Episode 6 of Doctor Who surprises with a Black Mirror-style surprise

At the beginning “Dot and Bubble”, the last episode of doctor whoseems to be borrowing from black mirrorThe Bag of Tricks is set on Finetime, a planet where everyone is accompanied by a small spherical AI assistant named Dot, who projects a “bubble” around their heads. Inside their individual bubbles, people live their entire lives (group chatting, watching funny videos or pop star performances) and don't seem to go out except to sleep. Even walking is mediated by the Bubble, which tells them how many steps to move in each direction, guiding them to the office, back home, and to meals. It's a very “kids these days and their damn phones!” sort of premise, but again: just first of all.

The initially forceful metaphor only becomes more forceful when the monster of the week is introduced: terrifying alien slugs that are eating the inhabitants of Finetime alive, while they walk unwittingly into their gaping maw because they can't see beyond their bubbles. . Our heroine of the week, the hapless Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), finds her Bubble's feeding interfered with by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who spend the episode trying to remotely take her to a safe place. despite her skepticism.

It's a clever setup, reminiscent of the fan favorite. doctor who stories like “Blink” and tropes loved by writers such as Steven Moffat (who, surprisingly, I didn't write this episode): horrible things on the brink of perception, a strict limit on the Doctor's ability to intervene, and a world designed for conformity, with safety dependent on the characters' ability to escape social gravity. This clever structure clashes with the painfully condescending metaphor at the heart of “Dot and Bubble,” which writer Russell T. Davies exploits to obscure what is In fact doing.

Image: Disney Plus

Because between the seemingly lazy satire of terminal online youth and the chilling thrills of its plot, Davies quietly drops pertinent details about Finetime and what's really going on here. Who are these people? What do they do? Why are they there? Each response, delivered conversationally in an episode packed with a loud, candy-colored palette, stronger social commentary, and one of the season's creepiest monsters, barely registers. So when you finally get to the end and the truth about Finetime becomes clear, it's like the floor opens up beneath you and “Dot and Bubble” immediately becomes one of the gloomiest. doctor who Stories told in some time.

(Ed. note: This means spoilers for the end of “Dot and Bubble”).

In the end, there is no way to save the people of Finetime. The first clue was Lindy's quick dismissal of the Doctor's warnings at the beginning of “Dot and Bubble,” which she only began to listen to when Ruby Sunday spoke to her. More clues piled up, leading to the answer to what brought the slug aliens to Finetime in the first place: the Dots. The Dots, in their algorithmic service to their users, learned too much about them and came to hate them. And it's not because their technology-obsessed brains blind them to the real world; It's because they're fucking racist.

Lindy and the other Finetime survivors refuse to accept the Doctor's offer of safe passage away from Finetime and instead choose to brave nature where they face certain death, just because of the Doctor's appearance. It's here where the last few details fall into place: chilling flashes of Lindy's selfishness, her group of white friends, the fact that Finetime is only inhabited by the young adult children of the 1%.

Image: Disney Plus

Until now, doctor who He hasn't been too concerned with how the Doctor assuming the appearance of a black man might change the dynamic of the show. On the one hand, this is understandable, even desirable: it would be rude and possibly retrograde to immediately subject the Doctor to racism the moment it becomes a possible outcome of the story. It also seems intellectually dishonest to act as if it were never affair. Davies, like the white showrunner who engineered this situation, chose neither trauma porn nor escapism. Instead, he opted for specificity: This is how the doctor job It's harder now. There are some people who don't want to be saved by him. There are some problems that cannot be solved by cosmically deep wells of compassion and empathy. There are some people with hearts so bad that they won't even save themselves.

“Dot and Bubble” maintains that its hero's role is to stand in the gap and help even in the face of such shocking scorn, because life is precious above all else, even the hateful little ones, presumably because life can be redeemed and death is final. . It's hard to accept this, and Gatwa's performance suggests that perhaps such idealism is unearned here. He laughs at the insanity of the situation and then screams in anguish. Who knows if it was the right decision, but he made one. The attempt.