Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble ★★★

“I am not lowering my bubble” – Lindy

Storyline
The young inhabitants of Finetime are dependent on their dot and bubble technology to get through their home and working lives. Interaction is constant but they are unaware that they’re being harvested and eaten by slug-like creatures, until the Doctor and Ruby intercede and try to guide Lindy and her fellows to safety.

First UK broadcast
Saturday 1 June 2024

Cast

The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa
Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson
Lindy Pepper-Bean – Callie Cooke
Ricky September – Tom Rhys Harries
Hoochy Pie – Niamh Lynch
Harry Tendency – Aldous Ciokajlo Squire
Cooper Mercy – Eilidh Loan
Gothic Paul – Pete MacHale
Blake Very Blue – Billy Brayshaw
Valerie Nook – Millie Kent
Dr Pee – Max Boast
Rotterdam Twins – Elloise Bennett, Olivia Bennett
Penny Pepper-Bean – Susan Twist
Alan K Sullivan – Milo Callaghan
Weatherman Will – Jack Forsyth-Noble
Suzie Pentecost – Ellie-Grace Cashin
Brewster Cavendish – Jamie Barnard

Crew
Writer – Russell T Davies
Director – Dylan Holmes Williams
Music – Murray Gold
Producer – Vicki Delow
Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson

RT review by Patrick Mulkern

We all do it. Walk around in a bubble, glued to our devices. In this intriguing satire, Russell T Davies takes that to an extreme. On Finetime – a city under a bubble dome – people go about their business constantly encased in a literal bubble of interactivity, oblivious to the fact that they and their friends are being harvested by slug-like monsters.

He toyed with this idea once before in Years and Years with the “filter mask” worn by young Bethany (Lydia West) who wanted to become a “trans-human”. Diehard fans will also spot the strong debt owed to the 1967 Patrick Troughton story, The Macra Terror, in which a human colony were enslaved by giant crabs they couldn’t see.

The technology and set design are gorgeous. The monsters brilliantly, disgustingly realised. And the tone is largely spot on. The vacuity of the young people of Finetime (“No stinky old folk,” says Lindy. “Just people ages 17 to 27”) is perfectly captured in the writing and performances. They are so dependent on their bubbles, they can’t walk without its directions, like the cellphone users of today who cannot put one foot in front of the other without Google Maps. Here, Lindy walks twice into a lamppost.

Unfortunately in this short run we have yet another episode in which Ncuti Gatwa’s relatively new Doctor isn’t fully involved. He and Ruby pop up regularly on windows in Lindy’s bubble, steering the action, but display all the presence and allure of daytime TV hosts offering advice to a live caller.

We realise before the Doctor and Ruby that they have been facilitating the evacuation of a vacuous moron. Lindy is also revealed to be treacherous in her betrayal of Ricky September, the influencer who is supposedly gorgeous. If you say so… Many viewers should have clocked early on that not only are these youngsters rich, entitled and gormless, like contestants on a reality show, but they are also all white.

In the last act, Lindy and her fellow survivors are shown to be racist, rejecting further association with or assistance from the Doctor. They don’t wish to be “contaminated” because “you, sir, are not one of us”. The Tardis is “voodoo”. It’s a strong line, but this final passage is protracted and overwrought, and doesn’t hit quite as hard as it ought to. We’re left with the uncomfortable feeling he should have left them to the slugs.

Read more:

• Episode 1 – Space Babies review
• Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review
• Episode 3 – Boom review
• Episode 4 – 73 Yards review

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