Dot And Bubble - Tumblr Posts

I'm losing my marbles at the latest doctor who episode like this is the first doctor who ep to make me cry in a w h i l e like- fuck you lindy pepper- bean you peice of shit spoiled ass rich kid I'm so pissed and sad rn tffff. the doctors reaction absolutely broke me like why did they have to be so mean?!?! were they being racist? were they being classist? were they just mean???? ahhhhhhggg

I Stan the slugs and dot

eat the rich and racist 💪💪

FUCK LINDY PEPPER-BEAN

Doctor who prediction - Ricky September is the Master secretly.

This is my Headcanon for now until they use the Actor in a future story.

Also, if I’m right. I’m probably crazy or something idk.

very good points *Nodded while smiling*

Dot and Bubble turned out to be much more than what the trailer offered, yet still I will post my list of words next to dots.

First up, in spite of it all, the episode is not escaping the "social media bad" allegations. More on that later

The core concept of the Doctor having to remotely guide someone out of a situation is excellent. Very Blink, but in real-time

The idea of being surrounded by a danger you're unaware of until someone reveals it is also pretty rad. And slightly terrifying

Like the scene where Lindy de-bubbles outside and loads of people are being eaten is messed up

Sadly I think it goes a little too far in having Lindy being unable to walk in a straight line without the bubble. I'm pretty sure that's not even how walking works

You could force the re-bubbling just by making it so she doesn't know the way out of the building. Then in the Plaza 55 scene just have her freak out and freeze because she's surrounded by scary monsters

The problem is that suddenly Lindy is capable of basic motor skills after a few minutes anyway so what was even the point

Also the Dots wanting to kill everyone felt kind of stupid to me for complex meta reasons. Social media might not have your best interests in mind, but the way it which it does so is not homicidal. It in fact needs you alive

The first big twist was pretty brutal. Surprise! The perky idiot was in fact evil!

This actually also clashes with Lindy previously being incapable of all thought since her plan requires fairly decent critical thinking skills to combine several pieces of information and to predict how revealing Ricky September's previous name might save her

This theoretically serves as the final hint of the other twist unless you already worked it out: The Finetimers are all racist. So much so that they walk off into the wilderness to die horribly

wow Ncuti Gatwa puts his all into that Doctor Speech

but there's a but

While it is good that the topic was not avoided, flattening all racist down into a vauge "wow look at those stupid racists" is not an amazing way to handle it?

There are smart bigots of all kinds and they are often the most dangerous ones

It also sort of glosses over how exactly Finetime is benefitting from whatever inequitable society they have

The audience reaction here is also not particularly inspiring here even on the things that aren't Fridge Horror

Some people are saying "woah the Finetimers didn't deserve to be saved" which is essentially not just missing the text of this episode but the entirety of Doctor Who. The Doctor's ethos is that everyone deserves to be saved. If the Daleks get mercy so does everyone else

Also what's going in this episode is genocide

And it gets worse. The episode shows us a very specific slice of the Finetimer's culture. They are directly stated to be the children of the rich upperclass.

The concept of a rich privileged elite only makes sense if the is an underclass from which the elite are distinct

Lindy is reflexively dismissive of the Doctor, and acts as if he should be obligated to help her, but she isn't surpised to see him. So whatever group Lindy thinks the Doctor is part of still existed when she moved to Finetime.

Therefore, I think it's incredibly likely that in addition to the rich racists, the Dots also murdered the entirety of Homeworld's underclass, for the "crime" of being that underclass.

So did the Dots turn against their creators for principled reasons, or did they simply absorb the values of the culture that created them, with the only difference being that they put themselves at the top of the hierarchy?

anyhow I think it would have been more messed up if Lindy realised "yeah we aren't going to make it" and abandoned the other Finetimers, while still being exactly as evil, bigoted and self-centered as she was before. Hell have her lie to the others that she's going to wait for more survivors then turn around and say "so what are we waiting for lets gooooo" in her airhead voice

living in my futuristic cyberbubble and everything is great! except for the creature

This is what we'll get for the next multidoctor story

we were all thinking it

I just got to watch this episode and I Fucking LOVED IT 🥰

DW opinion time

spoilers for the latest episode below the cut

So scrolling through tumblr after I watched the episode (because I always am nosey and wanna know what other people thought), it looks basically like an echo chamber of the same two or three opinions (there are probably more but the algorithm shows you the most popular ones first). Those opinions were:

“You can’t like Ricky, Ricky’s racist”

”Ricky can’t be racist, he was so nice/hot”

“I love that Lindy is just a terrible person through and through, like no redemption”

Here’s where I’m gonna go full essay on this shit and address everything.

There was this one opinion I read (I’m sure it’s other places but this is the one I saw) that said that basically Ricky was the white version of the doctor to show that Lindy would have listened to the Doctor if he was white. And I disagree, I’ll get to that in a moment though.

I read another (I really couldn’t find the post I found this opinion in again, I tried, but I lost it to cyberspace) that said that Lindy was more willing to Ruby because she’s white; once more I disagree, I think she’s more willing to listen to Ruby because she just starts with better people skills. The Doctor basically starts with “Hi, you’re gonna die” whereas Ruby pretends to be taking a survey and is like “by the way I love your top”.

Then I read one that breaks down a very passive interaction between Ricky and the Doctor. This feels like an interpretation thing, I really didn’t see it this way. I even went back and watched the interaction again, to me this sorta smile-and-look-away combo was more of a bashful/humility thing because he does it after the Doctor says something along the lines of “a clever boy too” (something of that manner).

Now for my opinion:

Personally I didn’t see it as racism, I saw classism. I mean, yeah sure, all the people in FineTime are white, but colour isn’t the barrier here, the barrier is economic (which I suppose somewhere further back on the line does imply racism, yada yada.. tangent for another time and not really the main point here). Lindy even says that it’s just the rich kids that are here (not exactly what she said but that’s the basis).

I also think that people put too much into whether or not Ricky’s a good person, he’s really only there to help move the plot along. He doesn’t have any background except that he’s also rich, his last name is actually Coombe (and C comes before P), and he’s famous. That’s it, he’s not got a properly fleshed out character.

I don’t think that outside of fanfiction we’ll ever find out what kind of a person Ricky September is. So I guess we just have to decide for ourselves on that one.

Me, personally, I like Ricky, but that’s because I read him the way I wanted to. People I think have all read him based on their experiences which is why despite not really having proper character work for him, we’ve all made decisions about who he is to us. I’ve personally decided that, maybe he does hold some of the same prejudices as his peers, but I think he’s really open minded and wants to learn stuff. I think he’s chill, I mean man really said he puts down the bubble and reads, basically “yeah, I touch grass”. So yeah 👍.

I’d love to take any legitimate arguments/comments/questions about it. I love proper debate/conversation 😊

It’s always fun when we get to see the new regeneration learn to hate

goddd the episode's premise does such a good job of setting up potential "justifications" for lindy's micro-agressions.

she immediately blocks the doctor? well, he wasn't on her friends list, of course she would! she's shocked that the doctor is in the same room as ruby? of course she would be, everyone here communicates through the bubble, not face-to-face!

her racism ISNT subtle, the episode just guides you (ESPECIALLY if youre white) to overlook it up until the reveal at the end! it SHOULDNT be a surprise, but for some people watching, it IS, because theyve been unknowingly making excuses for her the entire time!

Doctor, let them die.

How could you Lindy Pepper-bean, no one, and I mean NO one, was rooting for you and you STILL let us down

RIP Harry Styles, your acting in this episode was better than it was in My Policeman 😩

Damn, those slugs heard "Eat The Rich" and went 'say less'

ok ok so i just watched dot and bubble and i LOVED it but i have one problem with it

(spoilers for it below)

so for good things: obviously the whole social media taking over peoples lives and rich people being so out of touch thing was really good, like the way shes so reliant on the bubble and uses it to hide when she realises what was happening is so good, and i am *not* the guy to be speaking about how the racism was portrayed bc im about as white as you can get, but i did like how the doctor got to be properly upset at the end bc he has been relatively happy for most of this season (so far).

and i loved the way colours were used, like how most things were all pastel, and clean, and neat (even the “goth” guy was very soft and clean) and then the slug things (idk if they have names) were all dark and muddy and slimy and just plain nasty, like that contrast was so cool

but the thing i really didn’t like was the dots being evil for not really a good reason, like they could have gone for so many different angles but just “ai goes evil bc humanity bad” is really weak imo. like i think they should have gone with they were created by the people who created finetime also creating them just to really hammer home the “social media consumes people and this is bad” message (or really anything other than what they went with)