Mark Harrison | On 01, Jun 2024

This is a spoiler-free review – read on at the end for additional spoilery observations.

Welcome to Finetime, where the hip young residents work two hours a day, party the rest of the time and “Bubble” other characters with names like rejected Toast Of London characters. There are plenty of examples of Doctor Who crafting alien worlds on satirical points, but none quite like Dot and Bubble’s terminally plugged-in society.

Covering a day in the life of influencer Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), the episode sees hot young rich kids interacting via a Dot, a personal device which projects a holographic social media Bubble around their heads. But when the Doctor and Ruby Sunday slide into her DMs, Lindy is forced to face the true horror that has descended upon Finetime.

This is the second episode in a row to be directed by Dylan Holmes Williams and written by showrunner Russell T Davies, but otherwise it couldn’t be more different. Where last week’s 73 Yards was plied with subtlety and dread, this is Davies in Black Mirror mode, punctuating a story big on satire and farce with sharp horror moments.

While “semper distans” was the watchword for last week, a lot of this takes place right up in guest-star Cooke’s face, akin to the shots inside Iron Man’s helmet in Marvel movies. Lindy is one of those RTD characters who sneaks up on you, where however basic and ordinary she seems, there are hidden depths that reveal themselves surprisingly. She strikes us a really hard character to play, especially in such unforgiving close-ups, but Cooke pulls it off with aplomb.

Holmes Williams again proves himself to be the most exciting new talent behind the camera on Who in a while, but this is a slower, less suspenseful episode. Despite having a barmy, brilliant monster in it, the visual horror doesn’t work quite so well as the psychological and sociological elements. We’ll save our thoughts on the white-hot sting in the tail – that ending! – until the spoilery notes at the end.

And yes, it’s another “Doctor-lite” episode, necessitated by Ncuti Gatwa’s commitment to the overlong final season of Netflix’s Sex Education. (For those not up on the production lingo, it’s more in the style of Flatline, where the Doctor is present throughout but with scenes they can shoot in one location in one or two days, rather than Love & Monsters, where they’re simply absent for large stretches of the episode.) Even on screens for most of the episode, Gatwa and Millie Gibson are spellbinding and, for one of them, it’s their biggest acting triumph to date.

Dot and Bubble opens both modes of Davies’ Doctor Who in different tabs and scrolls between silly thrills and angry satire throughout its runtime. Beyond its “like, subscribe and despair” Black Mirror stylings, this is different again from anything we’ve had in Season One so far, building its silly, scary, and uneasy elements into a big picture that’s altogether more disturbing upon reflection.

 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers
“I don’t care what you think. And you can say whatever you want. You can think absolutely anything. I will do anything if you just allow me to save your lives.”

– The ending packs a punch because it sends up the lie of the central conceit – it’s not that people can’t see outside of their Bubble, it’s that they’re using it to shut out reality. Added to which, Finetime is a segregationist society, and the Doctor is shunned because he presents as a Black male. Gatwa’s stunned frustration is an acting masterclass and something that we’ve truly never seen the Doctor have to deal with before.

– As mentioned, Cooke gives an exceptional performance as an exceptionally unlikeable character. Even before she condemns lovely, clever Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries) to death by Dot, Lindy is a repulsive, self-absorbed character, whose racist micro-aggressions towards the Doctor throughout the episode are all the more obvious in the context of that final scene. But every time Lindy gets scared or angry, it’s Cooke regulating herself back to that default smile (“This might be the best day of my life!”) that gives us the wiggins.

– Also, it turns out these youngsters are being devoured by giant people-eating slug monsters that have already ravaged the Homeworld. Combining practical and digital effects, they’re cracking creations, but the slow and lumbering creature design seems to be a feature of this particular story rather than a bug, so despite the marvellous direction, suspense is in short supply.

– The slugs turn out to have been designed by the Dot, “a powerful antigrav psychocombination device” that orchestrates the attack in alphabetical order, taking out characters like Kirstie Book-keeper, Bertie Lester, and Gothic Paul before Lindy is on the chopping block. But never mind that, what is antigrav??? It’s the first time since 2023’s Wild Blue Yonder that gravity hasn’t been replaced with mavity – is it significant or just a continuity error?

– As much as it’s a modern social media satire, the episode’s Doctor Who touchstones are somewhat classical – this recalls Second Doctor serials like The Macra Terror, which also features a resort whose residents are ignorant of the dangerous creatures inside its walls, and The Faceless Ones, where aliens target young holidaymakers. But somewhere between previous Davies episodes Gridlock and Midnight, the world-weary cynicism is all his…

– Bonus trivia! Among Lindy’s close friends is Dr Pee, who provides health updates about her urinary habits. He’s played by Gatwa’s Sex Education co-star Max Boast, whose semi-regular character was called… Tom Baker. Look close enough, and you’ll start seeing Doctor Who references everywhere. Wait, Susan Twist again? Where?

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