Media Essays: The Failures of Dot and Bubble

The Wandering Fox is back, leaning back in his chair with a face that can only be described as looking as if he had seen somebody punch themselves in the face and call themselves a genius. The Wandering Fox then just sighed and looked to everybody as he then got up a photo of Doctor Who’s Dot and Bubble.

THIS HERE IS AMONG THE WORST DOCTOR WHO EPISODES I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE!

A envelope then falls in his lap. He grabs it and opens it.

RTD HAS BEEN NOMINATED FOR A HUGO AWARD FOR DOT AND BUBBLE!? For goodness sakes, this is utterly s*** I tell ya. Who’s gonna give me an award for scooping up the dog’s crap!?

Ugh, sorry everybody, but this is what happens when a favourite show of yours ends up being embarrassing and leaves you feeling like you lost a lot of brain cells. Even the Media Man felt like sticking a fork in his brain on this one. But since Doctor Who is back and is only going to get worse as this was filmed and written at the same time as the last season, I thought I’d look back on what is best described as among the worst Doctor Who episodes in the franchise’s sixty year history.

Dot and Bubble

I got through bad episodes like Love and Monsters, Fear Her, In the Forest of the Night, Hell Bent and Orphan 55, and believe me those episodes almost left my brain rotting, but this episode was so bad from it being written by RTD who’s meant to be an award winning writer and brought the show back in 2005 to its tries at messaging all over the blooming place. And to think he’s getting an award for this episode. Yeah, a lot of award ceremonies at just these rich celebrities patting each other on the back and being ignorant of how bad they are really, and with how RTD behaves he thinks this episode was a stroke of genius.

I’m here to talk to you about how bad this episode is.

Backstory

Dot and Bubble interestingly enough was pitched as an idea back in Matt Smith’s first series as the Doctor and while some things likely were changed for Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, I think if they made this episode back then it’d still be bad so Matt Smith dodged a bullet on that.

This episode was also the first that Ncuti filmed as the Doctor after his appearance in The Giggle so what comes at the end is awkward as you have the first black man playing the Doctor and the first thing he gets as the Doctor without David Tennant is having these idiots being racist to him. The again Donna was racist to him in The Giggle by asking him “Do you come in a range of colours?”

I remember seeing this episode being filmed with the slugs devouring people and we had been learning the episode was gonna be a metaphor to those who have their faces glued to their phones and don’t see around themselves which I’ve seen them do and it could have been good if that was the core message of the episode. But no, it wasn’t. There isn’t a core message to be found here, just a ideas sheet that was cobbled together and filmed.

Well, there’s the backstory, what is the episode about?

It takes place in a community on another planet called Finetime, where the general populace are these supposed humans in their twenties, living and relying on this technology called the Dot and Bubble to get about their daily needs, and this includes them needing help going to the toilet. The Dot is this tiny little ball of metal that projects a holographic bubble around them, giving them these screens of their friends’ faces, stopping them from seeing around them, the A.I in the Dot instructs them on how to walk and where to walk to. The parents of these guys live on another planet called The Homeworld and they also rely on the Dot. The Doctor and Ruby hack the Bubble and are trying to tell the lead character, Lindy Pepperbean, that the community is in danger but she doesn’t listen to them. However, the Doctor and Ruby get back and help her see some of her friends are disappearing as they see this alien creature coming towards them. The Doctor urges Lindy to turn the Dot off and she does and we get her clumsily knocking into things as she struggles without the Dot and she finally sees the creatures, human sized slugs called the Mantraps. Lindy continues and is found by a fellow Finetime member Ricky September, who is living without the Dot. Lindy fancies him and is uncaring of the dead. They try to find the Doctor and try calling the Homeworld for help but Ricky finds the Mantraps have killed everybody on the Homeworld. Lindy and Ricky then reach a door the Doctor and Ruby are behind and it’s their way out of city, it’s locked and they have to open it by typing in certain numbers. The Doctor then realises the A.I created the Mantraps and has been killing everybody in alphabetical order based on their names and births, the Dot then works as a sentient bullet trying to shoot Lindy. Lindy then betrays Ricky by revealing his real name and birth date and he’s shot through the head. Lindy then escapes through the door and the Doctor and Ruby are there with other survivors, who are getting a boat ready to leave for the world beyond Finetime. The Doctor offers Lindy and the survivors the chance to escape in the TARDIS and he can take them somewhere safe. However, Lindy and the survivors are racist towards him and say he’s “One of the good ones but we don’t want you” and call his TARDIS. “Voodoo Magic”, the Doctor screams and tries again but they don’t want to know, hence the Doctor and Ruby leave them to die with the Doctor crying AGAIN in the series and leaves, then the episode ends.

Okay. Look through that and tell me what is wrong there. If you can’t then I’ll break it down for ya.

No Core Message

This episode has no exact message it wants to tell us. Is it trying to tell us the next generation of humans are incredibly lazy and are pampered idiots who don’t know the basic it’s of life? That they hate working and would rather lay around and scrounge off their mums and dads? Yeah, there’s plenty out there in reality, but by the end of the episode these kids grow a sudden backbone in how to look after themselves so they aren’t exactly incompetent. If they can’t do basic things without an A.I telling them what to do then how did they know to steer a boat?

The episode trying to tell us that A.I can’t be trusted and this falls flat on its face with how the A.I went about with killing people. It resorts to creating the Mantraps to then guide the citizens in walking into their clutches. But then we get to the climax and we see the A.I have the Dot serve as a bullet and shoots Ricky in the head. If the A.I is meant to be this scheming baddie that hates these people, why didn’t it just kill them all in their sleep by shooting them in the head? And if the A.I didn’t want these people to be saved why didn’t it do it’s best to shut the Doctor and Ruby out?

Is this episode meant to be a take that at the elite of rich people? It’s clearly trying to be but the problem is that we don’t know enough about these people to understand why they’re like this. Are they humans in the far future who have secluded themselves from other ethnicities? Or are they humanoids judging by the blue blood trail a Finetime member leaves behind? If it’s the latter then why are they behaving like rich elite humans of the modern day and why do they have the same racial problems as we do? The fact the episode tries to portray rich elitist people as incredibly rude and lazy people is ironic given this is coming from RTD who is incredibly rude and lazy enough that he tells people to “F—- Off” or “Tough” after he got complaints about Davros and didn’t revise this script because he believed in his own “awesomeness”? RTD is a rich guy himself and proved in this era of Doctor Who he’s lazy and rude and wouldn’t work with anybody who dared to criticise him. RTD, let go of your Dot and start looking at the real world and stop being horrible.

RTD being an uptight rich git towards a Doctor Who fan.

Is this episode trying to tell us we can’t rely on technology forever or we’d end up hurt or dead? It could have worked better if the A.I wasn’t the antagonist and the Mantraps had snuck in Finetime to take advantage of these people why they were distracted, but instead the story is written as the technology actively working against them instead of it bring a cautionary tale of how we have to be looking where we are going.

Then we get to the final message of the episode which is clear and we can get behind it, but even then it’s still executed very badly. Racism is bad. Yes, racism IS bad and we have to be better. But how they went about it throughout the episode is terrible. We do get these quick comments from Lindy as she thought the Doctor was a different person and guesses people like him look the same. It’s a very quick moment and we don’t get much of it. Then we get to the end and we have Lindy basically telling the Doctor he’s good and did his job but they don’t want to mingle with him, calling the TARDIS “Voodoo Magic” after he tells them it’s bigger on the inside. The problem I have with this is why do these people hate other ethnicities? If they are humanoids but alien then why do they have the same racial issues as we do? If they are humans in the far future then why do they have these beliefs on others? We don’t know. But RTD in the behind the scenes commentary then said “Did any of the viewers notice there was no black people in Finetime? If they didn’t what does that say about you?” RTD is basically insinuating that every single person who didn’t notice this is unconsciously racist. Russel, I’m going to tell you something that you need to hear: I didn’t notice because I was so confused by all the dumb crap I was watching and I was cringing at everything. And I need to throw this in: lots of ethnicities have their racists. I’ve seen black people be racist to Asians, and white people have been racist to Asians, there’s racism towards and from South Americans and Latinos.

Why didn’t RTD tell a more complex story of how everybody could overcome their bigotry and see they are all human? Zootropolis could do it, why couldn’t he? I mean, The Mutants story with the Third Doctor has a very clear anti-racist message to it and did a great job at it, why can’t RTD do it? Oh and can I ask why is it okay for Donna to say something racist towards Ncuti’s Doctor?

That’s the first of the problems. Now we get to...

Plot Holes

Let’s start with the elephant in the room.

The A.I. If it hates these people that much then how come it didn’t kill them by shooting them in the head? How come it created the Mantraps instead? How did it create the Mantraps? We don’t know. In fact, the Mantraps are on the Homeworld which is another planet so it brings the question of how did it create the Mantraps on other planets? Don’t know. Why didn’t the A.I try and kill the Doctor and Ruby for trying to save these people? Don’t know. Is it gonna try and kill Lindy and the survivors now that they have escaped Finetime? Haven’t any idea. If the A.I knows everything about these guys then how come it didn’t know Ricky’s real birth date? Don’t have any idea guys.

Why didn’t the Doctor go through the door after the first survivor got through? The Doctor could have told Ruby to stay behind and keep the door open while he got the other survivors. He has lots of survivors with him and Ruby after Lindy gets there, what stopped him from going in? He’s the Doctor, he should be going in and saving these people, c’mon!

Lindy can’t walk on her own without the Dot or Ricky’s help, but come the end of the episode she walks just fine and knows how to steer a boat with her friends. How? Don’t know.

Why didn’t the Doctor try harder to get these people in the TARDIS? If you’re gonna yell me they would have hurt him, I’m sorry but while I find it odd they can walk fine and steer a bit, you think these guys even know how to throw a flipping punch? The Doctor is a martial artist and has kicked the butts of lots of folks, he’d just have to stun them with his Venusian Nerve Shock, take them in the TARDIS, leave them on a rescue ship and tell them to think of what he did for them then leave.

What is Finetime? Why had it been founded? How? What planet is this? We don’t know.

In the end we just get a complete mess of an episode that is so cringe it almost makes Orphan 55 look like a masterpiece in writing. But even then the only difference between them both is that one episode had better cinematography and directing but that isn’t enough. And still this utter trash is being given a Hugo Award. Gosh reward bullies for bad behaviour why don’t ya?

If I were to try and introduce a friend to Doctor Who, I would tell them to avoid this episode as it is that bad you feel like you lost your brainpower. This was all written by a guy in his sixties who has worked in the industry since the 90s and acts like a diva on Instagram if he gets the tiniest bit of criticism.

With this done, I need an ice bag to stick on my head cos I just lost a few brain cells on this. I’m the Wandering Fox and I’ll see you later.