TL;DR – When subtlety is like a ‘two by four’ to the side of the head, you get this week’s episode.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

If there is one thing that Doctor Who always does, it is to shine a light on the modern world by using a fantastical setting. This is common throughout science fiction, but Doctor Who loves delving into this world. Add a dash of horror, and you will have today’s episode before it starts to fall apart.  

So, to set the scene, the colony of Finetime is a world where everyone lives in these social media bubbles in constant contact with their friends. It is so all-encompassing that they need directions to guide them through the world. No one lowers their bubble, and why would they? You are always in contact with everyone else. But what happens when you start losing contact with your friends, one person at a time? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Okay, so I am going to be very mixed on this week’s episode, and I think people are going to have wildly different takes on it, which I believe will come down to how well you think they developed the themes in this week’s episode. But before I get into what didn’t work for me, I will say that some aspects did. I liked the early tension at the start of the episode when they leaned more into the horror elements. The monster that is waiting just off-screen where you can’t see it, a world set on auto-pilot leading people to their deaths, the crunch of someone being eaten next to you. Also, the design of the monsters was quite good for things that I don’t think I ever saw move.

Also, this was the second Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa)-lite episode in a row after last week’s 73 Yards. I am not sure if they were not able to get Ncuti during this filming block because of commitments to Barbie or Sex Education pickups/promotion, but this was a good way of getting around it. Last week, he kind of just disappeared for 95% of the episode for a narrative reason that I am not sure about, even a week later. However, this week, while he only appears in person for the stinger at the end. We get a whole lot more of him and Ruby (Millie Gibson) thanks to them popping into Lindy Pepper-Bean’s (Callie Cooke) bubble. This was an excellent narrative choice because you dramatically reduced the amount of time he had to shoot with no coverage needed while still having him be there most of the time.

However, then we get into the crux of the episode and why it did not work for me, and no, that was not because it became clear this week that Susan Twist is 100% the big-bad of the season in a ‘VOTE SAXON’ kind of way. This was the first episode of this new Russell T Davis era that very much felt in tone like one of an episode from the first time around. It is big and blustery, with a very key social message behind it, but also utterly un-subtle in how it presents it. Part of this episode reminded me of Majority Rule from the first season of The Orville, where we explore a world where social media has been taken to an extreme. The bubble also has the feeling of a more updated TV Wall from Fahrenheit 451.

However, the first thing I noticed the second that bubble of faces turned up was how monochrome they all were. Thankfully, we discovered that this was a deliberate choice and not an oversite, but even then, it was handled in such a slapdash kind of way. This is a world of rich white kids who don’t know how to walk unless someone tells them what direction to go in. There is a setting that would have been an interesting place to explore, but they were more interested in leaving that for a twist at the end than actually studying it. This means that what could have been a powerful episode only gets a surface-level analysis.

It was clear that they wanted to shine a light on modern British society, very much focusing on that Love Island-style generation and culture. In this Geordie Shore society, where everyone has wealthy parents, only has to work two hours a day, lose their accents, and then are so awful human beings that their computers rebel and kill them off in alphabetical order. Okay, that is interesting to explore, but they haven’t done the legwork to examine what that would mean genuinely. In a world where you only ever see in or show your bubble world, why would you spend time on the aesthetics of the world around you? These characters literally don’t interact in the real world if they are sitting next to each other, and I never got a sense of that in the design. Also, much like last week’s episode, but more frustratingly, this week, this is an episode where MANY questions get raised, and none of them get answered.

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble? Unfortunately, not. While it started strong, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with it as time went on. I do hope there is a larger writer’s room for the show moving on, so that we can get some more voices into the mix to help refine episodes like this that have a lot of potential but just don’t quite get there.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Doctor Who yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Dylan Holmes Williams
Written by – Russell T Davies
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson with Callie Cooke, Tom Rhys Harries & Susan Twist and Eilidh Loan, Aldous Ciokajlo Squire, Niamh Lynch, Millie Kent, Billy Brayshaw, Pete Machale, Max Boast, Elloise Bennett, Olivia Bennett, Jack Forsyth-Noble, Milo Callaghan, Ellie-Grace Cashin & Jamie Barnard