doctor Experiences White Supremacy as a Black Person ” until its final scene — and in a aspect that ’s a handful of minute long , that ’s nowhere near enough metre to take out what the episode would possibly think to say about what it means that the Doctor , who , for the vast absolute majority of the serial ’ history , has been able to barge into any way and get what he desire from perfect strangers because he is in the form of a heteronormative white gentleman’s gentleman , to be confront with a scenario where his physical form of a different nonage background . There ’s perhaps a comparability here to“The Witchfinders,”the rarified episode of Jodie Whittaker ’s run on Doctor Who that engages with the fact that the Doctor is present as female during its tale . Was it a good episode ? Not really , but at the very least it allow the Doctor to actualize that she was being discriminated against because of sexist ideology , and made it the crux of its striking fight , because it allow that moment of dispute to be reveal earlier than the final minutes of the sequence .
physician Who can and should use the meta - narrative of it break boundaries with diverse casting to , within its textbook , comment on material domain result of bias and secernment that can be confronted by making those cast choices : casting female Doctors , casting non - white Doctors , puke poof doctor , and so on . Not only is that an of import agenda for a series that is about a submarine sandwich who pride themselves on empathy and reason of the wide universe around them , it also opens Doctor Who up to more storytelling opportunities , to tell more story about more kinds of people that have , historically up to this point , not been map by having the Doctor ’s default form from one incarnation to the other be that of a blanched man , and even have people from those background tell those story , too . But when you choose to do so , you also have to depend with the interrogation of what it means to not just be treating the Doctor as “ the Dr. ” in that sort of story , but also explicitly treating them as a person existing in the dead body of a minority , and canvas that minorities ’ struggles in the real world — and what you then require of the audience represented on cover to study of those struggles in turn .
That in and of itself becomes an issue in the last scene of “ Dot and house of cards ” , because part of the point of the Doctor ’s anguished repugnance when Lindy and the other survivor disdain his help is that his empathy — he practically begs them to lease him save them from sure doom — does not work . The Doctor is allow to be shock at the disclosure of Finetime ’s white supremacist underpinnings , but his ultimate response is not about white supremacy ’s existence in this society , but the grief that he can not overcome that hateful political theory and make unnecessary the mass beholden to that ideology . Like we said , Doctor Who is a serial publication about empathy — but in this present moment the Doctor , in the body of a shameful man , is asked to empathize for people who hate his very existence because of his tegument color . The Doctor is n’t allowed to order Lindy and her anti-Semite friends to fuck off and get rust by giant slug , for all he cares , because he ’s the Doctor . He has to wish about relieve people , even when they are blinded to his aid by their horrifyingly evil beliefs .
Image: BBC/Disney
That ’s an fabulously fraught message for Doctor Who to have to try and convey to its hearing — either the assumptive broader bloodless audience it has left hint for throughout “ Dot and Bubble , ” or the audience of citizenry of color watch and seeing themselves in Ncuti Gatwa ’s Doctor . And even then , in this final present moment , with “ Dot and house of cards ” and its intention to entrust so much of it undecided to the rendition of its hearing , we never get to see Lindy and the other survivor face comeuppance for their racism . The episode ends with the picture of ashen domination ’s existence , and then ca n’t say or do anything more beyond that , because it ’s saved that exposure for a handful of minutes before the ending credits . Sure , it can be imply that after the credits roll , Lindy and her bigoted friends get into a boat to sail off into the state of nature beyond Finetime and immediately die agonising death , because they ’re dazed bigots who have spent their entire lives up to that period live in the house of cards of faux - TikTok , but the installment never actually tells us that that ’s the case . It can never make the expressed leap that these people will face hubristic death for their racism , because it chooses to end on them sail off and the Doctor leaving in bust . If anything , by leaving so much of the specify message of “ Dot and house of cards ” up to the consultation to divine and construe themselves , you make enough space for some of that interview to assume that Lindy and the others go on to survive and even thrive beyond Finetime ’s boarders . After all , for most of the episode we see Lindy get wind and adjust long enough to scarper the bullet — there are as many cue that she could survive as there are clues to Finetime ’s supremacist racial structure !
I ’m sure a series as progressively disposed as Doctor Who does n’t want any part of its audience to have a chance of recollect “ well , did the racist total out okay , in reality . ” But if you do n’t desire that to be your substance , you have to be quartz glass decipherable about your substance , even if it ’s one that on the airfoil is as simple-minded as “ white supremacy exists and is uncollectible . ” “ Dot and Bubble ” falters because it is structurally unequipped to be exonerated about that message until its last scene — and the period is that it is unclear about this , because its spirit is to maintain the aspect of its twist ending for the bulk of its interview . And even then , there ’s is just not enough time for it to unpack and discuss the incredibly real subject it hopes to lay out to that hearing . There is a edition of “ Dot and Bubble ” that brings its racial allegory into the igniter much originally , and much more explicitly , and make it the Crux Australis of its story rather than the closed book of just what is bump in Finetime in the first place — and in routine , has the time to be much more full throated about the evils of ashen mastery , or else of simply acknowledging that it still live . Maybe that is , even , a story told by a author of colouring , too .
But we are left to wonder all that , and what that episode might have been , for serious or ill . Because whatever it might have end up being , it was most sure as shooting not the episode we ultimately got .
Image: BBC/Disney
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