Doctor Who: ‘Dot and Bubble’ Confronts the Doctor With His Greatest Challenge Yet

This week’s episode of Doctor Who ‘Dot and Bubble’ is an intricate, pastel Easter Egg that conceals a nasty surprise…and we’re not talking about space slugs. 

We’re talking about a Doctor Who rarity: a threat that The Doctor has never faced before. 

No, you still don’t get it.

We’re not talking about a new iconic character design for the rogues’ gallery (like the introduction of the Weeping Angels in ‘Blink’), and we’re not talking about the umpteenth variation of the Cybermen. We are talking about The Doctor’s worst nightmare: the refusal of aid from folks in need who don’t even recognize his humanity.

Every fan favors a particular flavor of Doctor Who, but none of us would fall in love with our favorite time traveler if we never saw them off of their game – forced to take an L after the latest round of heroics. We most recently got a taste of something new like this back in the Whittaker era’s ‘The Witchfinders,’ in which The Doctor has to shoulder the casual sexism of the patriarchy when her older, white male companion is assumed to be the savior. 

This week, we are back. Fifteen’s desperate, guttural cries of frustration in the closing moments of this episode are as essential to Ncuti Gatwa’s iteration of The Doctor as every smooth utterance of ‘babes,’ or ‘honey.’ He exhausts every ounce of patience and care he can muster for Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), but Lindy and her surviving cohort deny Fifteen’s offer of support. 

While we could almost respect the survivors if they were making an active choice to turn away from simple solutions and lack of personal responsibility to strike out on their own, Lindy and her crew make it abundantly clear that this is a matter of race; while the episode falls short of using those exact words, it makes up for any possible lack of clarity with heavily coded language (not to mention the sea of white faces and blue eyes that make up Lindy’s “bubble” throughout the episode). Most notably, Hoochy Pie (Niamh Lynch) refers to The Doctor’s description of the TARDIS as “voodoo,” and Brewster Cavendish (Jamie Barnard) prompts his female companions to turn away from The Doctor before they’re “contaminated.”

The Doctor is, understandably, broken. 

This moment hits even harder thanks to an effective set-up.

Most of the episode is Lindy-centric. Cooke does a phenomenal job projecting her character’s vapid dependence on the literal social media bubble that controls every aspect of her life. Not only does it blind her to her real-world surroundings with constant social stimuli whirring about her head, but it also tells her how to walk and when to pee (thank you, Doctor Pee).

We don’t resent Lindy. We assume she is a product of her upbringing and surroundings. Of course we do; the episode plays the greatest hits of screen time/social media satire. From the news announcements (“Finetime News! Where everything’s fine, all of the time!”) to Lindy’s starry-eyed hero worship of Ricky September (The Doctor and Ruby share a great character moment of crushing on Ricky themselves: “Hands off!”), we sense that this young woman never had a chance to be anything more than she is. 

In Cooke’s greatest moment of performance as Lindy, the camera captures her in a moment of crisis as she struggles to accept the apocalypse happening all around her. A close-up on Lindy’s tearful face is genuinely moving. We all know how horrifying it can be to look away from our favorite distractions and view the horrors lurking just outside of our bubbles.

When Lindy meets the real, in-the-flesh Ricky September, he cuts a heroic figure and reveals that he is actually a deep reader and student of history. He is so deeply villain-coded that we sense Lindy’s growing danger. As he hides the information that their home planet has been completely wiped out, we continue to wonder what he might be plotting; but when he puts his life on the line to continually bat away Lindy’s rogue bubble-device with the accuracy of an MLB cleanup hitter, we are shocked to see Lindy turn on him by revealing his true surname and sicking the alphabetical assassin on her new friend. Ricky takes a dot to the head as Lindy seals herself behind a security door. 

The Doctor never learns the full depth of Lindy’s selfishness or deception, and this is the episode’s master stroke.

In those closing moments, when The Doctor is broken, viewers feel his pain on a deeper level thanks to the dramatic irony of Lindy’s selfish heel turn. We are more prepared for Lindy’s cruelty than The Doctor, and even viewers who don’t share the lived experience that would help them understand The Doctor’s pain and trauma have a second way to feel The Doctor’s pain – we can at least feel outrage over the fact that he has sacrificed so much for someone so deeply and unapologetically selfish. 

This is a phenomenal episode of Doctor Who, and whether it worked for you or not, its closing moments will be essential viewing for unpacking the psyche of The Doctor moving forward. 

It’s worth mentioning that this episode also delivers the moment in a Russell T. Davies season when The Doctor and companion openly acknowledge a season-long clue for the first time. We hear the duo voice their recognition of actress Susan Twist when she appears as Lindy’s mother, Penny Pepper-Bean (what a great character name).

That being said, this reviewer believes that the emotional weight of ‘Dot and Bubble’ is more worthy of reflection than the twists and turns of the latest season. Let’s hold off on that until next time.

That being said, please join us next week when The Doctor and Ruby confront some aristocratic birds!

Doctor Who, ‘Dot and Bubble’ is now streaming on Disney+