Survival

Chapter the 311th, it was 1989 but the cats were still much better than in 2019.

Plot:

The Doctor takes Ace back to Perivale, but nobody seems to be around. This isn't just because it's a Sunday, but because people are going missing, including some of Ace's old mates. The Doctor investigates some black cats that he spots in the area, buying some cat food from a shop run by Hale and Pace to tempt them out. They are kitlings, psychic creatures that can be used to aid hunters in tracking down prey. Someone mysterious (it's the Master, obvs) is using them to track the Doctor. Ace encounters one of the hunters in a recreation ground - it is a half-human half-Cheetah creature on horseback. It gives chase and when it catches her, it transports Ace and itself to an alien planet. Ace finds her friends Shreela and Midge there with a young lad called Derek. They have all been surviving as best they can there since they were transported; another of Ace's old friends Stevie has been killed. The Doctor is also transported to the planet alongside a keep fit instructor / TA soldier Paterson. At an encampment with many Cheetah people outside, the Doctor is greeted by the Master. He has brought the Doctor there to help him escape. The planet is sentient and alters people the longer they stay there, turning them in to Cheetah people. The Master is already changing. Original settlers on the planet, who bred the kitlings, thought they could control the planet's power but succumbed. The hunters and kitlings can only seem to transport people one way (as the Doctor puts it, they can only return home with their prey). Escaping the Master, the Doctor and Paterson meet up with Ace's party. During a Cheetah person attack, Midge kills a Cheetah person and Ace wounds one. This starts them both on the path to becoming Cheetah people, meaning that they will be able to take people home.

The Master uses Midge to return to Earth, the Doctor and the others use Ace. Shreela and Derek thank Ace and the Doctor and rush off home; Paterson is less grateful and goes off to teach a keep fit class to some teens. There, he finds that the Master and Midge have used the Cheetah planet power to entrance the group of lads he was set to teach. They kill Paterson. The Doctor and Ace track the Master and Midge to Horsenden Hill where the Doctor and Midge race towards each other on motorcycles (it's not clear what this is supposed to achieve). When the bikes collide, Midge is killed but the Doctor is thrown clear. The Master and his gang advance on Ace, who cannot fight without sealing her fate and changing for good. A Cheetah person she had formed a bond with on the planet, Karra, arrives and chases the group off. The Master kills Karra. The Doctor catches up with the Master in Perivale and is transported back to the planet (the Master calls it 'his new home'); the Master is full-on feral now, and their conflict is causing the planet's destruction. The Doctor is also coming under the planet's influence and just stops himself from attacking the Master. Just as the Master is about to strike, the Doctor transports himself back to his home, the TARDIS, leaving the Master behind as the planet dies in flame. The Cheetah people transfer to some other place and the hunt goes on. The Doctor finds Ace, and they walk off towards new adventures, the Doctor making a speech as if he knows this is the end of the last ever episode of the classic series...

Context:

As will be detailed more in the Deeper Thoughts, I was lucky enough to get tickets for The Happiness Patrol BFI event at the end of August 2024 to tie in with the final Sylvester McCoy Blu-ray box set (of season 25, Sylv's second run from 1988, the year before Survival). As soon as I knew I was going to be able to publish my write-up of the event, I knew I'd need a suitable story with which to pair it. There couldn't be anything random (aside from the BBC's Blu-ray release schedule) about which story to pick as I only had one of McCoy's stories left. So, I overrode random selection, and Survival it was. The story was viewed from the Blu-ray disc, all in one go, one evening in early September. I then had to wait another month before I could publish the blog as the one event at the BFI turned into two, and I wanted to write them both up close together (more on that is also outlined in the Deeper Thoughts section below).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This post marks the completion of another Doctor's entire televisual era, making a total of three Doctors done so far; the seventh Doctor (as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy) follows the recent completion of Paul McGann's eighth Doctor and David Tennant's fourteenth Doctor. Neither of those other two had much in the way of an era, though. Sylv is the first to be completed who had the role over multiple seasons, and I will miss the wee fellow. This post also marks the completion of another season, the 28th out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

The final Doctor Who story of the classic era, and - even after much experience in using a VCR for the previous four years - I still couldn't capture the whole thing onto a video tape. I was out for the second episode, and the programmed recording didn't work, so I only saw the first and last parts of Survival. I mentally pieced together the action that I'd missed as best I could, but didn't see the story in full until the sell-through VHS came out in October 1995. As the original broadcast was during a period I was most disconnected from Doctor Who news, I did not have any idea that this was going to be the last story for a good while, but I definitely remember picking up on the hopeful yet elegiac tone of the Doctor's final monologue and having some suspicions. The Doctor Who news I did get at the time was from the tabloid press, where a few months earlier in the Summer I'd read a story telling me that Gareth Hale and Norman Pace, UK comedy stars of the time, were going to be appearing in the series; aside from that, everything was a surprise.

Reaction:

There is often mention that Survival anticipated the 2005 series vibe (mainly because it features a housing estate). There's only a very short sequence in the block of flats, though; the rest of the earthbound sequences in the story are set in suburban rather than urban spaces. The decision to set and make this story in contemporary Perivale might have been forced upon the production by the offhand mention of Ace's home town when she was first introduced a couple of years earlier (perhaps producer John Nathan-Turner was working through an alphabetical list of suitable SE locations, the last companion before Ace came from Pease Pottage), but they make the most of it. Doctor Who often makes comparisons between the ordinary and extraordinary, but mostly just in dialogue - Survival makes the counterpoint a key visual feature of the story, cutting back and forth between alien vistas and a recognisable suburbia of convenience stores, milkmen, youth clubs and people washing their cars. It's rare and refreshing to see Doctor Who set in a place that was, not to put too fine a point on it, exactly like where I lived at the time (and no doubt a lot of viewers like me). I'd grown up watching Doctor Who on a street and in a house very similar to those being depicted - the alien was now invading my world. Doctor Who had never done this before (a short sequence where Sarah Jane is dropped off in a suburban street in The Hand of Fear is the only thing that came close); it took them to the very end of the classic series to do it. It's not really been done much since, either (Fear Her is the only example that comes to mind). It gives the story a unique energy and atmosphere, and - although it wasn't planned this way - works as a distillation of Doctor Who, and this era of it in particular, for the series' final outing on TV.

Taking the world of tooth and claw survival represented by the Cheetah planet back to the 1980s London of wannabe yuppies, with Midge's slick 80s suit and motorbike being the most obvious signifiers, highlights the political nature of the story's underlying theme. Thatcherism is being criticised here more precisely than in something seemingly more satirical like The Happiness Patrol (see Deeper Thoughts for more on that story). The Doctor screaming out the same phrase "If we fight like animals, we'll die like animals" in both environments at the climax to underline the parallel is subversive and radical, but wouldn't trouble anyone for whom the theme has whizzed overhead without being caught. They can still enjoy this as an action adventure. That's down to very good writing, script editing and direction. Survival's not quite perfect on that score, but it's tending towards perfection. Like other three-parters of McCoy's tenure, it has a few too many characters - this is most obvious at the start of episode three when, having been returned safely from the alien planet, a few people say happy goodbyes and rush off never to be seen again when there's still a third of the running time left. It's much better managed than in previous years, though; none of these characters had unnecessary subplots cluttering up the narrative, and the other three-part story of the year (Ghost Light, broadcast before but made after Survival) was even tighter. Watching, one just feels in one's bones that these people should be given another year to hone things, as they are so close to getting it 100% right. Alas, it wasn't to be. The significant characters are fully fleshed out anyway, so a little clutter didn't detract.

Foremost amongst the characters in the guest cast given material with which to shine is Anthony Ainley as the Master. This might not seem that unusual to the uninitiated; he is the lead antagonist and a recurring guest cast member who's worked on the series on and off for a decade, after all. But he's never before been given any kind of motivation, let alone a credible and interesting one as he is here. Ainley's a decent actor, so his performance - putting on an urbane front as he is wrestling with the beast within that threatens to overpower him, then finally giving in to it at the end in a violent tussle, consumed by the urge to destroy the Doctor - is effortlessly the best he gave in the series. It is flights above the panto moustache-twirling he usually had to deliver. Julian Holloway as Patterson is also excellent, paired with the Doctor for most of the running time and providing both comic relief and dramatic complication, while finding a good balance between the two. It's such a fun performance that it's almost a shame he has to die, the script making a sacrifice of a character who on the surface was ruthless but was revealed to be a coward underneath. It's sad to note that the character was running a service of youth outreach of a type that, however bleak the 1980s is painted in Survival, is much less likely to exist in 2024. Midge is perhaps just a smidge under-written meaning that a few of his lines and actions seem difficult for Will Barton playing him to get a handle on, but this is a tiny quibble and it's mostly a good performance. Sophie Aldred gets some interesting material reacting to the attraction of the alien planet as personified in Lisa Bowerman's Cheetah person Karra (though based on writer Rona Munro's comments since, the intended lesbian subtext ended up much toned down from what she had wished).

There's some great dialogue from Munro (and a nice little speech dubbed on the end written by script editor Andrew Cartmel when it was becoming obvious that this would be the last Doctor Who story broadcast for a while) and some strong science-fiction concepts: a planet whose influence starts to change those that stick around on it for too long, with their base instincts to hunt and kill activated and having to be resisted, is an interesting idea for Doctor Who. Watching characters - even, towards the end, the controlled and controlling seventh Doctor - succumbing to this power really upped the thrill factor of the story. Then there's the kitlings, feline carrion that look like black cats who can transport themselves between worlds and form psychic links with the humans that train them; then, there's the conflict being played out on the planet being directly linked to the planet's disintegration; then there's the concept that those turning into Cheetah people can only transport themselves in one direction because they can only return to their home with their captured prey. This creates the drama in the middle episode where everyone is waiting for someone whose home is Earth to change, and therefore offer them all a hope of escape. This volume of integrated and innovative ideas is rare in any Doctor Who, only seen before in Christopher Bailey's Mara stories earlier in the decade. Munro's similar journey into the dark places of the inside is expertly realised by the various creative persons working on the story. Alan Wareing gets great performances and creates some interesting visuals: the Cheetah people's planet is filmed in a quarry like many a Doctor Who planet over the years, but judicious choice of angles and application of video effects make it feel like a truly alien locale.

Also going above and beyond to create atmosphere in the story is composer Dominic Glynn. Just as in the previous year's story The Happiness Patrol (see Deeper Thoughts) Glynn creates the character of an entire planet with his expert application of instruments and motifs; in Survival, a mournful, wailing electric guitar accompanies the scenes on the alien planet, with piano used to underscore scenes in Perivale. Script, direction and music come together for some truly great dramatic moments, my favourite being the scene where Ace - believing the Doctor to be dead - is advanced upon by a group of thugs under the Master's command. She chants to herself that she must not fight (or she'll change into a Cheetah person for good) but still they advance. The only place where the stunt action of the script isn't realised very well is in the sequence immediately before this where the Doctor and Midge collide on motorbikes. It's unnecessary to the plot, and was just a bit too ambitious to be realistically staged. The realisation of the Cheetah people comes in for stick from some, but I think it's perfectly acceptable. The body and costumes are really rather good; the masks slightly less good, but still okay. Not so effective is any attempt to depict a dead cat on screen (they just look cuddly toys), and the animatronic kitling doesn't convince (it looks like an un-cuddly toy). I'm not sure whether they even needed the animatronic version particularly, though perhaps they didn't want to be left wholly at the mercy of the animal performers and their handlers - getting all the footage they needed that way would have been like herding cats, I suppose. 

Connectivity:

My blog post for Survival was originally planned to follow The Curse of Fatal Death which would have neatly meant two stories on the trot featuring the Master as an adversary where he's been genetically cross-spliced with another alien baddie, both followed by a reasonably large gap before the show would be seen on BBC1 again. Alas, the snafu at the BFI (see Deeper Thoughts below for more details) meant the Survival post was delayed a few weeks. Luckily, there's still a connection to highlight between Survival and the story it now comes after on the blog, Real Time: both stories feature an established comedy double-act playing a more dramatic double-act in the story.

Deeper Thoughts:

From Black Cats to Pink Ladies: Part 1 of The Happiness Patrol BFI events write-up, Q3 2024. In an inadvertent first, the humble little Happiness Patrol (as we will see, felt by many to be an unloved tale) is the only Doctor Who story ever to have two BFI events to tie in with its release on Blu-ray. On August 31st, the plan was that the new special edition of the story made for the Blu-ray would be shown along with the usual panels, quiz, etc. I was the most relaxed I'd ever been attending a screening that final morning of August 2024, because I had no travelling to do. I'd stayed over in London the night before (the Better Half had met up with friends for an event at the Royal Festival Hall on the Friday night, so we booked the evening in a hotel on the South Bank and enjoyed a London mini-break). I was able to meet long-term fan friend David for a leisurely breakfast, then amble over to the BFI to meet the others (Chris, Alan, Scott) at the BFI. Maybe this was why I wasn't particularly put out when they started showing the wrong version of The Happiness Patrol on the big screen. Before that, when we were settled in the auditorium of NFT1, things had started as usual: hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy walked out on stage, and lots of people took photos including yours truly. "I don't know," said Johnson "How many Dick pics do you need?!" They started with a round-up of social media comments with someone online suggesting that everyone should be wearing pink to attend as was done for the Barbie movie screenings in cinemas in 2023. "Most of our audience look more like Oppenheimer," said Fiddy drily.

There was then the usual quiz; one of the prizes was a self-assembly Kandyman action figure (i.e. a bag of Liquorice Allsorts); nobody could answer the question of whom Sylvester McCoy played in fan video The Zero Imperative, so they gave Sylv himself the prize as he at least could remember he played a Doctor, if not the Doctor (it was Doctor Colin Dove, fact fans). After that, the first interviewee asked up to the stage was Pete McTighe, one of the major creative forces behind the Blu-ray range, who had been instrumental in creating the special edition of The Happiness Patrol. The aim of this first interview - unfortunately, as it turned out - was to talk up this new edition to whet the appetites of the assembled about what they were about to see. McTighe commended the creativity and persistence of everyone involved in the original production, in front of and behind the cameras (his mention of Sheila Hancock's performance as Helen A got a big round of applause). His idea was that the special edition would help the original production out with some effects that they wouldn't have had the time or money to create, to help in world building. McTighe had access to over 60 hours of footage, not all but some of which is on the Blu-ray in its raw form. A lot of the material that was cut for time has been reintroduced, meaning each of the three episodes is now at least 30 minutes long. Some restructuring of scenes has also been done, particularly in the first episode, which reportedly makes the story flow and feel different. McTighe talked about extending the sequence of the Kandyman's death, and jokingly apologised for the spoiler. Johnson asked if anyone in the audience had never seen the story before, and a couple of hands did go up. McTighe was due to be back on stage later to talk more about the special edition once we'd all seen it, but that was destined not to happen.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, McTighe

After McTighe left the stage, a statement from Happiness Patrol's writer Graeme Curry's family was read out. They were in the audience, but probably thought they would be too emotional to make the statement in person on stage; it brought a tear to the eye. Curry died in 2019, and it seems that for most of the time after his only Doctor Who story's broadcast until 2019, he only heard negative things about the story, though in later years he did become aware that it had a few fans out there. It is a shame that he didn't live to see how well the story he wrote, as broadcast in 1988 and without any further changes, went down with the audience at the BFI in August 2024. For that was the version that was shown. It was clear from the first scene after the credits that something was up; if the idea of the special edition was to add effects shots to better build the world of Terra Alpha, then one would expect to open with something a bit grander than how the original version started. After a few more minutes, the picture froze and the lights came up. Johnson came on stage and explained that the wrong version had been sent, and we were watching the standard version of the story. They were looking at a way to rectify the situation, but it seemed unlikely that they could get the correct version to the BFI now before the allotted slot for the day's event ran out. He apologised again before going offstage, but said "This is what the BBC sent - to throw them under the bus"! The first episode then resumed, and was followed by the second, again as broadcast in 1988. You can find my write up of the story for the blog here, but I have to note that I was much more positive watching the story in the BFI than I was back in 2018.

(L to R) Fiddy, Mansfield, Fifi

I could probably do some clever-clever remarks at this juncture about the people in the audience - like the populace of Terra Alpha - being scared to seem unhappy, but they reacted honestly and warmly to what they were seeing, even though it wasn't what they were expecting. I was swept along too: it's a funny script and elicited many big laughs from the crowd; in character and out, McCoy and Aldred are a fun duo to spend time with; all that material that was cut makes it rattle along at a fair old clip; the music and the visualisation of the Kandyman and Fifi are superlative. Talking of the latter, Fifi was the next guest invited onto the stage after the end of the second episode. Well, strictly speaking it was Stephen Mansfield, creature creator and puppeteer, who with Susan Moore built some of the nasties of the McCoy era including Helen A's pet. Johnson and Fiddy, coming back on with a 'show must go on' attitude, talked about a routine disappearance style punishment for whoever it was at the BBC that had screwed up, and then invited Mansfield onto the stage. With him came something balanced on a dais and hidden under a cloth (and it was fairly easy to guess what). Mansfield talked about the particular position he was put in doing his puppetry work to bring Fifi to life on set, which was mostly on the floor sticking his hand up between Sheila Hancock's legs. His journey to restoring Fifi started when rummaging in a props lockup (which also contained puppets from 1980s satire show Spitting Image and the Destroyer from Doctor Who story Battlefield whose latex had "gone crispy"). He saw Fifi looking forlorn, its expression almost "imploring" him, so decided to return the puppet to its former glory. The air bladder control that made the eyes move still works, and - once Fifi had been revealed with a theatrical flourish - this was demonstrated on stage.

Fifi

The final episode was shown next, followed by some clips from the Value Added Material of the Blu-ray set; there was the set's trailer, an excerpt from Looking For Dursley (a documentary about Remembrance of the Daleks guest star Dursley McLinden), and a section from Googlebox style extra Behind the Sofa with various Who luminaries commenting on The Happiness Patrol. It all looks great, as usual. Once that was done, the main panel came out - it was the largest I've seen at a BFI Doctor Who event for some time with five people involved in the production coming up on stage for Q&A: director Chris Clough, Script Editor Andrew Cartmel, main guest star Sheila Hancock, who played Helen A, and stars Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy. Hancock was the biggest draw, and did dominate a little bit, but it was a lively panel in general, and everyone got a chance to shine. Hancock made it clear up front that she hadn't understood what was going on in the plot at all, but thought that it was an explosion of creativity, extolling the virtues of the effects, costumes, and make up. "You were good too, darling," she added to Sylv. She could see that it was a story with a moral, and that it did "sum up a dreadful period" of 1980s Thatcherism, but "I never followed the plot ... those little people, who the hell were they?". This instigated the first of many moments through the remainder of the event where Cartmel explained aspects of the story to Hancock. Later on, she queried what the point of the man wandering around with the harmonica was, and it's a good question to be fair. Early on, Cartmel highlighted how good the music - including the harmonica - was, and namechecked composer Dominic Glynn. Sticking with the musical theme, McCoy in typical self-deprecating style said that his "one talent" was playing the spoons, as he does to accompany the harmonica playing in one scene.

Sylv makes an entrance

When asked what he'd made of watching a story he performed in at a much younger age, McCoy said he was asking himself all the way through "Who is that chap, I recognise him?". There was a lively discussion amongst the panel members about the campness of the story, with many putting forward the view that underneath the trappings there was a lot of darkness, while others nonetheless thought it was "ultra camp, though" with the "pink TARDIS" being a giveaway. Cartmel explained that what might not come across is that the Doctor and Ace have landed in the "bad part of town" where infrastructure was crumbling but had facades erected to mask this, as in parts of "New Orleans or Venice". Clough outlined that they had filmed scenes with the cameras tilted to give a film noir effect, but once they fell behind schedule that was abandoned. The soundbites started to come so thick and fast that I didn't always have time to scribble down who said what. Aldred said that you can "Thank Chris [Clough]" for her performances throughout the series, new and old, as "He cast me", "So he's to blame," added someone - probably Sylv. Cartmel talked about Bassetts (the company in the UK famous for their liquorice sweets) getting upset about the potential breach of copyright that the Kandyman represented. "Who could have seen that coming?!" joked someone. "Ronnie Fraser was off the booze at that time" (that must have been Hancock); "You're obsessed by bike leathers"; "We are a cultured country"; "Nadine Dorries!". The story was initially seen as one that was badly received, but Cartmel thought that had changed of late, with it being embraced by a younger generation; "Well, they like sweets" said one wag. Someone, probably Clough, felt nostalgic at the wrong files being delivered to the BFI; it put him in mind of many a BBC cock-up he'd experienced in years gone by.

(L to R) Johnson, Clough, Cartmel, Hancock, Aldred, McCoy

A good-natured disagreement occurred between Cartmel and Johnson; the latter had an interesting fact written down on a card that The Happiness Patrol was the last Doctor Who story made wholly in studio until 2024's Boom, but Cartmel thought that Ghost Light also qualified. Ghost Light, as the obsessive fans in the audience (guilty as charged) knew, featured some establishing shots taken on location during the production of Survival. A question about making guest casts feel comfortable elicited a standard response from Sophie about Sylv being a good company leader, but Hancock bristled a bit about the suggestion that it was good to make things 'fun'. "Are you a killjoy?" asked someone whom I again did not have the chance to record, such was the speed at which the comments were coming. Hancock explained that after working long and hard on productions, she never liked it when the uninitiated said that "'It must be such fun.' Fun? This is my job, it's not a hobby!" Cartmel revealed that, although he and Curry had had Thatcher in mind as the template for Helen A, they had not passed this on to Hancock, who had come to it naturally in reaction to the script. When McCoy was talking about being told about the cancellation of Doctor Who, Hancock enquired whether more had been made after Happiness Patrol and was told that there had been another year of stories. "So, it wasn't this one that finished you off?" she asked, sounding a little relieved. McCoy shared something that I've never heard him say before, that a 1963 speech by the then UK leader of the opposition Harold Wilson led to the creation of Doctor Who, as the BBC were then inspired to make a scientific show. It's completely untrue, alas: this was the famous 'White Heat of Technology' speech that Wilson gave at his party conference; online sources differ as to whether it was presented in early October or late September, but either way Doctor Who was late on its development and had started production by then.

Towards the end, the panel took a more serious turn with a discussion about how Doctor Who was rated in the 1980s. Aldred and McCoy showed their usual positivity; when asked what was their personal legacy from Doctor Who, McCoy talked about how its allowed him to travel all over the world; Aldred answered " A pension" to laughs and added, hugging McCoy, "And a brilliant friend" to cheers. Clough, though, talked with maybe even a tinge of bitterness about the "career killer" that was having Doctor Who on one's CV. Everyone agreed that show business is a very snobby business, and Hancock pointed out that it wasn't just Doctor Who but all TV that tended to be looked down on, citing people referring to her late, great husband John Thaw dismissively as "a telly actor". All seemed to agree that - though TV without any purpose "disappears into the ether and is just bubblegum" - the best TV has messages within it. This was what drew McCoy to Doctor Who as a viewer in the 1960s. Clough talked with passion about his work on Brookside in the 1980s up to 2024's impactful Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which he produced. Whether he would add The Happiness Patrol to such an illustrious list was not made clear, but clearly it has a message and speaks to people. The event wound up and we left the auditorium for the BFI bar. I discussed the story with one of my viewing buddies Chris, who is a little more difficult to please than me. It became instantly clear that the issues I'd noted when I blogged the story are definitely there. As Sheila Hancock instinctively noticed, there is no real reason to include the pipe people or the harmonica player in proceedings, and there's many other examples along those lines. The story clearly has an effect on the audience despite these problems, though. Perhaps it isn't necessary for something to be coherent to be meaningful?

I wondered whether the special edition would have uncovered a more integrated narrative to back up the story's great premise, but assumed I would have to wait until the Blu-ray was released to find out. An email sent a week after the event would prove that assumption to be wrong... 

(With thanks to Scott and Alan for some of the BFI pictures.)

In Summary:

Ultimately it wasn't the end, but - if it had been - it would have been a great story to go out on.

Real Time

 

Chapter the 310th, a fist of absolutely no fun whatsoever.

Plot:

On an unnamed planet in 3286, a regularly occurring temporal wave has caused two survey teams to vanish. The last broadcast picked up from one of the scientists suggests the Cybermen are responsible. So, another team is put together including the Doctor and Evelyn, a mysterious Cyber expert called Goddard who's bound to have a hidden agenda, various redshirts, and a 1990s comedy double-act. With the clock ticking down to the next wave, they investigate a temple containing a time portal. Some of the team are pulled into the portal and reemerge in Cyber form, but a bit rubbish - like they have been converted in a hurry and not very well. The Cyber-Controller, who sits behind the portal trapped in a future time zone, is running low on energy and parts; but it plans to recruit the Doctor to allow the Cybermen to master time travel using the portal and/or his TARDIS (it's not very clear). Goddard turns out to be a cyber-converted human from an alternate timeline in Earth's past (he was born in 1927 and left Earth in 1951). Goddard believes the Doctor is destined to join with the Cybermen who will then travel back to 1927 and use a nano-virus to convert humans into his new type of Cyberman with a brain and a skin exterior, but with internal workings made of machine.

Goddard is one of a group of rebels who have broken their conditioning. He has a reverse-engineered virus based on the original that will destroy cyber enhancement technology, and he's going to use it to kill the Cyber-controller. The Doctor believes that the virus will fall into the Cybermen's hands and they will end up creating the original virus by reverse-engineering Goddard's own reverse-engineering job (bootstrap paradox squared). Evelyn is taken as bait, and sent for Cyber-conversion, but the process is apparently halted before it is complete. One of the comedy double-act is Cyber-converted and the other is killed. The Doctor sabotages the portal, so when the next wave comes it will happen inside the temple rather than outside. When Goddard and the Doctor go through the portal to confront the controller, the converted double-act member's humanity has been reactivated on hearing about the death of his comedy partner. He attacks, and in the confusion the Doctor gets Evelyn out of the portal and back to the safety of the TARDIS. Goddard is trapped as the wave hits, but kills the Controller; unmasking it, he discovers it is Evelyn. In the TARDIS, Evelyn suggests they go to visit 1927, suggesting that she's under Cyber influence and about to start the alternate timeline cycle up again...

Context:

This is another story of nebulous canonical status, so I asked myself my standard questions to decide on its inclusion in the blog. Aptly for a Colin Baker story, it passed with flying colours. Does it star the Doctor? Yes. Does it have visuals? Yes; they may be rudimentary, but they are definitely there. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or official spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Yes. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. This assessment done, I watched the episodes, one a night across the best part of a week, in late September 2024. The story is no longer available in its old home of the official Doctor Who website, but there are a few versions available on video sharing platforms.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Apart from a few extra odds and sods like Real Time that I throw in occasionally, I have completed 27 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-25, and new series 2, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

Through 2002 and 2003, the official Doctor Who website launched and then hosted four webcasts - three new stories and a reworked version of the unfinished 1970s story Shada. These were primarily audio stories but with some limited animation. They got more sophisticated as they went along, and culminated in Scream of the Shalka, a potential new start for the series with a brand new Doctor and companion (the return of Doctor Who to TV put paid to it being the start of anything, of course, but that was the intention). Real Time was the second of these four. It followed Death Comes to Time. The initial launch of that story was more exciting by dint of being first, but I think its fair to say that it wasn't well received by a large part of fandom. It was muddled, unnecessarily complicated, unengaging emotionally and far too tied up in detailing lore rather than in telling a story. Real Time followed, its first episode being shown only three months after the last episode of Death Comes to Time. It was definitely seen as better, but to me it was still muddled, unnecessarily complicated, unengaging emotionally and far too tied up in detailing lore rather than in telling a story. Not to the same degree, but enough to be off-putting. I watched the first three episodes on my computer at home in Brighton in August 2002, struggling with bandwidth issues all the while, then I bailed. This watch was my first ever viewing of the second half of the story. Looking back on it now, Real Time does seem like an oddity. It wasn't striving to be a new start like Death Comes to Time or Shalka, and it wasn't a full-on retro celebration like Shada. It was something more run of the mill - a standard adventure with an old Doctor, like dozens of others that Big Finish had made by 2002 and would make in the years afterwards, but this time with pictures.

Reaction:

Real Time takes place in real time, hence the name. If you went into the episodes not knowing that, though, I think you'd be hard pushed to tell, despite the script regularly referencing the ticking clock of the approaching temporal wave. Whether events of a Doctor Who action story take place over about an hour or an evening or a couple of days, they inevitably involve frantic races against the clock and similar structures of cutting back and forth between different breathless scenes of characters trying to survive. If it were one continuous piece, the elapsed story time might be more tangible, but this is disrupted when watching episodically as the original web viewers did, and I did on this watch. As such, Real Time feels no different to any pacey Cyberman story, like Earthshock, say, except in one crucial regard. Being set in a continuity of time tends to dictate that the action also happens in a continuity of place (the area around a temple containing the time portal). The Doctor can't go off for a jaunt and visit the future of the nameless world they are on, or go to 1927 or 1951 on Earth's alternate timeline where time-travelling Cybs have converted everyone. Events in these time zones are crucial to the plot, but the audience can't be shown them. It therefore needs to be told, told, told. This means that almost all of Real Time is spent in breathless scenes of characters exchanging barely comprehensible exposition about the backstory. A story full of time-travel and paradoxes is not trying to do something straightforward like Earthshock, it's trying to do something convoluted like, say, Mawdryn Undead. But in real time. It should have occurred to at least one of the many talented and experienced people involved in this production, who've produced lots more successful Who stories elsewhere (see Deeper Thoughts for more details), that it was the epitome of folly to attempt a story in real time if it involves lots of time travel.

Watching the resultant production is rather like being hit over the head repeatedly with an online fan wiki. It's very hard to follow, and even harder to care much about. To pick one detail that's representative: the very first scene depicts two people who are presumably alternate timeline Cyber rebels sending presumably Goddard back in time; but anyone watching this scene first time won't have a clue who they are or what's going on, and can't work it out until at least episode 5 when all the backstory is finally laid out; by that time, though, there's a real risk that they'll have forgotten all about this first scene. The scene also has the rebels refer to the person being sent as "Doctor", which was deliberate misdirection, I assume, but just muddies the waters further. The scene takes place in 1951, but in a technologically advanced Cyber base so it doesn't look or feel like 1951. What was the point of having the rebels come from an alternate 1951 rather than the story's 'present day' of 3286? It doesn't add anything except more confusion. I'm assuming, given that the story ends on a massive cliffhanger, that it was setting things up for a sequel, a story set in 1927 (when Goddard was first converted as an infant) in which the Doctor would presumably have discovered that Evelyn was under Cyber influence, and put things right, saving her and the timeline. Whether because of a change in the BBC Website team or at Big Finish (who produced the story), or for some other reason, the sequel never came. The ending to Real Time remains unresolved to this day. I'm ambivalent about this. Whatever issues it had, Real Time was a step up in terms of comprehensibility after Death Comes to Time; with a sequel to tie up the many loose ends, it might be thought of more fondly. Alternatively, when one's on a losing streak it's perhaps best to quit early.

Big Finish being involved in a web production means that Colin Baker's allowed to perform the role without having to shout and bluster as he was made to do on TV (by 2002, his Doctor was in a deserved renaissance period thanks to the more sympathetic writing and direction of the audios). Those like me who didn't follow the audios got to experience Maggie Stables playing Evelyn Smythe (a companion character invented for Big Finish). The dynamic between the Doctor and an older female companion is an interesting one, and works well with Baker's approach to the Doctor. Lee Sullivan's art that accompanies the audio is good, with interesting Cyberman design, and a blue version of the Sixth Doctor's costume (this change was made to save the artist realising Colin's usual colourful patchwork affair, but it's generally preferred by fans as the original is a hideous eyesore). The combination of Big Finish and web budget may have meant a stronger draw for contributors. Whether they needed that to get comedy duo Stewart Lee and Richard Herring involved, I do not know. Both do well considering they are not actors; their interplay is natural and balanced between comedy and seriousness; Lee's character's Cyber conversion and subsequent rediscovery of his humanity on finding out about his close colleague's death is the best part of the story. What's odd is that Lee and Herring stopped performing together, amicably, at the end of the 1990s. Aside from a very few and very brief appearances together for charity benefits and the like over the years, Real Time represents their last work as a duo, which is a quirky end for sure. Another bit of stunt casting is of Yee Jee Tso, who played Paul McGann TV Movie companion Chang Lee, appearing in a different role. It's a pretty thankless role with the most exposition to spew of everyone, but nonetheless he too comports himself well. Featuring aspects of classic series, TV movie, and with a eye to the future in a new medium, Real Time is itself something of a nexus point in the history of Who; it's just a shame it wasn't a simpler story.

Connectivity:

Both Real Time and Dot and Bubble feature a main adversary (the Cyber-Controller, the Dot system) that's technologically enhanced, with a metal casing and red eye(s). In both stories, this adversary controls multiple other creatures that are at least semi-organic.

Deeper Thoughts:

Poachers converted to Cyber-Gamekeepers. I've mentioned a few times before on the blog that I have only listened to a very small number of Big Finish Who stories over the many years that they've been made. Only seven stories, in fact (four were the very first Paul McGann starring audios that came out in 2001, because I was curious, the other three were some of those made available on BBC Sounds around Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, because they were free). Given their ubiquity in fandom (they must have created nearly a thousand Doctor Who stories at the time of writing, and they're still churning them out), that low a percentage is remarkable given I'm a fairly active Doctor Who fan, but there's only so many hours in the day. I have in the past, though, listened to a much higher percentage of the Big Finish audios' precursors. These were called Audio Visuals, and were unlicensed and fan-made Doctor Who stories distributed on audio cassette in the 1980s and early 1990s. Somehow, nobody involved in their making was prosecuted by the BBC for flagrant breach of copyright. I assume no profit was being made; I listened to a few tapes that were loaned to me by long-term fan friend David mentioned many times before on this blog; he copied them from other friends, who got them as copies from other friends, and so on. If any money exchanged hands at the start of that chain, I was definitely unaware of it. I doubt it, though, as that wasn't the point. It was instead a chance for everyone involved to do something they really wanted to do in creating engaging new stories based on their favourite TV series, honing their skills. This paid off, as many of the people involved have turned what started as a hobby into a professional career, and a few have even got to work on the series proper.

Big Finish's CD cover for Real Time's audio release

A couple of the key team behind Audio Visuals were Gary Russell (co-creator, writer and producer) and Nicholas Briggs (writer and voice artist playing the Audio Visuals Doctor for most of the stories). Both went on to have significant roles in Big Finish doing Doctor Who stories in a similar way, but with more polish and crucially with a licence from the BBC, so everything was legit. Both would also work on the new series after the show returned in 2005. Briggs has done voice work as Daleks, Cybermen and numerous other monsters, working with every Doctor in the revived era. Russell worked as a script editor on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as at different times editing Doctor Who Magazine, writing many Doctor Who books (novelisations, novels and non-fiction) and comic strips. He wrote and directed Real Time (anyone can have an off day) and has kept the animation flame alive with work providing visuals for 'missing' Doctor Who stories surviving on audio like Fury from the Deep and The Abominable Snowmen. Bill Baggs, who produced the Audio Visuals stories alongside Russell, has never worked on the new series, but after Audio Visuals he founded BBV Productions to make low-budget video stories using Doctor Who characters or concepts licensed from their owners, or using Doctor Who acting alumni in different roles. A notable person involved in BBV Productions was Mark Gatiss, who wrote many stories in the PROBE series featuring Caroline John as Liz Shaw. He of course went on to write several episodes of new Who, and star in a few too.

Real Time's cast including Nick Briggs

Gatiss, Russell and other writers who'd worked on Audio Visuals also wrote original novels for the Virgin New Adventures range in the 1990s. Paul Cornell was a key contributor to the Virgin New Adventures range, having started writing fan fiction in the 'zines and comic strips in Doctor Who Magazine. He would go on to write a couple of very well regarded new series stories in the early years of the revival. Keith Barnfather's Reeltime Pictures, who Nicholas Briggs was heavily involved with for many years, produced both documentaries and video fiction. Though nobody involved who wasn't also involved with other productions ended up working on the new series, Barnfather still gave opportunities to showcase further work of Who people like Terrance Dicks, Kevin Davies, Mark Ayres, and Philip Martin. Writers who worked on Big Finish audios such as Robert Shearman went on to write for the new series. A later key member of the Big Finish team Scott Handcock was script editor on the most recent (at time of writing) episodes of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa. Like some kind of metaphorical dandelion clock, Audio Visuals set a hundred seeds onto the wind to fly off into different corners of the Whoniverse, land, and take root. And most of this happened in a period inaccurately called the 'Wilderness years', between 1990 and 2004 when Doctor Who was not being made as an ongoing series by the BBC. That period clearly wasn't a wilderness, it was a crucible of creativity. I'd lobby to rename them the 'Crucible Years' except that sounds too much like a retrospective documentary about early televised snooker in the UK.

In Summary:

An overcomplicated story unfortunately means this is a Real waste of Time.

Dot and Bubble

Chapter the 309th, while democracy is losing its way, and greed is getting greedier, console yourself with a selfie or two, and post them on social media...

Plot:

[A recent story of the streaming era, so be warned there are spoilers ahead.] Lindy Pepper-Bean lives in Finetime, with lots of other rich kids aged between 17 and 27, sent there from the home world. She does two hours work a day and moans about it to her online friends, but the rest of the day is for partying. Remotely, though - every interaction Lindy has with her friends or workmates is on a hemisphere of screens (the bubble) projected around her head by a floating light bee (the dot); she never meets anyone IRL. She notices there are less people online than there once were, but doesn't let it worry her when she can instead be watching online heartthrob Ricky September's latest video where he lip-syncs to a song handsomely. On one screen in her bubble, the Doctor appears warning her she's in danger, but she blocks his unsolicited contact request. After a while, Ruby tries and has more luck. Lindy engages with her and discovers there are giant slug-like creatures eating people in Finetime. Weirdly, though, they ignore some people and eat others, with no easily definable pattern. Ruby invites the Doctor to their group chat, and at first Lindy doesn't recognise him as the same person as earlier; she also seems shocked that the Doctor and Ruby are communicating with her from the same room. They are stuck outside Finetime and can't get past the security to get in. They persuade her to escape through some conduits that will lead her to the wilderness outside. Between her and escape, though, are many of the giant slug-like creatures. Luckily, Ricky is there - IRL and everything - and he helps her escape them.

En route to the conduit, Ricky discovers on a video link that the home world's population has all been eaten by the slug monsters. Once Lindy and Ricky are there, the Doctor provides them a set of codes to unlock the exit. Meanwhile, the Doctor is musing on the mysteries of Finetime's situation and realises that Finetime residents are being eaten in alphabetical order; the dot system has somehow become sentient and turned on its masters. Lindy tries to turn her dot off, but it starts whizzing around, swooping at her. When it is just about to kill her, she evades it by telling it Ricky's real surname is Coombes; C comes before P, so Lindy escapes and the dot kills Ricky. Once through the conduit, Lindy finds a handful of Finetime survivors who plan to go out into the wilderness of the planet as pioneers. The Doctor and Ruby are also there; the Doctor tells Lindy and the others that he can take them to safety in the TARDIS, as they'll never survive otherwise. They turn down his help as they are a racist society, and believe that the purity of their community will be contaminated by his presence. The Doctor tries to persuade them, telling them that he doesn't care about their views, he will save them anyway. They will not be persuaded and travel off to their certain doom. He leaves in the TARDIS with Ruby, quite upset by this turn of events.  

Context:

Another Ncuti episode. This wasn't intended to be the next story covered by the blog, but the blog post for another story (not a Ncuti episode) has had to be delayed, even though I'd almost finished writing it. All will become clear in a few weeks' time. In another first for the blog, I did this rewatch of the story (from the BBC iplayer in early September 2024, after only just having watched the story when it came out on Blu-ray) while running on a treadmill - I'm trying to get a bit fitter. Being in motion while watching something on a screen is rather apt for this story, now I come to think of it. I was doing Couch to 5K using an app, so like Lindy Pepper-Bean I had a recorded voice from a personal device telling me when to move and when to stop too.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. A big chunk of serial broadcasting was Ncuti Gatwa's first season, which was shown in May and June 2024. This is the fifth of those seven stories to be covered for the blog. Beyond that, I have completed 27 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-25, and new series 2, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

As with all the stories of this run, I watched Dot and Bubble just after midnight, seconds after it landed on BBC iplayer, on the 1st June 2024. Just this once, I was on my own. My usual viewing partner, the middle child (boy, aged 14 at the time) decided to go to bed and watched it separately from me the following day. I will admit now that on that first watch I was a little slow on the uptake. I was thinking all the way through that Lindy was elitist, and that that elitism was built into the insular society of Finetime. At the end of the story, I watched and saw that elitist society reject someone that it perceived as a member of an underclass, even when that someone represented their only hope of survival, meaning their certain death, but I thought I saw it reject Ruby too. It was only just before the credits rolled that the penny dropped: oh, they're racists as well. I then had to rewind Ncuti's performance of frustration and revulsion and watch it again in its proper context. It was early in the morning after a week of work and I was tired, if I can offer that as some defence. Also, I think the story itself is pulling some punches in those final moments. There's a time for subtlety and this wasn't it. I think it would have been fine to have one of the citizens of Finetime explicitly mention the colour of the Doctor's skin, or mention the word 'race', or be excessively accommodating to Ruby and offer her a way to rid herself of the Doctor's company - it wouldn't have the burst the bubble (ahem) in that moment.

Reaction:

Coming immediately after 73 Yards, my favourite story of the year, it was almost certain that Dot and Bubble would be something of a comedown, and then... it wasn't. It was just as good in a different way, and just as haunting in a different way. So, as it turned out, my favourite two stories of the year were the two containing less Ncuti Gatwa than the others. I don't think that's a factor, though: I've enjoyed his performances in all the other episodes, and stories that revolve around his character more (Boom and Rogue, as two examples) are very strong too. Perhaps it's instead because the restrictions of Ncuti's limited availability for filming early on (as he was still working on the fourth series of Sex Education) encouraged the writer of both stories, Russell T Davies, to produce more innovative and interesting narratives. Whatever, the reason - in the opinion of this viewer at least - Davies delivers the goods. He's a writer with a reputation for sometimes not plotting as tightly as he should, but he proves that wrong in Dot and Bubble; it is a masterclass in the careful and gradual release of information. The world and its inhabitants' default behaviour is set up in the initial section, then there are reveals and reversals following one after another as the tension and pace ratchet up to the ending and the final twist (of the knife). Just look at the development of the Mantraps' relationship to the people of Finetime through the running time: there are monsters; the monsters are ignoring Lindy; not just Lindy, they're ignoring some people and not others; the monsters are killing in alphabetical order, so they're not unthinking monsters; Lindy is a monster; every person on Finetime is a monster. Then, after the credits toll, the lingering thought occurs that the Mantraps weren't monsters after all.

As mentioned above, I thought the ending could have been more emphatic. It's fine for the microaggressions thrown the Doctor's way to be subtle before that, that's the point, and I'm sure people of colour picked up on them long before those like me with white privilege. At the end, though, I think the realities of Finetime should have been hammered home  - it's a polemic, after all. We all watch with our own preoccupations, and it sometimes needs a jolt to dislodge them; as an ageing student leftie type, I was hung up on seeing the story as about class, so missed what were only a couple of lines of dialogue at the end that should have clued me in. It's probably a minor point now that Doctor Who is a streaming show first and foremost; the episode certainly rewards further rewatching. Perhaps another detail of the end that should have been beefed up is the danger that the Finetime residents are in, having refused the Doctor's offer of escape. As they travel off in the boat, it needs waves and storm clouds and crashes of thunder to show - rather than just tell - that they aren't going to survive. Such effects for a short sequence might have been budget breaking, but I think they would have helped. I'm also perplexed by the choice of name for the surviving Finetime resident that presents himself as self-styled leader at the end. It's Brewster Cavendish with a 'C', meaning he has managed to survive since almost the beginning of the purge; around a week, based on dialogue elsewhere. He must have found his way out through a conduit sometime before, or discovered some other way to evade the Mantraps. It had already been established that Ricky September was more resourceful than others, but he's a special case. To suggest that others could be too undermines the underlying theme that the lack of diversity in thought and action in this group will be its undoing (or maybe that's my student leftie reading again).

  

The other connection between my two most favoured stories of the year is that they have the same director, Dylan Holmes Williams. He does another sterling job with material very different to 73 Yards. Along with the full crew working at a high, high level, he creates a distinctive and interesting look for this story's world. The Mantraps, like a lot of the monsters of this era of Who, are CG-enhanced real builds, tangible creations worked by puppeteers. They are brilliantly effective. Dots, bubbles and screen after screen of rich kids in stylised clothing, all are effectively realised. What Holmes Williams achieves more than the visuals, though, are some cracking performances. Topmost of these is Callie Cooke's faultless turn as Lindy. It is a knife-edge difficult balance to play: she must seem somewhat sympathetic, but not too much, and Cooke finds that balance and milks every nuance out of the script. The moment where she turns on Ricky so she can save herself is one of those jaw-dropping, spine-tingling reveals; it feels both surprising and inevitable, and that's largely down to the actor and her director expertly realising the excellent script. Also selling it is the reaction from Tom Rhys-Harries as Ricky. He does some great work elsewhere too, peeling back the layers to show a bookish diffidence behind the hunky self confidence of his online persona. He doesn't stay alive for the next layer to be peeled, so we'll never know if he is in goose-step with the misguided ideology of Finetime. I'm sure many a fanboy or fangirl is in denial: if he reads history thoroughly, isn't distracted by screens and is still a racist, he's arguably even worse than Lindy.

The script is full of reversals, but it also acts as one great big bait and switch at the thematic level: it pretends to be a standard issue 'older writer bemoaning a younger generation's social mores' thing, but then reveals its true and much deeper intent. This climaxes in another great moment of performance, Ncuti Gatwa's burst of frustration at the stubborn senselessness of Finetime and its people. It's wonderfully scripted and performed as almost non-judgemental. The Doctor will save people, even if they're racists, and he's more sad than angry; the moment, though, is still imbued with the energy of a God who can't persuade a colony of ants to let themselves be saved. It is a hell of a scene to give an actor on his first day's filming, but Ncuti is nonetheless electrifying.

Connectivity:

There is very little in common between Dot and Bubble and The Curse of Fatal Death, which is a shame as there were numerous fun connections between the Comic Relief sketch and the story I intended to blog next (see Context section above). Never mind, it's all random, and that is the blog's raison d'etre. In both stories, the Doctor is first seen on a screen (as part of Lindy's bubble, and on the Master's TARDIS scanner) before later appearing fully - that's about it.

Deeper Thoughts:

It's a bit like Black Mirror (oh, I'm so clever). Ironically for a story warning of the dangers of social media, this story drove me back to my online feeds, unseen for many months. Except for blogger (I don't count blogger), I had given up the last one that I was still regularly reading - the platform formerly known as twitter - for lent in 2024 and hadn't gone back. The day after my first viewing of Dot and Bubble, still a bit unsure that I'd read the ending of this story correctly (see First Time Round section above), I took a look back into the abyss to check other people's reactions. They were pretty much uniformly positive, which surprised me as no topic on social media usually has such agreement. But people loved it. There was nobody I could see moaning about virtue signalling or woke-ism or whatever. The one thing I did see, though, and this was replicated in online reviews I read over the next few days, were lots of people saying the programme had echoes of Black Mirror, or was ripping off Black Mirror, or was very similar to a specific episode of Black Mirror (2016's Nosedive). Each time I saw the comparison made, it annoyed me for two reasons. First, it felt like each individual was celebrating their own cleverness in detection, as if - forensic scientist style - they had pored over every minute piece of evidence to find this debt to Charlie Brooker's dark TV anthology series. But the writer and executive producer Russell T Davies himself was the one who highlighted it. In an interview. Before Dot and Bubble's broadcast. He was quoted as saying the story was the "clearest step into Black Mirror territory" that Doctor Who had made. All those forensic scientists on the web were examining a 10-foot tall pulsating neon sign pointing in the direction of the murderer, but patting themselves on the back for it.

Maybe Davies was getting the word out early to head off any accusations of plagiarism. Maybe. Was he though? The second thing that annoyed me about the comparison, was that it was wrong. Dot and Bubble wasn't really anything like Black Mirror. What does it even mean to be like a varied anthology series? I haven't seen every episode of Black Mirror ever, but from what I know I'd say its common thread comes down to two things: a focus on the dangers of modern technology, and a dark ending. Doctor Who has done the former throughout its long history; it doesn't do the latter so often, but it still has some history going way back. It's very loose anyway (you can't have too restrictive a template for an anthology series if it's intended to run for a good few years as Black Mirror has). One might as well say that Dot and Bubble was like Inside No, 9 (samples comedy and horror and often has dark twist endings) or Severance (extrapolates the dangers of technological choices with stylised visuals) or many other shows one could list. Dot and Bubble had whopping great drooling slug monsters eating people; the show it was most like was Doctor Who. Anyway, Davies - in the same interview - has said that the original idea was pitched for the 2011 series of Doctor Who, before Black Mirror had ever been shown, but it was felt that the technology wasn't there to do the topic justice at that time. What about the specific episode of Black Mirror that was often mentioned, though? Nosedive was written by Michael Schur and Rashida Jones from a story by Brooker. It deals with a world where social media is voluntary but all pervasive, and features a female protagonist, so it is superficially similar to Dot and Bubble at a very high-level. The warnings that each give about the technology, though, are polar opposites.

Dot and Bubble warns of the dangers of the technology excluding people outside the bubble, and perhaps the warping effect of the echo chamber impacting those within the bubble. It's not clear what's cause or effect - do the citizens of Finetime all live in the same virtual place to keep outsiders out, or did living in the same virtual place lead to them excluding outsiders? Either way, though, those plugged into the technology are all in it together, one exclusive club. In Nosedive, the very point is how the individuals that are plugged in can turn against each other; Nosedive is about people rating one another (something like China's Social Credit System spliced with Uber rankings). The protagonist strives to improve her score out of five, but events conspire to mean it keeps taking a knock. An interesting point to note on similarities between stories is that Nosedive itself was compared in many reviews to an existing piece, an episode of the comedy Community from two years before called App Development and Condiments, which has exactly - and I mean exactly - the same base premise, and lots of other things in common too. It's just a coincidence, though: sometimes ideas have a life of their own and rise up in different places independent of one another. One of the only things that Dot and Bubble and Nosedive have in common is a penchant for pastels in the production design. Again, this is just a coincidence as the reason for it is different in each piece. In Nosedive (and, as it happens, in the Community episode) its about not wanting to give offence by being too bold or colourful: a world where everyone fears the ratings bestowed on them by everyone else bleaches out individuality. In Dot and Bubble, it connotes the pre-existing uniformity and homogeneity of the populace. The final irony of the comparison is that Nosedive ends with its character freed of the fear of being rated, and able to be be bold and colourful and rude. Although it is a dark story, it ends on a tiny moment of hope (so very unlike the usual for Black Mirror, but very like the usual for... Doctor Who). 

In Summary:

Bubblicious.