Dot and Bubble

[VickyMallard @vickymallard]

Wow. That was quite an episode. It felt a bit weird as the Doctor and Ruby only seemed to play a minor role as we see everything from Lindy’s POV. And what a dystopia! White rich kids whose parents pay a fortune so they kids can party undisturbed. Not able to find their way anyway without being told by the bubble where to put their feet. It reminded me a bit of the people in Wall-E, who were so pampered they became physically unable to walk.

I don’t even know what to say. I can’t remember ever seeing an episode where the Doctor was not able to save anyone – I mean, quite often he can’t save everyone, but at least someone. And normally, that someone is sort of a decent person (at least as far as I can remember, and yes I still have a lot to catch up on.) But this here? People who flatly refuse to be saved because the person saving them has the wrong skin colour?! That’s a new one (at least for me). Then again, I don’t feel sorry for them at all. If they’re so ignorant, they deserve what they get. (Which, however, reminds me of Gandalf: “Some people who live deserve to die. Some people who are dead deserve to live. Can you give it to them?”) Then again, we don’t know what exactly it is that awaits them beyond the river, but given that the homeworld population is dead, and how ego-centred at least Lindy is, they won’t last three days. I couldn’t believe how Lindy, after everything Ricky did for her, ratted him out without any hesitation! Oh boy.

Well I guess the universe is better off without Finetime anyway… but I still feel sorry for the Doctor. He didn’t deserve this.

[syzygy @thane16]

Was watching Dark Water…. (S8) and how 3W is cyberpeople. Dot and Bubble gives me the same feeling. Like the hint of light before dawn….

puro

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

The Harbinger link to Silver Nemesis made me wonder about the Cybermen.

Cybermen need special handling. The origin stories… Age of Steel, World Enough and Time, are the interesting ones… thereafter it becomes Mass Mook Death or, in the words of The Cult of Skaro, ‘pest control.’

The fact that the Finetime Flakes were essentially generating cybercurreny could be a link. I was reminded of Silence in the Library, the Dot was almost like the floaty surveillance unit controlled by the little girl, and everyone was being eaten by critters. But then the Flakes couldn’t be more virtual than Ruby & Doc because they met face to face under the city.

Is it like Danny returning from the Nethersphere (in fact the kid did)… even though their bodies no longer exist. How does that work? But is that function of a Gallifreyan Data Slice?

I have also wondered about The Matrix… has someone been organising a Gallifreyan house clearance?

So… the Zchib TL/CM evolution continues? Or will it be rewritten so it actually make Whosense?

[syzygy @thane16]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Interesting …. And you DID mention “Splice” (….Data Splice….) before -as in Daughter of …who also said “silly, he’s not gone. He’s just dead” of her dad.

[syzygy @thane16]

Data splice/slice…

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

‘Splice’ was surely more about Tecteun…

so… Doctor Who? Doctor What? But also… whither Gallifrey?

I did prick my ears up when Harriet mentioned The Mara. I also wondered about Colony Sarff in The Witch’s Familiar. Not sure reality could handle it all again after Daft Jackal (aka Sutekh). Kinda and Snakedance were great, but a full on Mara Empire? What would that be like?

Watch out for Dukkha, Anatta and Annica… wonderfully creepy in the original.

[syzygy @thane16]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Ah, anything Tecteun tends to confuse me… zzz…probably to do with how I substituted The Nightmare Child for the abandoned kid…

I also rewatched 12’s The Flood 2parter. Where O’Donnell’s character mentions The Minister of War (post 1980) reminding me of Roger ap Gwilliam. There’s always a minstry of ….😔

The more I think of this season the more I believe it’s a Story created by some God, possibly Mrs Flood who recognises the One Who Waits and her Clock which is a different clock…. Perhaps she’s a God of Time? Because the clock ⏰ in Empire of Death doesn’t read the time, for example, when Susan is supposed to begin her live speech (at 3 pm) -it’s many minutes later. Also not enough time for 15’s scooter visit to Susan…But, if she’s playing with lives (& stories), Mrs Flood is WITHIN the story, which isn’t usual? 🤔 Still working on anagrams of MissusFlood -hopeless! I have only ‘SIMS’ as useful.

Though I noticed @jphamlore referenced Sutekh in 2015 on the Under The Lake/Before The Flood which was lovely! 😻

Mmmm, the only Dukkha I know is one I eat.

Puro

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

May I say that I really don’t care if Lindy and Cooper and the whole five-second-attention-span TikTokTwitter menagerie get eaten alive by monsters.

Is this the ultimate in telecommuting? (Actually, no, Lindy did have to walk a short distance from her living-cubicle to her work-cubicle. I’m a little surprised she wasn’t plugged into the Matrix at home, but I guess the plot needed an office). Never mind, RTD has devastatingly echoed the shallowness of ‘social media’.

These monsters are right up there with the most horrific creations of Who. CGI well utilised.

And we’re 16 minutes in and still no title sequence, this is getting to be a habit with RTD isn’t it?

I was appalled when Lindy betrayed Ricky September to the Dot.

And somewhat morbidly satisfied when Lindy and the other Eloi sailed off down the river in their boat, all their skills will be as much use as an umbrella in a hurricane. As Chrissie noted**,  ‘..hopefully to fall down a waterfall or crash into a grille or vanish when it gets to the edge of the dome because it is a hologram or something. Because.’

(**At the end of her transcript on Chakoteya.net)

This episode was – disconcerting. And it – very loosely – echoes the future generation in H G Wells’ The Time Machine, with the ‘beautiful people’ (the Eloi) living in luxury sustained by the ‘sub-human’ Morlocks.

Another top-notch episode.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Lindy – obviously, at first, a totally shallow and unlikeable character. But as the episode progressed she seemed to be growing a little bit of a spine. This is quite common, I think, in Doctor Who stories, as we learn more about a character they become more of a person. (PLease don’t ask me for examples though). So by half-way I was expecting Lindy to be saved at the end by Ricky, and for Ruby and the Doctor to save everyone, or at least all the survivors, as they almost always do. And then of course, RTD bushwhacks us with Lindy’s abject betrayal of Ricky, and the Finetimers bigoted rejection of the Doctor.

The only thing that makes this less emotionally shocking and bitter, is that the Finetimers – Lindy in particular, but the rest of them in general – thoroughly deserve their fate. Well, they chose it.

But I can’t think of another episode in NuWho where the Doctor has failed so completely (through no fault of his own).

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent
there ARE titles of course… just after Lindy starts to irradiate her teeth to ‘incey wincey teeny blah’… with just a hint of man-eating gastropod/worm on the pan-out.

Characters who grow… dunno. Adam Michell, briefly a companion, but no cardboard cut out; Elton Pope; Lucy Saxon even; the parapsychic researchers in Hide; Perkins; some of the doomed people in Waters of Mars and Under the Lake. The writing has to be sympathetic, and the actors, good. Wasn’t Callie Cooke fantastic? Also there needs to be a real threat. Or the characters don’t grow.

The key here is the writing, in that all these airheads, while obviously very annoying, were NOT unsympathetic. We laughed with Lindy even as laughed at her. It’s only at the end that it becomes clear that they are (mostly) ageist, elitist and racist. RTD got some push back, both for talking down to gen z-ers and white liberal virtue signalling. Which is as much of a shut down as Lindy performs on The Doctor in the bubble.

Wonderful design. Lindy’s urban desert is shot to look so sterile and repellant.

Parallels? In Who… The Sun Makers. In Sci Fi generally, any of Azimov’s Bailey/Spacer stories. And the useless society was an oft utilised original series Star Trek trope, normally controlled by a daft computer doomed to smoky defeat by a ridiculous logical paradox. Also Douglas Adams’ Golgafrinchams.

I have wondered about Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: two worlds with an abstract economy/ culture that gets eaten by critters. Same trope different writers maybe, but the dot was definitely reminiscent of the Library’s information drone.

Because what motive can be ascribed to dot? Just as he went after right wing isolationist politics in Space Babies, this title would seem to riff on dot com bubble; RTD is mocking the shallow ephemera of highly digitised societies. None of it is REAL. Hmmm. That Wild Wood does not sound like a great move. Also, though the more intelligent is not expected to tolerate the less, isn’t Skynet really just protecting itself, and Killing All Humans, to stave off bankruptcy? Efficiency (Oxygen, Boom, and The Sun Makers) would seem to be a more believable imperative than AI developing aesthetics. That just sounds like RTD being spiteful.

Is this what the critics didn’t like?

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh yes, of course there are titles, just 2 1/2 minutes in.   Somehow I missed them.

The carnivorous megaslugs – I seem to recall there being a suggestion that they were created by the Dot / Matrix.   (I call it that because of the parallels with The Matrix, though obviously that was even more intensively in control of its humanoids).

I’m not so much in favour of the theory that the Dot / Matrix created the slugs.   It would require a whole next-level command of technology to do so.   And it doesn’t seem to have tried modifying any of the FineTimers.   So my theory is that the Slugs were an existing species in the Wild Wood, that somehow infiltrated the dome (or possibly the Matrix let them in).   But then, why were they eating the Finetimers in alphabetical order?   How did the Matrix control them?   I don’t think it did, or needed to.   We could see how slow they were, easily avoided by a human.   All the Matrix had to do was arrange for each Finetimer’s dot to make them avoid the Slugs – until their number was up, then steer them into one.   If, by pure random chance, the occasional Finetimer walked into a Slug before their appointed time, it really wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t nullify the algorithm.

As to why the Matrix did it in alphabetical order? – possibly it was bored.   Remember Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who had decided to relieve the boredom of immortality by insulting every creature in the universe – in alphabetical order.

I thought the satire in this episode was extremely well done.    I have never had an account on Tiktok or Twitter, my Facebook account is dormant, I have participated in half-a-dozen Zoom meetings; I watch a lot of Youtube.   But still,  by osmosis, I have absorbed quite a lot of what ‘social media’ looks like, and I think the shallowness of ‘influencers’ is a legitimate target.    (As it happens, the Youboob algorithm keeps showing me videos of Tiktok ‘livestreamers’ doing stupid and offensive ‘stunts’ for clicks and reaping instant karma.   Shallow as they are, none of the Finetimers are as obnoxious as that, although they do reap a far worse fate.)

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

Just a thought about Gatwa’s facial hair in this ep… someone else mentioned it… and it wasn’t apparent in other eps was it…? Was it??

Is this an attempt to help us empathise with Lindy? Two weird artificial worlds, what do you do your sensibilities to navigate virtual reality? Because I think the impression given is very very similar to the character of Seth Milchick from Severance.

This is uncomfortable territory. Is this, ‘You all look alike?’ Or is it a pointed criticism of Severance? (love the program btw) Like English actors in Hollywood representing the entitled malign, is this a new sad old way to signal unreasoned threat?

Mind you I was uncomfortable with RTD doing a similar thing with David Harewood as Joshua Naismith in The End of Time. Also thinking Bernie Casey as Mr Peters in the Man Who Fell to Earth.

Does this make the ‘voodoo’ line even more charged? Or are you going to tell me Gatwa’s tache was grown for another role?

[nerys @nerys]

Wow, another powerful episode! I am happily surprised … and happy to be surprised, if that makes sense. Surprises were becoming few and far between, with Doctor Who.

Initially I thought this was a clever take on influencers. It was hilarious that Lindy Pepper-Bean didn’t know how to do something as basic as walking without the guidance of her Bubble. But I never imagined that the episode would take on racism and apartheid, too.

It went from funny to dark as soon as Lindy threw Ricky September under the bus … or in the path of her Dot, as it were. “Dot and Bubble” delivered a depressing commentary on our increasingly self-absorbed society that landed heavily, but believably.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys    I wrote a page, but most of it was just repetitive of my comments almost exactly a year ago.   So I won’t post them again.

I found it a very strong episode, even on repeat viewing.    I still think the Slugs evolved naturally on Finetime (or were already there, in the jungle, in which case of course the boatload of Finetime refugees is totally doomed).    The  Dot/Bubble  AI just co-opted them.   And I think my theory in my post of 18th November 2024 was a good one – that the AI just guided people into the slugs (in alphabetical order) by using their Bubbles.   Very simple, very easy, requires no super-advanced genetic manipulation.   I *know* the Doc says the AI ‘designed’ them, but then that was his deduction, the Doc isn’t infallible.

Oh, but then the Slugs actually ignored Lindy.   Bugger.  Another lovely theory bites the dust.   Okay, modified theory – the Slugs were an existing lifeform that the AI just modified so it had psychic control of them.   All it would need to do would be broadcast some ‘attack/retreat’ signal to specific Slugs that Lindy encountered.

How the slugs got to Homeworld we don’t know.   Maybe a Slug stowed away on one of the shuttles that brought entitled teenagers to Finetime and took 28-year-olds back.   Or we don’t know their life-cycle, maybe they didn’t eat quite all their victims, maybe they just planted an egg in some of them like the Aliens in Alien.   What happened to people who died on Finetime? – there must have been the occasional accident.   Presumably the bodies were shipped back to Homeworld for burial – and hatching.

The Slugs also reminded me a bit of The Day of the Triffids, that early sci-fi classic.    The Triffids were clumsy, slow-moving sentient plants, they could only catch humans because most of the population had been blinded (just like Finetimers in their Bubbles?)

[janetteB @janetteb]

@nerys and @dentarthurdent Agreed it is a very well written episode that plays very effectively with the contrast between the light and bubbly surface and underlying darkness.  RTD at his best. I also feel that he was establishing something here or attempting to; the Doctor’s sense of betrayal and anger with human flaws.

Cheers

Janette

 

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent The only reason the slugs ignored Lindy is because they were killing in alphabetical order, and they hadn’t yet reached P for Pepper-Bean. That’s why she betrayed Ricky September in the conduit. She knew her turn was next because P was coming up in the alphabet. But then Lindy remembered Ricky September’s birth name, Richard Coombes. She blurted that out to her Dot and left Ricky to be killed while she escaped.

@janetteb I agree that this episode was RTD at his best. Very satisfying on every level.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@nerys @dentarthurdent @janetteb

This was the high water mark of S1. Only the finale (of the series) was a real problem, because those 2 eps dragged, and begged so many questions. That is, intelligent guesses can be made about to the arc but most people aren’t that interested. This means the show (or rather RTD and Gatwa) become a target to people who really aren’t interested in the show. Or even more of a target than they would have been already.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys I know the slugs ignored Lindy because they were working through in alphabetical order.
(As an aside, had the AI read the ‘Hitchiker’s Guide’ quintet, wherein Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, being immortal and bored, set out to insult every living thing in the Universe *in alphabetical order*?)

But, why do it that way. And why ‘build’ the slugs. I think it might be much more efficient, plot-wise, if the slugs were an existing species. The AI could have just decided to drop the defences and let them into the city. As for the alphabetical order, the AI could have modified the Slugs to obey its commands (much easier than creating a whole new species from scratch) in the same way that Man ‘created’ terriers and Pekinese and Alsatians. Could be that was what the Doc meant by ‘created’? 🙂 This would be consistent with the episode as screened.

An even easier way, though a lot less horrific, would be to just have everyone’s Dots zap them the way one zapped Ricky. Or even have their Bubbles guide them off a tall building.

My most-favoured way (and requiring least effort by the AI) would just be to have their Bubbles guide them into a Slug when their turn came up. Now that might lead to a few getting accidentally munched out of sequence but probably statistically insignicant. It would just require a small change in the script, though.

And finally, why bother with the Slugs? To inflict the maximum terror on the population? Okay, I can go with that, except – why hide the Slugs away from the average moron like Lindy in their Bubbles, why not let them know what was going to happen to them? And, even more, if bothering to do it in alphabetical order, WHY hide that from the victims? Wouldn’t it be far more terrifying if they knew their number was coming up?

So, my optimum woud be: the Slugs were a natural secies, the AI let them in, it shielded people in their Bubbles (but let them know their number was coming up so, nameless terror), when the time came their Bubble just guided them into the nearest Slug and dropped at the last moment to let them see what was happening to them.

So why on earth would the AI go that tortuous route in the episode to enact its hideous vengeance? Maybe it was just, like Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolongued, terminally bored.

I still love the ep. And those logical queries only arise on reflection, they don’t slap you repeatedly and continually in the face like, say, Kill the Moon.

@janetteb Agreed, RTD at his best.

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent Ah, thanks for clarifying that. Now I know the particular “why” you were questioning. Why do it that way? Dunno. Maybe there’s an underlying social media reference I didn’t pick up on, though I can’t think of anything done alphabetically. Even my “Friends” list is ordered, not alphabetically, but some other way.

@ps1l0v3y0u I agree with you that this episode was the high water mark of Gatwa’s first season. I enjoyed it the way I’ve enjoyed so much of Doctor Who, and had all but forgotten in recent years. It felt good to feel this way again!

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