Next, we have Dot and Bubble and honestly an episode I really didn’t expect to like as much as I did. Series 14 had ridden quite a high with back-to-back episodes being received very positively and I figured Dot and Bubble would be a revert back to average at best. And while it certainly was a downgrade to its preceding episodes, it still managed to be a solid entry in Fifteen’s era. According to behind the scenes, this was the first episode to be produced and it was done while Ncuti was wrapping up filming on other projects hence why he’s absent for large portions of the episode, which is the second Doctor-lite episode of the series. A bit of a risky decision but it is clever how Russell accommodates for Ncuti’s limited availability at the beginning of production. The final scene of the story in fact was Ncuti’s first scene to be filmed as the Doctor and I gotta say, now that this era’s all said and done, this goes down as one of if not my favourite Fifteenth Doctor scenes. Ncuti just really pours his heart into this ending where the group of people he’s spent all episode trying to save, suddenly reject his help when they meet him in person because they’re in fact racists. I knew at some point the show would go for an episode that tackles the Doctor’s change in skin colour and the potential conflicts that may arise from it, but I wasn’t expecting that episode to be one that takes place in the far future. Though it does paint a rather bleak idea that the same level of racism that exists today will continue to exist in the far future when by all logic it would’ve evolved into some other form of bigotry. But the Doctor doesn’t care how they feel or what they say about him, he just wants to save them because he knows they’ll die if they head out into the world that’s overrun by killer slug creatures. But because they refuse and he can’t force them to come with him, he’s left devastated that he was unable to save their lives. It’s honestly his best performance as the Doctor to date