Review: Doctor Who “Point and Bubble”

“Dot and Bubble”, the fifth episode of this season of Doctor Who, could have been a trite and clunky metaphor for how we spend too much time on our phones. Instead, it was a razor-sharp look at the colonialism and racism hidden behind a standard monster-of-the-week tale.

Spoilers ahead. As always, a few anecdotes in case you want to duck out but don’t want to feel like you’ve wasted a click. “The Devil’s Chord” was not the first time the Doctor and a companion had encountered the Beatles. The Tenth Doctor and Donna also met them. Donna quickly put the timeline in jeopardy by asking the Fab Four to sign her CD copy of their greatest hits. The Sixth Doctor also played with them before they succeeded.

Let’s get back to the episode.

“Dot and Bubble” takes place in a utopian town called Finetime, where people literally walk around with a constant social media bubble on their heads. It’s so immersive that the device tells them which direction to walk. A citizen named Lindy (Callie Cooke) is interrupted during her two-hour shift by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson). Little by little, they make him understand that everyone in his town is being eaten alive by giant armored slugs. The rest of the episode is dedicated to keeping her vapid, extremely online ass safe as she literally does everything she can to avoid reality.

At first, Lindy seems like a pretty standard Doctor Who guest hero character trope, the system mouse who rises to the occasion, is praised by the Doctor at the end, and then goes on to lead a more substantial and fulfilling life. It’s only as the episode progresses that you realize she’s more than indifferent to the world; she’s an active villain.

The revelation is subtle. The Doctor is the only dark-skinned person on the town’s vast social media network. Lindy blocks him at first without thinking, but then listens to Ruby, a white-skinned blonde. Midway through the episode, we learn that Finetime is a place where the children and daughters of the rich, the children of the rich, can pretend to be adults. They are given nominal jobs so they can justify spending 22 hours a day partying and texting.

Even after learning that slugs stalk people, Lindy does not help others while continuing to ask for help for herself. The only person who steps up to fight the good fight, she betrays and leaves to die.

And then this ending. . . Oh man.

The Doctor guides a handful of survivors out of the city, where they plan to board a ship and conquer the wilderness as pioneers. The Doctor instead offers to take them in the Tardis to a safe location. That’s when the whole group turns on him and says he’s not part of it. One woman even accuses the Tardis of being “voodoo”. They will continue their journey without him, because conquering the planet and defending the values ​​of Finetime is their divine right.

Back in the 19th century, there was a guy named Gregor MacGregor, and he pulled off one of the biggest scams in history. Basically, he fooled a group of middle-class Victorians into believing that there was a country in South America with cities already built and helpful natives just waiting to serve them. MacGregor sold land titles to the fictional country, and they left.

When they got there, they realized it was a sorry, do-nothing plot. However, most of them were unable to make a living in the wild. They expected the savages to simply bow to their superior Britishness and civility. The wild and local tribes did not, and most of the would-be colonialists died.

I thought of this piece of history while watching the ending of “Dot and Bubble.” The sin at the heart of Finetime is not disconnection and social isolation. We’re not watching The Revenge of the Zoom Meeting. No, the sin is that when you build an entire civilization by telling completely mediocre people that they are stars because they are inherently better than others, they are not building a good sense of morality.

The realization that these people would rather die than leave with him completely breaks the Doctor. Performed to one of the best scores of Murray Gold’s career, he completely breaks down, laughing then crying. He watches, with tears in his eyes, as Lindy stares coldly at him as the boat sails away. “But I could save you,” he said, almost as if he was trying to convince himself.

There has been a theme in The Gatwa Doctor that all past trauma is now behind him. He is a new man, leaving the Time War and a billion unsaved lives in the past. This time it will be different, baby! Let his predecessor carry the guilt while he saves the world.

“Dot and Bubble” is the first time its Doctor learns one of the fundamental truths that everyone before it has had to face: some people can’t be saved from themselves, no matter how nice you are, charming or fair. This is why the Daleks still exist. He can get them out of a city full of giant slugs, but he can’t get them out of the mindset that built this city in the first place.

It’s not that people couldn’t understand why their digital minions rose up against them and drove them into the maws of monsters. It’s because they refuse.

This crushing realization gave Gatwa his finest moment as the Doctor. His performance was transcendental. It is also a warning to us, the public. Do not confuse wickedness with ignorance. Lindy intentionally answered this test wrong, and not even the Time Lord can change that.