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.