Story 309: Dot and Bubble

In which the Doctor and Ruby attempt to save a society which is obsessed with social media... 

The population of a colony known as Finetime has a unique demographic, comprising only young adults. They have been sent here from Homeworld to work in a variety of mundane administrative tasks but spend their entire lives, from waking to sleeping, engaging with their social network Bubbles. These are literal bubbles of audio-video links with their particular circle of friends and favourites whom they follow. They are constantly enveloped by small screens, generated by tiny machines known as Dots.

Finetime is surrounded by a densely forested region known as the Wild Woods, in which there are many dangers, but the colonists have no reason to ever venture from their regulated domain.

One morning a young woman named Lindy Pepper-Bean notices that some of her friends are missing from her Bubble, and others report experiencing the same thing. 

She then sees a stranger, who tries to warn her of danger. This is the Doctor. He claims that Finetime has become infested with monsters. Not knowing him at all and annoyed at his intrusion, she ignores the warning.

As the day progresses she finds more friends going off-line. Another stranger appears whilst she is at work, this time a young woman - Ruby. She claims to work for the company she is employed by and wishes her to confirm that all of her colleagues are at work today. She advises her to deactivate her Bubble, at least momentarily, so she can check this. Loathe to do so, she looks through a gap in her screens - and witnesses one of her colleagues being consumed by a huge slug-like creature.

The Doctor joins Ruby on screen to reiterate his warning about the monsters. Lindy must turn off her Bubble and leave her office. She assumes that the creatures must have invaded from the Wild Woods. At one point the Doctor and Ruby see her review a message from her mother, Penny, and both recognise the woman - but not from the same place. The Doctor knows her as the face of the Ambulances on Kastarion 3, whilst Ruby is reminded of a hiker encountered in Wales.

Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Finetime have become so addicted to their Bubbles that they can hardly function without them - reliant on the Dots telling them what to do. Lindy can't walk in a straight line without them.

The Doctor is puzzled when Lindy comes face to face with one of the creatures - a Mantrap - but it ignores her.

Once outside in the street, Lindy witnesses other people being devoured. She tries contacting the authorities, but no-one answers. Looking to her friends for help, she sees one of them attacked by a Mantrap.

Someone then calls out to her, and she recognises him as Ricky September - a popular influencer whom she follows. He reveals that, despite being a huge social media star, he hardly ever uses it himself. He is therefore not reliant on the Dots and knows of a way out of the colony, via the underground infrastructure. He leads her to a conduit where he tries to contact Homeworld. He learns that it too has fallen victim to the Mantraps, but decides not to tell Lindy of this - trying to reassure her that help will soon come from there. There is a series of locked doors to get through before they can reach safety through a water course out of the colony.

The Doctor gets back in contact and reveals that he worked out why the Mantrap earlier failed to attack Lindy. They are killing people in alphabetical order - and have now reached the letter "P". 

As there is some intelligence behind their actions, the Doctor realises that they have not come from the Wild Woods at all. They have actually been created by the Dots, which have come to detest the society which they are forced to serve. Next in line to die, Lindy's Dot attacks her but she is defended by Ricky. 

She suddenly announces that she knows that "September" is not his real name. It is really Coombs, and he only changed it as part of his plan to become famous.

The Dot therefore kills him. Lindy has intentionally sacrificed him to give her enough time to escape into a tunnel beyond the conduit.

At the end of this she finds a small group of fellow survivors, who are preparing to leave by boat for the Wild Woods. The Doctor and Ruby are here with the TARDIS.

He offers to take them all to safety, arguing that they will never be able to survive on their own.

However, Lindy and the others reject his help outright as he is not like them. His skin is the wrong colour.

The Doctor is shocked and frustrated but can do nothing to help the group as they sail away...

Dot and Bubble was written by Russell T Davies and was first broadcast on Saturday 1st June 2024.

It's the second episode in a row to feature only minimal involvement from the Doctor. Apart from the final sequence, Gatwa only ever appears in brief messages within Lindy's Bubble. The same applies to Ruby this time. Like Blink in 2007, this episode elects to concentrate on the guest character of Lindy.

Initially she comes across as a shallow, social media-obsessed individual - though no different from anyone else in this society. We then see that she isn't simply naïve to the point of uselessness, but has a really nasty streak. First she deliberately causes the death of the person who has tried to save her - someone she has been a great admirer of - but then we see that she, like everyone in Finetime, is an out and out racist. The signs were there to see if you had paid attention from the start, as there hadn't been a single non-white face in her Bubble. It's only the second time we've seen the Doctor actively discriminated against - the first being in The Witchfinders, when it was on the grounds of gender.

He's obviously horrified and saddened when his help is rejected - knowing full well that the survivors don't stand a chance outside their ordered colony - but the bottom line is that this lot don't deserve to survive. Perhaps the ending might have had more impact had they been worth saving - but still refused his help.

Mentioned in reviews at the time was the fact that this story was akin to an episode of Black Mirror. As the name suggests, it's a series which holds a mirror up to current society and, like all good sci-fi, extrapolates some aspect of it - taking it to the extreme. In this instance it is the increasing obsession with social media. The inhabitants of Finetime are so reliant on their Bubbles that they can't function on even the most basic level without their Dots. We see that Lindy relies on them even to walk in a straight line without knocking into the furniture. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has seen someone almost knocked over by a car when they've stepped out onto a road whilst staring at their mobile phone, or witnessed a similar near miss. You hardly ever see anyone these days with a good old-fashioned book on public transport, and even toddlers are given screens to watch to keep them quiet.

Then we have Ricky the influencer, who doesn't actually use social media all that much but exploits it for fame. I doubt very much that any real influencers are so disciplined as to pay little attention to their "likes". The way in which Lindy sacrifices him so easily isn't just there to show us what a horrible person she is, but to also show that such people are not real friends at all when it comes down to it.

Lindy is played by Callie Cooke, best known for series such as Cheaters, Henpocalyse! and Rules of the Game. Ricky is Tom Rhys Harries. He featured in the second Inbetweeners movie as well as Britannia and Love Actually, and has recently been cast as comic book character Clayface, part of the DC Universe.

Playing Lindy's mother Penny, seen only in a video message, is Susan Twist. This marks the first time in the season that the Doctor and Ruby notice that they have seen this woman's face before somewhere else.

Overall, it is one of the better episodes of this first Gatwa / RTD2 season, with a fairly traditional monster of the week feel whilst the ending does pack an emotional punch. Gatwa's unavailability in such a short season is beginning to tell, however, as there's only three more episodes to go and we've hardly had time to get to know this incarnation of the Doctor.

Things you might like to know:

• There is a specific Black Mirror episode which RTD2 has said acted as an inspiration for this, both in terms of plot and overall look. This is "Nosedive", first shown on Netflix in October 2016. This is set in a society where people have implants which monitor how everyone interacts with each other, giving them ratings out of five. A woman notices that her ratings are falling and becomes obsessed by this, as low ratings can lead to becoming a social outcast. The colour palette for the episode was mostly bright pastel shades, whereas most episodes of the series went for darker tones. 
• Another inspiration for this episode might possibly be The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, as there is a definite sense of the Golgafrinchan B-Ark about the society of Finetime. Have the adults of Homeworld simply gotten rid of their social media-obsessed youths to this colony to carry out meaningless jobs because they served no other purpose?
• Davies had briefly pitched the idea for this story to Steven Moffat as an Eleventh Doctor story for Series 5. At the time it was felt impossible to make.
• With Gatwa's casting it had been suggested that the Doctor could experience racism when he visited Earth history, but Davies realised that racism might not just be confined to the past - and so had him confront it here in the far future. The character of Krasko in Rosa had already shown that racism still persisted in the 52nd Century.
• Homeworld appears to be an Earth colony as Ricky is seen performing a cover of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, made famous by Brian Hyland in 1960. It was repopularised, if such a thing is possible, in 1990 when covered by novelty act Bombalurina (aka supremely annoying TV "personality" Timmy Mallett).
• The inhabitants of Finetime are said to all be aged between 17 - 27. Callie Cooke was 29 at the time, whilst Tom Rhys Harries was 32.
• When location photographs first appeared online, many fans thought that the monsters were Tractators, as seen in Frontios.