Doctor Who Season 14 Episode 5, “Dot and Bubble,” was released on May 31 and while it comes across in trailers as bright, colorful, and a little wacky, the message of the episode is a whole lot darker.
“Dot and Bubble” is set on the planet of Finetime, which is entirely populated by rich, white, young adults aged between 17 and 27. Over the course of the episode, we are introduced to Lindy Pepper-Bean, played by Callie Cooke, who is the main ‘heroine’ of the story and must use the Doctor and Ruby’s advice to save herself from people-eating slugs.
Lindy begins the episode, as do all of the residents of Finetime, stuck in a very literal bubble of social media. Imagine living inside TikTok, with all of your human contact only being done through video calls and short blogs. Lindy is entirely unlikable and incapable of even walking without the aid of the Bubble telling her where to go, and Russell T Davies has said that we’re supposed to believe that she is growing through the episode and learning how to survive outside of her bubble.
However, the point of this episode is not Lindy’s personal growth or her battle for survival. The point of this episode is revealed within the last five minutes when Lindy and her fellow survivors turn on the Doctor and tell him that he “isn’t one of them” and that getting too close to him “will contaminate them”, all after taunting him for saying the TARDIS can take them away, describing it as “Voodoo”.
I have to admit, the ending did not come as a surprise to me. There are signs of the overriding racism of Finetime littered throughout the episode if you take the time to notice them:
- There is not a single black person residing on Finetime
- Lindy is visibly disgusted when the Doctor shows himself in her Bubble for the first time
- Lindy is shocked when she discovers that Ruby and the Doctor are in the same room
With all of these signs, the twist was somewhat expected. What I didn’t expect, however, was how perfectly both the Doctor and Ruby portray the moment of realization. Ruby, the white child of an adoptive black mother, looks as though she knows what’s happening but is powerless to stop it while the Doctor, knowing that he cannot change their perspective, tearfully begs them to let him help them anyway.
As the bigots of Finetime sailed into the unknowns of the Wild Wood, the visibly distraught Doctor left in the TARDIS and viewers took to social media to discuss the implications of the episode. Many were blown away by how well the twist was done, with some admitting that they didn’t see it coming, while others shared that they’d seen it coming from a mile away.
One thing that an overwhelming majority of viewers have in common, though, is that while we’re led to believe that the Slugs and Dot (the AI that controls the Bubbles and therefore life on Finetime) are the villains, they’re actually the heroes of this story. Well, those and a lamppost which does something the entire audience ends up wanting to do — bonking Lindy over the head a few times.
This isn’t the first time that Doctor Who has tackled the issue of racism. In season 11 (with Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor), the show took on the story of Rosa Parks and her fight for the right to retain her seat on a busy Montgomery bus.
However, this is the first time that the Doctor has been the victim of this type of behavior from the humans he so desperately wants to save. It remains to be seen how this will affect his morale moving forward into next week’s episode, Rogue.
In other news from the latest episode, Lindy reviews a video message at one point from her ‘Mummy’, who turned out to be the latest character played by Susan Twist. Although it gets somewhat lost in the message of the episode, we can finally say that the Doctor and Ruby are starting to realize that her face is familiar to them, with the Doctor finally recognizing her as the face of Ambulance and Ruby saying she’s “seen her somewhere else”.
