#Dot and Bubble

[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 ????????

[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.

[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.

[leikeliscomet]

What Dot and Bubble needs is to never have been written. It was never gonna be the start of the conversation because RTD decided to take the lead instead of having Black writers, not non-white, but *Black* lead a conversation on the *Black* experience. It was always a racism commentary for white people. Russell said himself that it's not about Black people, it's about white people. Even if we got an early follow up on Dot and Bubble it doesn't change the fundemental white British liberal rhetorical thats sown into its foundation. Only speaking for myself, but I wouldn't ever forgive this episode even if we had Black writers behind it. That antiblackness is inevitible and foundational part of the future. That the Doctor is a white or white adjacent human man and that Blackness has always and will always be foreign to him. The Doctor's anti establishment roots no longer matter bc whilst issues of gender, queerness, disability and more are always somethingthe Doctor fights, they're helpless in the face of racism and will only and can only react with endless care and empathy, like well behaving Black people must do.

This article just reaffirms my worries.

Whilst I appreciate RTD2's (awful) attempts at addressing the rise in right wing white supremacist & misogynistic radicalisation it almost *always* shoots itself in the foot by placing the blame at individual issues. Intelligence, loneliness, abuse. Never anything systemic.

You've told the audience the bigotry exists but you never give them any causes or solutions. It's always very liberal. Provide them with a caricature to point at but you never actually get them to interrogate themselves. Only 1 thing or person, nothing bigger to think about.

Hate to say 'self mastabatory' but sprinkling redpill white supremacy commentary in your scripts when you've had an all white writers team in s14 and had abusers working on set back in '05 maybe some self reflection is needed no?

(Also it should go without saying that that cognitive issues, emotional loneliness and experiencing abuse don't make u reactionary and blaming disability and victim/survivors is reactionary in itself)

From the amount of women, queer people & leftists I've had be antiblack to me on here the-single upper-middle-class-evil-white-guy character really doesn't mean anything to me when you all bite off his script on the regular. Conrads come in many shapes and sizes

I don't care for the big circle jerk about hating Conrad coming from the same men who'll go back attacking the Jodie stans with misogynistic and lesbophobic dogwhistles next week. I need more seasoning I'm afraid

[bnxxshthealien]

lindy pepper bean walks into a lamppost 72 times

[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.

[bluntshavingrazor]

Episode 5: the Doctor is black now.

I don't mean that in a cynical way, I'm glad they're not completely avoiding the subject, I just think it's interesting that the two episodes of the 15th Doctor that have most involved his new skin tone have been the fifth episodes. There aren't really any other connections between Dot and Bubble and The Story and the Engine that I can see. Both to do with networks of things? Both have a majority mono-racial cast? Both have giant artificial invertebrates?

Welcome to the 15th Doctor's tenure on Doctor Who! We have-

A first episode of the series with a goofy sci-fi aesthetic masking deep (yet also slightly shallow) social commentary.

A second episode where the Doctor meets a god, runs from the god and then gets grappled by a god using unconventional (and for some people I'm sure, strange-thought-provoking) tendrils.

A third episode with a darker tone focussing on a military operation and is also kind of a sequel to an RTD1 era episode (I say 'kind of' because there really was no reason for the planet in The Well to be Midnight)

An episode revolving around Ruby Sunday that the Doctor is not actually in all that much. (And yet, oddly, ends up one of the better episodes in the series.) Plus more political satire!

A mysterious old woman who keeps turning up all over the place for reasons that will probably be explained in the seventh episode's cliff-hanger. (Whether that explanation will be satisfying remains to be seen)

[excessively-english-jd]

Only Doctor Who could take me on the emotional journey whiplash of seeing a man titled "Dr Pee" to watching an entire group of people engage in a suicide mission because they are terminally racist

[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’

[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

[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

[fauxvvounds]

[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"

[were-wolverine]

i’ve been waiting for someone to make this but i haven’t seen it yet so i decided to just make it myself

[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

[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.