#6 (1.5): Dot and Bubble.

The Doctor and Ruby try to rescue spoiled Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke).

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 43 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Dylan Holmes Williams. Produced by: Vicki Delow.


THE PLOT:

"We come here from the Homeworld. No stinky old folk, just people ages 17 to 27. I mean, no, not just anyone. If you can afford it, obviously."

Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke) is a resident of Finetime, a carefree luxury city for the children of the elite. These teens spend two hours per day working and the rest of their time partying. Lindy and her friends are constantly online inside their "bubbles," holographic social media spheres that encircles the users' heads.

Lindy lives completely inside her bubble, so much so that the Doctor and Ruby have to push her to look beyond it before she even notices one of her co-workers being literally eaten right next to her. Finetime has become infested with monsters: sluglike creatures that are consuming the population - and yet, for whatever reason, they are ignoring Lindy... at least, so far.

Finetime's security is too tight for even the Doctor to get in. If Lindy wants to survive, she'll need to follow his and Ruby's instructions in order to reach a place of safety. All the while, the Doctor tries to piece together what's happening based on the snippets of information available to him.


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: He tries to contact Lindy right at the start of the episode. When he appears on her screen, talking about monsters, she instantly blocks him. It's only after Ruby manages to gain a small degree of trust that the young woman is willing to listen to him. He shrugs off Lindy's wails that she hates him, doing his utmost to keep this frankly idiotic young woman to focus on her own survival. Gatwa delivers what I think is his best-acted scene of the series thus far at the very end: The Doctor, letting out a cry of pure frustration before he lapses into a deep, still silence.

Ruby: Gets the time-honored companion's role of acting as the Doctor's intermediary when he alienates Lindy. She alternately ignores or agrees with Lindy's complaints about how "stupid" she is for not knowing about Finetime and the bubble, showing impressive patience and compassion for the girl. She's still working class at heart, though; when she learns that the residents are "the rich kids," she can't help but snark about it.

Lindy Pepper-Bean: Lindy's bubble is her world far more than any actual physical space. It's where she has fun, where she interacts with her friends, and where she distracts herself from having to ever actually think. There's a wonderful little moment after she witnesses the monster eating her co-worker. She shuts down, unable to process it, retreating into her bubble and playing music to avoid engaging with reality. The importance of Callie Cooke's performance to this episode can't be understated. We experience the entire story through Lindy's eyes, making it critical that this fundamentally selfish and unlikable person still comes across as human enough to make us care about her fate.

Ricky September: The social media star idolized by Lindy, Ricky (Tom Rhys Harries) has a "star account." In defiance of the stereotype, he is probably the least narcissistic person in Finetime. When he sees Lindy struggling, he helps her immediately, and he is protective of her both physically and emotionally from that moment on. He's more capable than her, and we discover why: Despite owing his success to social media, he likes to turn the bubble off while walking around and reading. Some of his behavior is almost Doctorish, with him putting himself in harm's way to save Lindy.


THOUGHTS:

Dot and Bubble is the best episode so far this season - and following on the heels of two other excellent episodes, that's an impressive achievement.

The story is well constructed. We open on Lindy and stay with her for the entire running time. A lot of world building is achieved in the opening minutes, with her turning on her bubble as soon as she wakes, her head engulfed in social media "noise" even as she walks to the bathroom (following directional arrows) to brush her teeth. A couple of her friends are bizarrely "offline," and the Doctor appears to give a warning that she ignores. That warning aside, this opening mostly establishes her daily life, which is so consumed by her bubble that reality has become all but irrelevant.

Lindy's bubble isn't a metaphor or analogy for social media, because it explicitly is social media. It's not the only bubble that exists in the story, though. Lindy happily declares that Finetime is reserved for the young and rich. Poor people and "stinky old people" have no place, keeping her and her friends isolated from anyone belonging to a different social class or even generation. Finetime is itself a domed city, so thoroughly locked off from the outside world that even the Doctor can't get in. When you break it all down, Lindy and her peers: live inside their personal social media bubbles... inside a bubble of youth and privilege... all of which exists inside the bubble of Finetime itself.

The epilogue takes the already existing ideas of social media isolation and separation according to class and adds a new wrinkle. This doesn't come out of nowhere, with hints dropped in character reactions throughout. However, unlike the "bubble" themes, this last is kept reasonably subtle and in the background, so that its full revelation comes as a shock to the Doctor and probably much of the audience, as well. The epilogue deals with this change-up well, with the final minutes particularly effective in not only the scripting, but also in Gatwa's performance and some outright beautiful closing shots.


OVERALL:

Dot and Bubble is my favorite episode so far this season. A good script provides an effective monster story while at the same time delivering plenty of social commentary. The performances are universally excellent. It's also extremely well-directed, with a wonderful contrast between Lindy's noisily cheerful bubble and the monsters chowing down on people outside of it.

This also marks the third standout in a row. At this point, not only has "Season One" (Series Fourteen, I mumble stubbornly) firmly recovered from its stumbling start - It seems on track to be one of the revived series' stronger seasons.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

Previous Story: 73 Yards
Next Story: Rogue

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

#5 (1.4): 73 Yards.

Ruby Sunday is followed by a mysterious woman who is always exactly 73 yards away.

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Dylan Holmes Williams. Produced by: Vicki Delow.


THE PLOT:

The TARDIS materializes in Wales, near the top of a cliff overlooking the sea. The Doctor exults in the view, waxing on about "the war between the land and the sea" - and gets so carried away with his own eloquence that he doesn't notice himself stepping on a fairy circle surrounding a makeshift shrine. Ruby pauses to read a couple of the prayers left by the locals, one of which references a "Mad Jack." When she looks up, the Doctor is gone, and a mysterious woman is watching Ruby from 73 yards away.

Ruby attempts to walk to her to ask where the Doctor went... but no matter what route she takes, the stranger remains 73 yards in the distance. After trying to get back into the TARDIS to no avail, Ruby starts walking to the local village. She asks a hiker to talk to the woman and the hiker agrees, only to flee as soon as she approaches. A man in the local pub also tries, with the same result.

Eventually, Ruby gives up and returns home. From the train, she sees the woman still watching her from 73 yards away, impossibly appearing in fields and towns every time she looks out the window. Her mother decides to put an end to this issue, striding forward to talk to her daughter's stalker... but she turns cold at once, abandoning Ruby.

Before the Doctor's disappearance, when he was nattering on about all things Welsh, he mentioned a future Prime Minister: Roger ap Gwilliam (Aneurin Barnard), whom he described as "terrifying." When Ruby sees ab Gwilliam giving a television interview, just beginning his political ascent, she decides that there's a purpose to what's happening after all. Whether it will solve her problem or not, she resolves to stop this man and "save the world."


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: He's barely in this episode. He drops a bit of exposition about Roger ap Gwilliam to set up later plot events. He's also instantly and deeply sorry about having broken the circle, with his first instinct to try to repair the damage he's done.

Ruby: By contrast, she doesn't care at all about breaking the circle, shrugging it off and proceeding to read some of the prayers left by the shrine. There's a running theme of abandonment, with every protector or potential protector deserting her: The Doctor, the woman who runs the pub, UNIT, even her mother. She feels these emotional wounds strongly, but she also pays close attention to the situation with the mysterious woman. She may not know what is happening or why, but she figures out some of the rules. By the second half, she learns to help herself - and when her lonely new fate intersects with the ascent of Roger ap Gwilliam, she uses her observations to greatest advantage.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: Briefly positioned as a potential savior for Ruby. She shows up with the offer a job, observing that UNIT has recently developed "a tradition of helping the Doctor's former companions." She also has UNIT's resources to bring to bear. Unfortunately, that's where it all goes wrong. Kate attempts to apprehend the mystery woman; and as soon as she and her soldiers approach, she turns cold and orders her forces to "disengage."

Carla Sunday: The Church on Ruby Road showed an alternate reality in which, without Ruby, generous and joyful Carla was instead selfish and bitter. We see that contrast again. When Ruby comes home, Carla is entirely supportive. She's the one who insists on confronting the woman, using walkie-talkies so that Ruby will be able to hear what the woman says. Then a switch is flipped. All at once, Carla stops seeing Ruby as her daughter, and Carla's manner transforms into... well, into the woman we saw in that one scene in The Church on Ruby Road.

Roger Ap Gwilliam: The closest this episode has to a villain, Gwylliam seems designed after modern populist figures. In the usual way of modern television, his actual politics are obscure. He is anti-NATO, however, and plans to buy a nuclear arsenal to keep the UK independent from the rest of the world. He's a nasty piece of work regardless, something the episode reinforces when he initiates an abusive relationship with Marti (Sophie Ablett), one of his campaign's young volunteers.


THOUGHTS:

"That's what we do, all of us. We see something inexplicable and invent the rules to make it work."
-Kate Lethbridge-Stewart drops a pretty big hint about the nature of this story.

73 Yards is deliberately ambiguous, providing questions and only ever giving partial answers.

That isn't to say that it isn't precisely structured. It sets up a problem for Ruby in the woman following her. It establishes rules: The woman is always 73 yards away, and anyone she speaks to is driven into an immediate panic and becomes particularly cold toward Ruby. It holds to both rules consistently and allows Ruby to use them to proactively to solve a problem. As a result, even with answers in short supply, there's still a feeling of completion. An end-of-episode twist provides sense of closure, even as questions are left to swirl around the viewer's mind.

The episode is a showcase for the character of Ruby in much the way Boom showcased the new Doctor. The result is, unsurprisingly, the strongest episode yet for the character. Ruby spends the first half trying to solve the immediate problem. She attempts to approach the woman. When that doesn't work, she enlists the aid of people she meets, hoping they can talk to her so that she can understand what's happening. Each attempt not only fails, but also leaves her more isolated than before. The second half then sees her fixating on a problem - Gwyllim - and relying only on herself to solve it.

I found the first half to be the stronger part, with plenty of atmosphere and a rising sense... not really of dread, but of something being "not right." The Gwyllim plot that dominates the second half is still well told, and it allows Ruby to firmly claim the "hero" role. But these scenes just don't have the same pull, and I think the script lifts a little too freely from Stephen King's The Dead Zone.

Millie Gibson impresses throughout. With Ncuti Gatwa gone save for a couple of minutes at the beginning and even less than that at the end, she has to carry the story, and she does so splendidly. There are moments of strong emotion, particularly in the scenes involving her mother's rejection of her, and she plays these in a way that makes them feel both effective and entirely natural. When she meets Kate, she shifts from relief at having found real help to dread when UNIT descends on the strange woman. Even as her isolation increases, she never loses her sense of humor or compassion.


OVERALL:

73 Yards is the second excellent episode in a row. It's atmospheric and mysterious, and it is further elevated by Millie Gibson's lead performance. I don't think the second half is quite as good as the first, which is why this falls just slightly short of full marks, but I'd still rank it among Russell T. Davies' best Doctor Who scripts. 

This season's stumbling start had me seriously worried. After Boom and this, however, I am back to eagerly awaiting the next installment.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Previous Story: Boom
Next Story: Dot and Bubble

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads