Doc and Trouble

And this week's was yet another good episode of Doctor Who. How tragic Davies decided to start the season with what's looking to be the two weakest episodes by a long shot. "Dot and Bubble" was already being compared to Black Mirror before it came out but, let's be honest, Black Mirror took a lot of influence from Doctor Who and The Twilight Zone. A lot of Black Mirror concepts tend to remind me of many Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays. What's Davies parodying with "Dot and Bubble"? Our culture growing increasingly wrapped up in convenient technology. The bubble which gives Pepper-bean directions for her every movement sounds like the GPS in a car. Her compulsive immersion in friend chats and memes pokes fun at people glued to their phones. This is explicitly a community of rich people. I liked how this was made clear because there's a tendency for this class of people to regard themselves as middle class. Pepper-bean bemoaning her two hours of work reminded me of those who confidently expect a "post-work" world. There's a fine line Davies manages to walk well, between laughing at Pepper-bean and sympathising with her. How much of her ridiculous behaviour is her fault and how much is due to the circumstances of her birth? That rock star, Ricky September, she runs into turns out to be unexpectedly cool, someone with the rare independent personality to explore life outside of the algorithms. He's improbably perfect but it also makes sense for a rock musician to be open minded and curious. Even so, the viewer keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen which shows this guy to be too good to be true. This expectation turns out to be a really brilliant bit of misdirection on Davies' part. There's another aspect to the premise not mentioned until the end. SPOILERS AHEAD I figured it out pretty early on. The BBC is so persistent with its diversity quotas, I knew there had to be a reason everyone was white. But this society of future racists was much better conceived than the one Chibnall came up. Davies builds that complicated relationship between the audience and Pepper-bean first. We've felt a little bad for laughing at her, we've felt good for her little triumphs. She's not just a cartoon villain. It's actually fairly reasonable that she and the others don't believe the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. This makes the episode a much better commentary on racism. I mean, Chibnall's episodes weren't really comments at all as much as they were simplistic messaging. "Dot and Bubble" juxtaposes racism with a culture of intellectual complacency, of casual selfishness, and endless, compulsive self-gratification. The only criticism I might have is that Davies ought to have made Pepper-bean's world more appealing to the viewer. It's good enough that the temptations that have rotted Pepper-bean's brain are thoroughly credible, though. Doctor Who is available on the BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere.