#Dot and Bubble

[timetravelbypen]

The Doctor and Ruby: *stare after the departing racists* The Doctor: ....... The Doctor: Right, Ruby, there is someone I have go go find and apologize to, like a lot, like right this second. She might slap me, but unlike various mums, I now realize she deserves it.

[doctorhomo]

“old man writes about gen z on their damn phones” ?????? no?????? old man writes about the dangers of staying in your own bubble and prejudice and privilege to the point where you’d rather die than let a black man save you????? old man writes about useless influencer-types who are so dependent on their bubble that they dont know when they need a piss???????? old man writes about white people desperately trying to make their own aryan society and staying in their racist BUBBLE ????????

[benisasoftboi]

Best thing about Doctor Who, and I mean this so genuinely, is the way it goes from ‘haunting Celtic folk mystery about death and penitence’ to ‘what if your group chat banter was so dire that your phone developed sentience and tried to kill you’

[sneezingisnotnormal]

When the episode looked like it was just a “kids these days with their tinktonks” and then suddenly the protagonist kills harry styles and then reveals she’s been racist this whole time

[box-dwelling]

Something Something the season setting up each episode paralelling an episode in season 1/14 meaning the story and the engine is instead a contrast to dot and bubble. Dot and bubble being a story of white supremacists who's bigotry gets them killed and this being a story with blackness at its core about community and lifting each other up, passing on heritage and tradition, and forgiveness where everyone lives at the end, even the "villian"

One story where the doctor learns that there are places his new body won't be accepted, contrasted by one where it helps him find community and support and love.

[zanderbobs]

Can't believe we got the opposite of "just this once, everybody lives" in the form of "just this once everybody dies because they're fucking racists"

[rosemarysdragon]

i know that some people are going to look at ruby and the doctor crying at the end of the episode and think that that was the show having them mourn over these teenagers going off to die, but i truly believe that those tears were from anger— ruby’s from the frustration of seeing your best friend be treated with such disrespect and disgust, and the doctor’s from the sheer indignation of it all, being so close to helping people, saving them, only to see that those people would rather stay in their own prejudices. and it seems there’s nothing you can do to change it. the rage and grief that comes with that

[innocet]

Never thought I’d see this kind of awareness and intentionality regarding race from RTD. never in a million years

[paintdoktahwho]

spacism?

[itsclydebitches]

Love it when the kinda half-formed observations you make about an episode finally come to the forefront.

Watching the start of "Dot and Bubble": Hmm, everyone in this episode is very... white.

Halfway through: The Doctor certainly continues to stand out, especially in that bright red sweater amongst all the pastels

Lindy freaking out about the Doctor and Ruby being in the same room together: I suppose that could be due to some cultural taboo about interacting in-person when everyone is supposed to communicate via bubble, but that doesn't track with what we've seen of her work day...

The "twist" that the chronically online, all white, super rich, entitled to the point of satire, willing to sacrifice others without hesitation, oh so eager to colonize people living in a literal bubble (TWO bubbles) are *gasp!* actually, devastatingly racist...

Yeah, that's not a twist. That's all deliberately interconnected. The episode didn't suddenly move from an argument about social media use to an argument about racism; the two historically go hand-in-hand.

[dykepaldi]

based slugs

[scottishmushroom]

Every Doctor Who fan after watching Dot and Bubble:

[donutdrawsthings]

we were all thinking it

[thisisnotacreativeusername]

seeing a lot of "the episode was about social media and suddenly out of nowhere turned into a commentary on racism" THE WHOLE EPISODE WAS ABOUT RACISM. THE WHOLE THING. IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT RACISM. from how white everyone was to lindy immediately blocking the doctor while only "sliding" ruby to them all being rich kids to lindy being appalled ruby and the doctor were in the same room to everyone saying they could "tame" the wild woods and "be pioneers". it was ALWAYS about racism.

yes the social media aspect ties into it bc racism is RAMPANT on social media. i specifically noticed how lindy made an effort to say how her clothes were sustainable and then turns around and commits microaggressions against the doctor. its the exact flavor of showboaty performative activism you see everywhere. just because you didnt notice it doesnt mean it wasnt there.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

god. the way she’s so rude specifically to the doctor. how she keeps reacting like he’s condescending to her, even though both ruby and ricky are speaking the same way. the fact that she’s smitten with ricky and able to run and perform complex tasks when he asks, but resists the doctor’s doctor-ing at every turn. the cold open is her reacting to him with immediate disgust and blocking him. “i thought that you just looked the same.” “i knew i was right to hate you.” “he’s going to be so disciplined.” “he’s not as stupid as he looks.” the doctor keeps being like “the monsters must be differentiating who to eat for some [superficial, silly] reason - height, perfume, astral signs, etc,” and for the slug monsters it is something silly, it’s the first letter of their last name, but at the end we realize that to these actual human beings, race is the metric through which they judge the quality of the people around them, and despite him literally being The Doctor of Doctor Who, the Guy Who Saves People And That’s the Show, he is not worth their time… fuck.

like, if it was any other doctor, the entire episode would have unfolded differently. they would have taken the ride in the tardis. but with this doctor, they don’t. and then it ends.

[weggggs]

It's gonna be a looong time before we stop noticing more details here

Yeah, it felt really weird in the moment how Doctor-like Ricky wound up being, and while of course he already has that reputation as a celeb, at the same time we can see first-hand that Lindy is a lot more cooperative with Ruby anyway