Season 1 (Series 14); Episode 5 --- "Dot and Bubble" by Russell T. Davies

Well, this was a weird one. Leading up to its release, its already obvious commentary on social media by a man in his 60s had me worried that it would be an episode entirely made up of "phone bad" messaging and, whilst it was still that, it was also quite a few other things. A weird, surreal twisting story with inspired design and atrocious dialogue where the message is that social media and racism is bad, but the racism is a surprise.

Everybody is happy in Finetime. A city for the young and rich, every citizen is connected to their closest friends via their bubble - a holographic social media system that encapsulates their heads with constantly streaming video calls. Only, people are going missing, and monsters roam the streets.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Even if I have my issues with this episode's script, I have to give props to every actor in it. Even with the lines they're given, all the sidecast is on top form, especially Callie Cooke, who manages to sell the deeply irritating Lindy enough to tolerate her. Another thing Dot and Bubble impresses me with is the visuals, which are stunning throughout and have easily my favourite set design so far this season, with a slightly retro, fifties/sixties inspired alien colony. Plus, the effects for the slug creatures (or Man-traps as they seem to be called) are incredible and the design generally is incredibly disturbing. In fact, most of this episode is surprisingly disturbing. Juxtaposed with the fun, pop-colour scheme and lively characters is genuinely horrific imagery - the visuals of Finetimers being eaten alive by the creatures is viscerally unsettling and the droning, masterful soundtrack from Murray Gold (which is probably my favourite so far in this season) lends itself geniusly to the events of the story. Also, oddly, I found myself genuinely invested in Ricky September, although, knowing the twist, it's wishful thinking to assume he wasn't also racist, so that's a shame. Honestly, I'm just impressed the BBC had the balls to make the episode, considering it pulls so few punches. From the twist revealing our main protagonist was really unabashedly an awful person to Lindy fully murdering Ricky in the third act, the sudden inclusion of themes destined to divide opinion is impressive more than anything and I certainly admire the courage.

Unfortunately, this is all built on a really poor script that fails in more ways than one. Firstly, I've already mentioned how atrocious the dialogue is. It is very clear that it was written by a 61-year-old-man and most of the time, it causes me to be unable to get invested in many of the characters and outright dislike a few. Also, this episode is just riddled with plot holes. RTD clearly did the same thing he did with 73 Yards, where he thought of cool ideas but no reason for why they happened and left Dot and Bubble with a litany of unanswered questions: What exactly are the dots? How exactly could they be "sentient"? How did they create the Man-Traps and to that extent, what even are the Man-Traps? Why are they killing people in alphabetical order for no reason? There's just too many to ignore. Beyond that, the main draw of this episode - the messaging - is just really clumsily implemented. The social media commentary is not only ineffective and unoriginal, but also practically non-existent past the premise. Any good ideas surrounding it - like Lindy not being able to walk without the aid of the bubble - is very quickly dropped (she learns to walk perfectly very quickly) but it's also completely abandoned by the end of the episode in place of a different commentary, the episode suddenly becoming a lesson about systemic racism when it turns out that Finetime is an ethnostate. The message is good and what Russell is going for is great, but this feels like a subject that is too important to relegate to a last minute twist. I enjoy the final scene, I do think it's good but I like it more for what it does with the Doctor's character than what it's trying to say. However, I will say that the twist didn't come out of nowhere, which it very much could've. I actually theorised that this was where the episode was going earlier when Lindy commented that she thought the Doctor was two different people that just looked the same. I also like the detail that when the Doctor makes an unsolicited call to Lindy, there's an option to block him but when Ruby does it, she's just allowed on through - it's little moments like this that, at least from a story perspective, justify the twist.

I liked Dot and Bubble, but I feel not for the reason I was meant to. I loved the design and world and sci-fi antics but the actual message, the foundation of the episode itself, was really badly worked into the story. It's going to be dividing opinions for a long, long time but I still like it quite a bit, even if it is admittedly quite flawed.

8/10

Pros:

+ Incredible set design that was incredibly unique and well realised

+ Great creature design brought to life with incredible visual effects

+ Good acting all around that does its best with the lines given

+ Incredibly disturbing atmosphere throughout

+ Fantastic score from Murray Gold

+ Shockingly ballsy episode that subverts a good amount of expectations

+ On a rewatch, the foreshadowing is very cleverly implemented

???

~ Ricky September was surprisingly endearing, though whether or not he was a white-supremacist is up for interpretation

Cons:

- The dialogue throughout is unequivocally awful

- The social commentary is clumsily implemented throughout

- Abandons it attempt to comment on social media

- The final twist feels weird and too small for it to be about such a big topic

- Too many plot holes to ignore