Doctor Who has never been shy about leveling broader social critiques. In Doctor Who 14×05 “Dot and Bubble,” it uses a familiar format — and a great twist — for a futuristic horror show with a pointed message. The episode deftly skewers social media obsession, influencer culture, faux activism, and racism.
Doctor Who 14×05 Follows a Classic Structure
Like last week’s “73 Yards,” “Dot and Bubble” keeps the Doctor physically distant for much of the story. This time, Ruby’s out of the picture, too. Instead, our apparent protagonist is Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke). Lindy lives on Finetime, a future colony where everyone relies on their Dot. These tiny devices project a “bubble” screen around everyone’s heads, while giving them instructions on things as simple as walking and keeping them perpetually connected to their social media feeds. Lindy is so absorbed inside her bubble that she strolls right by bodies being dragged off by monsters without noticing.
When the Doctor hacks into her screen and tries to warn her, she simply blocks him. The TARDIS can’t get through Finetime’s external force fields, so Ruby tries contacting Lindy instead. It takes her a lot of flattery (and a lot of allowing Lindy to call her stupid), but she finally gets Lindy to lower her bubble and look around her real office. Lindy is horrified to find a giant bug monster eating her last remaining colleague.
Ruby and the Doctor convince Lindy to flee, but her Bubble leads her straight to a monster. Oddly, it walks right by her without attacking. When Lindy gets out, she spills more about Finetime. It’s a colony populated entirely with 17-to-27-year-olds, who do nothing but socialize. The “homeworld” is… somewhere else, with their parents and everyone else.
Ricky to the Rescue
After witnessing one of her friends get eaten on camera, Lindy finally agrees to follow the Doctor’s instructions. She’s so disoriented without her Dot and Bubble, though, that she walks right into a pole. It looks like she’s going to be eaten by the monsters. Then, Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries), a boyband-esque influencer she was watching earlier, shows up. He’s real, in person, and he knows how to navigate the real world. Lindy squeals that this is the best day of her life. Ricky’s response — that thousands of people are dying — is played for laughs, but the exchange is still unsettling.
Ricky reveals that he actually spends most of his time offline. Doctor Who 14×05 plays with the irony that the biggest influencer is the least interested with being online. He’s been trying to warn people about the bugs, but no one listens. He and Lindy flee into underground tunnels, where he tries to connect with the “home world.” Unbeknownst to Lindy, when he makes the call, he sees the planet devastated, apparently by the same bugs.
When the Doctor and Ruby get back in touch, Ricky is ready to help. They feed him a string of codes to open a door and help him and Lindy escape through a tunnel. It’s at this point in Doctor Who 14×05 that we start getting answers. The Doctor figures out two things. First, the bugs are eating people in alphabetical order — and Lindy is next. Second, the bugs were created by the Dots, who turned on humanity after witnessing their vapid, constant chatter.
It’s not hard to see the message here. Doctor Who 14×05 skewers the lack of connection and the emptiness and immaturity of tech addiction. But the worst is still yet to come.
There’s Always a Twist (or Two) at the End
Up until now, Doctor Who 14×05 “Dot and Bubble” has mostly followed a familiar plot pattern. Now, though, things get ugly, fast. Lindy’s Dot begins attacking her, so Ricky switches with her. As she enters the remaining codes, he fends off the Dot’s attacks. When the Dot gets past him, she yells out that Ricky’s real last name is Coombs, not September. She knows this because she’s a super-fan, so we can add stan culture to the list of things the episode skewers. Per the alphabetical attack order, that turns the Dot on Ricky, who looks at Lindy with betrayal as he’s killed and she escapes.
Lindy winds up in a tunnel, where other escapees are preparing to sail out on the river. She reunites with a couple of her surviving friends. And here, it gets icky again, as one of her friends begins rattling off some very colonial rhetoric about “taming” the unknown lands. Selfish and delusional to the core, they’re all probably going to die, but they willfully refuse to realize that.
When the Doctor and Ruby show up in the TARDIS, Lindy coolly brushes them off. Without a shred of remorse, she lies that Ricky went back to save others. Then, we finally get the second gut-punch twist. Lindy (and her friends) rudely turn down the Doctor’s offer to take them someplace safe. Why? They begin slinging all sorts of nasty lines about the Doctor not being “one of us,” insist he had a “duty” to help them, call the TARDIS voodoo, and talk about “maintaining standards” of Finetime.
Translation: it’s the racism, folks.
Ncuti Gatwa Shines in the Final Scenes
Doctor Who has, on occasion, dealt with race in the past. Usually (thought not always), it’s in episodes set in the past, like the Season 3 “Human Nature” arc. Doctor Who 14×05, on the other hand, makes it all the more painful by setting it in the future. The show often operates on a logic of hope: the idea that humanity endures and improves, always. Here, though, we see the heartbreaking reality that bigotry doesn’t end — it just evolves.
Ncuti Gatwa is incredible in these final moments. Even after being insulted, the Doctor still begs Lindy and her friends to let him save them. Of course, they won’t. He watches them go, letting out a shout of anger and a single tear. In hindsight, this reveal makes a lot of other micro-moments (or, rather, microaggressions) click into place from earlier in the episode. It’s a painful but accurate message to end the episode on. No matter how good your intentions, you just can’t get through to some people, especially if they don’t want to let their biases go.
TARDIS Log
- Doctor Who 14×05 “Dot and Bubble” reminds me a little of Season 1’s “Bad Wolf.” There, the Doctor and companions were thrown into a reality/game-show world with a dark secret. Who can forget the combination of Daleks and The Weakest Link?
- Time for our weekly Twist update! Susan Twist appears as Lindy’s “Mummy” in a prerecorded message. This time, though, Ruby and the Doctor recognize her.
- Ricky September’s name feels similar to Ruby’s. Initials “RS,” a fake last name drawn from the calendar, a gentle approach to heroics. It’s probably nothing, but it pinged my radar.
- “Dot and Bubble” was a pretty dark episode, but it still finds time for humor. Namely, Ruby and the Doctor both getting a little flirty with Ricky!
